Concerning Isabel Carnaby

PROLOGUE.

A woman's tongue is ever slow To tell the thing she does not know.

There was a large dinner-party in Grosvenor Square at the house of Lord Kesterton, one of the new peers.

"Are you thoroughly enjoying your glories and honours?" inquired Lady Eleanor Gregory of her host, who had taken her down to dinner.

"Well, I must confess that I feel rather like the man who lost his wife, and said it was 'verra dull but verra peaceful'; and I have come to the conclusion that peace is an acquired taste."

"Then do you hanker after the fighting in your dear old House of Commons?"

Lord Kesterton smiled. "I am afraid I still babble o' green benches when I get the chance. The House of Commons is like certain women of one's acquaintance: you quarrel with them, and they expect too much from you, and you vow you will enjoy yourself and have nothing more to do with them; but, all the same, they have spoilt your taste for anything else, and they make all other women seem insufferably dull."

"And now I have got to scold you for dismissing my poor, dear Harry," said Lady Eleanor.

"Uncork the vials of your wrath," replied her host, "and I will endeavour to suffer and be strong."

"I shall appeal to Mr. Madderley to second my vote of censure," continued the lady, turning to the Royal Academician who sat at her right hand. "I suppose I ought to talk to you about art, but I am going to talk to you about politics."

"Please do not talk to me about art, dear lady; I could not bear it from you," replied the artist.

"Why not?"

"Because I should thereby discover that you knew nothing at all about it; and the one rag of faith still wrapped round my jaded spirit is my belief in your omniscience. If you take that away from me I shall sink lower and lower, and shall probably end in doubting the wisdom of Woman, or the supremacy of the British rate-payer."

Lady Eleanor laughed. "Don't you feel like this when I talk about politics?"

"Far from it. I know absolutely nothing about them myself; and when I hear you speaking familiarly--nay, even flippantly--of Whips and Under Secretaries and similar ruling powers, I regard you with awe as a mighty sibyl juggling with the mysterious forces of the Unknown."

"I see; it must sound rather impressive."

"Impressive is not the word--it sounds simply tremendous. Calling Under Secretaries by their Christian names seems to me like patting a thunderstorm or playing with an earthquake; yet I have often heard you do it without an apparent qualm. It is marvellous!"

Lady Eleanor was very proud of what she considered her wire-pulling powers; therefore she enjoyed the Academician's persiflage. It was in cases like this that Madderley showed himself such a clever man; he always said disagreeable things; but he generally took care that they were the sort of disagreeable things that people wanted him to say. Women liked Mr. Madderley because, they said, he did not flatter them; they never found out that is was because he flattered them that they liked him so much.

"When I talk about art, however, you regard me as 'an unlessoned girl,' I suppose," suggested her ladyship.

"That certainly is my idea, but, had you given me time, I would have decked its crudeness with some flowers of speech."

"I am so glad that I did not give you time, then. It would be insufferable if you began to be pleasant! Your raison d'être would be gone if you left off telling disagreeable truths, and we should all leave off liking you."

The artist smiled. "It is very kind of you to say that, Lady Eleanor; but don't you think that the men who tell palatable fibs are really the popular men?"

"No, I don't," Lady Eleanor hastened to assure him; "now you are immensely popular--you must know that you are; and yet you always say straight out whatever you think, and never mind how disagreeable it is. It is this truthfulness that makes us all admire and trust you."

The artist smiled again.

"Do you remember," continued Lady Eleanor, "how you once told a whole group of us our faults at a party at the Farleys'? You said that I was ambitious, and that Lady Farley was cruel, and that Isabel was shallow, and that Violet was cold. I have never forgotten it; I thought it was so nice and plucky of you to tell us the truth straight out like that."

Mr. Madderley remembered that he had once said these things; he also remembered that he had never thought any of them, but this he did not consider it necessary to confess.

"But where are the politics you said you were going to talk to me about?"

"Oh! of course--I forgot. I want to ask your opinion as to the way in which the Government has treated me. You know Harry Mortimer was Lord Kesterton's understudy--no, I mean Under Secretary--at the War Office; and it was a very comfortable arrangement for both of them."

"Well?"

"Then Lord Kesterton took his own peerage without a single twinge of conscience. But now that poor, dear Harry has succeeded to his uncle, and become Lord Gravesend, he has got to be sent away like an inefficient footman, because they say they cannot both of them be in the House of Lords. So please tell your host that you think he has behaved abominably!"

"I do indeed. Such conduct seems to me unjustifiable. It is like drinking oneself, and insisting on one's servants being teetotalers."

Lord Kesterton laughed. Madderley always amused him, and he loved to be amused. "But you are keeping back part of the truth, Lady Eleanor," he said; "we have endeavoured to break the blow to Gravesend by giving him the Governorship of New North Wales."

Lady Eleanor sighed. "That is nothing. I wanted Harry to have a career."

"You forget that he is going to marry you," replied her host; "surely that is a career sufficient to satisfy even the most ambitious of men, and to occupy the time of the most industrious."

"Of course it is. What I ought to have said was that I wanted Harry to have a recreation."

"Recreation means variety of occupation," suggested Lord Kesterton, "and he would hardly find that--after marriage--at the War Office."

"Do you think he will find it in New North Wales?"

"Most certainly; because there, in his official life, his duty will be to rule."

"You are very rude," laughed Lady Eleanor; "I shall talk to Mr. Madderley instead, and ask him if he doesn't think that Gravesend is a very depressing title for a young man to come into."

"It suggests the quintessence of finality," replied the artist, "there is no doubt of that."