Twelve #2
‘No, no, Poodle, don’t call me out!’ said Mr Beaumaris, his shoulders still shaking. ‘Really, I had no such intention! Besides, we should only make fools of ourselves, going out to Paddington in the cold dawn to exchange shots over a pair of dogs!’
Mr Byng hesitated. There was much in what Mr Beaumaris said; moreover Mr Beaumaris was acknowledged to be one of the finest shots in England, and to call him out for a mere trifle would be an act of sheer foolhardiness.
He said suspiciously: ‘If you’re not doing it to make a laughing-stock of me, why are you doing it? ’
‘Hush, Poodle, hush! You are treading on delicate ground!’ said Mr Beaumaris. ‘I cannot bandy a lady’s name about in the open street!’
‘What lady? I don’t believe a word of it! Why can’t you make that damned mongrel be quiet?’
In lamentable contrast to his well-trained adversary, who was now seated virtuously beside his master again, and affecting a maddening deafness, Ulysses, convinced that he had cowed the contemptible dandy, was hurling extremely ignoble taunts at him.
Mr Beaumaris cuffed him, but although he cowered under the avenging hand he was quite unrepentant, and resumed his threats with unabated fervour.
‘It is all jealousy, Poodle!’ Mr Beaumaris said soothingly. ‘The hatred of the vulgar for the aristocrat! I think we had better part, don’t you?’
Mr Byng gave an angry snort, and drove off.
Mr Beaumaris released Ulysses, who shook himself, sighed his satisfaction, and looked up for approbation.
‘Yes, you will, I perceive, ruin me yet,’ said Mr Beaumaris severely.
‘If I am any judge of the matter, you picked your language up in the back-slums, and have probably been the associate of dustmen, coal-heavers, bruisers, and other such low persons! You are quite unfit for polite circles.’
Ulysses lolled his tongue out, and grinned cheerfully.
‘At the same time,’ said Mr Beaumaris, relenting, ‘I daresay you would have made mincemeat of the creature, and I must own that I am not entirely out of sympathy with you. But poor Poodle will certainly cut me for a week at least.’
However, at the end of five days Mr Byng unbent, adopting a tolerant attitude towards Ulysses.
It had been borne in upon him that to drive past the Nonpareil’s curricle, staring rigidly ahead, was provocative of just the amusement amongst his acquaintances which he particularly wished to discourage.
Mr Beaumaris and Miss Tallant met again in the dazzling splendour of the Circular Room at Carlton House, on the night of the Regent’s dress-party.
Arabella was so much impressed by the elegance of the sky-blue draperies, and the almost intolerable glare of a huge cut-glass chandelier, reflected, with its myriads of candles, in four large pier-glasses, that she momentarily forgot her last meeting with Mr Beaumaris, and greeted him by saying impulsively: ‘How do you do? I have never seen anything like it in my life! Each room is more magnificent than the last!’
He smiled. ‘Ah, but have you yet penetrated to the Conservatory, Miss Tallant? Our Royal host’s chef d’oeuvre , believe me! Let me take you there!’
By this time she had recollected under what circumstances they had parted, so short a time previously, and her colour had risen.
Many tears had been shed over the unhappy circumstance which had made it impossible for her to accept Mr Beaumaris’s suit, and it had required all the excitement of a party at Carlton House to make her forget for one evening that she was the most miserable girl alive.
She hesitated now, but Lady Bridlington was nodding and beaming, so she placed her hand on Mr Beaumaris’s arm, and went with him through a bewildering number of apartments, all full of people, up the grand stairway, and through several saloons and antechambers.
In the intervals of bowing to acquaintances, and occasionally exchanging a word of greeting, Mr Beaumaris entertained her with an account of Ulysses’ quarrel with Mr Byng’s poodle, and this made her laugh so much that a good deal of her constraint vanished.
The Conservatory made her open her eyes very wide indeed, as well it might.
Mr Beaumaris watched her, a look of amusement in his face, while she gazed silently round the extraordinary structure.
Finally, she drew a breath, and uttered one of her unexpectedly candid remarks.
‘Well, I don’t know why he should call it a Conservatory, for it is a great deal more like a cathedral, and a very bad one too! ’ she said.
He was delighted. ‘I thought you would be pleased with it,’ he said, with deceptive gravity.
‘I am not at all pleased with it,’ replied Arabella severely. ‘Why is there a veil over that statue?’
Mr Beaumaris levelled his glass at Venus Asleep, under a shroud of light gauze. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he confessed. ‘No doubt one of Prinny’s flashes of taste. Would you like to ask him? Shall I take you to find him?’
Arabella declined the offer hastily. The Regent, an excellent host, had already managed to spend a minute or two in chat with nearly every one of his guests, and although Arabella was storing up the gracious words he had uttered to her, and meant to send home to the Vicarage an exact account of his amiability, she found conversation with such an exalted personage rather overpowering.
So Mr Beaumaris took her back to Lady Bridlington, and after staying beside her for a few minutes was buttonholed by a gentleman in very tight satin knee-breeches, who lisped that the Duchess of Edgeware commanded his instant attendance.
He bowed, therefore, to Arabella, and moved away, and although she several times afterwards caught a glimpse of him, he was always engaged with friends, and did not again approach her.
The rooms began to seem hot, and overcrowded; the company the most boring set of people imaginable; and the vivacious, restless, and scintillating Lady Jersey, who flirted with Mr Beaumaris for quite twenty minutes, an odious creature.