Leah: a woman of Fashion

Front matter

LEAH: A WOMAN OF FASHION. BY MRS. EDWARDES, AUTHOR OF "OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?" "SUSAN FIELDING," "STEVEN LAWRENCE," &C, &C. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1875- All rights reserved. CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME. chap. Page I. Transformation . . . . i II. Rose-Coloured Blinds . . .12 III. Her Grace of St. Ives . . 26 IV. A Red-Letter Day . . -57 V. Gas-Light in June . . .77 VI. Sweets from Lord Stair . .104. VII. A Whisper in the Crowd . 130 VIII. Checkmate ! , . . . 148 IX. For this Once . . . .157 X. Jack sees His Duty . . . 177 XI. At the Eleventh Hour . . 194 XII. Poor Human Nature . . . 212 XIII. The Last Irony of Fate . . 237 XIV. "Oh, that 'twere Possible". . 251 XV. "After Long Grief and Pain" . 265 XVI. " To Feel the Arms of my True Love 275 XVII. "Round Me Once Again!" . . LEAH : A WOMAN OF FASHION.

Chapter I. Transformation

THE assertion savours of paradox, yet 1 believe it to be true, that had Leah never come across Danton, or known pure love's taste, her chances of salvation as Jack Chamberlayne's wife had been greater. I said at the commencement of this story that hers were the very virtues to derive nourish ment from prosperity ; lapped in soft silks, fed on costly food from costly dishes, and VOL. III. B LEAH crowned with irreproachable sets of emeralds and diamonds for the world's approval. Married for money, with neither remembrance nor expectancy of aught beyond, Leah — doubt it not — had been circumspect enough. She is Colonel Pascal's child, and, but for that one accidental meeting, might have walked from her cradle to her grave with every tender, perilous faculty inherited from her mother undeveloped.

Do you suppose there are not, in most of us, some finer potentialities than those which the dull treadmill of our lot has served to awaken ? But to a soul that has once gone out of itself in love, danger, pleasure, pain, all human chances of evil and of good are multiplied for ever. Why, this Leah whom we see now is literally not the same woman whom we first saw essaying sprays and coronets before her glass in Paris. To Leah Pascal nature was a background, more or less becoming, for picnics and gardenparties, with Leah Pascal always as the prominent foreground adornment ; art, in the form of royal academies, or operas, a convenient means of seeing the latest fashions, and displaying to the world one's own latest conquest. Leah Chamberlayne, feverishly alive to every external influence, will gaze at a midnight sky or amber sunset — even amidst the turmoil of a London season — with emotion as much beyond her tears as it is beyond her power of analysis.

The scent of certain flowers thrills her to pain. Despite her want of ear, music begins to have a charmed voice for her. And all this, while the sisterhood of folly are copying her bonnets, the brotherhood of inanity con tending for — alas, and winning — her smiles ? An aspirant leader of fashion, and the soul within her struggling hourly into passionate life. Monstrous anomaly ! I would say, had not experience taught me to look for every anomaly, every contradiction in the B LEAH heart that has newly passed from self s narrow darkness into love. Imagine a man born blind who should come unexpectedly into great wealth, and just about the same time receive, as by miracle, the gift of sight. The crowd thinks of nothing save his equipages, his town and country house, his entertainments. But the man himself — could millions of gold, do you believe, affect him strongly with the fresh raptures of grass and river and sky, bewildering his sense at every turn ?

Money that can ransom us from no deep grief can assuredly purchase for us no exalted joy. Leah has inherited her very wishes, " the buildings of her fancy," with the certainty, daily strengthening, of their life tenure, and derives from them not one tithe of the pleasure or the pain that " Si tu savais " played by a street organ, or the sudden sweetness of a bunch of violets, have power to bring her. Possibly things might have gone better if she had had one wholesome source of interest derived from money, could have seen Deb growing strong through its agency, Deb overjoyed with London toys and riding habits made by the tailor. But fortune, who so seldom comes to us with both hands full, has in this matter been froward. Scarcely was Leah's spendid marriage six months old, when Colonel Pascal, to his mingled amaze ment and joy, found the burthen of existence lightened of another daughter.

" You recollect your dear Aunt Hepzibah ?" Thus he announced the stroke of good fortune to Leah. " The only one of the family who, during the trials of my early married days, remained a friend to your sainted mother. Your Aunt Hepzibah, lately left a widow and independent, has offered to adopt my beloved little Deb as her own child. The feelings with which I contemplate such a separation I leave to my Leah to guess. LEAH But what parent would allow selfish consider ations to interfere with a child's welfare ? Deb is to be clothed, educated, provided for by my admirable sister-in-law, and starts for her new home on Monday." And this was Deb's postcript : " Aunt hepzibah lives at Ramsgitt, and there are Shells and Donkeys and a tortis-Hell cat with Kittens, and I can't sleep at night for joy.

And Papa and Naomi will live alone ! ! " So, as far as rescuing Deb from pauperism went, the sacrifice or her marriage need never have been made. The letter reached Leah at Monaco, just before she began the experiment of gambling, and gave, perhaps, the finishing touch needed to her profound sense of self-abasement. She went, loaded with toys and sweetmeats, to Ramsgate, two days after her return to England, and found Deb almost rosy ; tumultuously glad to see Leah, of course, but too deeply engaged with a palace of dirt and oyster-shells that she was erecting in Aunt Hepzibah's garden for the tortis-Hell cat to give more than lukewarm attention to the very costliest of the London presents. "And when you come again bring the child nothing," said Aunt Hepzibah, a faded kindly woman, with eyes that spoke to Leah of her mother.

" She loves you better than anything on earth. Don't spoil the love by making it mercenary. When you come, you bring yourself. Be sure that will always be joy enough for Deb." Money of no use there ; nay, it would seem a barrier rather between herself and the child's affection. Aunt Hepzibah's means were modest ; she lived in a plain little house ; dressed in old-fashioned black ; kept one old servant. Leah, in her training silks, with her atmosphere of London life and frivolity, felt more and more out of her element each time she went to Ramsgate. And then Deb's questions, asked with Deb's LEAH eyes upon her face, were in themselves not reassuring. " Was Leah happy ? What, quite happy with Jack for a husband?" For Deb, as of old, displays what Montaigne calls the " esprit primesaultier," going at the first bound to the core of things.

"And had she forgotten Danton, and could she get no nicer friend in all England than ugly Lord Stair?" On one occasion his lordship had constituted himself Mrs. Chamberlayne's escort down the river. " Did Jack detest Lord Stair less than he used at Madame Bonchretien's ? And why had Leah taken to putting white dust on her face ? Was it to look like Cousin Bell, or the other fine town lady they had talked of in Paris — Madame Tatters?" Thus the little girl would prattle ; while Leah, silent, ill at ease, felt that the child killed her with her talk, and gradually lost courage more and more for her visits to Aunt Hepzibah's cottage and to innocence. So even her love for Deb, the one feeling that before her marriage served to keep her heart sweet, has in a manner been slain, and by her own suicidal hand.

Reader, if this woman has failed to win your pity hitherto, refuse it not now ; she has grown to shrink before a child's eyes — to dread a child's tongue ! A fortnight, three weeks, go by ; at last, on the Sunday forenoon succeeding her ex planation with Jack, Leah remembers with a start of remorse, that almost a month has passed without her paying Deb one visit. Shall she give up her hopes of meeting the Duchess at the Zoo, and spend the hot hours of the afternoon in Aunt Hepzibah's sea-side cottage and away from Babylon ? It is her custom on Sunday morning to pursue Royalty with the mob to the chapel in Margaret Street. But to-day her heavy eyes turn reluctant from the light at the usual LEAH 10 hour of waking ; and by the time she has risen, pretended to breakfast, and dressed, it is past one o'clock.

Too late to think of Ramsgate and Deb, even were one in spirits for the expedition. And then, there is her half-promise of meeting Lord Stair — as matters stand now, were it not an act well nigh of self-destruction to risk incurring Lord Stair's displeasure ? And while we live, must we not live ! Leah's head aches, her heart aches ; she wants the old panacea, ex citement, to bring her round. Chloral, or whatever poison stood readiest on her dress ing-table, yielded her as much sleep as comes within the reach of poisons, last night. Now, for the day's refreshment, she needs movement, admiration, flattery — I had almost written, needs Lord Stair. " And has Madame forgotten the Parisian dress and bonnet that the world has not seen ?" sug gests the consoling voice of Mademoiselle Melanie — Mademoiselle Melanie, anxious for freedom to appear in her Parisian finery before her world.

Put them on ; with such amount of white dust, such slender adminis tration of antimony as the occasion requires, order the carriage, and start — to Mrs. Balti more's, as it is yet too early for the Zoo. Better an hour or so of Bell and Bell's philosphy than the companionship of her own thoughts, the remembrance of the words that came from Jack's lips last night.

Chapter II. Rose-coloured Blinds

BELL BALTIMORE inhabits a gewgaw little doll's house in Curzon Street. The flower-decked passage, the fountain in the conservatory, six feet by four, on the first landing, the prevalence of rose-colour, patchouli, and half-light advise you what order of hostess you may expect before penetrating to boudoir or drawing room. The house belongs to Mr. Balti more ; so poor Bell lives rent-free, with a couple of women servants for her retinue. "In my halfwidowed position," she will tell you, her blue eyes suffused, " and considering Bob's immense expenses in Russia (a pair of gloves costs two roubles in St. Petersburg), I feel it a duty to economise. I try to make my nut-shell pretty. A little fresh chintz, and an occasional visit to Covent Garden Market do not ruin one. But I cannot entertain, and my friends know it.

Whoever cares for me must care for me alone. Five o'clock tea is the beginning and the end of my hospitalities." And this is true to the letter. Bell, having reached an age when even a pretty woman comes to acknowledge food as one of the substantial goods of human life, will accept dinners right and left — Richmond dinners, white-bait dinners, all dinners. She gives nothing. Deep hidden in the shrines of that cold heart, those who know her best affirm that the great god, Money, reigns LEAH 14 supreme; that not pleasure, dress, love of admiration, but a solid balance at her banker's, is the real motive power of Bell's seemingly butterfly existence. The accusa tion may be true or false. Towards herself, for certain, Mrs. Baltimore displays no grudging or parsimonious spirit. Wines of the best vinest, the earliest fruits and vegetables of the season, game when game is at its dearest — of all these does she partake without stint.

" My health requires it," says Bell ; that same plastic health that would not stand the cold of St. Petersburg, and required horse exercise at Scarborough ! " It really does seem horribly selfish to order nice little dishes all for oneself, but I should starve on the diet that suffices for robust digestions. Good food is my medicine." So, when Leah enters, on this particular Sunday, Bell is still in her own little morning room, with the remains of "medicine," in the shape of a plate or two and an emptied champagne bottle, pushed close on a small round table beside her sofa. Not even her most intimate female friends can number or catalogue Mrs. Baltimore's meals. Breakfast at ten ; at one, luncheon ; five o'clock tea ; dinner; and, after ball or theatre, supper; with early cups of chocolate, with tastes of liqueur, with glasses of wine and sandwiches innumerable.

It is astonishing the quantity of eating and drinking that a delicate woman going the mill-round of hard-and-fast London life can get through ; more astonishing still, that she can at the same time consume morphia, chloral, or belladonna, at night, and live to tell you of it. But fashion, that subverts so much, seems able to subvert even physiological laws with impunity. The blinds of Mrs. Baltimore's sanctum are thick, the atmosphere is perfumed ; Bell herself, all white embroidery and cambric, with a complexion like a girl's, and a knot of infantine blue ribbon in her blonde hair, LEAH forms a spot of pleasant cool light amidst the deep crimson hangings of the room. But Leah's jaundiced sense detects the mould above the rose ; ether amidst the millefleurs ; the deathly pallor of fatigue under the rouge so cunningly employed to hide it ; artifice — that artifice to which, at twenty years of age, she is herself fast drifting — everywhere.

Never can she visit Bell Baltimore of a morning without reflecting that to this — ether and rouge, rose-lined blinds and satiety, will her present life lead her, just as swiftly, as irrevocably, as to death itself. " Why, what a solemn Sunday face, my dear !" cries Bell, arranging herself upright among her cushions, with a pitying air of friendly criticism. "Anything worse than usual happened between you and Jack, or is it only the effect of your dress ? The dress, I think. These ghastly new combina tions of colour are a crucial trial to one's looks." The ghastly combination is citron, palely delicate as an April sunrise, relieved by sparing touches of warm chocolate maroon — a mixture strictly in accordance with nature's chromatic laws ; the great Venetians show it us often on their canvasses, and one that sets off every charm of Leah's pic turesque Eastern face to admiration.

" My costume is a work of art, Bell," she remarks, with quiet certainty. Let heart, let conscience suffer as they will — impugn Leah's taste in millinery, and the master instinct re-assert itself! " It is Worth's last creation, and came accompanied by an autograph letter from himself. But your cur tains are so cruelly thick, it is impossible to judge of colour here. Oh, but I must, Bell ! I am determined to make you a convert against your will." And before Mrs. Baltimore can stay her hand, Leah has drawn a curtain aside, and VOL. III. C LEAH the June sunshine sends in its flood of pitiless truth upon them both. Mrs. Baltimore actually shudders under its contact. A woman who fights against age, converts light, air, sunshine, all the good friends of humanity, into enemies. Leah, in her pale, flawless beauty, stands calmly self-possessed.

" Now that you see things unbiassed by rose-colour, confess that my dress is a work of art, dear Bell ?" " It may be a work of art, but it makes the complexion look green," says Mrs. Balti more, holding her position stoutly. The June sunshine may do its worst ! In the face of the foe — I mean of her dearest friend — Bell will not retrograde an inch. " And I am quite sure English people are too unculti vated to appreciate it. Those startling con trasts may create a sensation at Trouville or Monaco. They will never meet with real success in London." " It depends so much upon what people call a 'success," says Leah wearily, and quitting her place beside the window. " Ex change the word for ' notoriety,' and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, I suppose one would do pretty nearly as well as the other?"

" Perhaps. Talking of notoriety, what did you think of the parable of the Lyttons last night, or rather of Jack's commentaries thereupon ? Had I been in your place, my dear child," says Bell, looking at her friend's face hard, " I cannot say that I should have felt cheerful, under the circumstances." " It would be no easy thing to feel cheerful with a Hetty Robarts present," Leah answers evasively. " If it had not been for you, Bell, what spirits, what tempers we must all have sunk to — poor Jack especially." "I believe I gave poor Jack one bit of soundadvice," says Bell. "Not to venture on high tragedy without studying the part c LEAH well first. We have had a good many ren derings of * Othello ' on the London stage — — French, American, Italian. We have yet to see him interpreted by the implacable English husband of the nineteenth century !"

" Whoever plays Othello, do not cast me for Desdemona, please. Tragedy is quite as much out of my line of life as it is out of Jack's." " Tragedy !" repeats Mrs. Baltimore, with that cold smile that ever trenches so nearly on a sneer. " I should say tragedy was done with for ever on the day you bade good-bye to the Rue Castiglione. Our good-looking tenor — what was his name, Leah ? the man with a profile like Giuglini's, and an objectionable manner ? — might have been capable of playing a tragic part, perhaps ; but now — shall I tell you what you and Jack really remind me of, my dear ? A pair of spoilt children perpetually quarrelling with each other out of idleness, and because they have more pretty clothes, and toys, and sweetmeats than are good for them." " Pretty clothes, and toys, and sweetmeats are scarcely enough, you see, to fill two grown-up people's lives."

" I am not so sure of that. Of course, the toy must be varied to suit different dis positions. One man has his yacht, another his seat in Parliament, a third philanthropy, a fourth a theatre. And, for us women — oh, the pretty clothes and sweetmeats are enough, I suppose, for us !" "And you believe such an existence could ever be sufficient for happiness?" " Happiness ! Leah, you pay too much attention to your own pulse for health. That ' greatest happiness ' question is one wise people let alone. We spend life, not in being happy, but in playing at being happy. Novels divert one's attention — or might do so, if they portrayed creatures of flesh and LEAH blood, not heroines : or if novelists belonged to the world they try to describe — at all events, they keep one from that destroyer of one's good looks^ thought.

And dress would be ,an amusement, if the milliners did not take it so completely into their own hands. And then there is riding, till the Row gets too hot ; and yachting — no, I believe all sane human beings hate yachting the moment they find themselves out of smooth water. Pleasant little dinners, such as you gave us last night (minus Hetty), are, I fancy, about the highest, as they certainly are the most enduring, form of earthly enjoyment." " Unfortunately, I have a marked distaste for little dinners," says Leah with a sigh. " You will like them better as you grow older, my dear child. I remember the time when I looked upon an invitation to dinner very nearly in the light of an affront. And now — now," says Bell, with resignation, " I have learned to estimate most men and most things, little dinners included, at their just value."

" And the end .... the end of it all ?" cries Leah, half passionately. " Dancing, dressing, yachting — as long as you take care to keep your barque in smooth water — the eternal Row, the eternal skating in the rink, and Richmond and Hurlingham ! Oh, Bell ! I say, what is the end of all this vapid, meaningless existence we lead — you and I, the worse for ourselves, like the rest ?" At the energy of Leah's voice Mrs. Balti more's blue eyes open somewhat wider than their wont. " The end of it all, for me, is to be little dinners, we decided. For .J you " Pray do not hesitate." " For you — let me reflect ! Playing at sentiment, probably, for the next dozen years or so, until ' the last words of the last LEAH 24 romance ' are definitely spoken, a gradual subsidence, like mine, alas ! towards the art of dining — provided always that your diges tion lasts !

People of bilious temperament have, it must be acknowledged, long odds against them in that matter of digestion " "And then?" " Well, then — wrinkles, I assume, and whist. What other conclusion is there for any one ? Talking of wrinkles, have you seen the beautiful Patty Addison since their return to town ? My dear, the poor thing looks older than her mother ! Not all the dress and cosmetics in the world can patch her up into youth any longer, and yet she has had the audacity to appear in a Char lotte Corday bonnet." And so on to scandal, and the dress makers. When you have had half an hour of Bell Baltimore's philosophy, you have had a lifetime of it ; just as, when you have known one Bell Baltimore, you have known every other woman of her type. Not much has that type altered during the last hundred years.

" Metaphysics and flirtation," wrote the shrewd biographer of the Chatelets and the Espinasses. "Meta physics and flirtation, systems of nature, fashion of dress-caps, vanity, curiosity, jealousy, atheism, rheumatism, bouts-rimes, noble sentiments, and rouge-pots." Novel -reading may have taken the place of bouts-rimes ; neuralgia, not rheumatism, be the malady in vogue ; noble sentiments may have fallen into disuse. These are but variations of detail and the hour. The type of woman remains unchanged. What shall we say of the society, dining, dressing, pleasure-seeking, God-ignoring, to which she first owed her existence ?

Chapter III. Her Grace Of St

IVES. WE may say thus much, at least, that its creed and practice are logically consistent, its wisdom is justified of her children. " Love nothing, mourn for nothing. Eat, drink, sleep, and to-morrow die, expectant of the nihilism in which we have lived." As Leah drives away from Curzon Street, something of this philosophy of despair animates her heart. The future that lies before her, whether she again meet Danton or not — ah, that, like the " greatest happi ness " question, is a matter well left alone. To-day she will enjoy herself. The sky overhead is blue, and she is twenty, and her dress becomes her, and she will have Lord Stair's homage to display before halt London as usual. On to the Zoo, with hopes that some other excitement than a dual dinner at home may arise for the evening ! Then, sleep arrived at as best one can, and her morning canter with Lord Stair in the Row, and the polo match — Lord Stair has promised to drive there with her and Jack, in the afternoon ; and then engagements two deep (each including Lord Stair), for the evening.

Is there time after all for the destroyer, thought, to vex one — time for more than skin-deep, transient suffering in a life of pleasure like this ? Lord Stair's arm assists her from her carriage at the gates of the Zoological LEAH Gardens ; Lord Stair whispers the reassuring news that the Duchess of St. Ives is already here, and without her daughter ; so that, if Mrs. Chamberlayne have still any inclination for the ball on the thirtieth " Any inclination !" cries Leah, with her bright cold gaiety, the Prince Charming's very January sunshine. " Why, I have scarcely slept six winks for thinking of my coming grandeur. Fancy poor obscure me dancing in a quadrille made up of earls and marchionesses — perhaps, if I behave myself extraordinarily well, with that bulwark of all the rectitudes, Lady Violet McLagan for a vis-a-vis !

How can you ask such a question, Milor? and what, in the name of everything absurd, makes you call me ' Mrs. Chamberlayne ' with such an air of severity ?" An inexperienced man might pardonably be led astray by her tone. But Lord Stair has learnt his lesson too well for any change of mood in Leah to put him off his guard a second time. " Whatever absurdity I may commit to-day, you are answerable for it," he answers. " In the first place, because I have carbonic acid on the brain — the result of a couple of hours' vain expectation of seeing you last night at the cotton people's. In the second — well, I have always considered you rather nice-looking as you know — but in that dress " " Tell me, if you think it a crucial trial to the complexion ?" exclaims Leah with anima tion. " No ; that question inevitably leads up to a compliment.

Tell me honestly if my dress — Worth's last — is in good taste? I have been calling on Bell Baltimore, and she assured me, on her faith as a friend, that such an atrocious combination could never meet with success except at Trouville or Monaco." " Poor Mrs. Baltimore ! What compli- LEAH ment of mine could be flattery as thorough as her dispraise ! The dress is Worth's, Mrs. Chamberlayne — well, Leah, then, if you command it — and the wearer is . . . Leah f" How much sweeter can truth be made than falsehood, in the hands of a competent artist ! Leah blushes with pleasure at Lord Stair's reply ; and thus blushing, and with her lovely face upturned to his, makes her appearance before the world, or such section of the world as is taking its pleasure, moult triste mrent, upon the well-baked turf of the Zoo, this Sunday afternoon.

And her success is beyond dispute. Never did prophetess, even in her own country prove falser than Bell Baltimore. Women look at Worth's last, and envy the wearer. Men look at the wearer, and envy Lord Stair. At every step she takes she gains an admirer, or loses a shred of reputation. Her success is genuine. " And now for our Duchess," says Lord Stair, when they have two or three times made the circuit of the lawn. " I pointed her out to you in Kensington Gardens, the other day, did I not ?" " A painted old lady, with closed eyelids, who gets up for sixteen ? The difficulty is how to distinguish the Duchess of St. Ives from all the other less exalted old ladies with closed eyelids and paint, and who get up for sixteen !" " The Duchess wears an eau de Nil dress," whispers Lord Stair, " and at this moment is standing not six yards ahead of us.

Come, I will introduce you before Lady Violet and the McLagan appear on the scene. Lady Vi never loved me, even before she turned saint, and is not likely to extend a favouring hand to any of my friends. Indeed, you must not mind a little rude treatment from either mother or daughter. What we want is an invitation to the ball on the thirtieth, not politeness." LEAH 32 Need I enter upon a description of the well-known Dowager Duchess of St. Ives — friskiest of dowagers still, although with the marriage of Lady Vi to the great Glasgow whisky-lord the days of cakes and ale may be said to have passed? Ah, those palmy days, not to be spoken of now save in a whisper ! Did ever duchess and her daughter enjoy themselves like these two ? At one time seeing life behind the scenes of the London theatres, with the last handsome star or aspirant young actor in favour ; at another, dancing, incognita, at the opera balls in Paris.

Now shrimping, picturesquely barefoot, among the fisher-girls in the Scilly Isles or at Biarritz. Fast, popular, reckless as to men's respect or women's censure always! The Duchess, nee Mullins, must have possessed no common charms of person in her youth ; and certain tricks of manner, certain ineradicable tossings of the head, and gestures learnt before the glass, betray, her dearest friends suspect, an early acquaintance with the foot-lights. But on this point history is uncertain. She is quite an old woman now (alas ! Lady Vi's fortieth birth day had struck before that wayward beauty consented to barter the splendid name of Fitz-Osborn against the siller of the McLagan), but keeps her threescore years at bay valiantly ; wears tight-fitting waists, bonnets that would not misbecome a maiden of eighteen, and has her colouring attended to by the very first professional artists in enamel.