CHAPTER XXVIII
The important morning came, and with it the four carriages-and-four, and Lady Portmore, resplendent in feathers and silks, and much to be admired, till Helen came in, looking like a genuine angel, so soft and white and bright. It is difficult for the unlearned to explain the component parts of a becoming dress, but some of the party observed that the embroidery on her silk pelisse must have been done at Lyons, to which Mrs. Douglas subjoined the oracular remark, "that it was a pity that it was white upon white." There was also a quantity of shining lace, ordinarily, I believe, termed blonde, floating about, and forming an admirable cloud for the angel to float on.
"Well, Helen, you have gone and done it," said Ernest.
"Am not I bien mise?" she said, blushing; "I have really taken a great deal of pains about my dress, that the people at N——— may approve of Lord Teviot's taste. You know it is my first appearance there."
"And mine," said Lady Portmore.
"And mine," added Mrs. Douglas, in a tone that made everybody laugh except Lady Portmore, and she went on, never minding.
"But, my dear Helen, we must not expect to attract much notice to-day. There stands the real lion."
"My importance as a lion will not come into play till I begin roaring," said Mr. G.; "and my constituents will be glad to have something to look upon, even if they deign to listen to me. Really, my dear Teviot," he whispered as Helen moved on, "I never saw such perfection. I cannot take my eyes from her."
Such a speech from any other man would have given Lord Teviot a jet-black fit of jealousy, but it delighted him from Mr. G., who had established a right to make a little solemn political love to all the distinguished beauties of the day, and it was by no means a mere measure of custom and courtesy. He was as busy about his little flirtations, and as absorbed in his little sentiments, as if he had been a Lord Somebody Something just gone into the Guards, and doing his first London season, and nobody thought it odd. Half the women in London unblushingly paid court to him, and nobody said it was scandalous. If he got away from the House of Commons and came to a party, there was a sort of rustling sensation in the room, and two or three of his reigning loves immediately got up and made a circle round him, and drew their chairs close to his, and hated each other, and were as eager in their rivalries as if he had been thirty years younger, and were not absorbed in politics eleven hours out of every twelve.
Lady Teviot had taken his fancy prodigiously, and his unrivalled powers of pleasing were exerted for this young creature as if he were her own contemporary. Again, Lady Portmore was puzzled—in another point she was baffled. She wished to be in the same carriage as the hero of the day, but a Lord and Lady Middlesex had arrived the night before, solely for the sake of attending the ceremony. They were a remarkably dull couple—he, a quiet, magistraty sort of man, who never went into society except on a great county occasion—she, a little crooked woman, with an unpretending manner and a mistaken bonnet; but with all these drawbacks his peerage was a century older than Lord Portmore's, and upon a state occasion like this precedence must have its rights: so Lady Middlesex went with Lady Teviot in her carriage, which also contained Mr. G. and Lord Teviot—the lion and his keeper. Lady Portmore found herself actually doomed to the second carriage, with Mrs. Douglas at her side and Lord Middlesex opposite to her, and La Grange going to make a spring at the fourth place. But despair gave her energy, and she called to Ernest to take his seat.
"Thank you," he said, "but I hate sitting backwards; and Miss Douglas, who does not mind it, has promised to change places with me if I go in her carriage."
"Indeed I never did. Colonel Beaufort."
"Well, but you will, I know; if not, I shall look so frightfully pale that it will spoil the show and distress the Mayor. Now, let us get in."
"Come then, Stuart," said Lady Portmore, "I will have you here."
Lord Beaufort and Colonel Stuart, who had each their reasons for wishing to avoid the carriage which contained Miss Forrester, both hastened forward, and at last Lady Portmore was gratified by Mrs. Douglas's declaration that she should like to go in the fourth carriage, which had the honour of conveying her husband; so Lady Portmore had the pride of being escorted by three gentlemen, and the pleasure of talking to them all the way.
The delay occasioned by these arrangements gave the Teviot carriage some little advance, and the cheers with which it was received reached Lady Portmore's ears when she was in the midst of one of her confidential harangues.
"What a noise!" she said. "All on G.'s account, of course; he is so extremely popular. I often tell him his head will be turned. How they are cheering! it must be for him. What is it all about?"
"We shall be in the thick of it soon," said Lord Beaufort; "they are trying to take the horses off, and there is Teviot imploring and gesticulating like a madman, and Helen standing up and curtseying; and now for such a hurrah,"
A fresh mob rushed by. "Which is my lord's carriage—where is the young lady?"
"There, my good fellows. Lady Teviot is the lady in white."
"Why, you don't suppose," said Colonel Stuart, "they will go and take that estimable little hobgoblin, Lady Middlesex, for a bride?"
Another cheer, and, as the carriages moved slowly on, the murmur of comments on my lady's beauty and my lord's luck reached Lady Portmore's ears, and were encouraged by Lord Beaufort, who leaned out of the carriage and talked and laughed with the crowd, much to their mutual satisfaction. Lady Portmore waxed cross—wished she had known it would be such a mob, she would not have come; thought they had better wait a little, that the dust might subside; but no, on they went, the cheers becoming louder and the dust more opaque, and no vanquished king of the Huns, chained to the car of a Roman dictator, could feel his degradation more sensibly than Lady Portmore, following unnoticed in Helen's wake.
At last they arrived at the entrance of the bridge, and there stood the mayor and the magnates of the borough, with white staves in their hands and white ribbons in their button-holes, and white scarves over their shoulders; and Mrs. Mayoress, gorgeously arrayed, holding a bouquet to present to Lady Teviot; and the young mayors and mayoresses giggling at "the figure papa cut with a white shawl on," holding bouquets for the rest of the company.
The bridge was decked with flags, arches of laurel were thrown over it, and a barricade had been thrown across it to prevent any unhallowed foot from profaning the pavement till the proper moment. There was a dinner ready to be eaten at one end, and a balloon half ready to go up at the other. The carriages had all arrived, and the company were all assembled. Lord Teviot led up the mayor and mayoress and their goodly company, and introduced them to his bride; and Mr. G. accosted them all with the easy cordiality a well-practised member knows how to assume—perhaps really feels, though that is doubtful. He had the knack of remembering their private histories and family connections, and was strong in his recollection of Christian names.
"Ah, Dowbiggin, glad to see you; I expected you would have been off after the grouse. Charles Lloyd, you have been beat about the stone-coping of the bridge, I am glad to see. Taylor, is your father here? What! is that Nathaniel Curry? you have been living on the fat of the land since last I saw you. William, here's the sovereign I owe you—our bet about the steamer. Mrs. Dowbiggin, this is my godson, I am certain. I am expressly proud of George Dowbiggin, Lady Teviot; I must beg you to admire these curls. And now for our bridge; it is a very handsome structure, upon my word. Lady Teviot, you are to be the first to put your foot on our bridge. Now for it."
The procession was put in motion, the mayor gave a signal with his wand, the flags were hoisted, the guns went off, and the band at the other end began playing that original and unhackneyed air, "See, the conquering hero comes." But the barricade at the entrance had been made so particularly firm and good that none of the committee of management could move it, and it seemed probable that there would be a regular siege before the hero could either come, or with any propriety be called a conqueror. The agitated mayor waved his wand wildly, and called for the clerk of the works; but he had gone to assist at the inflation of the balloon, and was in his turn storming at the gas-man for the inefficient supply of gas. Still the band went on playing; still the barricade stood firm; and still the balloon remained flaccid. The mayor tore his white scarf in his attacks on the posts; the mayoress' face grew scarlet, but she periodically made little pokes at the powerful railing with the white ivory handle of her parasol, well meant but ineffective. La Grange proposed calling for boats, and attacking the bridge from the other side. "Impossible, quite impossible, my dear sir," said the mayor; "the boats are stationed here to convey the company to the launch; and the programme, sir, the programme specifies the south side of the bridge."
Happily, before the scene became perfectly ludicrous, the real carpenter arrived, the obstacles were removed, and the company advanced: it was really a pretty sight; the river was covered with boats—the quays and the adjoining buildings with people. The bridge was a very handsome structure, and no pains had been spared to make the temporary decorations accord with the occasion. As the procession turned to walk back again, the balloon rose just at the proper moment, carrying into the clouds, for the hundred and twenty-seventh time, the adventurous Mr. Brown, who assumed his most picturesque balloon attitude in bidding farewell to the old world and the new bridge. The supply of gas had been purposely stinted to save the credit of young Mr. Theodore Dowbiggin, who had announced his intention to become "an intrepid aeronaut," but had thought better of it as the time drew near. His intrepidity of course remained—that being a quality, like Dogberry's reading, that came by nature—but his aeronautcy was postponed. The well-paid Brown declared there was only gas enough for one, and the well-instructed engineer announced the impossibility of supplying another spoonful. Theodore loudly claimed to go up alone. Brown stuck to his balloon, and at last, as the papers announced, the high-spirited young man was borne away from the spot by actual force, and the balloon rose majestically, bearing north-north-west, and was lost in the clouds. Not really lost: there is no occasion for alarm; it was found again two hours afterwards, hopping about on Framlingham Downs; Brown going through all the usual manoeuvres of throwing out ballast, cutting cords, dragging anchors, etc., and extricating himself from all sorts of perils, from which he was eventually rescued by the Rev. Mr. Wilcox, who was taking his quiet afternoon walk, and was greatly surprised to see a Brobdignag humming-top skipping about his path, forty yards at a skip. Those who have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wilcox will not doubt the readiness of the humanity with which he helped Brown—first to get out of his balloon, and then to catch it—nor the hospitality with which he offered him luncheon. A chaise was immediately procured; and Brown and his balloon were carefully packed up in it and on it, and returned to N——— in time to claim the last shouts of this shouting day.
Much had been done in the interim—a ship had been launched, and christened The Helen by Lady Teviot; the docks had been surveyed, and the whole party were assembled at dinner. Lady Portmore had contrived to hook herself on Lord Teviot's arm for the walk, which gave her an opportunity of writing the next day to all her friends that she had been universally taken for the bride; and at the collation she very cleverly jockeyed Lady Middlesex, and took her place next to Mr. G. The dinner had been laid in an enormous tent; and as it was a morning fête, it had been arranged that the ladies should remain and hear the speeches.
The toasts proceeded in the usual routine without any attempts at eloquence, till the mayor pronounced a magnificent oration on domestic "'appiness in the 'igher classes" and the nobility in general, and concluded with proposing Lady Teviot's health. Air—"Happy, happy, happy pair." This was received with immense applause, which was increased by the sight of Lady Teviot's tears. She did not know exactly what to do, and so of course began to cry, but in a gentle becoming manner, though her nervousness increased when Lord Teviot got up to return thanks. She had never heard any public speaking, and expected that he would be unable to get safely through two or three inaudible sentences; therefore his gentleman-like easy flow of thanks struck her as a wonderful display of talent, and she was sorry when his speech ended, though it was by proposing the health of his friend Mr. G. Air —"Glorious Apollo." Immense cheering; and when that had subsided Glorious Apollo got up, and with a slight hesitation of voice and manner, as if he had not an idea what he was going to say, nor how to say it, and with an air of extreme surprise and gratitude at having his health drank at all, he started off in a brilliant speech that lasted three-quarters of an hour. As it was intended less for the edification of his present hearers than for an answer to the attacks of the Opposition papers, and a declaration of an important change in the commercial relations of the country, every word had been well weighed. It had been composed and revised and learnt by heart, and Fisherwick had copied it over five times with variations; but Mr. G. delivered it in an unstudied, off-hand manner, that gave it the air of a sudden burst of confidence to the 700 particular friends by whom he was surrounded. And by an artful allusion to the balloon, and the impracticable barricade, and one or two trifling events of the morning, he convinced the worthy mayor and corporation, who were not up to interpolations, that it was the sudden inspiration of the moment. Innocent creatures! their hearts burned with indignation when, on the following week, bitter leading articles dissected and misinterpreted and condemned every word of this speech; and they said it was most unfair that Mr. G. should be tried by words that were evidently spoken on the spur of the moment, and quite in confidence to themselves.
But in the meantime it was a magnificent display of eloquence, and the ladies of the party who were unused to public oratory were very much excited by it. Even Mrs. Douglas owned she was glad to have heard him once: she had no doubt that she should soon get used to the sort of thing, and see the fallacy and absurdity of long speeches; but for this once she had really rather have heard it than not, even though she had had the most uncomfortable bench to sit on that she had ever met with in her life, and though she was half starved in consequence of the waiter having whisked away her soup before she had touched it. Lady Portmore took joy on the occasion, in consequence of her having always prophesied that G. would make a capital speaker; and she could also venture to assert that his notions about trade were safe, and to be depended on, and she approved highly of what he had said. Mr. G., who liked a joke, contrived, by an allusion to foreign politics, to bring up La Grange, who was longing to astonish the natives by the purity of his English, and made a speech which in some respects was satisfactory, though he told them that the opening of the bridge was the finest imposition he had ever seen, that he should always consider that day the handsomest day of his life; that he was not to be regarded upon as a stranger, though he had never seen them before, for that he was as perfectly their compatriot in heart as in language; that it was his pride to be taken in as an Englishman wherever he went; and that from the bottom of his heart he drank their excellent healths.
The day concluded as satisfactorily as it had begun; Fisherwick came home slightly elevated, and so elated with the dinner and the speech, that after asking each of the company individually whether they had ever heard anything so fine in their lives, he found himself strong enough to read half a paragraph of an Opposition journal which contained a violent attack on his idol, and to rub his hands friskily while he hummed, Ça m'est égal.