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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78709 ***
+
+
+
+
+                               JACK BRAG.
+
+                                VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                       PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
+                      Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+                               JACK BRAG.
+
+
+                            BY THE AUTHOR OF
+                 “SAYINGS AND DOINGS,”--“MAXWELL,” &c.
+
+
+                           IN THREE VOLUMES.
+
+                                VOL. II.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                            RICHARD BENTLEY,
+                         NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+                                 1837.
+
+
+
+
+                               JACK BRAG.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Having given the reader a brief and succinct account of the prosperous
+progress of Mr. Brown, and deposited him in safety with his mother
+and sister, it now becomes necessary to give a glance at our hero
+Jack, and the measures he adopted under the peculiar and embarrassing
+circumstance of being accepted by two very charming women in the course
+of one afternoon.
+
+For a few moments after the arrival of the second note--that from
+Blanche--the little man was greatly puzzled how to act. That the
+answers to his declarations were jokes he had not the slightest
+suspicion, and therefore his difficulty arose from the necessity of at
+once making up his mind. Unlike Gay’s hero, he felt that he _must_ say
+“a word” to both his captives: in fact, he was forced on the instant to
+decide, yea or nay--widow or maid. This was really a puzzler even for
+Jack, who scratched his hair half out of curl before he had got near a
+conclusion. At length he determined to postpone the _éclaircissement_
+until the evening, and in the mean time to throw himself in the way of
+Sir Charles Lydiard, in order, if he could, to extract from him his
+opinion of the widow’s merits, and ascertain, if possible, the extent
+of his anger and vengeance if Jack should make _her_ his choice.
+
+For this purpose Jack began what he called his tour of the Clubs--but,
+in truth, that of their doors--for Jack had not as yet achieved the
+_right_ of crossing the threshold of any one of them. Nevertheless, he
+was not an unfrequent occupant of their halls, into which, by asking
+after some man whom he knew to be out of town, or who did not belong
+to that particular society, he made his way; and having performed that
+evolution once or twice, without, or, as he considered, with, perfect
+success, he at length encountered Sir Charles, and immediately joined
+him in his walk towards Grosvenor Street.
+
+In one of those amusing and instructive works upon natural history, in
+which we find recorded the traits of character peculiar to different
+animals, there is an account of a goose which had formed so strong an
+attachment to a Newfoundland dog belonging to the same master, that
+she never was easy out of his society. Neptune was conscious of this
+kindly feeling, and reciprocated it to a certain extent; and whenever
+they were together in the yard, _he_ feeding, and goosey looking
+affectionately on, or _vice versâ_, it was all very well; but when
+Neptune took the air in the street of the village or by the road-side,
+or went to refresh himself in a neighbouring pond, goosey _would_
+accompany him. Then it was too, that, after enduring the waddle and
+quack of his admiring companion for a certain period of time, Neptune
+invariably, as soon as he saw any dogs of condition or puppies of
+quality coming, put himself into a long trot, and dart round a corner
+or over a gate, in order to exhibit his dislike of the connexion. Sir
+Charles Lydiard felt very much like dog Neptune, when goosey Brag
+joined him: however, as it was impossible, without rudeness perfectly
+inconsistent with Sir Charles’s character and disposition, to shake him
+off, he endured the commencement of a conversation, which in the end
+excited the best feelings of his nature, and awakened in his heart the
+tenderest sympathy for a much-injured friend.
+
+As the reader will hereafter be referred to this important dialogue,
+he shall not be troubled with a repetition of it, here: that it _was_
+important may easily be imagined from the fact, that when Sir Charles
+reached the door of his hotel he invited Brag to come in, and that they
+remained in conversation in his drawing-room for more than an hour.
+
+The impression left upon Jack’s mind by what he had heard from his
+“friend” Sir Charles was, that the loss of the widow would neither
+cause the breaking of the baronet’s heart nor of his own head; and he
+was, as the reader may imagine, proportionably elated and elevated, and
+more particularly confirmed in his original intentions respecting his
+choice of that lady.
+
+Jack felt as if he were treading on air as he paced down Bond Street
+to call on some other friend, in order to make a new confidence, no
+doubt; however, the Fates decided otherwise, for, in turning the
+corner of Hanover Square, whom should he stumble upon, but Rushton!--a
+meeting which, as he had magnanimously determined to leave him in the
+quiet possession of the elegant Blanche, rather pleased him than not.
+Rushton, whose “affection” for Jack was, if possible, stronger than
+that of Sir Charles Lydiard, made a desperate attempt to get away from
+him, not only because upon a general principle he wished to avoid him,
+but because the impression on his mind was, that ridiculous as the idea
+might at first appear, _he_ actually was the creature for whom Blanche
+had withdrawn her affections from him, and that if they had much
+conversation, his temper would get the better of the prudence he meant
+to adopt until his suspicions were confirmed, and that he might resort
+to the expedient of kicking Jack somewhat prematurely. The rencontre
+was, however, inevitable.
+
+“On your way to the ladies, I presume,” said Rushton.
+
+“No,” said Jack, “not till the evening; I suppose we shall meet.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” said Rushton, to whom Jack’s air and manner appeared
+peculiarly pert and vulgar,--and he passed on. Jack turned and kept up
+with him.
+
+“Strange creatures, the females!” said Jack, perking up his head and
+smirking.
+
+“They _are_, indeed!” said Rushton, as the thought of Blanche’s
+affection for the burr which was sticking to him, flashed across his
+mind.
+
+“’Gad, Rushton,” said Jack--(Rushton shuddered at the
+familiarity)--“wonders will never cease!--_you_ are a happy man, with
+such a creature as Blanche Englefield your own.”
+
+“That’s a sore subject,” said Rushton, “and we had better not touch it.
+I know you are an admirable joker,--but jokes, especially practical
+ones, not unfrequently turn out ill.”
+
+“I know what you are up to,” said Jack:--“down upon you in half no
+time, smack, smooth, and no mistake.”
+
+“I dare say you may comprehend my meaning,” said Rushton; “but I
+repeat, that if you do, my present feelings are not to be trifled with;
+and if you do not, this is neither the time nor place to enlighten you.”
+
+“Don’t put yourself in a passion,” said Jack; “you never were more
+mistaken in your life.”
+
+“Upon what point?” said Rushton.
+
+“About Blanche,” replied Brag.
+
+“Really, sir,” said Rushton, “you are treading upon very delicate
+ground. You have entrapped me into a conversation which it was my
+particular wish and desire to avoid in the present state of affairs;
+but you have now led me to a point at which I cannot stop. You have
+alluded to a young lady in the most familiar manner, who, in my
+opinion, has been exceedingly civil to you, and I really do consider,
+under the circumstances in which I am placed, I ought to know exactly
+the character of your intimacy with her.”
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder!” said Jack: “it only shows how the longest
+heads may be puzzled. You’ll find out all how and about it, before
+to-morrow--eh!--are you awake?”
+
+“Awake!--I am,” said Rushton, “yet I seem to be dreaming. Do you
+then admit that your acquaintance with Miss Englefield, whom you so
+unceremoniously call Blanche, is so near its favourable termination?”
+
+“My dear Mr. Rushton,” said Brag, “you are safe--at least, as far as I
+am concerned: there are more horses in the stable than one--eh!--are
+you awake now? No? I’ll put you out of your pain then--I hate to be
+cruel;--never am, even to dumb animals, except when I want ’em to stir
+their stumps a bit. No, no: if anybody in the house has cause for
+jealousy, it isn’t _you_. Will that do for you--eh?”
+
+“What!” said Rushton, “am I to understand that Mrs. Dallington----”
+
+“Mum!” said Brag, bursting to proclaim his wonderful success--“dumb as
+a Dutchman:--the widow’s the winner, fifty to one.”
+
+“You are joking!” said Rushton.
+
+“Not I,” said Jack:--“thing settled, snug--smack smooth, and no
+mistake. I know you don’t half like Sir Charles. I’ll settle _his_
+affair: I speak, of course, in confidence--but so it is:--the thing is
+what the French call a _finny affair_.”
+
+“Surely, this never _can_ be!” said Rushton. “What! after all the
+declarations I have heard her make--all her regrets that his coldness
+of manner so much damped her natural affection for him: after----”
+
+“Lord bless your heart!” said Brag, “there’s no accounting for
+females--weathercocks--eh!”
+
+“I cannot comprehend it,” said Rushton: “even had--”
+
+“Do you believe it?” said Brag.
+
+“You say it, Mr. Brag,” said Rushton;--“it must be so.”
+
+“I’ll do more,” said Jack: “we are both in the same boat, and shall be
+near connexions.”
+
+“Yes,” said Rushton, in a tone not expressive of the feelings which the
+anticipation really excited, “so we shall;--well?”
+
+“Well then,” said Jack, “you must keep the secret:--when a female is
+concerned, a man ought to be as still as a dead horse. I’ll show you
+her own note,--in course, not a word to anybody.”
+
+Saying which, he took out his pocket-book, and selected with more
+than ordinary care the widow’s favourable billet. Rushton would have
+seized it, such was his anxiety to convince himself of the truth of his
+companion’s statement, but Jack would not part with it. Rushton saw it
+was her writing, and read enough to satisfy himself not only that it
+was a genuine document, but actually the identical letter which he had
+seen her despatch in the presence of Sir Charles Lydiard and himself--a
+fact which, however much it might relieve him from all apprehension of
+Brag’s further interference with his proceedings, was in an instant
+coupled in his mind with the circumstance of Blanche having upon the
+same occasion also sent off a hateful three-cornered note to somebody
+else. How subtle are the workings of a jealous mind!--one evil
+overcome, up starts another: one doubt is removed only to make room for
+its instant successor.
+
+“You see what she says,” said Brag. “What d’ye think of Sir Charles
+now--eh?--_he_ hasn’t been awake! That, I think, is a finisher for
+_him_. I shouldn’t have shown you this, but I know--I am sure, you
+thought I was beating about after Blanche--and fancied that _she_--eh?”
+
+“I fancy nothing now,” said Rushton--“Blanche is all faith and
+truth!”--(“Umph!” said Brag, dying, but not daring, to show _her_ up
+too.)--“But Mrs. Dallington,” continued he--“well! I have often told
+Lydiard that he was taking it too easy, and too calmly, and all the
+return I got was his reproach for being too hasty and too _exigeant_ in
+my demands upon the reason and consistency of women in general. I knew
+what would happen.”
+
+“Was that since I became acquainted with her?” said Brag.
+
+“Long before,” said Rushton: “and as for Blanche,” continued he, still
+‘harping’ upon the letter, “mild and amiable as she is, I dare say even
+_she_ deceives me sometimes.”
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Jack, looking excessively cunning.
+
+“You are a comforter to a doubting man,” said Rushton.
+
+“Well, good-bye!” said Jack. “In course, you’ll take no notice of what
+I have said. I think we had better have the double marriage the same
+day--eh! Mrs. Dallington Brag will sound well. I think I shall startle
+Lord Tom:--so, mum! as I say:--keep my counsel, and it will all come
+off smack smooth, right up, straight down, and no mistake!”
+
+Saying which, Brag quitted his wondering companion at the top of Harley
+Street, to which this dialogue had extended their walk; and darted
+across the New road to a livery stable, where two or three of his
+horses, which did _not_ belong to him, were standing at livery.
+
+Rushton’s feelings were considerably excited by the disclosure which
+his companion had made. His indignation was roused by the assurance
+and vanity of the coxcomb, ready to sacrifice the character of a woman
+who had owned her affection for him, to the gratification of boasting
+of her good opinion; while his sympathy was seriously awakened for Sir
+Charles Lydiard. That he had been, as he had long suspected, made the
+dupe of a heartless woman, was now a fact incontrovertibly established;
+and Rushton considered it his duty to Sir Charles, for whom, however
+uncongenial their characters and opposed their dispositions might be,
+he could not fail to entertain a high respect and esteem, to make him
+acquainted with what he had heard from Brag,--or rather, which was most
+convincing, that which he had seen in his possession, in order that he
+might spare himself the needless mortification of receiving a formal
+dismissal from the widow, as well as to rescue him from a further
+continuance of a system of hypocrisy and deception, for which, although
+it was impossible not to admit it, it was most difficult reasonably to
+account.
+
+Naturally enough, these considerations upon Sir Charles Lydiard’s
+affair led to some reflections upon his own. Blanche, the gentle and
+the mild, was the sister of the woman who had conducted herself with
+such heartless levity and indelicate duplicity--not only her sister,
+but her constant associate--her confidante, no doubt. The last pert
+toss of Brag’s empty head had its weight in these calculations: it was
+most unquestionably to be inferred that there was no great difference
+between the conduct or character of the two sisters. But what was a
+hint or innuendo from such a person? Nothing!--unless backed up and
+corroborated by testimony so convincing as that which he had afforded
+of the widow’s levity and fickleness.
+
+Rushton’s thoughts, however, still rested on Sir Charles Lydiard. A
+little more reflection upon the matter strengthened him in his first
+intention, of imparting all he knew to the worthy baronet--an intention
+which he more particularly determined to put in practice, inasmuch as
+a communication between them might elicit something beneficial to both.
+
+Accordingly Rushton proceeded to the hotel at which Sir Charles was
+living, and found him at home and alone. When he entered the room where
+he was sitting, he was sensibly struck by an unusual embarrassment in
+his manner, and a kind of affectionate air in his reception of him.
+Rushton felt assured that he knew the worst. They sat down; but the
+difficulty which Rushton naturally experienced in opening the subject
+uppermost in his mind, was increased by the evident agitation of the
+baronet. A few commonplace observations, and questions about riding, or
+walking, or dining, were soon exhausted. At length Rushton asked his
+friend if he should be at Mrs. Dallington’s during the day or evening.
+
+“I think I shall go there in the evening,” said Sir Charles, and his
+voice faltered:--a pause ensued.
+
+“Have you heard from either of the ladies this morning?” asked Rushton.
+
+“No,” replied Lydiard, looking earnestly at his friend--“have _you_?”
+
+“Not I,” said Rushton--and then came another pause. “What extraordinary
+creatures women are!”
+
+“They are indeed, Rushton,” said Sir Charles. “Pray, have you happened
+to meet that most odious of persons, Mr. Brag, in the course of your
+walk or ride to-day?”
+
+“I have,” said Rushton, in a tone much more serious than the subject
+seemed to require, at the same time fixing his eyes steadily upon the
+unhappy victim before him.
+
+“He is extremely popular with the women,” said Sir Charles, “which
+strikes me as one of the strongest proofs of the impossibility of
+comprehending the nature of their minds and tastes.”
+
+“It does seem curious,” said Rushton, “that anything so vain and so
+vulgar should have the power to induce women of sense, education, rank,
+and character, to forfeit all claims to respect and esteem by favouring
+his pretensions.”
+
+“Pray, Rushton, did the fellow make any communication to you?” asked
+Sir Charles.
+
+“Upon what subject?” said Rushton.
+
+“A very tender and important one,” replied the baronet: “indeed, if you
+had not called, I should have endeavoured to find you before dinner, to
+have spoken to you upon it.”
+
+“Why, he certainly did say something,” said Rushton,--“and that
+something was very important.”
+
+“Did he show you a letter?” said Sir Charles.
+
+“He did,” replied Rushton.
+
+“Well, then, we can speak without further disguise,” said Sir
+Charles;--“were you not thunder-stricken?”
+
+“It merely confirmed me in my often repeated opinion,--that we know
+nothing of women,” said Rushton.
+
+“You have often told me you thought there was something of the sort
+going on between them,” said Sir Charles; “but I take matters so much
+more coolly than you do, that, I confess, it appeared to me little else
+than the common _badinage_ in which a pretty woman dearly loves to
+engage.”
+
+“Ah! Sir Charles,” said Rushton, “it is that very coolness of which you
+boast that has done all the mischief.”
+
+“I don’t exactly see that,” said Sir Charles. “You will find that I
+shall bring my young widow into perfect subjection, more especially
+after this adventure of the chattering Brag.”
+
+“After!” said Rushton--“why, my dear Sir Charles, what on earth do you
+mean? That after the exposure of falsehood and flightiness, delusion
+and deception, which this fellow has had the good fortune to excite,
+and has now the vanity to exhibit in the public streets, you would
+marry Mrs. Dallington, if you could?”
+
+“My dear friend, why not?” said the baronet. “I may, and do, feel
+deeply for all the results which you enumerate, and agree with you
+in your surprise that such results should have occurred: it seems
+perfectly miraculous!--but, however much I may sympathize with you,
+there can be no reason why I should give up Mrs. Dallington.”
+
+“Did you read the letter Brag received?” said Rushton.
+
+“I did,” replied Sir Charles, “twice over--and, I assure you, was
+exceedingly shocked and amazed.”
+
+“My dear Sir Charles,” exclaimed Rushton, “are you made of
+ice?--‘exceedingly shocked!’ is _that_ a phrase consistent with the
+discovery of such a proof of infidelity as _this_?”
+
+“What can I say more, Rushton!” said Sir Charles. “You must feel
+the blow most severely, especially with your vivid imagination and
+excessive sensibility; but for _me_, I have only to thank my stars that
+my fair widow is still my own.”
+
+“Your own!” cried Rushton:--“what! after she has accepted Brag!”
+
+“_She_ accept Brag!” said the baronet, opening his eyes rather wider
+than usual--“no, no--that would be rather too much of a joke!”
+
+“Why, she _has_ accepted him!” said Rushton, dashing his hand on the
+table.
+
+“In your circumstances, Frank,” said Sir Charles, “one would
+not venture to suspect a joke:--but, whatever may have been the
+indiscretions of the meek and modest Miss Englefield, Mrs. Dallington
+has, I flatter myself, too much good sense to be betrayed into any such
+absurdity.”
+
+“Why, you told me you had seen the letter,” said Rushton.
+
+“So I have,” replied Sir Charles, “but most assuredly no letter of
+her’s.”
+
+“Whose then?” exclaimed Frank.
+
+“Why,” said Sir Charles, “Blanche’s letter.”
+
+“Letter to whom?” cried Rushton, starting from his chair.
+
+“To her accepted lover, Brag,” replied the baronet.
+
+“_Her_ lover!” cried, or rather screamed, the infuriate Rushton. “My
+dear friend, what do you mean?--what does it all mean?”
+
+“I mean merely,” replied Sir Charles, “that Mr. Brag was good enough
+to show me the letter in question, which was written to him by Miss
+Blanche Englefield, accepting the offer of his hand,--and that I read
+it twice over.”
+
+“Why, then, the world’s at an end, Lydiard!” cried Rushton. “Blanche
+false!--Blanche!--Oh! why was I deceived?--why was I duped?”
+
+“I really don’t know,” said Sir Charles, in a tone which, by the
+contrast it afforded to the convulsive exclamations of his agitated
+friend, seemed to imply that he did not very much care.
+
+“But how do _you_ bear it, Sir Charles?” said Rushton. “These women
+are worse than women usually are. He showed me a letter from the
+widow,--your widow! Sir Charles,--couched in exactly the same terms.”
+
+“What!--accepting him?” said Sir Charles.
+
+“Upon my honour and life! yes,” said Rushton. “What on earth does it
+mean? That dear, calm, mild--I shall go mad--raving mad!--Wretch that I
+am!”
+
+“Stop, Rushton,” said Sir Charles; “follow my advice; sit down, and
+take rest and comfort.”
+
+“Comfort!”
+
+“Yes, comfort,” said the baronet. “I see through all this in a moment.
+While there was but one letter, and one traitress, it was all possible,
+though not probable; the two settle the affair:--it’s a trick.”
+
+“A trick! my dear Sir Charles,” said Rushton--“no, no! To think that
+that fair creature should so far forget herself--no, no:--I am sure she
+never could have written--”
+
+“My dear friend, I saw and read the letter,” said Sir Charles, “and I
+repeat it is all a trick. How could two women, living on the terms upon
+which Blanche and her sister live, accept the same man in one day? No
+doubt, this wretched little creature has been persecuting them with his
+attentions, and they have undertaken this scheme as the precursor of
+his unceremonious rejection.”
+
+“But why write?” said Rushton--“why--”
+
+“For the better carrying on of the plot,” continued the
+baronet:--“_you_ trust their letters--_I_, their hearts. That very
+empty coxcombs may, and do, succeed sometimes, is too notorious to be
+denied; but here the case is totally different, in my opinion. The fat
+knight, in the hands of the Windsor wives, was in a more enviable
+position than our little steeple-hunter is at this moment in those of
+one maid and widow.”
+
+“Do you really think so?” said Rushton, his rage moderating a little.
+
+“Think!” replied Sir Charles--“consult your own common sense; a
+moment’s reflection proves it.”
+
+“Upon my life! I begin to think so too,” said Rushton. “But there is
+one thing which seems to me absolutely necessary, not only to assure
+us of their good intentions, but to vindicate our own characters and
+worry them in their turn,--I mean, that whether these notes are or
+are not intended to entrap and expose Mr. Brag, _we_ should consider
+them serious, and act upon the information we have received from their
+adorable imp.”
+
+“I shall go to Mrs. Dallington’s,” said Sir Charles, “this evening, as
+usual, see how things look, and proceed accordingly.”
+
+“Yes, but don’t let us believe everything we hear too readily,” said
+Frank.
+
+“What! still jealous--still doubting?” said the baronet.
+
+“No, not that,”--said Rushton, “I will be there too; and while you
+touch upon the subject, I will watch their eyes.”
+
+“The telegraphs again,” said Sir Charles.
+
+“Yes, there one may read the language of the heart,” said Rushton.
+
+“Leave the management of the affair to me,” said Sir Charles: “I can
+conduct myself more calmly and moderately than some people. Rely upon
+it, my widow shall not get out of this little manœuvre without some
+trouble.”
+
+“You will not distress her?” said Rushton.
+
+“A woman in tears looks remarkably interesting,” said the baronet.
+
+“I love to see her dear countenance drest in smiles,” said Rushton,
+“and I do hope you--”
+
+“We will go this evening together,” said the baronet. “See how I
+conduct myself towards Mrs. Dallington, and if you do not choose to
+follow my example, at least profit by experience.”
+
+“I confess,” said Rushton, “I am by no means satisfied; yet all you
+say--”
+
+“Is all that is to be said on the subject,” said Sir Charles. “So now
+I am at your service for a walk or ride till dressing-time, and, if
+you have nothing better to do afterwards, for a _tête-à-tête_ cutlet
+at Crocky’s; we can there talk over our future proceedings for the
+evening, and suggest some method of utterly exterminating John Brag,
+Esq.”
+
+“Kicking him first, and shooting him afterwards,” said Rushton, “is
+what I should respectfully recommend.”
+
+“Oh! dear no,” said Sir Charles, “most assuredly neither the one
+nor the other; he shall live to amuse us upon some other occasion:
+without a few tigers and lions, society would be ‘flat, stale, and
+unprofitable.’ So, come away, and, I flatter myself, you will see
+me this evening at Mrs. Dallington’s in something very like a new
+character.”
+
+It was under this engagement the friends proceeded on their stroll,
+Rushton feeling infinitely less at ease than the baronet, who viewed
+the affair in its true light, and was fully resolved upon having his
+_revanche_ after his own plan.
+
+What the state of Brag’s feelings might have been during the few hours
+which preceded the deciding visit to the same scene, it is scarcely
+possible to imagine. Mr. Ducrow can ride two, or even three, horses at
+once; and some other equally astounding artist is able to dance upon
+two tight ropes at the same time; but to manage two ladies under the
+circumstances in which Brag had placed himself, seems to be a task
+Herculean by comparison with either of the others. A man less conceited
+and self-assured would either have seen through the trick which they
+had so justly played upon him, or if he could have imagined the result
+possible, would have excused himself from accepting the invitation
+of either lady, when both were for the same night; but Jack took it
+for granted that he had, as he called it, “knocked them both over,”
+and that, as the “females” were “cunning creturs,” each one would so
+contrive to play her own game, as not to awaken the suspicions of the
+other.
+
+As the time approached, Johnny made the most careful preparations
+for dressing. Never was anything so smart and spruce as the dapper
+cockney in what he called his “genteel comedy” dress; and by nine
+o’clock he was all ready for the conflict. Circumstances, however, as
+we shall see, conspired to delay his appearance at the widow’s, and
+Sir Charles and Rushton arrived before him. It was judged, however,
+better, for the furtherance of their scheme, that Rushton should not
+make his appearance in the drawing-room at the same time with his
+friend; he therefore made an excuse to the servant, that he wished to
+write a letter before he went up stairs, and bade him put lights in
+the library in order that he might do so. Sir Charles proceeded to the
+drawing-room at once, and found the ladies alone, evidently waiting the
+arrival of Brag, whose exhibition was not intended by them to have been
+witnessed by anybody but themselves. Their surprise at the appearance
+of Sir Charles was, however, speedily changed into a feeling of a
+very different nature, by finding him colder, more gloomy, and more
+reserved than even _he_ was usually.
+
+(“Rely upon it,” said Mrs. Dallington to her sister, “Mr. Brag has been
+blabbing.”)--“My dear Sir Charles, you seem vastly out of spirits.”
+
+“There are circumstances in the world which affect us to such a degree,
+madam,” said Lydiard, “as to render a concealment of the feelings they
+excite impossible.”
+
+“To what do you allude, Sir Charles?” said Mrs. Dallington, really
+concerned at perceiving what she could not doubt to be the successful
+result of her manœuvre.
+
+“I mean, madam,” said Lydiard, “that a woman who permits the
+unequivocal attentions of a lover--encourages those attentions--nay,
+goes the length of admitting her affection for him, and then betrays
+him and accepts a rival, strikes a blow to his heart, the anguish of
+which cannot be disguised.”
+
+“Rely upon it,” said Mrs. Dallington, “_you_ have no cause for the
+grief you describe.”
+
+“I! madam,” said the baronet,--“I am not speaking of myself: no,
+no--_my_ sorrow and anxiety are excited by a sympathy for my poor
+friend, Rushton. Oh! Miss Englefield, what must your feelings be when
+you know the state of mind to which he is reduced? He has discovered
+all. He is aware of the transfer of your affections, and is, as I
+verily believe--mad!”
+
+“Mad!” said Blanche.
+
+“Yes,” said Sir Charles; “his feelings, as you well know, are
+strong--his passions violent. His conduct this afternoon I consider
+very little short of insanity.”
+
+“Under similar circumstances, Sir Charles,” said Mrs. Dallington,
+“_you_ perhaps would not be so violently affected.”
+
+“Certainly not, madam,” replied Sir Charles; “but I can feel deeply for
+a friend who is. To _my_ advice only will he be indebted for a speedy
+restoration, as I hope, from his alarming state. I have found the
+means, and I rejoice to know that he has adopted them.”
+
+“What may they be, Sir Charles?” said Blanche, her eyes filling with
+tears.
+
+“Very simple, and, in my opinion, not particularly disagreeable,”
+said Sir Charles. “There is a certain Miss Harrington, a most amiable,
+beautiful girl, who is avowedly in love with him,--Julia Harrington, I
+think, she is called.”
+
+“Y-e-s,” stammered Blanche, “I--know--I have seen her--”
+
+“Well,” said the baronet, “after what he had communicated to me of
+your conduct, it appeared to me, that as you had thought proper to
+reject him in a way so decided as by accepting another gentleman,
+which--forgive me, if I am wrong--he told me you had done, it was the
+most judicious thing in the world for him to transfer his affections
+to the young lady of whose compassion he was perfectly secure, and for
+whom, I happen to know, he entertains a very high regard, to call it by
+no other or tenderer name.”
+
+“And,” said Blanche, “did he take your advice, and fly to her at your
+suggestion?”
+
+“Not exactly,” said Sir Charles; “I had to drive him to her father’s
+house in my cab; and although he certainly resisted at first, I
+eventually succeeded in settling him into an invitation to a family
+dinner with them, where, I conclude, he is now sipping his claret, and
+making himself acceptable to the fair daughter of the house.”
+
+“What on earth shall I do!” said Blanche to herself:--but her
+ejaculation was not so completely “mental” as to escape the attentive
+ears of the worthy baronet, who felt his own character change, and his
+disposition alter, as he witnessed the gradual success of his stratagem.
+
+“I think, Sir Charles,” said Mrs. Dallington, who was now convinced
+that _her_ proceedings with Brag were yet unknown to him, “that you
+might have spent the last few hours of your life more profitably than
+in separating two fond hearts.”
+
+“Fond hearts!” said Sir Charles--“the acceptance of a rival is no
+particularly strong proof of fondness. No--let him marry where he is
+loved; and as for myself, Mrs. Dallington, I shall content myself with
+waiting a little longer for the happiness which, I trust, my friend
+will shortly enjoy. I hope, madam, some day to find, like Rushton,
+a woman who will condescend to love me truly and faithfully. My
+pretensions, I own, are inconsiderable; but I have at least the merit
+of sincerity and honesty. I admit that these are not such striking
+qualifications as those of Mr. Brag, a preference for whom I am aware
+you have exhibited, and upon which I have the honour to congratulate
+both you and myself. I wish you a very good evening, ladies.”
+
+Saying which, Sir Charles walked out of the room, leaving Mrs.
+Dallington and Miss Englefield in a state of stupor and amazement. That
+Brag should be laughed at by them, and made the subject of a scene
+which should in the end prove to their lovers the utter contempt they
+had for the pretender of whom those lovers were both jealous, was, as
+the reader knows, the main object of their scheme; but the mean opinion
+even _they_ entertained of the man--if man he may be called--did not
+induce them to suspect the possibility of his exhibiting their two
+letters to his rivals.
+
+Their own agitation, and the manner Sir Charles assumed during the
+conversation, gave them no opportunity of explaining away the affair,
+and they sat looking at each other for two or three minutes without
+speaking, convinced that the anger of Sir Charles was genuine, and the
+story he had told true; for although it was part of their object, or at
+least of Mrs. Dallington’s, to agitate the feelings of their devoted
+swains, it was most assuredly not their intention either to drive Sir
+Charles into old bachelorism, or hurry Rushton into a marriage with
+Miss Harrington.
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Dallington, “this has somehow taken a wrong turn.
+I admit that Sir Charles’s agitation pleases me; it is what I hoped
+for;--although certainly I did not think that Mr. Brag was quite so
+great a monster:--but for _you_, Blanche--”
+
+“I am lost,” said Blanche, “for ever! Oh, sister, sister!--why did I
+lend myself to this scheme? If Rushton marries that Miss Harrington,
+what on earth will become of me!”
+
+“There it is, Blanche,” said Mrs. Dallington; “while you had him all
+to yourself, you never were at rest,--always quarreling, always
+reproaching, always accusing and defending.”
+
+“True,” said Miss Englefield, “but what are such quarrels? I know his
+heart--I know his good qualities--I can see his imperfections;--but
+that I love him sincerely is now my greatest misfortune.”
+
+Little did Miss Blanche Englefield think that this most unequivocal
+declaration of the state of her heart and feelings was clearly and
+distinctly heard by Mr. Francis Rushton himself, who having, instead
+of dining at General Harrington’s, as Sir Charles had stated, entered
+the boudoir, in which there was no light, from the staircase, at the
+moment that his friend was giving his account of the proceedings of
+the morning, and not venturing to interrupt the thread of a narrative
+which was to form so important a feature of _their_ scheme, had dropped
+himself quietly into a well-stuffed chair in a corner of the room,
+where he lay _perdu_, not daring then to make his appearance, which
+would, of course, overthrow the authenticity of Sir Charles’s story;
+and afterwards being ashamed of admitting, by presenting himself to
+the ladies, when the worthy baronet was gone, that he had, under such
+circumstances, overheard the declaration which had given him such
+unqualified delight.
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Dallington, “of one thing it assures us, at all
+events, that however the warmth of the one and the coldness of the
+other may at times have excited our suspicions of fidelity in one
+instance, or affection in the other, it is now clearly established that
+they are both sincerely attached to us.”
+
+“And what consolation is that to _me_?” said Blanche--“or how can I
+ever atone to myself for having, at your suggestion, answered the
+impertinent note of that odious, foolish creature, Brag? What must
+Frank think of me?--to prefer such an animal to _him_!”
+
+“Well, but surely, Blanche,” said Mrs. Dallington, “Rushton’s devotion
+to _you_ cannot have been so entirely exclusive. I have heard him
+vowing that he would die if you rejected him; instead of which, he
+immediately sets about making another match the moment he thinks you
+have cast him off. If he had chosen to kill himself, you could not
+help it, you know.”
+
+“Oh! sister, sister,” said Blanche, “do not for the world talk of such
+a thing:--Rushton kill himself for _me_!”
+
+“Yes: it was his course of proceeding,” said Mrs. Dallington, “to
+agitate, excite, and alarm you into loving him. Sir Charles’s line with
+me has been totally different. It is our duty to ourselves to conceal
+our feelings now, however strong they may be; our honour demands the
+sacrifice.”
+
+“Honour! my dear sister,” said Blanche,--“honour consists in deceiving
+no one. As for Rushton, you would at this moment be delighted to find
+Sir Charles as jealous of _you_ as you have often seen _him_ jealous
+of _me_. Miss Harrington has long been attached to him, and now by
+this silly scheme, as I must call it, I have driven him to return that
+affection. If he could know the anguish I feel at this moment, he would
+best know how to appreciate my regard and esteem.”
+
+The tears that followed these words were more than Rushton could
+bear. His apparent meanness in listening--the certain overthrow of
+Sir Charles’s scheme--every consideration but one was forgotten; and
+starting from his corner, he rushed into the drawing-room, and in an
+instant was on his knees before his beloved Blanche.
+
+“I am here!” said Rushton,--“is this enough?”
+
+“Mercy on me!--Mr. Rushton!” cried Blanche.
+
+“What!” said Frank, “did you--could you for a moment believe that I
+should act as Lydiard has told you I had done? No, no, Blanche! I am at
+your feet--your slave eternal: my heart--my hand--my fate, are all at
+your disposal.”
+
+“So,” said Mrs. Dallington, “Sir Charles Lydiard is the wise manager of
+this scheme.”
+
+“Yes,” said Rushton, “he saw through the trick you were playing, which
+I was mad enough to believe a matter-of-fact.”
+
+“And how might _you_ have become acquainted with the story?” asked Mrs.
+Dallington.
+
+“Your double victim,” said Rushton, “was so elated by his success,
+that, in order to relieve Lydiard’s weak mind, he showed _him_
+Blanche’s tender billet; and in order to prove what a dupe Lydiard was,
+he exhibited yours to _me_.”
+
+“Was there ever such a detestable wretch upon earth!” said Mrs.
+Dallington.
+
+“You know he is coming here this evening,” said Rushton.
+
+“He shall not be let in,” said Mrs. Dallington.
+
+“Oh! yes, by all means let him in,” said Rushton. “All care is now
+banished from our hearts; let us celebrate the happy termination of all
+our uncertainties by a sacrifice.”
+
+“As you like,” said the fair widow. “And where is Sir Charles?--is he
+gone?”
+
+“Not he,” said Rushton: “he is in the library, I take it. His scheme
+is not yet half complete, but he may now spare himself the trouble of
+working it out.”
+
+“I may indeed,” said the worthy baronet, entering the drawing-room
+through the boudoir, where he hoped to have found Rushton still
+ensconced, and the mystification still in progress.
+
+“They know all,” said Rushton.
+
+“As I did before,” said Sir Charles. “I was perfectly aware of the
+character of their proceedings towards our formidable rival, but I am
+equally satisfied with yourself that we deserved such a return for our
+doubts of those we so dearly prize. I admit that I have been jealous,
+from an excess of esteem; Frank has been jealous from an excess of
+love. It is time to terminate these little bickerings; and if my dear
+Mrs. Dallington will be content with such a heart as I have to offer,
+it is hers, entire and undivided.”
+
+“This is a very extraordinary proceeding,” said Mrs. Dallington. “I am
+taken entirely by surprise; however, Sir Charles, I know of no great
+advantage in concealing a generous feeling of attachment which I admit
+to exist--and so--we will consider of it to-morrow.”
+
+“My dear sister,” said Blanche, “I began to be very angry with you at
+one time.”
+
+“When you thought you should lose Rushton,” said Mrs. Dallington. “But
+I never was much agitated, because I did not give that implicit credit
+to Sir Charles’s history of Julia Harrington, which you, who were so
+much more interested, and therefore so much less able to form a just
+opinion upon it, did; and I was at all events satisfied, that if your
+devoted had, in the course of two hours, made up his mind to a new
+_affaire du cœur_, his _cœur_ was not much worth caring for.”
+
+“Well,” said Sir Charles, “I confess myself happier than I have been
+for these two years.”
+
+At that moment, it being about half-past ten o’clock, the drawing-room
+door was thrown open, and--“Mr. Brag!” announced. The effect produced
+was infinitely greater than the hero of the night himself imagined.
+The cause of his being so late was this;--he had anticipated that
+the “females,” each manœuvring in her own behalf, would not only
+have contrived to find opportunities for separate _têtes-à-têtes_,
+but that his widow, who, of course, had the control, would so have
+arranged that there should be no visiters to interrupt them. When
+he first reached the house, he found Sir Charles Lydiard’s carriage
+at the door. This annoyed him considerably, and he retired for more
+than an hour, thinking that the “bore” of a baronet might have dined
+with his intended, and that he would go early. Upon his return at
+the latest possible period at which he felt he could with propriety
+seek admission into so regular a family as Mrs. Dallington’s, there
+he still found the eternal carriage of Sir Charles Lydiard. In order
+to show the earnestness of his feelings, and his anxiety to keep his
+double appointment, he resolved to pay his visit, however inconvenient
+the presence of other company might be. He grasped the knocker: the
+thunder resounded through the hall. The door was opened; and after the
+purgatorial process of mounting the stairs,--there he stood, in the
+middle of the circle,--“as large,” or perhaps we had better say as
+small, “as life!”
+
+It is difficult to describe the various sensations created by his
+appearance--the indignation of the women, or the sovereign contempt
+of the men, increased tenfold by his vain, dirty, and unprincipled
+exhibition of the letters. However, although there had been no time
+for preconcerting any course of behaviour towards him, it seemed
+simultaneously to strike the two happy couples, to treat him in that
+sort of easy, commonplace manner, which might leave him without
+the slightest suspicion that the whole of the affair was known or
+understood, and so give him scope for a little of that admirable
+management with which he used to boast he “carried on the war,” and
+to which, it was evident, he must resort, to maintain his position
+relatively to his two captives.
+
+“You are late, Mr. Brag,” said Rushton.
+
+“Yes,” said Brag, “I have been dining with some monsters who sit and
+drink wine. Upon my life! we had to swallow four or five bottles after
+dinner, before coffee was ordered:--that I call a bore, and no mistake.”
+
+The time to which this description referred had been expended by this
+exemplary man in walking up and down and round about the neighbouring
+streets, until he should see the departure of the baronet’s carriage.
+Little did he imagine what had occurred in that very drawing-room
+during the period of his peregrinations.
+
+“I ought to apologize to _you_,” said Brag, addressing himself to the
+widow, with a look which the other three perfectly understood;--“but
+Lord Tom had two or three young fellows to dine with him--wanted me
+to do the honours and be _crowpee_; so I couldn’t say no,--for Tommy
+is a right good fellow, and no mistake, although _some people_ don’t
+patronize him.”
+
+“I _thought_ Lord Tom, as you call him,” said Sir Charles, “was at
+Dover.”
+
+“Came to town this afternoon, and goes back to-morrow,” said Jack, not
+in the slightest degree abashed or confounded.
+
+Sir Charles whispered something to Mrs. Dallington, which seemed very
+much to impugn the truth of Jack’s statement; during which little
+_entretien_, Jack drew his chair close to Blanche’s, and with a look
+which nearly destroyed the serenity of the rest of the party, said, in
+a low tone, “I was determined to be here this evening, let what might
+happen.”
+
+“I appreciate your kindness and consideration,” said Miss Englefield.
+
+“I was thinking,” said Brag, in that sort of confidential whisper
+in which all the branches of the Brag family speak nothingnesses to
+handsome women, in hopes that they may be mistaken for somethings,
+“that you are too hard upon Rushton. What you say in your note is too
+severe: give him a trial. There’s no accounting for temper. I had a
+cover hack once,--as pretty an animal as ever stepped,--but his temper
+was unaccountable bad. Instead of flogging or pulling him, I bore
+with him, and humoured him,--tried him with a snaffle instead of a
+curb,--and at last he went as quiet as a lamb.”
+
+“What!” said Blanche, assuming the same tone,--“you recommend patience,
+and advise forbearance!--I scarcely expected this.”
+
+“Upon my honour!” said Jack, “you know I _can_ mean nothing but what’s
+right up, straight down, and no mistake. I like Rushton very much, and,
+I must say, I do think you don’t give him a fair chance. I mean, if
+that’s the cause of your separating--”
+
+“What,” said Rushton, “are you talking about me?”
+
+“Nothing you need mind hearing,” said Brag. “You,” continued he, rising
+from his seat, and leaning over Rushton’s chair,--“you are not like our
+poor friend the baronet in the next room--he, he, he!--eh?”
+
+“No,” said Rushton; “he seems entirely devoted.”
+
+“Strange blindness!” said Jack. “But, I say, Rushton,--now that Blanche
+is gone to join them,--upon my life, I cannot help congratulating
+you upon that. She _is_ charming; so mild--so gentle--eh! Do _that_
+off-hand--take my advice--hit the nail on the head--strike while the
+iron’s hot: settle--sign--seal--eh!--black and white, and no mistake.”
+
+“I think I shall,” said Rushton.
+
+“Blanche, dear,” said Mrs. Dallington, “if you have any voice, sing us
+one of those little things of Rossini’s.”
+
+“Voice!” said Blanche,--“I have neither voice nor inclination to sing.”
+
+“Do!” said Brag, taking her hand affectionately--“delight me! To-morrow
+I will explain all I said just now.”
+
+Blanche turned from him with a shudder, which he mistook for a mark
+of sensitive affection, and proceeded to the piano-forte, to which,
+much to her delight, Brag saw Rushton accompany her. It was evident to
+the conspirators that Brag attributed Mrs. Dallington’s proposition
+for singing to a desire for a few minutes’ conversation with _him_,
+because he knew enough of society to know that a young lady’s song is
+the signal for the general untying of tongues; and that people who have
+been all the evening sitting as silent as the grave, immediately begin
+to talk and flirt the moment the music begins. To favour Brag’s too
+palpable design, Sir Charles left Mrs. Dallington’s side to make way
+for the pretender, and joined the happy couple at the piano-forte.
+
+The bait was swallowed--the baronet’s vacated place was instantly
+occupied, and Brag as close as he could be to Mrs. Dallington in a
+moment. The symphony was luckily long and loud.
+
+“How shall I thank you enough,” said Brag, “for your note? It settles
+my fate:--all done, snug and comfortable. I _could_ tell you such a
+story!--but mum for the present. How you _can_ go on with that most
+worthy Sir Charles! upon my life you are too bad;--he believes that you
+are desperately in love with him at this minute--that I know;--and I
+know more,--that he is desperately in love with _you_: however, he may
+stay or go, now, just as he pleases. My dear Mrs. Dallington, you have
+bound me in eternal gratitude:--all will go well--and, by Heavens! I
+swear--”
+
+“Sir Charles, Sir Charles!” said Mrs. Dallington, “do leave those
+players and singers alone. Mr. Brag is getting so dreadfully tender,
+that I don’t know what upon earth to do with him. I must have you, if
+you please, to break the particularity of a _tête-à-tête_, and to play
+propriety in that corner.”
+
+“The devil!” said Brag, in more than a whisper--“what the deuce are you
+about?”
+
+“What! is our friend getting particularly animated?” said the baronet.
+
+“Not particularly, Sir Charles,” said Brag; “I was merely saying
+_that_, which, under the circumstances, is mere matter of business,
+as I conceive. I may be wrong--but I like candour and openness
+nevertheless, and no mistake.”
+
+This sentiment, expressed in the loudest tone of voice, reached the
+fair syren and her swain; the lady ceased playing, and the pair burst
+out into a violent fit of laughing.
+
+“Well,” said Brag, who began to get uncommonly angry, “that’s civil,
+considering how things stand at present.”
+
+This remark threw Mrs. Dallington and Sir Charles into an equally
+powerful convulsion of mirth with that of the other couple.
+
+“I can’t help laughing at _you_, Lydiard,” said Rushton.
+
+“Nor I at _you_, Rushton,” said the baronet.
+
+“Well, it is all very good fun, I dare say,” said Brag, “but, for _my_
+part, I see no joke in your laughing at each other: there’s not much to
+laugh about in any of it, if you come to that.”
+
+Here the four members of the party all laughed ten times louder than
+before.
+
+“I am not aware,” said Brag, “what you are all so very merry about.”
+
+“Why, Mr. Brag,” said Blanche, with one of her sweetest looks, “we are
+all laughing at you!”
+
+“At ME!” said Brag.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Brag,” said the widow;--“when gentlemen choose to write
+duplicate love-letters to two sisters, and then show their answers to
+the two gentlemen to whom these ladies are engaged, don’t you think the
+affair, when discovered, becomes rather ridiculous?”
+
+The laugh which followed this question was so loud, that the voice of
+the servant, who announced supper,--a light and social meal to which
+the agreeable widow was strongly addicted, and to which her favourite
+guests were always specially invited,--could scarcely be heard.
+
+“What!” said Brag, “have you been hoaxing me? Why, this is too bad!”
+
+“Not at all, Mr. Brag,” said the lady of the house. “Had the conduct of
+either my sister or myself been such as to encourage your pretensions,
+we might have excused your addressing either of us; but when you
+undertake to make two proposals at once, the pity we might have been
+inclined to feel for your blindness is turned into a sentiment which,
+as supper is waiting, I will not stop to describe. Come, Sir Charles,
+give me your arm; Mr. Rushton, take care of Blanche. We are going to
+supper, Mr. Brag. Good evening!”
+
+“Good evening, Mr. Brag!” said Blanche, making a low curtsey to the
+astounded little man.
+
+“Good night, Mr. Brag!” said Sir Charles, bowing formally.
+
+“Brag, good night!” said Rushton, nodding to him familiarly; and the
+happy quartett went laughing down stairs to their symposium, leaving
+Mr. John Brag as cold as ice and as white as a sheet, standing on
+the hearth-rug with his back to the fire-place, transfixed, as it
+were, to the spot. The world was at an end! His eyes rested upon the
+marquetrie and the buhl, and the ebony and the ivory, and the Sevres
+and the Dresden, and the large looking-glasses, and the Louis-Quatorze
+tables,--all of which he had, half an hour before, considered his own
+goods and chattels; and there he would have stood till “morning’s
+dawn,” had not one of the footmen, more considerate than the rest, gone
+up to him and asked him if he should call a cab for him, for that it
+had set in a very wet night.
+
+It was all too true!--this appeal awakened him from his dream. He
+declined the offer, took his hat, and descended the staircase to
+the hall; passed the door of the library where the supper had been
+served; heard the clatter of plates, and the peals of mirth which were
+doubtless ringing at his cost, and stepped from the door of his lost
+paradise into a thick mizzling rain with a sharp wind, which drifted
+right into his blanched face, saturated his thin shoes, and made him as
+bodily miserable as he was mentally unhappy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+
+After this most disagreeable ejectment, the character of which might
+be well expressed in the words which Mr. Kane O’Hara has put into the
+mouth of the kicked-out-of-Heaven Apollo, who calls his expulsion from
+the higher regions and his fall to earth, “a pretty decent tumble!”
+it may naturally be supposed that our sprightly friend, Jack, was
+rather out of sorts. As he baffled the wind which drove the sharp rain
+peppering into his eyes, new lights seemed to burst upon him; and in
+recalling to mind the whole course of his proceedings with the ladies,
+“trifles light as air,” came one after the other to his recollection,
+which, coolly and calmly combined, tended to exhibit himself _to_
+himself in anything but a favourable point of view.
+
+He began all at once to perceive that the lovers as well as the ladies
+had all along been playing upon him; and the idea that both of them
+should have accepted him seemed, in the midst of the soaking shower,
+an absurdity only to be equalled by his having himself made the double
+proposal. In fact, it is quite curious, as a matter of natural history,
+to consider the extraordinary effects produced upon the pretender by
+the wretchedness of his present position; and one might have hoped
+that such an exposure, and such a degradation, would have cured his
+affectation and pretension for ever:--but no. As soon as the next day
+dawned and the sun again shone, Jack’s despondency was at an end, and
+his natural disposition for bouncing rather sharpened than checked by
+the desire he now felt of showing how little he cared for his late
+disaster, and how much better he could do for himself now that he was
+freed from his self-imposed fetters.
+
+It nevertheless suggested itself to him, that it would be wiser and
+more prudent to choose another sphere of action; for, besides having a
+better chance of success, it would remove him for the present from the
+town which held the ladies and their lovers, with all or any of whom he
+felt a meeting for the next few weeks would be extremely disagreeable.
+
+In casting about for a retreat, he recollected that Lord Tom, as Sir
+Charles had truly said, was staying at Dover; and as that circumstance
+would secure him a friend, and probably some introduction into
+society there, he determined upon following his noble friend thither
+forthwith; and therefore upon his often-tried principle of figuring
+in print amongst the great and gay, he caused his portmanteau and
+bag to be deposited at a hotel in the vicinity of his town “plate,”
+at which he slept that night, and at the door of which the Branch
+Coach of the Dover Union, would call for him the next morning, and
+convey him to The Bricklayers’ Arms, with the certainty that he would,
+on the second day after his arrival on the coast, find amongst the
+“fashionable departures” in the fashionable London newspapers, the
+words--“Mr. Brag, from Pumpkin’s Hotel, for Dover.” It would have been
+easier to have slept at his lodgings at Kennington, and hired somebody
+to carry his baggage from his “little place in Surrey” to the Kent
+Road--but no:--then he must have been at the expense of paying for the
+announcement of his own removal, whereas by his present arrangement he
+got _that_ gratis, and flourished at the hotel for a few hours for less
+money than the insertion would have cost him, had he adopted the other
+means.
+
+At one time, soon after his father’s death, Jack made an attempt at
+popularity amongst the sicklies at Cheltenham, and contributed to one
+or two public charities, and two or three private subscriptions for
+distressed objects. Upon these occasions he regularly transmitted
+his donation to the printer of the newspaper, with directions to
+deduct the charge of inserting his name and liberality in the
+columns of his “widely circulated” journal, and hand the balance of
+whatever he enclosed to the charity:--for instance, one pound for
+the subscription, and five-and-twenty shillings for advertising his
+benevolence three times.
+
+This ostentatious virtue has a parallel in an anecdote recorded,
+falsely or correctly, I know not which, of a late celebrated dissenting
+preacher, who, upon the occasion of visiting a family reduced to a
+dreadful state of poverty, found the father of four or five starving
+children shirtless in bed; his necessities having driven him to sell
+his last remaining garment. A sight like this, could not fail to move
+so exemplary a man: he desired the children to quit the room, and
+forthwith divested himself of the shirt he himself wore, to “cover the
+nakedness” of the emaciated sufferer. This being done, the children
+were called back, and bid by their parent to go on their knees to
+the pious minister, who had deprived himself of his own garment to
+comfort their father. They did so; they wept for gratitude,--and they
+did more: all four of them went,--one east, one west, one south, and
+one north,--and proclaimed the excellence of the pastor; and when
+he quitted the house which he had adorned by his presence, women,
+standing at their doors, bent lowly before him, and pointed him out to
+the babes in their arms, whom he blessed; and when their husbands came
+home from work the story was told, and repeated, until at length it
+reached the “public,” who joined in the praise and admiration, which
+soon became general. What would they have said or thought if they
+had known that this saintly person, who had won all their love and
+gratitude, had, in order to produce the desired effect, put on, before
+he left home, the particular shirt which he thus sacrificed _over the
+one that he actually wore_!
+
+It might be thought an ill compliment to one of the parties, to make
+a comparison between this departed worthy and Jack Brag; but if the
+history be a true one, there is not much to choose between them. Jack
+however found, that with all his much-spoken-of benevolence, he could
+gain no solid advantage by conciliating the affections of a maiden
+lady, whose fortune he knew to be considerable, and who was of a most
+charitable turn of mind, and he therefore quitted Cheltenham nearly
+as much discomfited as he now found himself on his departure from
+London--only the retirement in that case had been altogether voluntary.
+In his last failure his exit was far less qualified, and, in truth, he
+felt very much like the gentleman who in ancient verse says--
+
+    “Perhaps it was right to dissemble her love;
+      But why did she kick me down stairs?”
+
+The journey to Dover is not one which requires much space for detail,
+although scarcely a road out of London affords more striking evidence
+of the wealth and importance of the British metropolis. The frequent
+glimpses of the majestic Thames, bearing on his ample breast a daily
+fleet of countless vessels, and which especially strike the foreign
+traveller just on leaving Milton, where the expansive reach of the
+Upper Hope first catches the eye,--are full of beauty and interest. The
+verdant fields and “hedge-rows green,” with the hop-gardens in full
+bloom, clustering even more gracefully than the boasted vine, afford
+a delightful contrast to the wide waste of _la belle France_, which,
+perhaps, one has just left; while, as far as comforts go, the inns
+at Rochester, Sittingbourne, and Canterbury, afford all that can be
+desired, at least to those who can afford to desire them.
+
+Amongst the mutations of fashion, few appear to be so reasonable
+as that by which Dover (the “Clavis et repagulum totius regni,” as
+Matthew Paris calls it) has become a place of favourite resort for
+the best society. It combines a great variety of attractions, and, as
+long as England continues at peace with France, the daily intercourse
+between the two countries produces a constant activity, and a change of
+visiters every twenty-four hours, for the enlivenment and amusement of
+those who take up their residence in it for the season.
+
+“No promontory, town, or haven, in Christendom is so placed by nature
+and situation, both to gratify friends and annoy enemies, as this town
+of Dover. No place is so settled to receive and deliver intelligence
+for all matters and actions in Europe from time to time; no town is by
+nature so settled either to allure intercourse by sea, or to train
+inhabitants by land, to make it great, rich, fair, and populous; nor
+is there in the whole circuit of this famous isle, any port, either
+in respect of security or defence, or of traffic or intercourse, more
+convenient, needful, or rather of necessity to be regarded, than this
+of Dover.”
+
+So sayeth Sir Walter Raleigh, in his memorial to Queen Elizabeth; and
+if that much-injured worthy were alive to see his favourite town at
+this period, he would be quite satisfied that his successors in this
+transitory world have ably worked out his principle. The people of the
+present day are assiduously continuing their improvements under the
+sanction of the illustrious Lord-Warden. Nor are the improvements in
+the port and harbour the only testimonies of its flourishing condition;
+squares, gardens, streets, rows, crescents, parades, esplanades, and
+terraces, are rising from the beach, and form a delightful contrast
+to the business-like appearance of the thickly-thronged pier, and the
+London-like gaiety of Snargate, with all the attractions of Muddle’s
+and Mummery’s.
+
+In this agreeable _locale_ was John Brag, Esq. deposited at a quarter
+before seven o’clock; and having caused himself to be set down at the
+corner of a lane leading up to one of the best houses in the place, he
+called a little boy with a ragged jacket and well-tarred trowsers, to
+carry his portmanteau and bag to one of the smallest hostelries in the
+town, which stands in Church Street, and rejoices in the sign of “The
+Three Mackerels,” at which “hotel” Brag proposed to occupy an apartment
+at the very top of the house,--for the benefit of the air.
+
+The first desideratum in mechanics is the production of the greatest
+possible power in the smallest possible space; and the attainment of
+this advantage, in a moral point of view, was the ever-present object
+of Jack’s ambition; that is to say, to make as much show as possible at
+the least possible expense:--for Jack, in the outset of his feverish
+efforts at settling himself in good society, had disbursed so largely,
+that it had become a matter of prudence, if not of necessity, to “shave
+close.” Several of his greatest friends were his largest debtors;
+and Lord Tom Towzle, as has been before hinted, had not unfrequently
+availed himself of Jack’s anxiety to oblige. Having, in two or three
+instances, discovered that either the well was dry, or that the pump
+would not work, his lordship had latterly given up soliciting the aid
+of his lively acquaintance, but at the same time had evinced less
+desire for the advantages of his agreeable society. Jack, however, who
+was one of the regular cur tribe, who sneak back to the vulgar great
+upon the “cut and come again” principle, resolved, if he could not get
+his principal out of the penniless lordling, to take his interest in
+the way of introductions to good company; and so, like Sinbad’s old
+man, he took the earliest opportunity of mounting his lordship the next
+morning.
+
+After a night, not blest with the most soothing dreams, Jack rose from
+his bed, dressed, and descended from his eyrie, resolved to find Lord
+Tom in time for his morning meal; and having discovered a back entrance
+to the alehouse in which he had stowed himself away, he proceeded by
+that route to the “Ship” inn, where, he guessed--and, as it turned
+out, correctly--his noble friend was staying:--and there, as he
+proposed, surprised, not altogether agreeably, his noble friend in the
+act of sitting down to breakfast.
+
+“Why, Brag,” said his lordship, “what the deuce has brought you here?
+Where’s the widow? Has Lydiard shot himself?--or have you shot him, and
+bolted?”
+
+“None of it,” said Brag:--“no--that game’s up:--cut the connexion
+altogether, smack, smooth, and no mistake. Lydiard may have her--win
+her and wear her for his pains. Rather too cunning for me--can’t bear
+forwardness--eh!--you take. I value nothing that does not require some
+hunting after.”
+
+“What!--then you have abandoned her,” said Lord Tom; “left her
+mourning!--hard-hearted Jack!
+
+    ‘Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
+    From street to street the raving Dido roves.
+    So when the watchful shepherd from the blind,
+    Wounds, with a random shaft, the careless hind,
+    Distracted with her pain, she flies the woods,
+    Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods
+    With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
+    Sticks in her side, and rankles at her heart.’”
+
+“There it must stick,” said Jack--“that’s all I know. I’m off there: I
+have seen enough of that house and its inhabitants:--old birds are not
+caught with chaff--eh! No, no--I know enough of the females to take
+care of myself.”
+
+“Come,” said Lord Tom, “sit down, and eat: my notion is, that starving
+is good for no complaint. Keep your heart up by keeping your stomach
+full; so, now
+
+  ‘Rebellion’s dead and let us go to breakfast.’”
+
+Brag needed no more pressing invitation to do ample justice to the
+substantial repast which was placed before him; and his exertions in
+the way of replenishing afforded very satisfactory evidence that he was
+not pining for the loss of his “ladye-love,” and that his indifference
+was genuine and sincere.
+
+“All the world here,” said Lord Tom--“not a house to be had--people you
+know by dozens. How long do you stay?”
+
+“Never pin myself to time,” said Jack--“as long as I find it
+pleasant. Have about fifteen invitations to different places in the
+country:--can’t cut myself into bits--go to as many as I can. This
+fish is uncommon good--eh!--fresh out of the water, and no mistake.”
+
+“How’s your mother, Jack?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Can’t say,” said Jack; “haven’t seen her since the ‘Bridge’ day.”
+
+“Then you don’t know whether she has forgiven you?” said his lordship.
+
+“Oh! she’s like me,” said Brag, “she don’t bear malice. I dare say it’s
+all right, up and straight down, and no mistake, by this time. Talking
+of that,--are there any likely females for a matrimonial concern here?”
+
+“Why,” said his lordship, “I have been here so short a time, that I
+can’t present you with a list; but in the afternoon the band will play
+on the Parade, and we’ll go and see the turn-out. You still stick to
+the marrying line?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jack, “when I can see one to suit. I’ll have another cup
+of tea, my lord,” continued he. “I say--talking of suiting--just look
+there--of course tiled, as I say:--read _that_, and then, I think, you
+won’t wonder at my cutting the widow.”
+
+Saying which, the generous gentleman, the _kickee_ of the family,
+tossed the accepting letter of Mrs. Dallington across the table to his
+lordship, for his perusal and edification.
+
+“Well,” said Lord Tom, “what in the world would you have?--here is
+consent, or the deuce is in it. I don’t see exactly how you could get
+out of the business after this.”
+
+“I tell you, my lord, I cut and run,” said Jack. “What I saw the
+evening before last, when I went, settled it. I took my hat and
+walked--wouldn’t even stop to supper:--a regular turn off.”
+
+“What _did_ you see,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Mum!” said Jack, “that never passes my lips. Where the female sex
+is concerned, honour is everything. I know you wouldn’t wish me to
+say more: the thing’s over now, and there’s an end: but if I _do_
+marry, rely upon it, neither Mrs. Dallington nor Miss Englefield shall
+visit my wife: that’s all:--_entree nows_, as the French says, and no
+mistake.”
+
+“Well, I am sorry to hear this,” said Lord Tom; “for although, somehow,
+I was never a favourite there, I had the merit of introducing you to
+them, and I wish the acquaintance had been more satisfactory. I suppose
+they will take up with their long-dangling lovers.”
+
+“Perhaps yes,” said Brag, putting his finger to his nose--“perhaps no:
+that’s no affair of mine. All _I_ mean to say is, the ladies are ‘much
+of a muchness,’ as I _could_ show you--only, as I say, honour’s the
+thing, and no mistake.”
+
+“I believe, Jack,” said Lord Tom, “you have a great deal to answer for.
+What’s gone with the unfortunate victim of your success whom we met in
+Regent Street?”
+
+“Hang me if I know!” said Jack. “Poor girl! I sometimes do think of
+_her_. Wouldn’t do now for a wife--but--else--nice little thing in her
+way.”
+
+“Didn’t you say she was somehow connected with you?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Yes, distantly--very distantly,” said Jack, wondering in his own mind
+when he had ever been sufficiently candid, or drunk, to have admitted
+the connexion in any degree whatever: “her brother, the Major, married
+a relative of mine.”
+
+“I think it is rather lucky,” said Lord Tom, “that her brother, the
+Major, does not take it into his head to make some enquiries upon the
+subject of the affair.”
+
+“He’s abroad,” said Jack; “besides--all snug--never suspected. Her
+mother wonders why I have cut them, no doubt:--out of my line--can’t
+keep on visiting:--one thing at one time, eh! different at another, you
+know. Don’t mean to marry her, eh!--a little too late, eh!--all that
+sort of thing.”
+
+Lord Tom, since the affair of the “Bridge” appointment, and the
+disclosures which the respectable Mrs. Brag had thought proper to make
+upon that occasion, began to grow a little more suspicious of his
+friend’s strict adherence to the truth than he previously had been; but
+as he was bound to countenance him as long as he remained in society,
+by his pecuniary obligations to him, he resolved to keep secret all
+the facts which had come to his knowledge, but at the same time more
+attentively to watch his future proceedings: indeed, the matter of Mrs.
+Dallington’s note which he exhibited, combined with Brag’s manner in
+describing his own indignation and disgust, had the effect of rather
+unsettling his mind upon _that_ business, and he resolved to write
+to somebody in town for a correct version of the break-off, which,
+under the circumstances, could not fail to create a sensation in--as
+everybody calls his own circle--“the world;” Lord Tom thinking, that if
+Jack were convicted of romancing at the expense of the characters of
+all the men and women with whom he was permitted to associate, it would
+be absolutely necessary to shake him off, and leave him to any legal
+remedy he might think fit to adopt for the recovery of the money he had
+borrowed of him, which his lordship quite well knew he had lent as a
+consideration for any good offices which he might be able to do for him
+in the way of patronage.
+
+After the discussion of breakfast, my lord and his little-expected
+tiger began their perambulations. The Pier was visited, although
+the freshness of the breeze kept the “females” from that delightful
+promenade. In the course of their walk they encountered a certain Sir
+James Gunnersbury, an old artillery officer of Lord Tom’s acquaintance,
+who with the greatest warmth and cordiality invited his lordship to
+dine with him that day _sans-façon_, if he happened to be disengaged.
+
+The critical moment had arrived, and Jack, who heard the invitation
+given, actually shook with apprehension as to the course his noble
+friend might think fit to pursue; his delight was great, however, when
+he heard his noble patron hesitatingly decline the bidding on the score
+of being engaged to “his friend, who was on a visit to him for a few
+days.” The truth was, that Lord Tom had no great inclination to accept
+the invitation, and rather wished to back out upon the plea of being
+tied to his visiter. The gallant officer, however, was quite resolved
+to have him, and entreated his lordship to do him the favour to present
+him to his companion, in order that he might express his wish that
+_he_ also would honour him and Lady Gunnersbury with his company.
+
+To Jack this was the most agreeable thing in the world; and if it
+had not been so, it would have been extremely difficult to evade it.
+Brag looked at his lordship, who made no sign of either a negative or
+an affirmative character, and accordingly his “friend” bowed, rather
+awkwardly, and said he should be most happy: and the affair being
+settled, Sir James, “his pig-tail fluttering in the wind,” made the
+best of his way home to the house which he and his family occupied in
+the Parade.
+
+“Rather a nuisance,” said Lord Tom, after he had taken his departure:
+“deuced dull his parties in town:--Lady Gunnersbury, the greatest bore
+on earth--and two daughters, who sing all night; a remarkably slow
+coach of a son,--and not a particularly good cook. However, we may see
+something to amuse us.”
+
+“Daughters!” said Brag: “rich--eh?”
+
+“Poor as church mice, I take it,” said his lordship, “and no
+beauties:--fancy themselves blue.”
+
+“Blue!” said Jack--“what an odd notion.”
+
+“Very odd, indeed,” replied Lord Tom; “but they talk--as you will hear.
+All I hope is, it is not a mere family party--for we shall die of the
+blues ourselves if it is.”
+
+Brag, who was too happy at the idea of opening a new connexion, now
+that he saw his noble friend’s kindness of manner towards him, began
+to wish that he had at once proceeded to “The Ship,” instead of having
+studied economy so deeply as to ensconce himself in a minor and obscure
+house of entertainment;--it would be so much more convenient--so
+much more agreeable--and he could then be continually with his noble
+friend:--but now the great difficulty, in his small mind, was how to
+get his portmanteau and bag conveyed from “The Three Mackerels” to
+the leading hotel of the place. This required considerable dexterity
+to manage, but at last his genius triumphed; and having got into his
+apartment, he sent for a fly, in which he deposited his property;
+and having driven to the hotel, paid the fly-driver his fare, and
+dismissed him without permitting him to exchange a syllable with any of
+the waiters, or ostlers, or porters near, which might have the effect
+of enlightening them as to the “place from whence he came:” such pains
+and trouble did he always take, to seem to be, that which he was not,
+nor ever could be.
+
+Upon this special occasion he was remarkably unfortunate; for although
+he had managed so much of the affair as has just been described, he was
+not destined to sail out of it altogether with flying colours. It was
+about five o’clock in the afternoon when some gay friends of Lord Tom’s
+had just arrived at the “Ship,” whence they were to start for Calais in
+the morning, to whom his lordship had just introduced our hero, and the
+coffee-room was thickly peopled with persons of certain consideration,
+when a waiter advanced to Jack, who was laying down the law about some
+horse that was to run at Doncaster in a somewhat authoritative tone,
+and told him a young woman wished to speak to him.
+
+“Hallo! Jack,” said Lord Tom--“what! at your old tricks already!--more
+fascinations--no time lost. Where is she?”
+
+“At the door, my lord,” said the waiter.
+
+“I’ll come this moment,” said Jack. “’Pon my life! I don’t know what it
+means.”
+
+“By Jove! but we’ll see,” said his lordship; and accordingly he and
+the two or three men of his group who perceived that they might
+presume a little upon the goodnature of their new acquaintance Brag,
+rushed out into the hall, where stood before them on the steps, a poor
+wretched-looking girl, wearing black stockings, a cracked chip bonnet,
+a begrimed gown, and a dirty green baize apron.
+
+The moment the horrid vision met Brag’s eyes, he recognized it:--it was
+the one sole, solitary she-servant of the pot-house he had so skilfully
+abandoned.
+
+“Oh! sir,” said the girl,--“I beg your pardon,--but missus found your
+nightcap and comb in the attic after you were gone--so she bid me run
+and bring them to you.”
+
+“Where do you come from, my dear?” said Lord Tom, with a killing
+gravity of countenance.
+
+“‘The Three Mackerels,’” said the girl, “where that little gentleman
+in the white cords slept last night.” Saying which, she produced the
+articles in question,--the cap not bearing quite the lily-hue, and the
+comb, unclean as it was, being somewhat scant of teeth.
+
+The expression of Jack’s countenance at the moment this exhibition took
+place was beyond description wretched. The friend and associate of Lord
+Tom Towzle--the companion of peers and dandies--to be the owner of two
+such objects!--as the French say; and that those _objets_ should have
+been transmitted to him from the “attic” of “The Three Mackerels,”
+where he “had slept the night before!”
+
+But the worst was not yet over:--what was he to do with the cap and
+comb, now that he had gotten them?--for he had, almost unconsciously,
+taken them into his possession:--Throw them away he could not; deny
+them he dare not,--for, upon the edge of the cap, the letters B, R, A,
+G, were marked in red silk capitals. Must he “quit the gay throng,”
+and carry them himself up to his present dormitory?--or must he spread
+the history of the affair still more, by handing them over to a waiter
+or a chambermaid to deposit them there for him?
+
+The laughter which this incident provoked it was impossible for the
+spectators entirely to conceal; and the fact that it elicited, as to
+the “_venue_” of Jack’s last night’s lodging, did not at all decrease
+Lord Tom’s suspicions that his friend was habitually disposed to
+justify his possession of the name in which he rejoiced.
+
+Brag thought, and thought wisely, that the best thing he could do was
+to, what he called “cut and run;” and so if he could not check the
+mirth which the exposure of his weakness had excited, he might at all
+events escape the misery of hearing it ringing in peals round his
+devoted head; accordingly, grasping the nightcap and comb, and devoutly
+wishing both of them midway between Calais and Dover, or anywhere
+else in the world but where they were, he bounded up stairs to his
+newly-acquired apartment.
+
+Had so miserable an animal as a punster been present at Brag’s sudden
+departure, there would have doubtlessly been sundry criminalities
+committed in the way of quibbles, about Brag’s being armed _cap_-a-pied
+but not _comb_-il-faut, or some such nonsense; luckily, however, the
+audience and spectators were well-bred, well-dressed gentlemen, and
+disdained a joke with as much sovereign contempt as if they could have
+made one themselves. They looked at each other; those with moustachios
+twisted their whiskers--those with none, rubbed their foreheads;
+and all of them turned involuntarily to Lord Tom, as the sun of the
+sunflowers, in hopes of ascertaining who the little gentleman in the
+white cords was, who had just run up stairs with part of his bed-room
+furniture from the sign of “The Three Mackerels.”
+
+Lord Tom was a man of the world, as the reader may naturally believe:
+by his manner he repudiated any intimate acquaintance with Jack;
+proclaimed him an excellent rider, light weight, and up to any hounds;
+and further announced his intention of taking him over to Paris, to
+“astonish the natives” in the Champ de Mars by carrying off all the
+prizes at the races on the following Sunday, to the infinite dismay of
+the sporting world of that lively city. His lordship accompanied this
+account of his obsequious friend with an indescribable look, which
+left his lordship entirely exonerated from any responsibility on the
+score of his manners or habits, and gave a tone to the character of the
+_liaison_ between them, in the smallest degree flattering to the vulgar
+coxcomb who had recently escaped.
+
+When the hour of dressing for dinner approached, Brag “showed”
+again--the coast was then clear; but Lord Tom, if he had not very much
+desired to benefit himself by Jack’s only available accomplishment on
+the turf, and had not moreover felt conscious of the “debt of honour,
+which must be paid,” would most gladly have either persuaded him not
+to accompany him to General Gunnersbury’s, or to permit him to send an
+excuse on account of a sudden attack of spasms--a raging tooth-ache--or
+any other of those “ills which flesh is heir to,” and which, as Dr.
+Short told Mr. Brown in India, make no external show; but Jack would
+not give his lordship the slightest chance or opportunity to get off
+the engagement.
+
+It was just as the clock was striking seven that Lord Tom and his
+squire proceeded on foot, enveloped in cloaks to screen themselves from
+the effects of a regular gale of wind across the bridge, and pursued
+their way along the coast, making first for Mrs. Dutsell’s baths, and
+thence taking a fresh departure for the great bombardier’s hospitable
+mansion on the Parade--a perfect silence having been observed by both
+parties as to the episode of the cap and comb, any reference to which,
+Lord Tom knew would be unpleasant to his companion, and the particulars
+of which he thought it most judicious not to touch upon, since, as the
+reader knows, his lordship meant to make use of Jack on the race-course.
+
+When the visiters entered the drawing-room, Lord Tom was horror-struck
+and Jack delighted at finding a large party already assembled, amongst
+whom were several people whom he knew, and some few whom he did not
+know; however, the body consisted of not less than fourteen persons,
+who were destined to be crammed into a dining parlour, licensed, by
+size, not to carry more than ten inside.
+
+Jack was presented to Lady Gunnersbury, who did not hear his name,
+and subsequently to the two young ladies--young by courtesy--upon
+whom Jack, very shortly after the performance of the ceremony of
+introduction, began to play off some of his most insinuating tricks.
+The way in which the tall, gaunt damsels looked at him, most forcibly
+reminded Lord Tom, who was watching his progress, of the regards of
+mingled curiosity and surprise with which the Brobdignagian virgins
+considered Gulliver; Jack, however, nothing daunted, went off at
+score; and during the dreadful quarter of an hour before dinner,
+when the company were as cold and as stiff as wax-work, Jack’s voice
+was specially audible. When, however, dinner was announced, the
+unfortunate interference of precedence with pleasure threw him out,
+and he found himself last, and “least,” except young Gunnersbury, to
+quit the drawing-room, the fair ladies of the party being appropriated
+to persons having ascertainable rank, and _he_ left next what he
+called the “crowpee,” with the back of his head exposed not only to
+the draughts of wind from the sea, which found their way through the
+hall, but to certain thumps and bumps of the door of the room itself,
+whenever it was necessary to open or shut it.
+
+The “crowpee” was, of course, young Gunnersbury; and Jack’s left-hand
+neighbour was a German baron, who spoke no English. The heir of the
+house was particularly fine; and even if he condescended to notice any
+of the stray guests whom his father was in the habit of inviting, while
+they were actually at table, made a point of cutting them dead, if he
+met them anywhere else the next day. He took an inveterate aversion
+at first sight, from Jack and his curls and studs, and never deigned
+even to look at, much less to speak to him, throughout the rest of the
+dinner: Jack’s position was therefore not particularly enviable.
+
+To describe accurately Lady Gunnersbury’s character and conversation
+is, I apprehend, beyond the reach of pen. The old lady, who neither
+looked, nor, it is to be presumed, felt old, lived in a state of
+perpetual anxiety to talk to everybody near and about her, upon every
+subject which they might be discussing, being at the same time most
+punctiliously, or rather pesteringly, civil and attentive to her
+guests, especially at dinner. This assiduity was derived from the age
+and mode in which she had been educated; and her evident anxiety to
+talk with everybody about everything arose from the circumstance of her
+having once been deaf for several years together, of which infirmity,
+Time, or some successful aurist, had cured her. It was her desire to
+show not only that she was no longer deaf, but that she could hear half
+a dozen things at once, and reply to them all, that produced an effect
+of which I despair of being able to convey even a faint idea.
+
+On the right hand of her ladyship, who assumed the head of the table,
+sat the Earl of Dullingham; on the left, Lord Tom, next to whom the
+Countess was placed, on the right hand of Sir James Gunnersbury, on
+whose left was Mrs. Carnaby; next to her was seated a Mr. Paddle, and
+between him and the “crowpee” Mr. Carnaby. Next the earl, on the other
+side of the table, was the elder Miss Gunnersbury; and between her and
+her sister Sir Henry Rockly. Next to the younger miss was deposited the
+German baron; and between the baron and the “crowpee,” Brag.
+
+Seated and settled, and the soup discussed, the conversation became
+general, but not universal. The neighbours who were acquainted with
+each other began to chat; the Earl and Maria--the Countess and Sir
+James--Lady Gunnersbury and Lord Tom--Rockly and Eliza--Paddle and Mrs.
+Carnaby--Carnaby and young Gunnersbury;--but Brag and the Baron were
+basketed. Had Brag been placed next either of the girls, he flattered
+himself, from the play he had made up-stairs, and the way in which
+his little attentions had been received, that he should have got on
+remarkably well, and no mistake; but being hedged in between two men,
+one of whom could not, and the other of whom would not, speak, was
+anything but smack smooth, straight up and right down, in his opinion.
+
+When the Babel-like noise of the jovial party was at its height, Lady
+Gunnersbury began to be in her glory: in every dialogue she must have a
+word--in every tête-à-tête discussion an interference; and in something
+like this fashion did she continue one incessant gabble of confusion,
+such as could not well have been worse confounded.
+
+“My dear Lord, take some of these cutlets.--I think so, Mrs. Carnaby;
+always said she was beautiful; dresses so well.--Done with sauce _à
+la Soubise_.--I’m glad you like Dover, Lord Thomas; the pier is so
+charming--so fine and clear in a morning-walk.--Looks so well in that
+pretty pink bonnet, Mrs. Carnaby.--Thank you, I’ll take the sweet:
+limit myself to two glasses at dinner.--Capital invention,--four
+thousand gallons in a minute!--Very full, just now.--Maria, what
+will you have, dear?--you eat nothing.--Wonderful accumulation of
+shingle.--As you say, Sir Henry, what a man Shakespeare was!--dear,
+dear!--quite a wonder rising in that dark age.--Striped red and
+white, was it, Mr. Paddle?--I love balloons.--Sir Walter Raleigh
+wrote it, my lord: I heard you ask Maria. I forget how many plays
+he wrote--fifty-two, I think. What a shocking thing to cut his head
+off, my lord, after all that time--wasn’t it?--A blue body with red
+wheels--I heard you tell Sir James about the coach.--So superior to
+any writer of his time.--With morocco squabs.--A little bread-sauce,
+if you please.--From Lord Mackdaudle’s place in Scotland; always
+sends us plenty.--Tremendous sight the parachute, as you say.--Come
+in boxes once a week. I don’t think it quite so good as his last.--I
+heard your opinion of Captain Marryat’s book; one of our very best
+writers.--Meyer and Miller make for Sir James: you were asking my son,
+Mr. Carnaby, about shoemaking.--In three volumes, with plates--And a
+little of the _fondu_.--We get it from the library.--Eliza, dear, Mr.
+Paddle wishes to drink wine with you. Different place this from Paris,
+Mr. Paddle.--With a shifting rumble, Sir James, if you please.--Won’t
+Baron Bumbeltronden take _fondu_? You speak German, Eliza, ask the
+baron; I don’t: I am no great linguist. I am very much of the opinion
+that one tongue is sufficient for one woman.”
+
+“Especially, my dear,” said Sir James, “if, like Dr. Johnson’s
+memorable sheep’s tail, it be long enough.”
+
+Under the heavy fire of my lady’s eloquence, the dinner proceeded as
+dinners usually do. Jack had not opened his lips, except to put the
+viands and wines of his gallant host into his mouth; and although
+Lord Tom supported him by asking him to drink wine with him, young
+Gunnersbury devoted himself entirely to Carnaby, to whom, when he
+did speak, he spoke in an under-tone, keeping, as it were, aloof
+from all the guests excepting the Earl and Countess, to whom he was
+obsequiously polite, and Sir Henry Rockly, to whom he was remarkably
+civil. Sir James, however, called upon Jack to do him a similar favour
+to that which he had done Lord Tom; but in inviting him to the social
+intercourse, he unfortunately called him Mr. Bag, instead of Brag,
+which excited some attention, caused a slight whispering, and excited a
+few titterings.
+
+There is always in women a goodness of feeling towards those whom they
+imagine to be ill at ease with themselves; a kind of pity certainly
+not akin to love, but which shows itself in an anxiety to “make things
+agreeable.” This sort of sentiment both the young ladies entertained
+towards Brag: they saw how perfectly uncomfortable he was, and Eliza,
+who was nearer to him than her sister, after ineffectually telegraphing
+her brother to be civil to the stranger, put herself sufficiently
+forward to afford him a gracious look, which encouraged him to suggest
+a glass of champagne. Had he seen the expression of young Gunnersbury’s
+countenance while this ceremony was in progress, it would have turned
+his Silleri into prussic acid: the frown he bestowed upon his sister
+the first time their eyes met after it was over, even more distinctly
+marked his high mightiness’s entire disapproval of the whole proceeding.
+
+According to Brag’s calculation, they had sat at least five hours after
+dinner before Lady Gunnersbury, whose incessant volubility it would be
+impossible to follow, at least with any chance of catching it, until
+at length that exemplary lady at once delighted and astounded him by
+announcing the retreat of the ladies.
+
+“Dear Lady Dullingham, I am ready,” said the hostess. “_I_ see, Sir
+James; hate the custom nevertheless--separating after dinner.--I hear
+you, Sir Henry: with a band of music and a cold collation, I agree;
+but in England.--Oh, fie! Mr. Paddle, that is really ungallant--unlike
+you.--In a barge by moonlight; don’t do so in Paris, Sir Henry.--What
+Eliza says is quite right; but such a bad singer: however, we must bow
+to custom, Lady Dullingham.--I quite agree with you, Mrs. Carnaby,
+about the bull-fights.--Isn’t it quite extraordinary?--Prejudice
+and custom, as you say.--Lights up-stairs.--With the matadores and
+picadores, and--The omelette soufflée, Sir Henry, I know.--Delicate
+creatures, indeed!--handfuls of nuts to throw the men down.--Very
+extraordinary.--At Tortoni’s, Hardy’s, or anywhere else, all the
+same.--Entirely steam.--Very fine sight, I dare say--two hundred horse
+power.--The meat, I believe, is given to the poor.--The “Nel più” is
+the only thing she does decently well.--I differ with you still about
+the omelette.--Dragged away by horses.--Dear George, do ring the bell.”
+
+The last words were music to Jack’s ears; and they were followed, in
+less than five minutes, by the adjournment of the “females,” Lady
+Gunnersbury stopping kindly to hope that he had not felt any draught of
+air from the door during dinner,--an act of civility and courtesy which
+her son, by his look, deemed entirely superfluous, but which induced
+Sir James, the moment the ladies were gone, to insist upon Brag’s
+closing up on his side, in order to rescue him from the taciturnity of
+the baron, and the studied coldness of his son.
+
+Lord Tom, in the plenitude of his good-nature, seeing Brag so unusually
+nervous and depressed, became anxious to put him at his ease, and
+bring him out; besides which, he felt in some sort offended by the
+supercilious manner which Mr. Gunnersbury had thought proper to adopt
+towards a guest of his father’s, whom he knew to be a friend of his.
+His lordship therefore gave Brag an “excellent character” in a whisper
+to Sir James, and, above all, lauded his judgment in horseflesh and his
+skill in equitation, to which he was the more readily inclined because
+his praises upon that point were really well-merited, and because the
+noble and taciturn Earl of Dullingham, who sat on the opposite side
+of the table, had been, in his day, a great sporting man, and who,
+although now declined into the vale of years, and retired from “the
+turf,” still, as the old coachman loves the crack of the whip, entered
+with more interest into conversations touching such matters than any
+other.
+
+“It strikes me,” said Sir James, “that our Government ought in some
+way to interfere in order to prevent the exportation of our best
+English horses, the effect of which must eventually be, not only the
+improvement of the breed in countries which, however peaceable the
+world looks just now, must and will, in the course of time, be at war
+with us, but the deprival of the English cavalry of their acknowledged
+superiority in cattle, at all events, over our enemies.”
+
+“If I had _my_ way,” said Brag, encouraged by the deference with
+which Sir James addressed this observation specially to him, “not a
+nag should go abroad--no, not at any price. I have been over and over
+again offered lumps of money for some of my hunters to go to France and
+Germany, and the deuce knows where. No, says I, not a bit of it: I’m
+English from top to toe--straight up, right down, and no mistake. I’ll
+be no party to mending the foreign breed, let what may happen.”
+
+The German baron coughed, and young Gunnersbury silently expressed his
+astonishment at the burst which his father’s injudicious patronage of
+the stranger had occasioned.
+
+“You are a true sportsman, sir,” said Lord Dullingham, gravely taking a
+pinch of snuff.
+
+“And,” said Lord Tom, “as good a rider as you’ll see from Totness to
+Newcastle.”
+
+“I do flatter myself,” said Jack, “I can come it strong in that
+line”--(Here Sir Henry Rockly exchanged a look with Carnaby)--“and no
+mistake. Lord Tom knows what I’m up to. In one week I’ve hunted five
+times, rode two trotting matches, and three steeple chases, picked up
+a hundred stones with my mouth in fifty-five minutes, and killed two
+hundred and nineteen brace of partridges.”
+
+“With a long bow,” said somebody, loud enough to be heard by everybody
+except Jack himself, who was now on his hobby.
+
+“I stick at nothing in that way,” said Brag--“do I, my lord?”--looking
+at Lord Tom. “Many a time I’ve gone after hounds for twenty minutes, as
+blind as a bat, as wet as a rat, and as sick as a cat, with the skin of
+my leg rasped up by the top of a grower from my shin to my knee, and
+only brought to my senses then by bumping my head right against that of
+my horse, for all the world like a flash of lightning, that loosened
+all my teeth in their sockets. That’s what I call going across a
+country, and no mistake. I’d have backed my “Tantrum” against anything
+of his age and inches that ever switched rasper. Jem Jiggins had the
+handling of him for some time, and a queer one he was, at first; but
+they as begins rum, turns out generally well in the end. One day,
+however, sold him:--run three foxes, one after another, right on end,
+seventy-two miles and a half in all!--he was done:--got my money for
+him though, after that. Had him painted; the picture is now at a little
+place I have in Surrey, with me on his back, topping a flight of rails,
+just alongside of “Fly-away Dick,” with portraits of two or three
+Melton men in the distance--eh!--that’s good.”
+
+This sudden dash out of his super-incumbent despair, and the way in
+which he helped himself to the veteran bombardier’s port-wine, in
+preference to claret, convinced Lord Tom that he was determined to
+rally against the tyrannical treatment which he had received from the
+young squire.
+
+“Have you hunted much in Dorsetshire, sir?” said the earl; “if you
+have not, I should think the Vale of Blackmore would give you some
+opportunities of showing your skill amongst the drains: half the fences
+are double, and the ditches wide and deep.”
+
+“No, my lord,” said Brag, “I’ve never seen much of that country, but
+shouldn’t care if I did. I’ve heard of it, and all the history of
+Oliver’s blind mare; but folks _do_ stretch sometimes. There’s a story
+of a Lord Penfeather, or some such chap, which he used to tell of
+himself--of taking a double fence and a double ditch, and afterwards
+clearing a Dorchester doctor, horse and all, who had grounded on the
+top of his nob just outside a drain beyond _that_:--that’s what I call
+going it. However, nobody’s alive that saw it, so we have it all upon
+my lord’s word, and that’s not much of a go, I take it.”
+
+A sudden death-like silence ensued, interrupted only by a few hems from
+Sir James Gunnersbury and Sir Henry Rockly, a look of dismay from Lord
+Tom, and a simper of exultation from the young squire. The pause did
+not last long; everybody appeared astonished, but nobody more than
+Jack. The silence was at last broken.
+
+“I assure you, sir,” said Lord Dullingham, in the most solemn manner,
+“the story is true--the doctor’s name was Flapps. He indeed is dead,
+but there are others who saw it done, still living.”
+
+“Oh,” said Brag, still unenlightened, “I don’t know--but I _do_ know
+a great many of Lord Penfeather’s friends who say ‘no go.’ If your
+lordship saw it, why, in that case, it’s all right, and no mistake; but
+from what they say of the chap himself who said he did it, why--”
+
+“I did it myself, sir!” said the earl, more energetically than he
+usually said anything, drawing himself up into an erect position,
+looking pitchforks and tenter-hooks at Brag, and taking a pinch of
+snuff with all the dignity of the old school.
+
+“That _is_ Lord Penfeather,” said Lord Tom, wishing to bring the
+affair to a speedy conclusion; “at least he was so, when he took the
+extraordinary leap in question.”
+
+“Oh!” said Brag, turning as white as a sheet--“Ah!--yes, my lord--I--”
+
+At this most critical minute, when acted upon by various and very
+different feelings, every gentleman present most anxiously expected
+a _denouement_, the butler, an old and valued servant of Sir James,
+made his appearance to announce coffee in the drawing-room, and being
+privileged, by long service, to use a certain degree of familiarity
+with his master, added, in an audible whisper to that exemplary
+officer--“There’s a large brig come ashore at the back of the pier,
+Sir James: it’s blowing terrible hard--and they are afraid she’ll be
+totally lost.”
+
+“Brig ashore!” cried Brag, most unceremoniously availing himself of a
+communication not made to him, and at the same moment jumping up--“I’m
+off, Sir James; excuse me--I _may_ be of use:--swim like an otter. Swam
+all the way from Oxford to London in nineteen hours without stopping.
+Have saved nine lives already: got three medals from the Humane
+Society: don’t value the surf of a sixpence. I’ll bet fifty to four I’m
+on board that brig in ten minutes from leaving your house--back in less
+than an hour. I know you’ll excuse me:--don’t you think I’m right--eh?
+Humanity--philanthropy--and all that--straight up, right down, and no
+mistake. Be with you again almost directly.”
+
+Saying which, and without waiting for an answer, away Jack bustled,
+leaving his astonished companions in amazement; Lord Tom, however, not
+a little annoyed that he should, in the end, have so far justified
+young Gunnersbury’s _hauteur_ in the beginning.
+
+The earl bore the imputation of exaggerating his leap with perfect
+good-humour, and explained to the rest of the party his own
+astonishment at the occurrence; but Lord Tom, beaten by the event,
+declined going up-stairs, upon the plea of endeavouring to prevent his
+friend from rashly endangering his life; and when the other guests
+repaired to the drawing-room, he hastened to the beach, where, truly
+indeed, the sea was breaking over the ill-fated vessel, which kept
+striking so awfully and so frequently, as to leave little hope of her
+extrication. He could, however, learn no tidings of Brag. It was quite
+true, however, that a venturous gentleman had been seen swimming with
+a rope through the surf, and had succeeded in rescuing two ladies--but
+he was gone; and so, after an hour’s fruitless search for his intrepid
+friend, Lord Tom proceeded to “The Ship,” where he found that Mr. Brag,
+after having read the day’s London paper, and drunk two glasses of hot
+brandy and water, had gone to bed, and had been, at the time of his
+lordship’s arrival, more than an hour snug in his “nest.”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+
+“Rather put your foot into it last night, Jack,” said Lord Tom to the
+tiger when they met at breakfast.
+
+“R-ā-ther,” said Jack. “How the deuce should I know that that
+greyheaded gig was the chap who took the flying-leap in the Vale of
+Blackmore half a century ago?”
+
+“You got off deuced well,” said Lord Tom; “for although Dullingham is
+too old to fight, there might have been a bother if it had not been for
+the brig.”
+
+“Never saw a finer sight!” said Jack, “Told you I’d soon be aboard: the
+minute I got down, saw two females waving white handkerchiefs--signals
+of distress: off I went--caught hold of the rope--clung like a
+cat--splash through the surf--up the side--seized hold of them, held
+on by my teeth, and slipped along the hawser: put one girl under each
+arm, for all the world like a fowl with the gizzard under one wing and
+the liver under the other, and landed them in less than a quarter of an
+hour, safe and sound, smack, smooth, and no mistake.”
+
+“Their gratitude, I suppose, was unbounded,” said Lord Tom, whose
+doubts of his friend’s strict adherence to truth began hourly to
+increase.
+
+“Gratitude!” said Jack--“they are females;--when did you ever hear of
+an ungrateful female?”
+
+“Did you make yourself known to them?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Not I,” said Jack--“leave that for to-day. I hate boasting and
+puffing: if I had said who I was, the chances are, it would have been
+stuck in the newspapers. I can’t stand notoriety: don’t mind it in my
+own line--sporting, and all that sort of thing; but else, all quiet and
+snug--mum’s the word, and no mistake.”
+
+“I admire your modesty,” said Lord Tom; “and your coming home here and
+going quietly to bed, without saying a syllable of the matter to the
+master of the house, or any of the waiters, shows your desire to be
+unknown and unnoticed. Didn’t they see the condition in which you were
+when you came back?”
+
+“Condition!” said Jack--“I was in no condition.”
+
+“Not wet?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Jack, “I was uncommon dry. Sir Gunnersbury’s
+port was what I call regular black-strap--Day and Martin--eh!--and no
+mistake.”
+
+“Why didn’t you drink his claret?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Red pickled-cabbage juice bottled,” said Jack:--“no--I had two glasses
+of hot ‘with’ when I came home, and then turned in.”
+
+“But did you sit in your wet clothes?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Wet clothes!” said Jack. “Oh!--wet clothes--eh!--oh! in getting aboard
+the brig:--pshaw! my dear lord--nothing--a mere flea-bite--salt water
+never gives cold--I blew myself dry, running home.”
+
+“Pleasant, gentlemanly man, young Gunnersbury,” said Lord Tom,
+swallowing the explanation without any apparent effort.
+
+“I never sighted such a fellow in the whole course of my run,” said
+Jack. “You saw how I treated him--cut him dead--never so much as looked
+at him after the first glance: no--life’s too short to waste upon such
+a scarecrow as that. Eliza’s not bad--has eyes, eh!--and knows how to
+use them. Mother’s a droll woman.”
+
+“Droll!--a polyglot,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Oh! her name was Glot?” said Jack:--“rather old to be called Polly
+now. That Mrs. Carnaby looks lively, I take it. _She_ has eyes too, and
+_she_ knows how to use them. Carnaby seems a steady, respectable sort
+of man; I suppose, it wouldn’t be straight up and right down to disturb
+his domestic happiness,--else, my lord----eh! I say nothing--only----I
+know the sex, and no mistake.”
+
+“I know nothing of either of them,” said Lord Tom. “We must call on the
+Gunnersburys, however, to-day.”
+
+“When we are sure they are out,” said Jack, who had scarcely uttered
+the words before he astonished Lord Tom by thrusting his head out of
+the window, and exclaiming--“By Job! it _is_, and no mistake!”
+
+“Who?--what?” cried his lordship, half frightened at the energetic
+manner of his companion.
+
+“George Brown,” replied Jack: “if ever I saw George Brown in my life,
+he has just this minute gone out of this house with another gentleman.”
+
+“And who is George Brown?” said Lord Tom; “and where’s the wonder?”
+
+“Wonder enough, my lord,” said Jack, “if you knew all: why, he is the
+major you have heard me talk of so often.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lord Tom, “the brother of your deserted damsel?--hadn’t you
+better brush up your pistols, and make your will.”
+
+“No, no,” said Jack, “not exactly that; but I’ll just ask the
+question. I know I can’t be deceived in my man, although he looks older
+and browner than he did when I saw him last.” Saying which, he rang the
+bell.
+
+Of the waiter who obeyed the summons he made his inquiries, and found,
+according to his anticipation, that it _was_ the identical George Brown
+himself. In a moment Jack, who had always hitherto slurred over his
+connexion with this said George in his communings with Lord Tom, being
+convinced by the waiter’s account that he had by some means become rich
+and prosperous, immediately altered his tone.
+
+“Mr. Brown and his lady are going off to-morrow for Calais,” said the
+man. “They would have gone to-day, but they were too late to get their
+carriages on board.”
+
+“Is Mrs. Brown here?” said Jack.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the man; and being asked no more questions, retired.
+
+“That’s a lucky chance,” said Jack. “I’ll go to her this moment--find
+out all, how, and about it: can’t make it out just yet.”
+
+“What! do you know the lady?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Know her!” said Jack; “shouldn’t wonder: why, she’s my sister, that’s
+all.”
+
+“Your sister!” said his lordship; “I never understood you that the
+major was your brother-in-law. You always said that he was a distant
+connexion.”
+
+“So he was,” said Jack, “when he was in India; he is nearer now. So up
+I go, smack smooth, and no mistake. Come along, my lord, I’ll introduce
+you to Kitty; it will be a regular surprise upon her; and when George
+comes back he’ll stare like a stuck pig. I like a surprise.”
+
+“I’m your man,” said Lord Tom. “I shall enjoy the sight of your
+meeting.”
+
+“Here, waiter,” said Jack; “which room is Mrs. Brown in?”
+
+“That room, sir,” said the waiter. “Do you wish to--”
+
+“No, no,” said Brag, in a half whisper; “don’t say anything--I’m
+her brother. Want to astonish her; she don’t know I’m here: haven’t
+seen her for years. Hush!--now, my lord--” At this period of his
+conversation, the dexterous gentleman gently opened the door, and
+stepping softly up to the lady, exclaimed in a voice sweet as the music
+of the spheres--“Kitty!--I say, Kitty, my Kit!”
+
+The noise roused the lady, who was sitting with her back to the door,
+reading: she turned round, started from her seat, and presented to
+the eyes of the astonished Jack, and his much-mystified companion, a
+beautiful countenance, in which an expression of alarm and surprise was
+predominant, but which, as the reader has, no doubt, anticipated, was
+not that of the _ci-devant_ Kitty Brag.
+
+The group were at what Sheridan, in “The Critic,” calls a “dead lock.”
+
+“Why, it isn’t Kitty!” said Jack.
+
+“I believe there is some mistake,” said Mrs. Brown, at the same moment
+extending her hand towards the bell-rope.
+
+“Your name is Brown, ma’am, isn’t it?” said Jack.
+
+“It is,” said the lady.
+
+“Wife of George Brown, from India?” said Jack.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Can’t make it out,” said Jack.
+
+“If you have any commands for Mr. Brown, sir,” said the lady, “he will
+be here in a few minutes.”
+
+“You had better return _then_,” said Lord Tom, who saw that his expert
+friend had somehow got into a new scrape, and that the lady was
+extremely desirous of getting rid of his society.
+
+“It’s all right, by Job!” said Jack; “there’s some kink or caddle
+somewhere, but in the main it’s all straight up, right down, and no
+mistake,--for here’s Nancy, as nice as Nip.”
+
+These words were uttered, accompanied with a caper such as would not
+have disgraced a dancing-master, and followed by a scream of horror
+from Anne, who at that moment entered the room, and who, as Jack
+advanced to take her hand, fell senseless into a chair.
+
+The changes which had taken place in Jack’s views and intentions
+during a shorter period than the relation of this event requires,
+were most particularly characteristic. That Brown was Brown, browner
+than he was, Jack was convinced; that his wife was not Kitty at once
+pointed out to him that his sister must be dead, and that George had
+remarried: hence, like lightning, it darted into his mind that it must
+have been through _her_ that he had acquired the means of living as
+it too manifestly appeared he did; inasmuch as, besides the waiter’s
+previous representation of the difficulty of “embarking the carriages,”
+the sudden appearance of a valet, two lady’s maids, and a strapping
+livery servant, jacketed, topped, and leathered for travelling, who
+rushed into the apartment at the tintinnabulary summons of Mrs.
+Brown, confirmed him in the opinion that his now readily acknowledged
+brother-in-law had become wealthy, and consequently important, and was
+therefore much to be cherished and toadied.
+
+These momentarily excited feelings were, as it were, electrically
+driven into another channel the instant he beheld Anne Brown. There
+she was,--she who had confessed her affection for him,--the sister of
+the rich and prosperous George, now, in his own opinion, a suitable
+match for him: and in less than a second more he had resolved that the
+meek, the mild, the modest unoffending creature whom he had neglected,
+slighted, and traduced for years, should still be his; and that they
+would somehow, in the end, make a snug family circle, all right, and no
+mistake.
+
+“What on earth does all this mean?” said a gentleman entering the room
+in the midst of the confusion:--“what has happened?”
+
+By this time Anne had been led, or rather carried, from the
+sitting-room by Mrs. Brown and her maid. For a moment the last-arrived
+gentleman was absent, and the two intruders were left alone in the
+apartment.
+
+“Missed your tip, somehow, Jack,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“All right in the end,” said Jack. “Don’t you remember our little
+friend in Regent Street?--that’s Nancy.”
+
+“Oh!” said my lord, looking uncommonly wise.
+
+“Exactly so,” said Jack, looking particularly cunning.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the stranger, re-entering the room, “I am yet to
+learn the cause of your abrupt visit to these apartments.”
+
+“It’s all right,” said Jack--“all fair and above board. George
+Brown married my sister--that’s the mistake. This lady is not
+my sister--that’s clear as light. I never heard of poor Kitty’s
+death!--but she’s gone, no doubt, and George will tell us all about it.
+But George has a sister too: Nancy;--and if I flurried her at first
+seeing me after so long a parting, I’m deuced sorry for that. However,
+it’s all natural: and so I’ll call in by-and-by, when George comes
+back. Sunshine after rain, and no mistake. This, sir, is my friend,
+Lord Thomas Towzle--so that’s all right.”
+
+“I believe,” said the gentleman, “if you are the brother of the former
+Mrs. Brown, I have heard your name mentioned as a very particular
+friend of Mr. Brown’s sister.”
+
+“R-ā-ther so,” said Jack, “but circumstances occurred to keep us
+apart. Never had but one feeling towards her--I believe it is what you
+call reciprocal; and I am deuced sorry I took her so aback: however,
+by-and-by, as I say----”
+
+“Sir,” said the gentleman, “what course Mr. Brown may choose to pursue
+towards you I am at a loss to conjecture; but with respect to his
+sister, it becomes _my_ duty to act for myself--I am her husband, sir:
+although I assumed that character only three days since, it is my
+province to protect her from insult and alarm. Permit me to say, sir,
+that your absence is what we all most particularly desire: indeed,
+that we should have been favoured by your presence did not enter into
+our calculations, although we were accidentally made aware of your
+residence in this house shortly after our arrival.”
+
+“Married to _my_ Nancy!” said Jack; “oh, that _is_ a go!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Dr. Mead, for it was he who spoke; “and not married
+to her, until, in the candour and ingenuousness of her heart and
+mind, she had informed me of all the circumstances of your early
+acquaintance;--nay, more, sir, of the preference for you which she
+at that time acknowledged. If you will take the trouble to cast a
+retrospective glance over your conduct during a period when you might
+have properly evinced the sincerity of your professions--and the total
+neglect of a being whom you fancied your victim, you will perhaps
+perceive through the gloom a glimmering of light sufficient to show you
+the indelicacy and impropriety of your remaining one minute longer in
+this room.”
+
+“What! did she tell you _all_?” said Jack, quite at sea, and scarcely
+knowing what he said.
+
+“All, sir,” said the doctor; “but perhaps not _quite_ all that you have
+permitted your licentious tongue to utter.”
+
+“I--sir--I?” said Jack.
+
+“Come,” said Lord Tom, “you had better come away.”
+
+“But my sister--” said Jack.
+
+“Delicacy, sir,” said Dr. Mead, “seals my lips with regard to that
+unfortunate person. She is in her grave, to which she was borne,
+unfollowed by an injured, outraged husband. It is fit you should know
+this; and it is fortunate that the duty of telling you the bitter truth
+devolves rather upon _me_ than on my brother-in-law himself.”
+
+“By Job!” said Jack, scratching his head.
+
+“Indeed, I would venture to suggest your retiring,” said the doctor,
+“before his return from his walk. His affection for his mother and
+sister is ardent and strong; and if he found you here, something
+perhaps might occur which, for all our sakes, had better be avoided.”
+
+“Oh,” said Jack, “in course I’ll not stop a minute--no:--as you say,
+there’s no use in that kind of thing. It is all very surprising, and
+particularly unpleasant: but you, sir, are a gentleman, and act as
+such; not that I have the pleasure of knowing your name, but----”
+
+“My name is Mead,” said the doctor; “and I feel the greatest
+satisfaction in announcing it to you, in order that you may be good
+enough for the future to avoid any communication with the humble
+individual who bears it. I wish you a very good morning, sir!”
+
+“Good morning, sir!” said Jack. “I certainly should have liked to shake
+hands with Anne.”
+
+“I assure you, sir, she is not well enough to risk any further
+interview,” said the doctor.
+
+“Well then, in course there’s an end,” said Jack. “Come, my lord--we’ll
+go. Good morning, sir!”
+
+Saying which, infallible Jack crawled out of the room, followed by Lord
+Tom, who made a slight bow to the doctor.
+
+“Hadn’t we better go down the back-stairs,” said Jack; “it’s no use
+running the risk of meeting that fellow, Brown: one can’t fight a
+serjeant.”
+
+“Fight whom?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Why,” said Jack, “he never was anything but a serjeant.”
+
+“What!--learned in the law?” said his lordship.
+
+“Club law, if any,” said Jack. “No--a serjeant in a marching regiment.”
+
+“Why, I thought you told me he was a major in the army!” said Lord Tom.
+
+“So he was--serjeant-major,” said Jack, who, the moment he found
+himself despised and kicked out of his brother-in-law’s society,
+suddenly changed his ground, and tried to run down the man and his
+connexions whom, ten minutes before, he was ready to eulogize to the
+skies.
+
+“I should like very much to belong to his corps,” said Lord Tom: “it
+must be deuced good pay for a serjeant to enable him to do what _he_
+does in the way of living. But--Jack--what do you mean to do next? Do
+you mean to take any notice of what that Mr. Mead, or whatever his name
+is, said?--it was not over-courteous, you know.”
+
+“No,” said Jack, “but then I make allowances. I certainly did tantalize
+his poor little wife. I _am_ a sad dog in that way. ’Pon my life! it is
+more my misfortune than my fault.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lord Tom; “but then--somehow----however, it all depends
+upon feeling--only he decidedly turned you out of the room.”
+
+“Well, you know, my lord,” said Jack, “he had a right to do that,
+because they pay for separate apartments, and in course I had no
+business there. If it had been really my sister, instead of another
+wife, you would have seen how I should have acted: but, you see, she’s
+gone;--and--eh!”
+
+“Yes,” said Lord Tom, “the gentleman was good enough to mention that
+fact.”
+
+“I didn’t like to ask further particulars,” said Jack; “but it seems
+deuced strange that one shouldn’t have heard of her death.”
+
+“Perhaps your mother has heard of it,” said Lord Tom; “only I suspect
+you are not a very constant correspondent of that worthy lady’s.”
+
+“Maybe she has,” said Jack, evidently thinking as much as he could.
+
+“Do you mean to stay here?” said Lord Tom. “I intended to have crossed
+to-morrow; but I suppose it wouldn’t be agreeable for you to go afloat
+with your newly-recovered connexions.”
+
+“Not exactly,” said Jack. “Oh, in course, I shall stay here till you
+go: but I couldn’t well have gone to-morrow anyhow, because I have
+engaged myself to pass one day, before we went over, with a friend at
+Walmer.”
+
+“What! at the Castle?” said Lord Tom, making a face, invisible to Jack,
+whose real character began to develope itself rapidly.
+
+“No, no,” said Jack archly, “nothing of that sort: all
+snug--fellow-passenger in the ‘Union’--promises not to be
+broken:--mum!--that’s all right, and no mistake. I shall go over
+directly, and stay till to-morrow after--”
+
+“--After ‘The Ferret’ starts for Calais,” said Lord Tom. “You are
+right--peaceably disposed, and averse from collision. I’ll wait for
+you; only keep yourself all right for the Champ de Mars.”
+
+“Deuced odd name for a race-course, isn’t it?” said Jack.
+
+“‘What’s in a name?’” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Not much,” said Jack. “One would never fancy that pleasant gentleman
+up-stairs to be called Mead, from the sour way in which he talks.”
+
+“Oh, hang him!” said Lord Tom, who, foreseeing that if there was
+anything like a fight, he must inevitably be Jack’s friend upon the
+occasion, lent himself entirely to his views of the subject, and
+acceded completely to his notion of terminating the affair peaceably.
+“I should have nothing to do with any of them; it is all what I call
+a tangle, and would take a deuced sight of trouble to unravel it: so
+start for Walmer, and I’ll wait your return.”
+
+It is impossible to describe the delight which Brag felt at this
+acquiescence on the part of his lordship in all his propositions; nor
+was it long before he put his scheme in execution: and two o’clock
+found him strolling about upon the beach at Deal, having secured a
+bed-room at one of the worst inns in the place, the whole history of
+his promise and assignation with his “Fanny of Timmol” being, as the
+reader will naturally believe, a bright fiction of his own particular
+school.
+
+It is scarcely necessary now to mention, that in the case of Dr. and
+Mrs. Mead “the course of true love _did_ run smooth,” since the doctor
+himself announced his marriage with Anne to Jack Brag; nor is it more
+necessary to eulogize the candour and single-mindedness on her part,
+to which he also referred, and which determined her to relate to her
+intended husband every circumstance connected with her intimacy with
+her early lover. They were united at St. George’s, Hanover Square;--not
+because it is _the_ church for matrimony _par excellence_, but because
+it happened to be the church of the parish in which Mead’s house was
+located. They had started from town three days before, and were joined
+at Sittingbourne by the Browns, who, reducing the prescribed “treacle
+period,” proposed, as we have already seen, accompanying them to Paris.
+
+The evil star of Jack, however, was just now in the ascendant. It is
+true that his skilful and timely retreat to Walmer saved him from any
+inconvenience likely to arise from a meeting with Mr. George Brown;
+but it occasioned another calamity, which to him, even with all his
+prudence, was worse than the chance of being wounded in a rencounter
+with his injured brother-in-law:--but of this no more at present.
+
+When Jack had finished his solitary dinner, and sipped his glass of
+grog--for in the house he had selected for his abode wine was wholly
+out of the question, he fell into a lengthened reflection upon his
+family affairs: he felt anxious to ascertain the real history of his
+sister’s defection and fall, and to discover how the long-despised
+George had attained to wealth and importance such as he evidently
+possessed. The fortunate marriage of the neglected Anne equally puzzled
+him, and he resolved to while away the dull evening by writing his
+mother a letter, in which, giving a modified account of his discovery
+of the Browns, he might, as delicately as he could, ascertain the
+extent of his mother’s knowledge touching Kitty. Of course, he could
+get no answer until he was in Paris, his desire of going to which place
+was by no means increased by the fact that the Meads and Browns were
+going thither also. It was, however, impossible to disappoint Lord Tom,
+who so entirely reckoned upon his riding, and he therefore consoled
+himself with the reflection that Paris was a large city, and that they
+should not stay there long; and that it was by no means impossible that
+he might not fall in with any of his connexions during his stay.
+
+Then there came into his head a sort of question whether he ought to
+assume mourning for his departed relative; but, after a discussion with
+himself, he decided, that as she must have been dead for a considerable
+time, it would be ridiculous to begin to weep then; besides which, his
+appearance in a “suit of sables” would naturally lead to questions
+which it would be neither agreeable nor convenient for him to answer.
+He accordingly resolved upon saying nothing upon the subject, but upon
+writing, to hear the extent of the evil, from his respectable parent.
+
+While all this was going on, a storm was brewing at Dover calculated
+to swamp the pretender upon his return and which was a splendid
+illustration of the saying, that “misfortunes never come alone.” The
+reader will recollect the infelicitous _tête-à-tête_ which Jack
+enjoyed at the sign of “The Duke of Marlborough” with the Earl of
+Ilfracombe: the sociable mutton-chop; the social glass of punch; with
+the pleasing episodes of Mr. Figg’s horses, and the red-elbowed Rachel.
+
+The reader will also recollect that the said Earl of Ilfracombe, the
+denounced “Kill-joy,” was uncle to Lord Tom Towzle, his sister being
+Duchess of Ditchwater. It was quite clear that the event, and the
+statements of Jack of his great intimacy with Lord Tom, must form the
+special subject of conversation between the uncle and nephew whenever
+they met. It so happened that they had not met since this curious
+_rencontre_ at “The Duke of Marlborough.” Lord Ilfracombe, his wife
+and family, had gone to Brussels three or four days after that event;
+and, as if Old Nick had really set his cloven foot in it, actually
+arrived from the Continent on the morning following Jack’s departure to
+Walmer, and before his return thence; a calamity--for such it proved to
+him--which would not have occurred, if he had not induced Lord Tom to
+postpone his passage until the next day, to suit his convenience and
+security as regarded other matters.
+
+One of the principal morning recreations of Dover is the inspection
+of the passengers who land in the bay behind the pier, after the
+rolling and pitching which are so peculiarly the attributes of a voyage
+across the Channel from Calais: women pale and wan, (with their long
+ringlets all uncurled and limp, hanging adown their cheeks, enveloped
+in plaid cloaks,) brown cloaks, green cloaks, and sometimes soaked in
+fine silks and ermines, which their love of appearance has induced
+them to retain.--Men, with caps, and straps, and jerkins, and pea
+jackets, and Welsh wigs in every variety of deformity, scarce able
+to endure the tiresome assiduities of the “commissioners” from the
+different inns; some laden with leather hat-boxes, others with bags
+of sundry descriptions, and all looking sad, wan, and miserable. All
+these objects excite an interest, and often afford amusement; and, of
+course, when people can be amused and interested at so cheap a rate,
+the _spectacle_ is always well attended.
+
+To the scene of action strolled Lord Tom, after having witnessed the
+early departure of “The Ferret,” with all Jack’s tormentors; and as
+each boat-load left the newly arrived steamer, his eye vainly roamed
+in search of somebody he knew. At length, however, his surprise and
+gratification were simultaneously excited by the appearance of Lord
+and Lady Ilfracombe, Lord and Lady Dawlish, and Lady Fanny Smartly,
+his lordship’s cousin. The recognition and meeting were exceedingly
+agreeable, for Lord Tom, who was always on his best behaviour in the
+society of his maternal uncle, was a considerable favourite with his
+aunt and cousin. One of the most striking proofs of his desire to
+stand well with this branch of his family was the fact, that he had
+never thought proper to present or introduce his tiger Brag to any
+member of it; and although Jack, to whose ear their names and probably
+attributes, had grown familiar by hearing a great deal of them from
+Lord Tom, his practical and personal knowledge of them was--_nil_.
+
+Lady Fanny was the first to recognise her cousin; and in a moment
+afterwards, pale, sick, and sad as Lady Ilfracombe and Lady Dawlish
+were, they “rallied all life’s energies” to wave their hands in token
+of kind acknowledgment, looking more like a party under the care of
+Charon than of the jolly mortal boatmen, who cared no more for the
+wabbling of the waters than a fine lady does for an undisturbed rumble
+over a macadamized road.
+
+They had intended to proceed direct to town, but the fatigue of the
+ladies, joined to the opportunity of passing a pleasant day with Lord
+Tom, induced them to change their design. The greetings and welcomings
+of the party were really true and genuine, for never was there a
+happier family, nor one whose whole delight centred more completely
+in the domestic pleasures of home. Lord Tom escorted Lady Ilfracombe
+and Lady Fanny; Lord Ilfracombe and his son were the supporters of
+Lady Dawlish; and so they ground their way, instep-deep, over the
+shingles--a walk said by experienced persons to be infinitely more
+tremendous than the tread-mill for an equal space of time,--until
+they reached the wonted “Ship,” and whither Lord Tom insisted upon
+their going, in opposition to Lord Ilfracombe, who, being the
+“sickest” of the party, was all for its rival, because it was nearer
+the landing-place, and because the landlord was most civil and
+obliging,--all of which character he deserves. But Lord Tom was to have
+his way, and so the party were as speedily as possible deposited at
+“The Ship,” which, with all its splendour and all its gaiety, does not
+half so much cheer our hearts as it did when it was an humbler-looking
+house, full of comforts afforded in a different style--an attempt at
+splendour which never can reach the scale to which it pretends, is
+always a mistake. Take “The Fountains” at Canterbury as an example of
+perfect snugness without pretension. Recollect that a late noble earl,
+and prime minister, in his journeys to Walmer, always stopped to dine
+and sleep at “The Rose” at Sittingbourne, because it was excellent in
+its way, and perfectly different from the ordinary routine of his life;
+and recollect that in all its appointments and accessories, innkeepers
+who deal in tinsel and tawdry, in the hope of making their houses
+something like what their noble customers are used to, fail entirely:
+neat and clean are the qualities of an inn--grand and great, must be
+ridiculous.
+
+Into “The Ship” scarcely had the Ilfracombe party been ushered, before
+breakfast was prepared for the voyagers, who, after the refreshments
+of the dressing-room, recovered themselves entirely, and proceeded to
+make up for any loss of appetite which they might have sustained on
+the water. Never did aristocratic party more revel in the _dejeuner à
+la fourchette_ put down before them than these; and Lord Tom, who had
+already done breakfast the first, particularly well delighted at the
+opportunity afforded for the reunion, managed breakfast the second with
+infinite glee.
+
+They were a family of love--Lord Tom avowedly the _roué_,--but still
+never betraying any of those symptoms which were likely either to
+excite the anxiety or displeasure of those members now present. They
+laughed, and talked; Lord Ilfracombe related many anecdotes of the
+_liberality_ of the King of the Belgians--and some extraordinary traits
+of the _liberalism_ of the King of the French;--discussed, in _his_
+way, the anomalous position of a monarch raised to a throne not his own
+by the clamour of a people, whose liberties he was subsequently obliged
+to restrain with greater rigour than had ever been attempted even in
+the time of their idol and tyrant Buonaparte; and the curious fact of
+his denunciation even unto the death, of the contrivers of barricades,
+by which barricades alone he had himself obtained the crown.
+
+From these, and similar general subjects, his lordship glanced to the
+more domestic topics of Dover; and Lord Tom explained precisely his
+position there--his connexion with a gentleman whom they would see at
+dinner, Mr. Brag, and who was to be his lordship’s companion to Paris
+for the purpose of riding his race.
+
+“Why, then, you really _do_ know Mr. Brag!” said Lord Ilfracombe.
+
+“I do,” said Lord Tom;--“but do _you_?”
+
+The train was fired;--the fatal evil had occurred. Then it was that
+Lord Ilfracombe first had the opportunity of relating all that the
+reader already knows, about their meeting, &c.;--then it was that Lord
+Tom first became “wide awake” to the character of the tiger he had
+so long patronized:--and then it was he was resolved to give him a
+reception upon his return,
+
+  “More honoured in the breach than the observance,”
+
+and kick him soundly for the insolent falsehoods he had dared to utter
+even to the face of their object. One thing alone interfered to prevent
+this obvious manifestation of his contempt--and that was, the debt,
+which he could not but acknowledge, but which, alas! he could not pay.
+
+Lord Ilfracombe, instead of being the “Kill-joy” described by Brag,
+was a remarkably agreeable person, and, more than most people, ready
+to enter into a joke. Before Brag’s arrival, he entreated Lord Tom,
+instead of taking the matter up seriously, to punish the pretender by
+allowing him to join the party as usual, to permit him gradually to
+become acquainted with the ladies, whom he might not remember, and
+conclude the evening by making a matter of jest of that which could
+produce no satisfactory result if treated in any grave manner.
+
+“At the same time, Tom,” said the earl, “I honestly confess, for your
+own sake,--let him down as you may--the easier the better,--I _do_
+think you ought to get rid of him,--if after the Paris races, well and
+good: but you have no idea how ready the world is to attribute motives.
+This little man is of use to _you_, because he _is_ little, and rides
+light; but--_le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_. Pay a jockey, and let
+him ride--but do not make him an associate; do not give him the power
+of gossiping about your relations, as this little man did to me. You
+cannot pay _him_, and therefore he must, if he ride, take it out ‘in
+kind,’ as the clergy have it.”
+
+Lord Tom agreed with every word said by his noble uncle, even to the
+assertion that he could not pay Jack. This was the crisis fatal to Brag.
+
+“My dear uncle,” said Lord Tom, “will you forgive what I am going to
+tell you?”
+
+“Anything, Tom,” said his lordship. “I am not hard-hearted.”
+
+“I admit to you,” said Lord Tom, “that recent events have opened my
+eyes to the character of this man. Last night he exposed himself in a
+house to which I had the credit of taking him. I have got a letter from
+town this morning, which gives me the whole account of his incalculable
+insolence in making offers to two ladies, sisters, who, both in joke,
+accepted him.”
+
+“Mrs. Dallington and Miss Englefield,” said Lord Ilfracombe, “I
+presume.”
+
+“My dear uncle, how in the name of wonder, do you know anything about
+it?” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Your exemplary friend himself,” replied the earl, “told me the
+whole story of their devotion to him, with their names and places of
+residence, at the very moment in which he was spanning the by no means
+taper waist of the barmaid of the alehouse.”
+
+“You don’t mean _that_!” said Lord Tom.
+
+“How else could I possibly have known it?” said the earl. “Rely upon
+it, he is to be discarded.”
+
+“Well then,” said Lord Tom, “I must come to the fact:--I owe the
+fellow four hundred pounds. The law of primogeniture, my dear uncle,
+makes us, Lord Toms, Lord Johns, and Lord Bobs, anything but rich;
+and we _are_ consequently run sometimes to do things of which, upon
+sober reflection, we are seriously ashamed:--now there’s the truth--he
+volunteered upon all occasions, and I, like a fool, accepted his
+proffered accommodation.”
+
+“The city men say,” said Lord Ilfracombe, “‘accept anything, except a
+bill:’ however, Tom, I have been young myself. I will get you out of
+the difficulty. Mr. Brag may ride your horses; but although you may be
+saddled by others, he shall not ride _you_. You shall have the money;
+you shall Fectorize him this very day. But I’ll have no quarrelling--I
+will have it all my own way. I dined with him at the small inn--he
+shall dine with us at a large one; and if I have not my revenge out
+of him, I shall be astonished. If he had denounced me as a seducer,
+a murderer, or even a Whig, I could have borne it all; but when he
+called me to my face a “Kill-joy,” and a “wet blanket,” it was too bad.
+Let him come; let us have him to dine, and I will instruct the other
+members of our little family community to play their parts. But not one
+word of those whom he is to meet, till we have him in our meshes.”
+
+“My dear uncle, you are too good to me,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Not a bit of it,” said the earl. “There are a set of underbred fellows
+in the world, who swagger and strut about, because by some accident,
+sometimes as little honourable or decent to themselves as may be, they
+have got hold of money, which they as little deserve as they had any
+right to expect--who fancy, because, from their very insignificance,
+they have shuffled, screwed, or pushed themselves into society to which
+they ought not to belong, they are to mount upon their money-bags into
+yet higher places; and who, exactly in proportion to their natural
+meanness and original insignificance, perk up their noses and toss
+their heads, to give them a consequence, which makes them insufferably
+odious to the people with whom they really _do_ live, and incalculably
+ridiculous to those with whom they never can live, let them try as
+much as they may. This man Brag is one of that class, and it will be
+a very slight punishment for his immeasurable insolence to get rid
+of him after our own fashion. So, come along; we’ll to Fector’s: you
+shall have the money, and we will eject your familiar in the civilest
+and most amiable imaginable manner: _that_ part of the affair you will
+leave to _me_; the discharge of the debt remains with _you_.”
+
+The letter which Lord Tom had received from Rushton himself, describing
+the outrageous conduct of Jack, and its merited results, went so far to
+convince him that Brag was neither more nor less than a disgrace, that
+his first impulse, on his return to Dover, would no doubt have been to
+put him on his defence, as far as that affair went; but clogged as he
+had hitherto been with the debt, it would have ended in a laugh-off or
+a qualification; and however much convinced he might have been of the
+unworthiness, not to call it insanity, of his conduct, they would have
+continued their route to Paris, and their subsequent connexion. Now,
+armed with the means of vindicating his character by the abandonment of
+such an associate, Lord Tom felt himself doubly braced by the breeze,
+as he and his uncle left the door of the bank, his lordship having the
+amount of his debt to Jack safely lodged in the sinister pocket of his
+lordship’s trowsers.
+
+The events of the day remain to be told.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Little did Brag suspect that a pit so deep as that, which Lord
+Ilfracombe proposed, was digging for him during his forced absence
+from his noble friend Lord Tom; still less indeed, did he anticipate
+the arrival of that noble Earl, which, full as he naturally must be of
+the history of the dreadful luncheon, if he had imagined it possible,
+would have satisfied him that the last explosion was at hand. The truth
+is, that being ignorant of any such facts, and innocent of any such
+anticipation, Jack’s thoughts were fully occupied in reflections upon
+the still unexplained fate of his sister Kitty, the worldly advancement
+of George Brown, and the evidently advantageous marriage of Anne.
+
+In the confusion of his ideas as to the causes of this advancement, and
+these advantages, and a sort of a compunctious visiting in the shape
+of a recollection of the manner in which he had treated and talked of
+the woman whom he once fancied he loved, who certainly had loved him,
+and whom he now as certainly had lost, Jack passed no pleasant time.
+The weather was stormy, and although it might have
+
+  ----suited the present temper of his mind,
+
+it was by no means so agreeable in its congeniality as “the rocking of
+the battlements” was to the sable hero of Dr. Young.
+
+Time, however, as we all know, will go--although as Shakspeare says, he
+hath many different paces,--still he keeps going, and after Jack had
+finished his two glasses of grog, and folded and sealed his letter to
+his mother, (which he proposed slipping into the post himself the next
+morning in order that nobody in the inn might see the direction), he
+rang the bell in order that he might--
+
+  To keep his spirits up
+  By pouring spirits down--
+
+desire the waiter to bring him some more hot brandy and water.
+
+No waiter came to answer the summons; the lout who had previously
+attended him having gone to the stable; but, instead of that attendant
+there appeared before him a sylph-like creature, who seemed to have
+descended from some other sphere to do his bidding--the very Hebe of
+waiting-maids--a girl as fair, and as modest in her deportment as if
+she had just stepped from the threshold of a nunnery. “Acasto’s dear
+remains” could not have been more interesting--her face lovely, her
+flaxen locks inartificially falling about her ears--her innocent blue
+eyes cast down upon the floor, and her cheeks suffused with blushes
+such as tint the opening rose of future whiteness.
+
+Jack was at once confounded, delighted, frightened and amazed: his
+first impression was, that it was a mistake--that the plainly yet
+gracefully dressed creature he saw before him was, like himself, a
+visiter at the inn, and that she had either in mistake, or because she
+had seen him in the course of the day, entered his room. Don Quixote
+himself was not more prone to the exaltation of his “loves” than Jack:
+he gazed, he doubted--rubbed up his hair--pulled up his collar, and was
+going to try to say something, when Fanny Martin, (such was her name,)
+saved him the trouble by asking him if _he_ rang?
+
+“I ring!” said Jack, “yes,--yes. I rang--that is--eh!--I beg your
+pardon--do you?--eh!”--
+
+“What did you please to want, sir?” said Fanny.
+
+“I rang for the waiter,” said Jack.
+
+“Tom only stops in the house till eight, sir,” said Fanny; “I can get
+you what you want.”
+
+“Umph,” said Jack, “that’s--eh!--well--I’m sorry to give you the
+trouble,--a glass of hot brandy and water--if you please.”
+
+Fanny curtesied, retired, and shut the door.
+
+Jack’s head was gone--turned, twisted,--what could it mean?--never
+was such a pretty creature,--what was she--bar-maid, house-maid,
+chamber-maid--what? It was a bright vision,--it was something to
+love;--for, upon Moore’s principle, (and Jack had done more in the way
+of advances, however ill the combats eventually turned out, by the
+aid of a smattering familiarity with the mischievous beauties of that
+bewitching poet than anything else)
+
+    “’Twere a shame when flowers around us rise
+      To make light of the rest, if the rose be not there;
+    And the world’s so rich in resplendent eyes
+      ’Twere a pity to limit one’s love to a pair.
+
+    “Love’s wing and the Peacock’s are nearly alike,
+      They are both of them bright, but they’re changeable too;
+    And wherever a new beam of beauty can strike,
+      It will tincture love’s plume with a different hue.
+
+    “Then, oh! what pleasure, wherever we rove,
+      To be doom’d to find something that still is dear;
+    And to know, when far from the lips we love,
+      We have but to make love to the lips that are near.”
+
+This is a faith almost as convenient and elastic as that of Popery,
+although vulgarised down by Jack to the practical siege of a
+chambermaid at Deal, some degrees superior, however, to the red-elbowed
+Rachel of the Duke’s Head, who, as we have already seen, did most
+unequivocally reject his “delicate attentions.”
+
+And there was besides a history, of which Fanny Martin was the
+heroine,--a history that everybody in Deal knew, and which made
+everybody who knew her modest demeanour and excellent character very
+solicitous for her welfare. But she shall speak for herself--poor girl!
+she is but humble. Let us hope--we say no more--that the gaiety and
+sprightliness of our hero may have no ill effect upon her peace of
+mind, or the excellence of her character.
+
+Jack, when she left the room, was, as we have seen, what he
+called “toppled over.”--“Why, bless my soul!” he mentally
+ejaculated,--that is, said to himself,--“Nancy Brown never was
+like _that_--Blanche--psha!”--(be it remembered that the ale and
+grog in which he had solitarily indulged, mixed with his grief and
+anxieties, had dreadfully fermented.) “Miss Englefield--what’s a
+Miss!--what indeed--she’s amiss--Mrs. Dallington--two fools--eh!--made
+me a laughing-stock. What’s the sincerity of that--young
+Gunnersbury--beast!--hate him--deuce take that old lord with the
+snuff-box yesterday--The brig--psha! Lovely creature this--must have a
+talk with _her_--eyes--hair--eh! I hope Brown is gone--ah--foolish--how
+could he have got that money? Poor Anne--eh--did like her
+once--Walworth--mud--fog--squash--nonsense, couldn’t--Old mother
+mad--deuce take Waterloo Bridge--hate Lord Tom--wish he’d pay me my
+money--don’t like going to Paris--meet Nancy. Hope the farmer has given
+up his action about the trespass at the steeple chase--eh,--never left
+direction for the attorney. Hang that old Ilfracombe--Tom’s uncle--made
+a fool of myself there--beast Figgs and the horses. Want money to carry
+on the war. What happened to Kitty--all wrong, I suppose. What a noise
+the wind makes!--bore being at sea. She’s a long time coming--think she
+was hit--saw her look--innocent--eh! Well--ah--that’s all right and no
+mistake. Three Mackerels--comb and night-cap;--deuce of a bore--dirty
+monster--eh!--wonder who the people were standing all about--Tom never
+said a word. Mrs. Carnaby--eh!--don’t know--pretty woman--poor Carnaby!
+Well--I wonder if they go to Paris! Old fool, Lady Gunnersbury! Wonder
+if Lydiard will be married soon. Wretched wet night--good-natured
+slavey to offer the cab. Oh!--they may all go to Nycko. Where is this
+fair--eh!--creature. Oh--”
+
+This half-whispered, half-thought soliloquy was scarcely ended, when
+Fanny re-appeared with the glass of hot brandy and water: this she
+deposited upon the table, and was about to retire.
+
+“I say,” said Jack, “stop a minute,--just shut the door.”
+
+“I can’t stop, sir,” said Fanny.
+
+“I only want just to say three words to you,” said Jack.
+
+“Well, sir,” said Fanny, “I can hear them as well with the door open,
+as shut.”
+
+“Yes, so can anybody else,” said Jack.
+
+“I’m sure, sir,” said the girl, looking all modesty, “you would not
+want to say anything to _me_ that everybody in the house mightn’t hear.”
+
+“No,” said Jack, “only the draft of air from the door, you know, is
+likely to give one cold. I really want just to ask you--a question or
+two.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said Fanny, “I’ll shut to the door, if you wish it, only I
+can’t stop a minute.”
+
+“Tell me,” said Jack, essaying to take her hand, which she gently
+withdrew, “what the deuce does it mean?”
+
+“What, sir?” said Fanny.
+
+“Why, don’t you twig?” said Jack. “What the deuce brings such a sweet,
+lovely creature as you, into such a place as this?”
+
+“My good fortune, sir,” said Fanny.
+
+“Your good fortune,” said Jack, “I should think that you might better
+your fortune if you chose.”
+
+“No, sir,” said Fanny; “my father was a native of this place, and so
+was my mother: he was lost at sea, and my mother is dead. I was an
+orphan, one of four, and my mistress has been a mother to me ever
+since: I am quite happy where I am, and very grateful for her kindness.”
+
+“You are a regular angel,” said Jack. “I meant to have gone away
+to-morrow; but now I have seen you I’m not sure I shall ever go
+away--at least without you.”
+
+“The longer you stay the better, sir,” said Fanny with a smile, which
+had scarcely left her pretty countenance, before she quitted the room
+and shut the door.
+
+That smile convinced him that his never-failing qualities of person and
+conversation had triumphed, and that the fair orphan was all at once,
+heart and soul devoted to him; and it was at this moment he began to
+repent his positive engagement to Lord Tom for the next day, to which,
+as his ruminations have already informed us, he began to grow somewhat
+disinclined upon other considerations.
+
+A nervous anxiety to see and have the opportunity of again speaking
+to the really beautiful girl, induced Jack to ring his bell very soon
+after he had finished his brandy and water, and desire to be shown
+to his bed-room;--it was then about half past ten o’clock. The sylph
+came--gave him his candle--attended him to his chamber, and there
+underwent a certain degree of vulgar persecution in the way of very
+marked attentions, from which she contrived to escape, not--as a
+faithful historian, I am bound to say--without the undesired gain of
+one single kiss from Jack, which was so hastily given and so seriously
+repulsed, that it remains doubtful whether it fell upon the cheek which
+the attempt had brightened into a beautiful blush, or upon a depending
+curl which hung clustering inartificially over it. Probably Crispissa
+
+  ----tended her favourite lock,
+
+and the presence of Ariel was scarcely needed, since Fanny felt no
+“shock.”
+
+Jack, however, did not see the door close or hear the retreating
+footsteps of the delicate hand-maiden, without, as usual, satisfying
+himself that he had settled _that_ point, and that if it were not for
+the provoking necessity of going to Dover in the morning, he should, in
+a very short time, be the favoured of all the admirers which so sweet a
+“creechur” must necessarily possess.
+
+Full of these new thoughts, which, as his small mind had not room
+for many, naturally expelled all the other previous occupants, Jack
+“turned in,” as the sailors say, and tossed and tumbled about, not much
+soothed or composed by the various noises incidental to a minor inn at
+Deal during a blowing night. The impending morrow now was viewed by
+him with double dismay, since he had discovered a new attractive power
+where he was; and as for the meekness or modesty of anybody in _that_
+station, _that_ was all a regular mistake.
+
+Jack had been deposited horizontally for about an hour, with something
+like an expectation of an accidental “look in” of Fanny to see after
+his candle, or upon some other little errand to which she might have
+been excited by his never-failing attractions, when, just as he was
+dropping off into a slumber, the result of exhaustion of thought, Jack,
+to his infinite delight, but not surprise, heard a gentle delicate
+noise at his chamber door, not very much unlike
+
+  “The woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree.”
+
+The sound roused him in a moment: he sat up in bed--saw the glimmering
+of a light through the key-hole, and in one of those half impeded
+whispers, in which gentlemen under such circumstances sometimes express
+themselves, said “Who’s there?”
+
+“Me, sir,” was the response uttered in the sweet voice of the gentle
+Fanny.
+
+“Come in,” said Jack, still more effectually subduing his voice, “come
+in.”
+
+The pretty rustic obeyed the call, and stood before him with a light in
+her hand, more lovely to _his_ eyes than ever.
+
+“You are a dear soul,” said Jack, ten thousand ideas rushing at once
+into his imagination, which as I have just said was not calculated
+to hold more than one at a time,--“you are come, are you--what is
+it?--eh!--”
+
+“Why, sir,” said Fanny blushing, and looking modestly down at the
+candle she carried, “I’m sure I beg pardon, sir,--but--could you spare
+half your bed to-night?”
+
+“Spare!” said Jack, sitting bolt upright, conscious that he had not
+overrated the power of his fascination,--“do you doubt it?--spare!--to
+be sure--to be sure--all right and no mistake.”
+
+“That’s all right indeed, sir,” said Fanny, “because, sir, here is Mr.
+Van Slush Harridick, a North-Sea trader, just arrived, wet to the skin,
+who hasn’t been in bed for three weeks, sir, and we should have had no
+other place whatever to put him in to-night, if you had not been so
+good as to say ‘yes.’”
+
+“Mr. Van what?” said Jack, in an agony.
+
+“Van Slush Harridick,” was replied in the hoarse gruff voice of a man
+six feet four in height, and four feet six in circumference, dressed in
+a well-saturated pea jacket and dreadnought trowsers, who followed the
+girl into the room the moment the permission was granted;--“And I dank
+you var moch, zir, vor de commodation: I zleeps zound, and znores not.”
+
+“What does all this mean?” said Jack,--“I don’t understand.”
+
+“Bot I too,” said Van Slush Harridick;--“Vanny ask for half de
+ped,--you zay yez--wot vor now you zay no. I aff not zlept dry vor dese
+dree veeks von vay and doder, and I zshall drop to my znoozle like a
+dop.”
+
+“Like a what, sir?” said Jack.
+
+“A dop,” said the giant.--“Zo, Vanny, get up my bipe, and my pag, and
+my pacco, and my prandy and vaterz, for bleaze de bigs I mill haf a
+buff and a zwig pefore I durns in.”
+
+“Do _you_ mean to say, sir,” said Jack, “that you propose to share my
+bed?”
+
+“Doo be zure I too,” said Harridick, “Vanny asked you; if no?--if
+yez?--you zaid yez--zo here gose.”
+
+Saying which Harridick began to disencumber himself of some part of his
+drapery, Fanny having previously obeyed his orders about his pipe, and
+his bag, and his brandy and water. Brag sat up and reconnoitred the
+giant, who was shaking his jacket and preparing to make “snug for the
+night.” Having scanned the size and power of his companion, his next
+step was out of his comfortable nest.
+
+“Dat’s right,” said Harridick; “go if you like, and leaf it all do
+me,--I’m not do be drifled mid.”
+
+Finding remonstrance hopeless and resistance impossible, Jack huddled
+on his clothes in the corner, and when Fanny returned with the
+North-Sea trader’s little comforts, he was prepared to announce to her
+his determination of giving up the whole of the accommodation to the
+newly arrived guest, and passing the night upon the short horse-hair
+sofa which stood in his sitting-room--an announcement which, in order
+to convince both the maid and the trader that he was not terrified into
+a removal, he made to the former in the civilest possible manner.
+
+“I’m zorry do durn you out, my vrend,” said Harridick; “you are bot a
+liddle vellow, and dere voud haf been blenty of room for poth of os.”
+
+“You are extremely welcome,” said Jack; “in course if you have not been
+in bed for three weeks, it must be of much greater consequence to _you_
+than _me_;--so--Fanny dear, give me a light, and I’ll make myself as
+snug as I can down stairs.”
+
+“Coot night, coot night, my liddle vrend,” said Harridick; “I’ll too as
+moch vor you menever you are apoard mein prig in de Nord Zea.”
+
+“I wish with all my heart and soul you were there now,” said Jack to
+himself. “Good night, sir,--come, light me down, Fanny.”
+
+Accordingly Fanny did as she was bid, and Jack found himself again
+deposited in his sitting-room. Here he enquired whether he could have
+a cloak or two, a blanket, or a covering of some kind, to protect
+him from the chilliness of the night; and his request was answered
+by the landlady in person, who in bringing up several articles of
+warm clothing, expressed her regret that he should have been so
+inconvenienced.
+
+“Why,” said Jack, “I must say, to _me_, used as in course I am to every
+sort of luxury and comfort, it _is_ rather hard; but the gentleman--is
+tired--and so--”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the landlady, “but he should not have interfered
+with you, only you gave him leave, as my maid tells me, to share your
+accommodation: indeed, it was Fanny who first thought of asking you;
+for says she to me, ‘Mam,’ says she, ‘the London gentleman is so very
+little, there’ll be plenty of room for Mr. Harridick;’ and all our
+other beds, you see, sir, is quite full.”
+
+“I am much obliged to Fanny for the notion,” said Jack; “I certainly
+did not think--I--however--”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said the landlady, “if it hadn’t been with your own consent,
+nobody should have put you out of your room. I’m sure I hope you won’t
+catch cold, or feel any other illconvenience by sleeping here--and I’m
+humbly obliged to you for your consideration--will you take anything,
+sir, before you settle yourself?”
+
+“Don’t care if I do,” said Jack, “a glass of brandy and water, same as
+the last,--hot, strong, and sweet, eh!--I’m deuced shivery.”
+
+“I’ll send it you directly, sir,” said the landlady, quite delighted at
+having so far soothed her guest--“Good night, sir.”
+
+“Good night,” said Jack. Casting his eyes round the room, which looked
+as cheerless as might be; and having reflected for three or four
+minutes upon the consequences likely to result from his own estimate of
+his lady-killing qualities, a gentle tap at the door announced that
+
+  ----“the drink was ready.”
+
+“Come in,” said Jack--and again appeared before him the gentle Fanny
+with a smoking tumbler of the desired beverage, which she deposited on
+the table.
+
+“So, Miss Fanny,” said Jack, “it was you who foisted that sea-monster
+upon me, was it?”
+
+“Sea-monster! sir,” said Fanny.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Harridick, as you call him,” said Jack.
+
+“He is no monster, sir,” said Fanny, “but a very kind-hearted
+gentleman, and one of my mistress’s best customers.”
+
+“I didn’t think you would play me such a trick as that,” said Jack,
+looking tenderly and plaintively at the girl:--“the only thing you can
+do by way of compensation is, to come and sit with me for an hour or
+two, and tell me all your own history--eh!--and then I’ll make it up
+with you, smack smooth, and no mistake.”
+
+“Sit up! sir,” said Fanny--“Lord bless you! sir--why, it’s just twelve
+o’clock: we are all in bed here by twelve. I sleep with my mistress,
+and she’s waiting for me now.”
+
+“I say, Fanny,” said Brag, somewhat emphatically--
+
+“Come, Fanny--Fanny,” said a voice outside the half-open door, and
+which Jack recognised as that of the landlady.
+
+“Coming, ma’am,” replied the girl--“coming this minute. Good night,
+sir!”
+
+“Good night!” said Jack, in a subdued tone.
+
+The girl retired, the door closed, and the last sound Jack heard
+was a duet of suppressed laughter performed in the passage by the
+maid and the mistress, in which the voice of the former considerably
+predominated.
+
+There are sounds to which men sometimes love to shut their ears; Jack,
+however, could not muster up a sufficient stock of dysecœa to answer
+his purpose. What could they be laughing at?--at the sea-monster
+perhaps, thought Jack; there was nothing else ridiculous, that he could
+discover; and so in no very good humour the little man rolled himself
+up for the night in a boat-cloak which evidently had not long been
+home from a voyage.
+
+In the morning everything was naturally as uncomfortable as anything
+well could be, and Jack, looking about wistfully for his _valise_,
+began sorely to repent that he had not taken up his abode at “The
+Three Kings,” or some of the more substantial inns of the place, where
+he would certainly not have been subjected to such an intrusion and
+expulsion as those which he had so incautiously brought upon himself.
+Having got up, just as he lay down, he rang the bell, and enquired
+whether he should be able to use his last night’s room for dressing;
+to which Fanny, the cruel fair, replied in the affirmative--that Mr.
+Harridick was up, and coming down almost directly, and she would just
+“put the things a little to rights,” and let Jack know when it was
+ready.
+
+There was nothing in all this, to soothe or console our hero, who could
+not divest himself of that nervous, aching, sinking feeling, which
+seems almost miraculously to announce the falling of some heavy blow.
+He could not account for the sensation, except indeed that with the
+day had come upon him the reflection, that, besides making himself
+extremely uncomfortable during the night, he had made himself rather
+ridiculous into the bargain. However, a few hours would extricate him
+from his worries; he would be cracking his jokes under the patronage
+of Lord Tom; and as for the North-Sea trader, as he had, under an
+erroneous impression, given him permission to accommodate himself,
+it was much better to concede the point upon an assumed principle of
+good-nature and consideration, than get into any personal altercation
+with a man whose place in society could not easily be defined.
+
+While he was congratulating himself upon the success of his diplomacy,
+a knock at the door, louder than that in which the gentle Fanny
+announced her presence, startled him; and the permission “Come in”
+being uttered, the door opened, and Mr. Slush Van Harridick presented
+himself to Jack’s astonished eyes.
+
+“Cood mornin do you,” said Harridick; “I ope you zlept mell.”
+
+“Good morning, sir,” said Jack:--“slept like a top, as you say--warm,
+snug, and comfortable; couldn’t be better; all smack smooth, and no
+mistake.”
+
+“I only looked in,” said the trader, “joost do dell you dat
+de zea-monster has done tressing, and your room is at your
+zervice--eh--dat is all. And now, liddle man, de zea-monster is going
+to git his prakfast.”
+
+Saying which, Harridick shut the door, and calmly walked away, singing
+a line of a popular Dutch song, which sounded most discordant to Jack’s
+ears, who was now perfectly satisfied that every word which he had, as
+he thought privately and confidentially whispered to Fanny, had been
+by _her_ communicated to his ursine rival; and that in escaping the
+vengeance of Scylla Brown at Dover, he had run into still greater peril
+by having offended Charybdis Harridick at Deal, and so got himself,
+according to his own phraseology, “out of the frying-pan into the fire.”
+
+Shaftesbury says:--“The passion of fear (as a modern philosopher
+informs me) determines the spirits of the muscles of the knees, which
+are instantly ready to perform their motion by taking up the legs
+with incomparable celerity, in order to remove the body out of harm’s
+way.” Now although it would be unfair and unjust to attribute to any
+apprehension of consequences, on the part of Mr. Brag, the resolution
+at which he suddenly arrived, of not stopping any longer where he was,
+and the immoveable determination he made to depart forthwith; certain
+it is that he did so resolve and determine, upon the ground that he
+had been ill-used, imposed upon, turned out of his bed, and generally
+outraged by the mistress of the house and her handmaiden.
+
+Accordingly Brag, when he had finished his toilette, or, as he
+generally pronounced it, “twilight,” rang the bell and ordered his
+bill, giving at the same time a negative to the question if he would
+have breakfast served. The tone in which this negative was given, and
+the dignified air which accompanied it, satisfied poor Fanny that her
+day of influence was over; and when the account was produced and paid,
+with the smallest possible gratuity for herself, Brag, boiling with
+rage and indignation, qualified in a certain degree by his anxiety to
+escape any farther parley with Harridick, quitted the house, bearing
+in his hand the valise in which his cap, comb, and the rest of his
+portable comforts for one day’s use had been stowed.
+
+Thus loaded, he emerged from the lane in which, for the benefit of
+the sea-view (his room facing the street) he had immured himself, and
+walked on to “The Three Kings,” where enquiring the hour at which the
+first coach to Dover would start, he ordered breakfast, having first
+asked whether the waiter had seen Mr. Brag’s servant anywhere about.
+
+Of course the man said no--inasmuch as servant there was none.
+
+“Then,” said Brag, “I have no doubt he drove on last night: never mind,
+the coach will do.”
+
+Jack, whatever might have been the real source of his anxiety to quit
+his late residence, felt comparatively happy in his new _locale_. The
+house was a good one; there was an air of cleanliness and cheerfulness
+about it; the weather was fine, the sun shone brightly, and his
+happiness was complete, when, as the waiter was putting down the
+breakfast, he replied to the question, “What steamer is that smoking in
+the distance?”--“The Dover boat, sir, for Calais.”
+
+“To-day’s paper, sir,” said the waiter, presenting a copy of “The Dover
+Telegraph.”
+
+“Thank you!” said Jack, with a princely affability of manner, and
+forthwith he began his morning meal, alternately cutting, spreading,
+sweetening, pouring out, and reading, with a mind perfectly at ease.
+A new cloud, however, rose on the horizon, which threatened the
+neutralization of the delight which he had just received from the
+distant smoke of “The Ferret,” in the shape of the following account of
+the grounding of the brig at the back of the pier, which stared him in
+the face in large letters under the head of “Local News.”
+
+“The night before last, the brig Rose, from Falmouth to this port,
+missed the entrance of the harbour, owing to the strength of the gale,
+and got on shore at the back of the pier. Great apprehensions were
+entertained for her safety: three of the crew swam on shore, but were
+severely injured on the shingles by the sea, which ran so high that no
+assistance could be offered her. About half-past nine a communication
+was made with the brig by means of a hawser. Lieutenant Brunt, of the
+royal navy, who happened to be on the spot, seized the first moment to
+dash through the surf, and at the imminent hazard of his life succeeded
+in bringing ashore two female passengers, a lady and her daughter, who,
+by the occasional gleams of moonlight were discernible lashed to one
+of the masts of the vessel, making signs of distress and supplication.
+This is the second instance in which Lieutenant Brunt has signalised
+himself in a similar manner. Three men have been unfortunately lost,
+but as the weather has moderated, it is thought the brig may be
+ultimately got off.”
+
+“There’s a go,” said Jack to himself,--“I wish we had been off to
+France yesterday--now that’s clear contradiction to my story--I saw
+him do it--didn’t look like a lieutenant--pooh!--deuce take it--that’s
+bad again--no sooner out of one scrape than into another.” In fact,
+Jack, like all pretenders, was perpetually dancing the tight rope in
+constant fear of a tumble. In the present case his fate was certain,
+for there were but two female passengers on board the brig, and but one
+man on shore to save both.
+
+Perhaps Lord Tom might not see the paper, or, if he did, might not
+read the account of the brig; at all events, it was no use discounting
+misadventures: when they came due, if they were presented, or presented
+themselves, it was time enough to meet them:--and so Jack read the
+sporting news, and the London news, and finished his breakfast. Having
+discovered that the coach would be up in a few minutes, his old failing
+overcame him.
+
+“Waiter,” said Jack.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Does the coach, in going through Walmer, go near the Castle?” said
+Jack.
+
+“Passes the end of the road leading down to it, sir,” said the man.
+
+“Oh!” said Jack, affecting to consider, “I must go to Dover first, but
+I think my man may have taken the phaeton direct to Walmer.”
+
+“Oh, sir,” said the waiter, at once impressed, as Jack meant he should
+be, with the idea that he was going on a visit to the Castle, “I dare
+say the coachman would stop while somebody ran down and enquired.”
+
+“No, no,” said Jack, “it does not signify, if he is not there, he has
+probably gone through to Dover himself,--it will be all right in the
+end, and no mistake.”
+
+In a few moments the coach drove up; the instant it stopped, the
+waiter, anxious to be most active in the service of the guest, whose
+destination he flattered himself he had discovered, ran into the room
+to inform him that one of the duke’s servants, who had come from the
+Castle early in the morning, was going back, and would, perhaps, be
+able to give some information on the subject.
+
+This was a staggerer.
+
+“No, no,” said Jack, “_he_ could not know, because I did not expect my
+man so soon--no,--no--never mind.”
+
+Jack’s distress when he beheld, during the packing of some parcels
+into the boot of the coach, the said waiter in close conversation with
+the aforesaid servant, may well be imagined; and the fact that the
+aforesaid servant occupied an outside place, rendered it absolutely
+necessary, in order to avoid any farther explanation, that Jack himself
+should proceed, inside. He accordingly enquired if there were room, and
+was answered in the affirmative. In he jumped, valise and all, having
+the whole interior of the coach, entirely to himself. In a few minutes
+he was again in motion, the coachman having received directions to take
+up one, at “The Standard.”
+
+Jack did not feel himself at all at his ease about his last effort
+at dignity:--his name he had given--the total absence of servant or
+equipage might lead to further enquiries and discoveries, and he get
+more deeply involved in intricacies and embarrassments. However,
+
+  “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,”
+
+
+and Jack still fancied something more agreeable might turn up in his
+little journey. The passenger to be taken up at the Standard might be
+one of the female sex, who by her kindness and sociability might make
+amends for the treachery of Fanny and the incivility of her mistress.
+There was even yet a chance of an adventure--of some event which, if it
+came off, triumphantly, might weigh in the opposite scale against his
+defeats and discomfitures.
+
+As the coach rattled along, towards Walmer, Jack took all his customary
+precautions of running his fingers through his curls, pulling up his
+shirt collars, and setting himself generally in order, so that, when
+the vehicle stopped at the corner where the roads divide, he was all
+prepared for conquest. Open went the door, down went the steps, and
+Jack, longing as lie was to behold his coming victim, considered
+it more becoming his dignity to affect a perfect indifference, and
+therefore kept his eyes filled with an expression of military interest
+towards the gates of the Barrack-yard, until he felt the inclination of
+the carriage to the weight of the entering passenger, when, turning
+carelessly “as it were” round to meet, as he hoped, the responsive
+glance of some Walmer beauty, he beheld squeezing himself into the
+narrow-door of the coach, enveloped in an immensely thick great coat,
+his dread and abomination, Mr. Sluys Van Harridick.
+
+Jack then thought that his measure of calamities was full even to
+overflowing.
+
+  “Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
+  The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger,
+  Take any shape but that”----
+
+said Macbeth, and thought John Brag, Esq.--What! had he waylaid him to
+revenge himself for the insults offered him? or was he doomed to his
+society to Dover by mere accident?--what was it?--
+
+“Ah!” cried Harridick, the moment he had succeeded in establishing
+himself in possession of nearly three-fourths of the coach; “Vot! here
+agin,--vy I dought you vas gone--I no zee you to prakfast--here is your
+zea monster come do dravel mid you to Tover.”
+
+“I’m delighted,” said Jack, looking parsnips.
+
+“I spect do vind my prig at Tover,” said Harridick, who seemed by his
+manner either not to comprehend the compliment of being called a sea
+monster, in the full acceptation of the words, or to treat the intended
+affront of his companion with sovereign contempt,--“I lantet at Teal
+pecause I like Teal,--I haf known de lantlaty vor dventy years, ant her
+hosbond beforr her--zo I alvays gets ashore dere--to get my znooze, and
+leaf my mate do get de prig into de harbor.”
+
+“Oh!” said Jack, “then you stay at Dover while the brig is there.”
+
+“Do be zure I too,” said Harridick, “and alldow I am zea monster, I
+zshall be doo happy do zee you on poard and plow you out mid znaps.”
+
+“You are very kind, sir,” said Jack, still doubting whether he was
+in earnest in his civility, or indeed, whether being “blown out with
+snaps” meant anything hospitable and civil, or exactly the reverse.
+
+“As ve are alone,” said Harridick, “I zuppoze you mill haf no
+hopjecksion do my avving a whiff. I haf no bipe, hot I aff ghiroots
+mid amadow do light him mid--mill you aff von, mid me?”
+
+“No,” said Jack; “none, I thank you:--but, pray do you smoke if you
+like.”
+
+“I mean do too zo,” said Sluys, opening a box of particularly fine
+cigars, striking a light, and methodically beginning his exercise, to
+the utter confusion of Jack, who knew that by the time he should arrive
+at “The Ship,” he should be awfully redolent of the fumes of tobacco,
+before noon.
+
+At this moment the coach stopped to set down the Duke’s servant, who,
+having been informed by the waiter that the little gentleman with the
+visionary servant and imaginary phaeton seemed to be going to the
+Castle, came to the window, touched his hat, and asked whether he
+should say anything to his man if the carriage had arrived there.
+
+“No,” said Jack, “thank you--no--I shall be back by dinner-time--if I
+can get back in time--I--”
+
+“His Grace isn’t here, sir,” said the servant; “only if--”
+
+“No, no,” said Jack, “I know--no, no--it’s of no consequence; I dare
+say my man is gone on to Dover--thank you--much obliged to you.”
+
+The servant again touched his hat, and retired. “All’s right” was the
+word, and away went the happy couple of “insides.”
+
+It was, it must be confessed, a great comfort, or, as Jack would have
+called it, “an ’appy release,” that Harridick, who had not during the
+night sufficiently
+
+  “Unfatigued himself with gentle slumbers,”
+
+still felt drowsy; so that, ere the tip of his first cigar had
+faded into ashy paleness, he had himself subsided into a nap, which
+greatly relieved his companion from his apprehensions with regard to
+consequences; and left him luckily in ignorance of the name of his
+“prig,” to which otherwise he might have felt himself bound to pay a
+visit. The nap continued until they reached the turning near Dover
+Castle, when Brag stopped the coach, and indicated his desire to walk
+down into the town by the short cut, ordering the coachman to send
+his valise into “The Ship” as soon as he arrived. By this manœuvre
+Jack contrived to escape from the caravan without waking the bear,
+and without farther cementing an acquaintance with one from whom, the
+moment his dread and apprehension of him were overcome, he entertained
+the most unqualified aversion.
+
+Away bounded Jack, along the side of the hill, until, carefully
+avoiding “The Three Mackerels,” he cut through the intervening streets,
+and _viâ_ Snargate reached his inn, where his first enquiries were
+naturally directed as to the position of Lord Tom: Lord Tom was on
+the pier. Of course, or, as Jack had it, “in course,” thither Jack
+repaired; and, sure enough, there he found his lordship, amidst a crowd
+of persons of all sorts and conditions, who were anxiously watching the
+process of warping off the unfortunate brig, of which we have already
+heard so much.
+
+Jack was rather sorry that the brig--or, as Sluys Von Harridick
+would have called it, “the prig”--was the leading object of the day,
+inasmuch as it might lead to a discussion with the young lord as to the
+paragraph, which had caught his eye, at Deal. However, Jack proceeded
+to join his lordship, who was leaning over the parapet between two
+ladies utterly unknown to our hero.
+
+“Ah, Jack!” said Lord Tom, in a tone not quite like that which Jack had
+been used to--“so, you are come back. ‘The Ferret’ is gone--eh!”
+
+“I know, my lord,” said Jack.
+
+“You are just in time,” said his lordship:--“this must be a most
+interesting sight for _you_. Why, it could have been no easy work to
+get aboard that unfortunate craft by a hawser in the gale of the night
+before last.”
+
+“No,” said Jack, “I never said it was. The rope was as slippery as an
+eel; and I’m sure, now I look at it, I wonder how the deuce it was
+done, only when a man makes up his mind, he don’t stick at trifles.”
+The reader will please to observe that Jack’s tone was somewhat
+altered--he now put the case hypothetically.
+
+“I suppose,” said Lord Tom, “you mean to enquire after the ladies whom
+you rescued; rely upon it, they will not be ungrateful.”
+
+“Not I,” said Jack, “I leave all that to fate. I’m satisfied with
+having done my little all; I never make mountains of molehills.”
+
+“Then,” said Lord Tom, “I positively declare you do yourself the
+greatest possible injustice, and I will not be so careless a friend as
+to suffer you to ‘hide your candle under a bushel.’”
+
+“My what!” said Jack in an agony. The shop--the moulds, the sixes and
+tens, all blazing at once in his mind’s eye.
+
+“By your candle,” said Lord Tom, “I mean your talent and intrepidity.
+Permit me to present you to the two ladies whom, at the hazard of your
+life, you preserved--Mrs. and Miss Mervyn--who, I am sure, will be too
+happy to award you all the gratitude which you deserve.”
+
+The ladies turned round, as if preconcertedly, and--more shame be to
+them!--burst into an immoderate fit of laughter.
+
+“I don’t understand this,” said Jack, who, on the contrary, understood
+it perfectly.
+
+“Nor I, sir,” said the elder lady of the two. “That we were
+miraculously saved--at least from what, at the moment, we thought
+inevitable destruction, is most true; but it is to this gentleman
+we owe our preservation,”--(drawing forward a short, stubby,
+thick-whiskered man, whom Jack in a moment recognised as having seen on
+the beach,)--“Mr. Brunt.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” said Jack: “that’s the way, ma’am, some men get credit for
+what other men have done.”
+
+“I recollect you, sir,” said Lieutenant Brunt. “I saw you--stood next
+you on the beach--and, I dare say, you recollect me. I remember your
+kindness in offering to hold my cloak when I started upon my hurried
+voyage, or whatever it might be called.”
+
+“By Jove!” said Lord Tom, calling the attention of his party to a great
+effort made by the men who had the hawser round the capstan to get the
+brig off--“she will be saved yet!”
+
+The relief that this change of conversation afforded Jack, was more
+than compensated by the evident change which he so clearly observed in
+his friend Lord Tom’s manner; and affecting to be extremely anxious to
+get a “good look” at the operation in progress, he fidgeted himself
+away as far as possible from Mrs. and Miss Mervyn and the odious
+lieutenant, whose exertions it was perfectly true he had witnessed,
+and, like a simpleton, had appropriated to himself.
+
+What was he to do:--remain, and battle it out; or go to “The Ship,”
+and wait the result? He felt that he had certainly carried the joke a
+little too far, but how to retrace his steps he did not exactly see.
+How on earth could Lord Tom have got acquainted with the two women who
+were saved, and who, instead of being two beautiful girls ready to eat
+him up for his gallant exertions in their rescue from a watery grave,
+were mother and daughter, neither beautiful, nor ever having been so!
+but then, “Master Shallow owed him a thousand pounds;” that was his
+stay--his prop--his support--his safeguard and security.
+
+Fortified by this consideration, he remained on the pier, and
+eventually rejoined the party. The attempt to get the brig off
+succeeded; she floated, and was soon afterwards towed into the
+harbour. The ladies and their preserver took their leave of Lord Tom,
+but without bestowing the slightest notice upon Jack, who cowered
+beneath the glance of his lordship, who, to his mingled surprise,
+gratification, and regret, never uttered another syllable upon the
+subject. Lord Tom walked towards “The Ship;” so did Jack--on a parallel
+line; but Lord Tom took no more notice of him than if he had been a
+stock or a stone. They reached the inn door; Lord Tom entered the
+house; Jack, as usual, followed him,--but Lord Tom made no sign; and
+the first mark of recognition which he received was, to his utter
+horror and amazement, from Lord Ilfracombe, who meeting him in the
+hall declared himself quite delighted at renewing the acquaintance so
+propitiously begun at “The Duke of Marlborough” near Wigglesford a few
+weeks before.
+
+Brag was now completely taken aback. The chilling coldness of Lord
+Tom’s reception in the first instance struck him hard; the contemptuous
+manner in which the rescued ladies treated him, hit him harder in the
+second; but he was so extremely vain and silly, that even after all
+these indications, he was not able to make up his mind whether Lord
+Ilfracombe were in earnest or jest when he so warmly expressed his
+gratification at again meeting him.
+
+Still more was he puzzled when his lordship invited him to luncheon,--a
+part of the plan which he had preconcerted, and which, as his lordship
+did not then know of the last exposure of Jack’s humbug with regard
+to saving the lives of the ladies in the brig, he still resolved upon
+carrying into effect. That affair, however, in conjunction with a
+letter Lord Tom had received from London, touching the double offer and
+rejection of Mrs. Dallington and Blanche Englefield, had determined
+his lordship to eject him in a much less ceremonious manner; but as
+Lord Ilfracombe knew nothing of this, he insisted upon Jack’s coming
+up-stairs, under the arrangement into which he had previously entered
+with his nephew.
+
+Jack, who took the whole thing _de bonne foi_, screwed up his curls and
+settled his collars as usual, and accompanied the earl to one of the
+drawing-rooms where luncheon had been put down; (after which the party,
+excepting Lord Tom, were to start for Canterbury, see its antiquities,
+and sleep, on their way to London;) and was, by his lordship, ushered
+into the apartment, in which he found, assembled together, Lady
+Ilfracombe, Lord and Lady Dawlish, and Lady Fanny Smartly.
+
+Lady Fanny, Jack knew by sight, her ladyship being a pre-eminent
+equestrian of the equestrian order; but the other ladies he did not
+recognise, although he concluded that the elder lady was my lord’s
+wife. The other couple, although they were of the party which picked
+up the earl at “The Duke of Marlborough,” he did not at the moment
+recollect.
+
+“Lady Ilfracombe,” said the earl, “let me present Mr. Brag to you--a
+great friend of Tom’s, who will be here presently--and with whom I
+passed a remarkably pleasant hour or two on that wet day when you
+discovered me in my shelter from the rain.”
+
+“Ah!” thought Jack, “then he remembers it all: what will happen
+next!--perhaps he has forgotten some of it--perhaps, if he has not
+forgotten, he forgives. What I’m to do, I don’t know--I’m in for it;
+and so here goes, and no mistake.”
+
+“That _was_ a dreadful wet day, my lord,” said Jack; “I had no idea at
+the time whom I had the honour of speaking to, but when one is at an
+inn whatever comes uppermost comes out--and--I--dare say I talked a
+little too fast.”
+
+“Not a bit,” said the earl. “My great object, besides the pleasure of
+having your society at luncheon and gratifying Tom, is to undeceive you
+as to our real characters. We are not the ‘kill-joys and wet-blankets’
+you take us for.”--“Come, Lady Ilfracombe, let us sit down; Tom will
+be here immediately,--we have no time to lose.”
+
+The bell was rung, the servants appeared, the little party were soon
+seated; but before fork had assailed a chicken’s breast, or knife been
+flourished over it, Lord Tom himself entered the room evidently excited.
+
+“My lord,” said Lord Tom, addressing himself to the earl, “I feel it
+my duty to undeceive you, as I am myself undeceived, in the character
+of a person in this room, who is only protected by being in it, in the
+character of my uncle’s guest. He has now the assurance to sit down
+in the presence of Lady Fanny Smartly, with whom he claimed to you a
+personal intimacy; he has the impudence to sit next Lady Dawlish, my
+cousin, whose person he ridiculed without being acquainted with it;
+he libelled you, sir, without ever having seen you; and, in short has
+exhibited himself in the most contemptible possible character. This, at
+your lordship’s desire, I would have overlooked, in order to carry on
+the jest a little further, and have had the satisfaction of marching
+him out with all the honours of ridicule; but circumstances have come
+to my knowledge this day which render it my duty to insist upon his
+instantly quitting this room. How he has the audacity to sit down in
+the society of ladies whom he has vilified, and of men whom he has
+aspersed, it is for him to decide; but since I have had the misfortune
+of associating him in the slightest degree with my family,--which be
+it observed, I have carefully abstained from doing, whenever it was
+possible,--I feel it due to them to evince my feelings by desiring, or,
+if necessary, by ordering him out.”
+
+“My dear Tom!” said Lord Ilfracombe,--and the ladies looked aghast.
+
+“Come, sir!” said Lord Tom;--“I have to apologize, my dear aunt, for
+this course, but it is the only one;--walk out--with me, if you please,
+sir.”
+
+“Oh!” said Jack, rising from his seat, “in course; if your lordship
+goes out too, there can be no difficulty whatsoever--only I don’t
+understand--I know something which may, perhaps, make a difference.”
+
+“Whatever difference there is between us, sir,” said Lord Tom, “shall
+be settled immediately.”
+
+“My dear Tom,” said Lady Ilfracombe,--“what do you mean?”
+
+“Nothing to be alarmed about, my dear madam,” said Tom. “I shall be
+back in five minutes at the farthest.”
+
+Lord Ilfracombe, who had really intended to have a good joke out of the
+affair, and have regularly presented Jack by degrees to Lady Dawlish,
+the “winky-eyed, waxy doll of the toy-shop,” and the “monstrous bore”
+Dawlish, and so on, until he had shamed him laughingly out of his
+absurd propensity to talk big, was seriously vexed at the manner in
+which his nephew had lost his temper and taken the matter up; but the
+truth really was, that the conduct of the man had grown unbearable. The
+scandal of the affair in London had made him ridiculous beyond measure,
+and the last event of the preservation of the distressed “females”
+crowned the whole.
+
+Jack certainly felt extremely awkward in getting up from the table at
+which he had placed himself so comfortably; but, embarrassing as was
+the movement, he still chuckled at the thought of having Lord Tom in
+Dover gaol before sunset: he never travelled without his lordship’s I.
+O. U.’s carefully deposited in a Russia leather pocket-book; and his
+lordship, as he felt, might be secure that if _he_ did not ride his
+lordship’s horses at Paris on the next Sunday, his lordship would not
+be at Paris to see them run.
+
+When Jack rose, which he found inevitable,--for, spite of Lord
+Ilfracombe and the compassionate ladies, Tom was inexorable,--he said,
+
+“Well,--I didn’t expect this--I was asked by Lord Ilfracombe
+to luncheon--I did not force myself here;--and I _do_
+think--considering--however--I say nothing;--but in the presence of
+females--I do not think this altogether proper;--however, ‘might
+overcomes right’--and I--can only--add--I wish your lordship and the
+ladies a good morning. It is hard treatment, but I’ll be even with
+somebody that you may rely upon, and no mistake.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Brag,” said Lord Tom when they left the apartment, “just step
+into this room, and hear what I have to say.”
+
+“Oh, in course,” said Jack.
+
+“From the time I first made your acquaintance on the course at Epsom, I
+always treated you like a gentleman,” said Lord Tom; “I introduced you
+to my friends--you lived with me--I took you to Mrs. Dallington’s--all
+that story, sir, I have heard. You meet my uncle accidentally--you
+vilify him to his face, traduce me and the ladies of my family. You
+render me ridiculous wherever I take you--you insult everybody you
+come near--and you wind up with telling me a distinct and deliberate
+falsehood with regard to your exploits in saving two ladies the night
+before last, whose faces you did not even know when you saw them this
+morning. All this you do. Now, I only ask you, can you be surprised
+that I am in the highest degree enraged with you?”
+
+“Not a bit,” said Jack; “I dare say you are very right, and I am very
+wrong: but you forget, my Lord Tom, one part of the story--I mean the
+money you have borrowed of me;--if that has slipped _your_ memory, it
+has not slipped _mine_,--and I will take care that you shall not slip
+_me_, for, by Job--”
+
+“Don’t make a noise, sir,” said Lord Tom; “give me back my _bons_
+or whatever securities you have of mine, and I’ll pay you down
+every shilling upon that account; and thank you, not only for the
+accommodation you have afforded me, but for the lesson you have taught
+me, as to making friendships, which I shall not, I think, easily
+forget.”
+
+“What! are you going to pay me?” said Jack.
+
+“To the last farthing, sir,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Why, then,” said Jack, “that’s more than I ever expected. I’ve
+got your _bons_ and your I. O. U.’s all here in my pocket-book.
+Stop,--let’s see; there--”
+
+“Take your time,” said Lord Tom; “I don’t want to hurry you.”
+
+“There,” said Jack; “two hundred and twenty--one hundred and ten--one
+hundred. That’s all.”
+
+“Four hundred and thirty pounds,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Exactly so,” said Jack; “but I say--I won’t take a cheque.”
+
+“But you _will_ be impertinent,” replied my lord. “Here, sir; here are
+the four hundred and thirty pounds in bank-notes. Count them, sir; look
+at them.”
+
+“It’s all right, and no mistake,” said Jack, looking over the paper.
+
+“Here perish all my _bons_!” said Lord Tom, tearing them up, “and, I
+hope, with them, all my absurdities. To be sure, I am easily deceived.”
+
+“Yes, very; you are what I call, as innocent as a lamb,” said Jack.
+“Stories _may_ come out. I say nothing.”
+
+“Do you mean to insinuate?” said his lordship.
+
+“I insinuate nothing,” said Jack, “but I wish you a very good day.
+Boaster and humbug as you call me, I’ve done one thing to-day that
+would puzzle a philosopher. I’ll be hanged if I haven’t got four
+hundred and thirty pounds out of an empty pocket! That’s what I
+call coming it strong. I’ve lost the honour of your lordship’s
+acquaintance,--that’s a misfortune; but I’ve got my money back, and
+that’s a capital set-off _per contra_, and no mistake.”
+
+“With this moment, sir, all connexion between us ceases,” said Lord Tom.
+
+“Thank you, my lord,” said Jack; “good morning!”
+
+Lord Tom, who was exceedingly agitated during this burst, returned
+to the drawing-room, and the reproaches of the ladies for his
+cruelty towards the little man; and Brag, the moment his lordship
+had disappeared, leaned over the balusters and cried in a loud and
+commanding tone--
+
+“Waiter!”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“Order me a chaise and four to Hythe directly.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And”--in a louder tone of voice--“bring me my bill--a bottle of
+soda-water, and change for a hundred-pound note!”
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+
+While these events were occurring on the sea-shore, matters were
+progressing, as the Americans have it, in the metropolis, and the
+two pair of lovers enjoying a felicity to which, spite of all their
+inclinations and affections, they had previously been strangers.
+Rushton, taught by the precepts and encouraged by the practice of
+Sir Charles, began to think that a woman might be lively without
+being vicious, sad without thinking of his rivals, and civil to her
+acquaintance without being a coquette; while Sir Charles, assured
+of Mrs. Dallington’s esteem, began to appreciate the merits of her
+character, and understand, which to him were before incomprehensible,
+the fluctuations of spirits and variation of temper which he had
+frequently remarked, but which, until the recent _éclaircissement_ took
+place, he never suspected to have their origin in his own coldness and
+apparent indecision.
+
+Out of evil comes good; and, whatever faults Mr. Brag possessed, he
+certainly had the merit of bringing matters in the Dallington family to
+a crisis. The double marriage already began to be spoken of, and hints
+were even given upon the subject in the fashionable intelligence of the
+Morning Post.
+
+Of the other party, the Browns and Meads, we know enough for the
+present; they are on their way to Paris, as happy as may be, having
+left Mrs. Brown the elder, who declined the tour, at the doctor’s
+house in Burlington Gardens, where she was to reside, even after her
+daughter’s return from the Continent, which could not long be delayed,
+in consequence of Mead’s professional engagements in London.
+
+While these quieter persons are moving regularly in their proper
+spheres, it becomes our duty to regard the movements of the exploded
+Jack, with the same sort of attention which we bestow upon the
+wrigglings and twistings of the animalculæ in the great microscope,
+the natural insignificance of which render the developement of their
+limbs and motions matters of interest, being such as to leave their
+distinctive characteristics perfectly invisible to the naked eye.
+
+The bill was scarcely paid, and the change settled, before Jack’s
+terribly alarming post-chaise and four rattled up to the street-door of
+“The Ship,” making the cliffs reverberate with its clatter, and--
+
+  “----the very stones prate at its whereabout.”
+
+Open flew the door--bang went the steps--pop went the cork of
+the bottle of soda-water--down went the draught at full speed,
+nearly choking the patient, or rather the impatient, with its
+effervescence--and at three skips and a jump the little man sprang into
+the “carriage,” and throwing himself into one of its corners, as if
+anxious to conceal himself from the anxious gaze of the public, not one
+of whom was looking at him, away he went, boiling with rage and foaming
+with vexation, and resolved to pay Lord Tom off in his own coin, and no
+mistake.
+
+Little did the furious John know what he was driving to; little did
+he anticipate what was to happen to him at Eastbourn, which was his
+eventual place of destination, or what strange events his sudden
+dismissal from the friendship of Lord Tom was to bring about. The
+immediate purpose of his soul was to reach Hastings that night, in time
+to despatch a letter to his mother, directing her _not_ to direct his
+letters to Paris.
+
+Arrived at Hythe, Jack’s fever had by no means subsided; yet, upon
+ascertaining the hour at which the post left Hastings, and feeling
+certain, since he did not mean to “carry on” with four horses, that
+he should not arrive there in time to despatch his filial epistle by
+the night’s mail, he resolved to rest for an hour or two where he was,
+until he saw the boys returning with the chaise to Dover, so that by no
+means it might be discovered that he had discarded his leaders, (as men
+sometimes in a pet, feel very much inclined to do,)--and that he might
+have time to write his letter, which he did, in the following terms:--
+
+    “White Hart, Hythe,
+    Thursday evening.
+
+    “MY DEAR MOTHER,
+
+  “I wrote to you yesterday from Deal; and, as Jem Salmon would say,
+  a deal has been doing since I wrote. After having seen Brown and
+  his new wife, and having been bullied, as I told you, by the doctor
+  to whom that snivelling Nance is married, I thought there was an
+  end; so in course, I went back as soon as the smoke of the Ferret,
+  the steamer in which they crossed, told me they were off. I had a
+  very pleasant ride to Dovor, for I had made an acquaintance with an
+  uncommon gentlemanly man, a captain of a Dutch man-of-war lying off
+  that port, with whom I was so much pleased that I gave him up my
+  sleeping-room, which in course was the crack apartment of the hotel
+  where I lodged. So, in the morning, he would insist upon attending me
+  back. Indeed, it was generally supposed I was going on a visit to the
+  Castle; and it was with great trouble I undeceived them, for, being
+  so much with the nobility in these parts, in course they took for
+  granted ten thousand things which one can’t help.
+
+  “Well, when I arrived at Dovor,” for so Mr. Brag thought it
+  uncommonly smart, to spell it, “I found Lord Tom with a couple of
+  females talking, on the pier, which somehow I did not like;--I am, my
+  dear mother, very particular in that respect;--so, directly I saw it,
+  I said to Lord Tom, ‘Tom,’ says I, ‘this won’t do before people of
+  character,’ and that kind of thing--and so I walks right away.
+
+  “Well, up I goes to ‘The Ship;’--that’s the inn here, the only place
+  a man of any character can go to, and where in course I am uncommon
+  well known;--and who should I see there but old Ilfracombe, Tom’s
+  uncle,--a kind of a bore of a lord whom I have always made a point
+  of shirking, with his wife, and son, and daughter-in-law, and a Lady
+  Fanny Smartly, which rides in the Park. So when I goes in--‘Jack,’
+  says my lord, ‘I’m delighted to see you. Where’s Tom?’ meaning Lord
+  Tom Towzle, which is his nephew. Says I, ‘My lord, I can’t say; I
+  have left him on the pier with two rum ones.’ Upon which my lord
+  says, ‘Never mind _him_; come up and have some luncheon.’ I said, ‘My
+  Lord,’ says I, ‘I never lunches.’ But that war’nt no go; he would not
+  have it at no price. ‘Come along, Jack,’ says he, and up he drags me,
+  smack smooth into the room with all his relations, and no mistake.
+  I’d rather have been in a pigstye; however, Lady Dawlish and Lady
+  Fanny smothered me with kindness, and I was forced to sit down and
+  sham eating; which, in course, I did.
+
+  “Well! in comes Lord Tom; and he was in a regular humour because I
+  would not speak to the two promiscuous females which he was parading
+  about with. So I stands no nonsense, but ups to him in a minute, like
+  a game cock, before the females and all, and just gave him as good as
+  he could bring. I told him my mind, and pitched into him about the
+  money he owed me. Had him there!--in course he couldn’t stump a dump:
+  so I just shook my whip--it was my little whip--right before him, and
+  I says, ‘Good by’e, my lord! When you learn manners, we associate
+  together again; for the present I cut you,--not with _this_,’ says
+  I, shaking my little Crowther again right in his face; ‘but the next
+  time I see you, by Job I’ll have my money out of you!’ With that,
+  he walked away just like a dog with his tail what the soldiers call
+  countermarched; a regular try-back, and run into the kennel amongst
+  the females of his family.
+
+  “And see what a fool he is: I was to ride for him on the Champy
+  Mas at Paris next Sunday--got my new jacket all ready:--and now
+  he’ll lose that, and no mistake. So instead of stepping over the
+  herring-pond, I am going to Eastbourne, which is a nice, retired
+  place, and where I hope you will send me down fifty or a hundred
+  pounds; for to tell you, my dear mother, the plain truth,--I’m
+  stumped. So don’t forget, and direct to the hotel, Eastbourne.
+
+    “Yours affectionately,
+    “JOHN BRAG.
+
+  “P. S.--Tell me something about Kitty: I can’t make it out. Brown has
+  got one child, and two carriages:--there’s a go!”
+
+When he had written and sealed this, he enquired, as usual, of the
+waiter, the way to the Post-Office; and having been properly directed,
+himself slipped his packet into the box. The epistle despatched,
+Jack got into his new chaise, and proceeded towards the place of his
+destination with a “happy pair” of posters.
+
+It was lateish in the evening when he reached Hastings, and was driven
+to that admirable inn, “The Swan,” which certainly combines all the
+attributes which a man does not require in a house of the sort at a
+watering-place. Jack, however, bundled out of his yellow-and-two, and
+being in no humour to soliloquize, betook himself to the ill-smelling
+coffee-room, and contented himself with ordering a bed, and--as he
+seldom failed to do--a preparatory glass of hot brandy and water.
+Dinner he had had none--(his appetite was not particularly sharp under
+all the circumstances)--but, by way of what he called a “stay” to his
+stomach, he told the waiter to bring him a sandwich--the only single
+word in the English language which comprehensively describes in a
+dissyllable, dirt, butter, and mustard, laid between two bits of stale
+bread.
+
+As for Hastings--Jack cared nothing. Whether it had been founded by
+Jack Hastings, the Danish pirate, or whether Athelstan had coined money
+in it, was all one to him:--Whether Robert, earl of Eu, or John de
+Dreux, had the better right to the castle, disturbed not Jack; nor, in
+the present temper of his mind, would he have cared one pin, if, after
+the French burned it in 1377, it had never been rebuilt. He was, as he
+told his mother, regularly “stumped”--not exactly in the way he wished
+to make her believe--but still, stumped he was: and perhaps never did
+little man experience fall so sudden or deep as that by which Jack had
+been afflicted during the last four-and-twenty hours.
+
+It was impossible, however, for the little man to withstand the impulse
+of his inherent infirmity:--the old, stale, worn-out trick of asking
+after his servant and carriage, was again played off at “The Swan.”
+
+“No, sir,” was, of course, the answer to the enquiries if his man and
+phaeton had arrived.
+
+“I told him to come here,” said Jack, who, till he reached the place,
+did not even know that the sign of the inn was “The Swan.”
+
+“I’ll send to enquire, sir,” said an officious waiter; “he may have
+gone to some other house. What name shall I say?”
+
+“Brag,” said Jack;--“and, stay--if he should be at any other inn
+by mistake, tell him to bring me up the large leather case with my
+writing-desk, and the small one with my dressing-case--and the brown
+cloak lined with fur:--remember, the brown one--not the blue.--But I’d
+bet my life he has made some infernal mistake.”
+
+Away went the man. Jack had gratified his ruling passion, and again
+fell into no pleasing reverie.
+
+It was in this state of mind that Jack sat looking at the “drink,”
+which had been placed before him until his eyes seemed to swim in the
+glass. The time began to verge on nine o’clock when a sort of scuffling
+noise outside the coffee-room door aroused his attention; and turning
+his eyes to the source of the disturbance, he beheld a slim, pale, and
+what is called an “interesting-looking” man, enter the room somewhat
+feebly, assiduously wrapped up in divers and sundry coats and cloaks;
+his face peeping out from under a fanciful kind of foraging cap,
+overlaid by a pink silk handkerchief, looking like the pale queen of
+Night peeping to earth through some intervening clouds.
+
+Jack saw that the approaching object was what he considered “uncommon
+genteel;” and when it threw itself down upon a seat in a state of
+exhaustion, he began to think he had discovered somebody upon whom
+he might make an impression--in whom he might find an agreeable
+listener;--which was, after all, his notion--when he could find one--of
+a pleasant companion.
+
+“Pay the chairmen,” said the stranger to the waiter, “and tell
+Rummagee-Doss to bring me some Eau de Cologne.”
+
+The waiter disappeared.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the stranger to Brag, “but I am a sad
+invalid,--and so hipped and wretched--upon my life, I declare, I can’t
+tell how:--so low and miserable from ill health, that I prefer this
+corner of the coffee-room to any private room of my own--and, I am
+afraid, I cause a great deal of inconvenience. I declare, I wouldn’t
+for the world, if I--”
+
+“None in the least,” said Jack. “Don’t mind _me_, sir; I’m not
+particular any how:--take everything as it comes--straight up, right
+down, and no mistake.”
+
+“I have just arrived from India,” said the stranger. “I never suffered
+anything like the wretchedness of the voyage: such a set of people!--no
+sentiment--no delicacy about them;--so rough and noisy,--and I so
+extremely indisposed!--so, the moment I could, I got on shore here.
+The purser of the ship--a great coarse creature, who used to laugh
+all day long like a hyæna--landed here with letters and things, all
+about business, for those people in Leadenhall Street; and so I--it
+was a very lucky chance--I said I would land here too:--I brought
+nothing but half a dozen packages of things I wanted, and my man,
+Rummagee-Doss, just to take care of me a little;--I only came ashore
+yesterday--and I have been to take a warm bath, and I feel a great deal
+better already; for the nasty smell of the ship, and such a great deal
+of talking, and playing games and romps, and a parcel of women who had
+no sympathy for a sick creature like me, quite upset me,--I really
+never was so overcome in all my life!”
+
+“It must be a deuce of a bore,” said Jack, “being boxed up for half a
+year in one of those great arks.”
+
+“Oh! sir,” said the stranger, “you have no idea of the misery of
+it!--and the man--the captain--had nothing in the world to make one
+comfortable. He had tea, but no milk--his cow died; and not a drop of
+lemonade was to be got--nothing but wine and beer, and those things,
+which one can’t drink you know--and no pastry after the first five
+weeks! Oh! if you knew what I have suffered, sir, you would excuse any
+little trouble I give.”
+
+Hereabouts entered a fine-looking piece of brown humanity, done up
+in muslin, with a high-caste yellow streak down his forehead, bearing
+a bottle of Eau de Cologne, who turned out to be Rummagee-Doss, the
+stranger’s Kitmagar.
+
+“You don’t dislike _this_, do you, sir?” said the stranger, holding up
+the Eau de Cologne bottle.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Jack, “quite the reverse, and no mistake.”
+
+“_Jou_,” said the stranger, and the muslin and streak retired.
+
+“That’s a rummish cut of a toggery,” said Jack, who had never seen an
+Oriental attendant before.
+
+“A what!” said the stranger.
+
+“Curious dress,” said Jack.
+
+“Pretty and picturesque,” said the stranger, “ill suited to this
+climate. I don’t mean to keep him in England--he is an excellent
+creature--and so affectionate--I never saw so much kindness--all during
+my illness--so sick. I declare--well I never did--”
+
+“I’m not used to that sort of thing,” said Jack; “however, if you are
+not going to turn in just yet, I’ll order another glass of ‘hot with’
+just to keep you company.”
+
+“Do,--you are _so_ good,” said the stranger, twisting himself about
+gracefully; “I am sure we shall be great friends by and bye. I am going
+to have a little weak tea, and I have taken such a fancy to a raspberry
+tart, I think I shall indulge myself--for I am very unwell.”
+
+“Tea and tarts,” said Jack, “that’s what I call a queer cross; but I
+suppose you chaps from the East have a great many varieties of feed of
+which we know nothing.”
+
+“It is extremely agreeable there,” said the stranger, “but I have such
+wretched health that I cannot enjoy anything.”
+
+At this period of the dialogue, the waiter arrived with a tray, on
+which a tea equipage was arranged, and sure enough, three raspberry
+tartlets, ovals of jam covered with a trelliage of pastry, which might
+be heraldically described as “Gules, fretty of Or,” but in which no
+reasonable mortal--“not to speak it profanely,” above the age of
+thirteen, indulges in the way of eating. Jack looked, wondered at the
+taste of his companion, and ordered a replenishment of his glass.
+
+“I shan’t discommode you,” said Jack, “shall I?--I’m not for late
+sitting, but, finding a gentleman to converse with, why, I think,
+eleven or so a goodish hour to turn in, and no mistake.”
+
+“I shall be delighted,” said the stranger. “Oh dear! this tea is so
+strong--Qui hi--oh, I forget I am--Rummagee--oh dear dear.--Waiter”--
+
+“Shall I ring the bell?” said Jack.
+
+“Oh don’t let me trouble you, sir,” said the stranger.
+
+The waiter luckily appeared--more grog was brought for Jack, and a
+little more hot water for his companion.
+
+“Have you been long in India, sir?” said Jack--who began to feel his
+natural desire to “find out” anything come strongly upon him.
+
+“Only a few years,” said the stranger. “I did uncommonly well at
+first, for my mother, who is an excellent woman--indeed I don’t know
+how to speak of her in terms strong enough, for I declare I never did
+see such a creature--got a friend of hers to put me on his staff.”
+
+“Oh!” said Jack, stirring his grog, but not at all comprehending the
+precise nature of the advantage to be derived from what appeared to him
+a very extraordinary position.
+
+“But at last,” said the stranger, “I could not bear the tyranny of the
+old creature of a general, so I left him and joined my regiment; but
+when I got to it, the sun was so hot, and the duty so hard, it was
+too much for me; so I got sick leave, and I must say I never saw such
+handsome treatment in my life; everybody--I declare they did--even
+nasty creatures whom I hated--all of them were ready to bear witness
+to my illness, and to get me home the very moment I expressed a desire
+that way.”
+
+It is a remarkable fact that people of education and even general
+knowledge and experience, and all of them therefore wonderfully
+superior to Jack Brag, have such strange and ill-arranged notions of
+our Indian empire,--for so it may be called--that the sharpest and
+cleverest of them will ask a man who has arrived from the East, if he
+happen to know Mr. Hawkins, or Mr. Jenkins, or Mr. Tomkins, who went to
+India about ten years before; without reference to the Presidency to
+which he went, or even the service in which he was engaged, which, as
+they who know the truth, know, is something tantamount to a Bengallee
+asking an Englishman if he knows Mr. Smith of Great Britain; the extent
+of territory in the one, equalizing the numerical superiority in
+population in the other.
+
+If wise men and clever men, and clever women and wise men, ask such
+questions of returning Indians, is it to be wondered that Jack Brag,
+who knew no more about India than Chaucer did, should venture to
+inquire something about his horror, Brown, and, what really _was_
+interesting to him, the fate of Brown’s wife? Of course the reader must
+think that Brag would make those researches after his own fashion; and
+so he did--but he _did_ make them.
+
+“I,” said Brag, drawing himself up, and setting his neckcloth to
+rights--“I had some connexions in India--but they, like you, have come
+home--extremely rich and all that--stumpy down, and no mistake;--left
+them at Dover--cause indeed of my coming here on my way to meet a
+friend of mine, at Eastbourn;--they are off to France--excellent
+people--I have a very high regard for them.”
+
+“What part of India do they come from?” said the stranger, bathing his
+temples with one hand, and eating a tartlet with the other.
+
+“What part!” said Jack, “Oh--I--I--don’t know--India--somewhere about--”
+
+“What is the name of your friend?” said the stranger.
+
+“His name,” said Jack, “I should think, must be pretty well known in
+those parts;--Brown is his name.”
+
+“Brown!” said the stranger, “dear me!--a gentleman!--”
+
+“Why,” said Brag, “I don’t say much, sir,--but, as I have already said
+he is a near connexion of mine, I need not, I suppose, answer your
+question--eh!--don’t you think so?--I’m plain spoken--straight up,
+right down, and no mistake. He’s a deuced fine fellow, with a deuced
+handsome fortune, and married to my sister.”
+
+“Oh!” said the stranger, “Ah!--then I don’t know;--but I _did_ know a
+great horrid creature in India with a carman’s shoulders and balustrade
+legs.--Oh--such a man--of the name of Brown, whose behaviour to a
+young delicate creature, the daughter of the general, to whom I was
+aid-de-camp, absolutely drove me out of India--that is--in point of
+fact--”
+
+“Oh,” said Jack, “that cannot be _my_ brother-in-law; he is a regular
+good fellow; prime chap! what I call a regular switcher, and no
+mistake.”
+
+“Upon my word,” said the stranger, “you _do_ talk so!--a switcher!--I
+don’t in the least understand you. The dreadful man, I mean, was a
+serjeant in some regiment, who came out with a wife. Oh, if you had but
+seen her--such a monster!--all I don’t know how--so coarse, and that
+kind of thing, who voted herself a beauty; and so, somehow for _her_
+sake, he wanted to be made a gentleman of.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Jack, beginning to grow rather suspicious that his
+cast had been too good.
+
+“I declare I never saw anything like those people,” said the stranger;
+“so impudent, so pushing, and so rude! However, it did; it answered;
+and a man--a major--kind of secretary in the general’s office, took
+a fancy to him--Heaven knows why, _I_ never could see anything about
+him to admire--and made him his clerk: from _that_, you would hardly
+believe it, he became first an officer, then an aid-de-camp, and at
+last--but then, there is such a long fie-fie story about that--he
+married the general’s daughter!”
+
+“What!” said Jack, affecting perfect indifference, his cheeks red as
+fire and his hands cold as ice, “while his other wife was alive?”
+
+“Oh dear no!” said the stranger; “she was dead. She was a very naughty
+woman, quite paw, paw!”
+
+“Quite what?” said Jack.
+
+“Oh you understand what I mean,” said Fripps, (for Narcissus it was,
+who spoke,) patting his arm,--“quite fie, fie!”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” said Jack, nevertheless shrewdly
+guessing--hating the half-uttered monosyllabic and mincing manner
+of his raspberry-eating associate, and feeling, callous as he was,
+something like a reflective affection for his sister,--“What did she
+do?”
+
+“Oh,” said Fripps, “I can’t tell you;--upon my word something so
+shocking--and--I never did--it was--oh, very bad!”
+
+“And,” said Jack, his lips quivering, “what--what became of her?”
+
+“They buried her, poor thing!” said Fripps.
+
+“But--but,” said Jack, “tell me, if you please, sir, was she parted
+from George before _that_?”
+
+“George!” said Fripps; “what--do you know _this_ Brown too?”
+
+“No,” said Jack; “no, no--I--don’t know him--eh! You said his name was
+George--didn’t you? She--I--should like to know about _her_--that’s
+all. You have made me wish to know--that’s all.”
+
+“What a dear sympathetic mind you have!” said Fripps; “but let me beg
+you not to trouble yourself about tipsy Kitty!”
+
+“There,” said Jack,--“you see--you call _her_ Kitty.--Well, you called
+_him_ George.--You did not recollect; and so--she--she--”
+
+“She,” said Fripps, “first took to drinking, and then--then--don’t you
+know?--she left this great odious Brown--ran away from him.”
+
+“Oh,” said Jack; “ah--yes, yes; that’s natural.”
+
+“And as everybody said,” said Fripps, “as they do when a man dies after
+a long illness, it was a happy release.”
+
+“Yes, so it was--that’s what _I_ often say.--Poor Kitty!” muttered
+Jack, to himself--but audibly striking his hand upon the table; “Poor
+soul--poor soul!”
+
+“There it is again,” said Fripps; “now you say Kitty.”
+
+“_You_ said Kitty,” said Jack; “how else should I know?”
+
+“There was nothing romantic about her,” said Fripps; “she was a
+dowdy-looking thing, the daughter of a candle-maker somewhere in
+London; and this Brown persuaded her that he was an officer, and so she
+ran away with him, and, as she told a friend of mine, who really--upon
+my word--I declare--people _do_ such things in India--used to meet her
+and talk to her, sometimes in the evening after she had gone away from
+cantonments,--she had a brother, who helped her to run away with Brown,
+as she told _him_, because he himself wanted to be very civil indeed to
+Brown’s sister--don’t you see?”
+
+“Yes,” said Jack; not lifting his eyes from the table--“Umph!--I do--I
+see it all.”
+
+“It is so strange,” said Fripps, “that you should have asked me about
+anybody of such a common name as Brown in all India, and that I should
+have been able to give you such a comical history. However, as I told
+you, _this_ Brown afterwards married the general’s daughter, and when
+_that_ happened, I gave up my staff appointment,--I could not stop in
+the place,--and so Brown succeeded me, and then the general died, and
+left him the whole of his large fortune.”
+
+“He did, did he?” said Jack; “why then--” swallowing at one gulp the
+remainder of his grog--“that--eh!--that was--straight up, right down,
+and no mistake!”--and the laugh that followed the words was hollow and
+sepulchral.
+
+“What office did your relation fill in India?” said Fripps.
+
+“I forget, at the moment,” said Jack.
+
+“Was he civil or military?” said Fripps.
+
+“Very civil, I believe,” said Jack; “but--I don’t know.”
+
+“No, but,” said Fripps, “I mean, was he a civilian or a soldier?”
+
+“I forget,” said Jack, who was quite “toppled over” himself for once,
+“but we’ll--that is, if you have no objection--talk this over in the
+morning. I’m what you call, right slick stumped; I have been riding
+hard all the forenoon, and am regularly done. Perhaps we shall meet at
+breakfast, sir.”
+
+“I shall be so happy you can’t think!” said Fripps. “I shall try and
+get up towards town to-morrow in the course of the day, perhaps as far
+as Tunbridge Wells. But that will make no difference; and I shall be
+quite delighted to renew our acquaintance in London when we meet there.”
+
+“You are uncommon good,” said Jack; “I shall be very glad indeed”--at
+the same time ringing the bell for a light. In a minute or two more he
+quitted the room, with a bow to Fripps, who seemed greatly disappointed
+at the growing want of cordiality which he thought he had discovered in
+Jack’s manner, as their dialogue had advanced.
+
+So, however, they parted for the night.
+
+In a few minutes afterwards, Fripps rang to give Rummagee-Doss
+notice of his approach to rest; and while he was half leaning, half
+lolling on the table, on the edge of his departure for his room, he
+incidentally asked the waiter if he knew the name of the gentleman who
+had just retired.
+
+“The gentleman’s name is Brag, sir,” said the man.
+
+“Brag!” said Fripps; “you don’t mean that!--well! if ever--”
+
+“That is the gentleman’s name, sir,” replied the man.
+
+“Well then, if ever I did”--said Fripps. “What time is he going in the
+morning?”
+
+“He has ordered horses at nine, sir,” said the man. “The chaise is to
+follow him to St. Leonard’s, as he means to walk on.”
+
+“Well, never mind,” said Fripps: “only take care and don’t let anybody
+call me till ten. I have no doubt--the name is so uncommon--but
+that I have told the unhappy man the whole story of his wretched
+fie-fie sister. _Her_ name was Brag--that’s all I know. I declare I
+wouldn’t have done such a thing for a thousand rupees. Hitherow, come
+along:--where is the creature? Here--help me up. Good night! Well, I
+declare--come, Rummagee--it can’t be helped!--good night--good night!
+Well--if ever----”
+
+And so tottered up to his chamber the delicate Narcissus Fripps, who
+had thus innocently afforded Jack all the information about his sister
+which he perhaps could never have derived from any other source. This
+advantage Jack had gained by boasting of his high Indian connexions;
+while the misery of Fripps, consequent upon the discovery that his
+companion was Mrs. Brown’s brother, was occasioned by Brag’s having
+ostentatiously announced his name, while asking after his servant and
+carriage.
+
+It is needless to add, as the jest-books say, that Jack, who certainly
+did not much admire the manners of his communicative companion, and
+still less the nature of his communication, was up in the morning
+by seven, and, before eight, was off towards St. Leonard’s. As he
+walked onwards, his mind was as much occupied as it could be with
+anything, with the account he had heard of his sister. From what Mead
+had previously told him, the intelligence of the preceding evening
+certainly did not so much surprise him as it otherwise would have
+done; but every man has _some_ feeling, more or less as the case may
+be; and Jack had been, at the moment, affected by the unexpected
+recital of this piece of family history.
+
+From the meditation in which he was absorbed, Jack was aroused upon
+his arrival at that splendid creation of modern art and industry,
+St. Leonard’s, which perhaps affords one of the most beautiful and
+wonderful proofs of individual taste, judgment, and perseverance, that
+our nation exhibits. Under the superintendence of Mr. Burton, a desert
+has become a thickly-peopled town: buildings of an extensive nature and
+most elegant character rear their heads where, but a few years since,
+the barren cliffs presented their chalky fronts to the storm and wave;
+and rippling streams and hanging groves adorn the valley which, twenty
+years since, was a sterile and shrubless ravine.
+
+Jack, who appreciated in a very slight degree the beauties of nature,
+and who talked of a fine country only in reference to hedges, ditches,
+stone walls, and five-barred gates, looked at the sea, only as a great
+glittering body of water which dazzled his eyes--and at cliffs as
+something uncommonly out of the way. His approbation of St. Leonard’s
+was excited not by the great changes its establishment has made in
+the face of the neighbourhood, nor by its intrinsic beauty; (and he
+expressed his satisfaction to a promiscuous friend with whom he had
+fallen into conversation in the street;) but because it reminded him of
+the Regent’s Park; and he judiciously added, that if it could only be
+got away from the sea, and set down altogether in a sporting part of
+Leicestershire, with a lot more stables, it would be a regular “trump,”
+and no mistake.
+
+His temporary companion heard his opinion, looked at him, touched his
+hat, and walked on.
+
+It may be asked, if Jack had such an aversion for the sea, why he
+should propose to visit Eastbourne--or why he had hovered upon the
+coast? The truth is, Jack was like the king of the chess-board towards
+the end of the game. The widow and her sister occupied the London
+square, and if he moved thither, he would certainly put himself into
+danger; from Dover he had been driven by Lord Tom’s check--or rather
+checque; France was occupied by his adversary’s queen; and the inland
+watering-places were filled by knights and rooks, who were so placed
+as to keep him at bay if he ventured near their quadrates. Eastbourne,
+he had heard, was quiet and retired; and the fewer people there were
+resident in it, the less chance he had of being known; and obscurity to
+him, just at this particular moment, was, strange to say, desirable.
+His various defeats must inevitably become known, a circumstance which
+would speedily bring the game to an end; and his last check would, in
+all probability, arrive without the accompanying cry of “mate” from any
+of the ladies whom he had so assiduously besieged, so to Eastbourne he
+proceeded as soon as the appointed chaise from “The Swan” overtook him.
+
+To those, to whom Nature has given a taste, the drive from Hastings to
+Eastbourne is one full of interest; but Jack, who looked at Pevensey
+Castle with a shudder on account of the owls and the ivy that were
+about it, and considered the neighbouring martello towers as works of
+coeval antiquity with its Roman brick walls, regarded with an “equal
+eye” every other object, animate or inanimate, which he happened to
+encounter or pass on his way to the place of his destination; and
+most certainly, of all things that never entered his head, one never
+was near it,--which is the fact, that we are indebted for the term
+“merry-Andrew” to a native of the, at present, dullest little cluster
+of houses in England--this very identical Pevensey itself. It was
+there, that Andrew Borde, or, according to his own absurd latinization
+of his name, Andreas Perforatus, first saw the light. He was educated
+first at Winchester, and then at New College, where he studied physic,
+and travelled over almost every part of the then known world. He
+returned to England in 1542, took his doctor’s degree, and settled at
+his native place, whence, finding the climate remarkable healthy, and
+the people all exceedingly well, he proceeded to London, and became
+first physician to Henry VIII.
+
+He was, however, a wag; and used to visit fairs and markets, and make
+speeches to the people, and crack jokes, by way of advocating the cause
+of medicine, and especially the use of those particular remedies, which
+his eloquence went most highly to eulogize:--hence his _sobriquet_,
+wherever he was known, was “Merry Andrew,”--a nickname which, in the
+first instance, descended to his successors in practice, but who, in
+course of time and the progress of refinement, ostensibly separated the
+functions of fool and physician; and while the medical part devolved
+upon the doctor, the mummery was confined to the merry-Andrew.
+
+Of this Borde--as I have mentioned him--I must add, that merry as he
+was, and author as he was, of jest-books, and satires, and “books
+of knowledge,” his eccentricity took another turn later in life,
+and he practised all the austerities of the Carthusians,--a course
+of discipline which might perhaps have well prepared him to endure
+imprisonment in the Fleet prison, where he died in 1549. Some say he
+poisoned himself; and others tell us that he was not incarcerated for
+debt:--Wood, however, calls him “a noted poet, a witty and ingenious
+person, and an excellent physician.”
+
+This little digression, for which I duly apologize, just brings our
+hero to the door of the “Hotel” at Eastbourne, which, magnificently
+as the word sounds, does not, in point of fact, possess the striking
+attributes of its more lordly contemporaries. Jack rather liked its
+unostentatious appearance, and entered it with one of his liveliest
+expressions of countenance, skipping as usual, rather than stepping out
+of his chaise into the hall.
+
+“Have rooms?” said Jack; “sitting and bed-room, eh?--all snug and
+comfortable, and no mistake? Seen my servant down here, with the
+phaeton, and my things.”
+
+“No, sir,” said the landlady, “I think not. What name, sir?”
+
+“Brag,” said Jack; “a young man--light weight--dark mixture frock,
+leathers and tops, an olive-green phaeton, and pair of bright bays.”
+
+“No, sir,” said the hostess; “no such person has been here; perhaps he
+has gone to ‘The Lamb,’ or the ‘New Inn,’ at South.”
+
+“Stupid dog!” said Brag; “perhaps he has. I told him ‘The Hotel,’ as
+plain as I could speak.”
+
+“Shall we send and see, sir?” said the wily landlady.
+
+“I wish you would,” said Brag. “Where do you think he is gone?”
+
+“To ‘The Lamb,’ perhaps, sir,” said the mistress of the hotel.
+
+“Couldn’t mistake Lamb for Hotel!” replied our hero, looking as much
+in earnest as if he really had expected the servant and equipage which
+he so accurately described. “Never mind, I can do without him till
+to-morrow, so don’t fuss yourself on my account. Just show me my room,
+and I’ll order my dinner, and all that, and take a turn while it is
+getting ready.”
+
+Those who are not acquainted with Eastbourne, and more especially, the
+‘Sea Houses,’ which give their name to the _quartier_ in which Jack had
+established himself, can scarcely believe how very agreeable a place
+it is. It is true there is nothing like gaiety going on; there are no
+crowded promenades; there are no grand balls--no house in the whole
+groupe is spacious enough to enable a man to inflict a large party
+on his friends; but everything around one is, though humble, clean,
+fresh, and delightful. The two extreme points of the place at which
+civilization ends are distinguished by buildings which in other days
+would have afforded but little gratification to cockney ears. “The
+Round House” is the _ultima Thule_ of the promenade in one direction,
+and the “Watch-house” the termination of it at the other. These are,
+however, but local and conventional terms, and in the height of the
+season you will generally find some delightful family located in the
+one, and at all seasons a gallant sea-officer stationed at the other.
+
+To enjoy the quiet of this peaceful village, for such it is, after
+all the worries of the few preceding days, and “sniff the briny,”
+which, although he did not admire its beauties, he admitted was
+“uncommon refreshing,” was Jack’s first wish:--it might perhaps give
+him an appetite; and then his wine would serve as a Lethean draft
+after it; and then in the morning he should get up calm, and cool, and
+comfortable, and seek his fortune at the Library, which to cockneys is
+always a resource, and to Jack could not fail to be a very important
+one. Accordingly, he hastened his “twilight,” and having calculated
+the length of time required for dressing his fish and fowl, descended
+the stairs, looking all fresh and smart, or, to use his own favourite
+phrase, “as nice as nip!”
+
+“How long,” said Jack, pulling up his collars, “how long will it be
+before my dinner is ready?”
+
+“About half an hour,” said the landlady.
+
+“What do you call your best wine here?” asked Jack.
+
+“All very good, sir, I believe,” was the reply.
+
+“What claret have you?” said Jack.
+
+“Very good Lafitte, sir--Chateau Margaut,” said mine hostess.
+
+“Oh--ah!” said Jack,--“any good Madeira--eh!--London Particular, and no
+mistake!”
+
+“Our Madeira, sir,” said the landlady, “I am afraid is not quite so
+good.”
+
+“Port and sherry, I suppose?” said Jack--“Kitchen wines, eh?”
+
+“Both excellent in their way, sir,” said the landlady. “We get our port
+from Paxton, and our sherry from Toone.”
+
+“Very good names,” said Jack. “And champagne or hock?”
+
+“Both, sir,” replied the landlady.
+
+“Any ice in the house?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Oh, very well,” said Jack; “I’ll--see about it. My man is not come, I
+suppose?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Nor the carriage?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“In half an hour, you say, dinner will be ready?” said Jack.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the hostess.
+
+“I like dining early by way of a change,” said Jack; “something new
+after the infernal late hours of London. I’ll be in time, rely upon it,
+and no mistake.”
+
+Saying which, he walked into his sitting-room, adjusted his hat on
+one side of his head, pulled up his collars, and just giving himself
+a sort of satisfactory shake before the looking-glass, sallied forth,
+scarcely deigning to look at a man, of about his own size, dressed in
+black, whose innocent mind he had been endeavouring to astonish, by the
+dialogue which he had just concluded with the landlady on the subject
+of the wines, and the ice, and the servant, and the carriage.
+
+The man of about his own size, in black, however, was not to be so
+passed over. He came forward as Jack advanced, and rather startled our
+hero by a peculiar interest which seemed to pervade his countenance,
+as Jack moved across the hall towards the door with an air and manner
+something between a swagger and a wriggle, smacking, as usual, his
+boots with his “remarkably small whip,” and thinking he was doing it
+all right, and no mistake!
+
+Jack cast a sort of contemptuous glance over the figure of his fellow
+guest, with which he could scarcely avoid _favouring_ him, since he
+seemed to force a notice of some sort from him. Who he could be,
+Jack could not exactly comprehend;--In black--with a remarkably
+bad hat;--too smart for an undertaker--not smart enough for a
+parson--Village doctor perhaps, looking out for patients. No matter.
+Heads or Tails, what did it signify to him? And away went Jack,
+baffling the breeze, which blew right in his face, and came strong upon
+him as he “opened” the sea between Weston’s shop and the library.
+
+There were but few promenaders, and in the library not more than
+three persons; one of whom was peeping through the little hole
+of a kaleidoscope, another poring over the list of subscribers,
+and the third, standing just inside the half-opened door beating
+the old gentleman’s tattoo with his fingers upon the window-pane.
+Jack looked in, enjoyed for a moment the well-known smell of green
+baize, white-brown paper, kid gloves, Windsor soap, varnish, and
+lavender-water, with which such gay receptacles are generally redolent;
+then turned out again, and walked as far as he could in the direction
+of Beachy Head, the state of the tide and the nature of the shore
+limiting his excursion thitherwards, however, to about two hundred
+yards.
+
+Having done this, he followed the example of the other strollers, and
+walked back again, extending his march beyond Mrs. Gilbert’s “Tea
+Room,” and the life-boat, and concluding it by entering the garden of
+the hotel, which opens to the beach, by which route he regained his
+parlour, satisfied that the air was remarkably bracing, and the company
+of the place as select as he could possibly wish it to be.
+
+The cloth was laid; everything prepared; and nothing appeared to be
+wanting but the summons--the rub of the lamp to produce the Genius.
+Jack rang the bell;--all was ready. The smoking fish came, leaping
+like a salmon to the board, and in five minutes Jack was seated fork in
+hand.
+
+“What wine do you take, sir?” said the waiter, who had heard the
+conversation upon that particular subject which had passed between the
+guest and his mistress in the hall.
+
+“Wine?” said Jack, “why, half a pint of sherry; and bring some small
+beer, if it’s very good.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, and, it is needless to add, did as he was
+bid.
+
+Jack certainly had been upset by the last night’s rencontre; but still,
+as his stomach filled, and the genial influence of the cruet-full of
+Toone’s super-excellent began to operate, he again reared his drooping
+head; and resolving to care nothing for what could not be helped,
+ordered a bottle of old port, and a bit of fire; for although the
+season was young, yet the weather was coldish, and he felt chilly,
+and besides, as one of the most beautiful women that ever fell into
+solitude in the midst of a crowd once said to me--“To anybody who
+lives so much alone as I do, a cheerful fire is company.” These simple
+words sounded to _me_ deeply pathetic, and conveyed to my mind an idea
+of the wretchedness of involuntary seclusion, which more eloquent
+language, or a finer-turned phrase would perhaps not have produced.
+That fair creature, however, once the gem-like centre of the circle she
+brightened and adorned, is gone to her long account; and if retribution
+were to be meted out to mortals in _this_ world, she would nearly have
+atoned for all her faults before she left it.
+
+“Put down some dessert,” said Jack, “clap a log on the grate, draw the
+curtains, and bring me the London paper.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, who implicitly obeyed the commands he
+received, but still looked somehow suspiciously at Jack, not as
+doubting his respectability and solvency, or even questioning the
+bright vision of the groom and the phaeton, but as if expecting that
+something was likely to happen in the course of the evening to mar the
+comfort of the ‘cheerful fire-side.’
+
+The paper came; Jack occupied two chairs, and it would be doing the
+vain simpleton injustice to deny that as he sipped his wine his
+thoughts reverted to his sister Kate. The chain, it is true, contained
+many links, and one end of it was riveted to the counter of the
+candle-shop; but still there is no man so callous, or so heartless, but
+that at certain moments he “feels:”--Jack _did_ feel, and even went
+the length of repenting many things which he had done, and regretting
+that he had not done many others which he had neglected, and was really
+getting quite amiable. There certainly _was_ a reason for this--he was
+alone,--and had no game to play.
+
+From the reverie or rather slumber into which the heat of the fire,
+the strength of the port wine, and the very long leading articles of
+the newspaper which he was reading without understanding one syllable
+contained in them, had thrown him, he was aroused in about three
+quarters of an hour by the re-appearance of the waiter, who said that a
+gentleman wished to speak a few words to him.
+
+“To me?” said Jack.
+
+“Mr. Brag, I believe, sir,” said the waiter.
+
+“Yes,” said Brag, “in course, that’s my name, and no mistake. What is
+the gentleman’s name?”
+
+“I don’t know, sir,” said the waiter. “He is outside, sir.”
+
+“Desire him to come in,” said Jack, who concluded it was either the
+master of the ceremonies to nail him for a subscription, or the
+apothecary to secure a patient, or perhaps some of the parochial
+authorities desirous of knowing whether he would wish the bells at
+“South,” as they call it, to announce his arrival at the Sea Houses.
+
+The waiter opened the door, and all Jack’s suspicions were
+confirmed when he beheld the man about his own size, dressed in the
+shabby-genteel black, whom he had entirely astonished about the wines,
+the ice, the servants, the horses and the carriage, in the hall before
+dinner, enter the room with a low bow.
+
+The waiter retired, and shut the door.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the shabby-genteel, holding his shocking
+bad hat in his hand, “I believe, sir, your name is Brag?”
+
+“It is, sir,” said Jack.
+
+“Of Lower Grosvenor Street, in the Parish of St. George, Hanover
+Square, Middlesex,” said the stranger.
+
+“Exactly so,” said Brag.
+
+“It is very curious, sir,” said the stranger, “that I should have been
+lucky enough to meet with you here. I have been frequently to Grosvenor
+Street, but the people there, said you never lived there. I heard, sir,
+you had a house in Surrey, but I never could find out exactly where it
+was. We did get a letter saying that the newspaper said you were gone
+to Dover, and I should have gone over to that place from this, but
+your arrival here saves me a great deal of trouble, and will make no
+difference to you, sir.”
+
+“No,” said Jack, drawing his little legs off the second chair, and
+sitting upright to look at his visitor,--“but may I just ask why you
+happen to be so very anxious to see _me_?”
+
+“I am clerk, sir,” said the visitor, “to Messrs. Tapps, Tatlock, and
+Shackleton, of Pump Court, Temple, and have been for these ten days
+looking out to serve you with notice of action of trespass at the suit
+of Thomas Grindleston of Wigglesford, in the county of Herts. We wrote
+twice to you, sir, but, not getting any answer, and not knowing the
+name of your solicitor, _my_ gentlemen ordered me to look after you at
+Dover; but as I had some business here, on my way, the minute I heard
+you asking for your carriage and servant, and mentioning your name, I
+said to myself--‘That’s my gentleman.’--Here is the copy of the writ,
+sir, which I now serve you with.”
+
+“Upon my life,” said Jack, “I don’t know what I have to do with this.”
+
+“It’s about the steeple chase, sir,” said the visitor, “of which
+you had the management, and which did considerable damage to Mr.
+Grindleston’s property.”
+
+“But,” said Jack, “there are hundreds of steeple chases in the course
+of the year, and nobody is prosecuted.”
+
+“That is all according to taste, sir,” said the stranger. “Mr.
+Grindleston, our client, sir, is not a sporting character, and
+doesn’t exactly see why _you_, as having marked out the line, should
+have chosen to draw it directly across his property;--even hunting a
+fox, sir, over another man’s grounds, after the case decided by Lord
+Ellenborough, (Earl of Essex against General Capel, 1809,) is held
+to be a trespass. In the case of Merest and Harvey, the defendant
+committed the trespass in the plaintiff’s presence after being warned
+off--the jury there, sir, gave five hundred pounds damages; and Sir
+Vicary Gibbs, who tried the case, refused a new trial, and said,
+‘Suppose I had a walk before my house which I had a pleasure in looking
+at or walking on, would it be allowed that a man should come and walk
+there to my annoyance, and then offer me a halfpenny in satisfaction,
+alleging that I had received no actual damage?’”
+
+“But what am I to do now, sir?” said Jack.
+
+“Nothing in the world, sir,” said the stranger; “just put that slip of
+paper into your pocket, and the gentleman, whoever he may be, who is
+concerned for you, will tell you all the rest.”
+
+“Sir,” said Jack, “I don’t understand this at all; I have no gentleman
+who is concerned for me--nor lady either, as I begin to think; and I
+don’t comprehend it--it’s all gibberish--moonshine--nonsense--straight
+up, right down, and no mistake.”
+
+“No, sir, I will not trouble you any farther,” said the clerk; “_I_
+know there’s no mistake--but I have done my duty, sir, and I wish you
+good evening. I would not have intruded till the morning,” added the
+shabby genteel; “but I have a chance of a cast to Lewes to-night, and I
+thought it best to lose no time.”
+
+“And who are your employers?” said Jack, who had just instinct
+sufficient to know that he had got himself into a scrape.
+
+“Messrs. Tapps, Tatlock, and Shackleton, of Pump Court, Temple, sir,”
+replied the clerk: “good evening, sir.” Saying which, the unwelcome
+visitor disappeared, and closed the door after him.
+
+This was extremely agreeable; here was Brag saddled with an action
+for trespass, singled out as the leader of the sport, and all the
+burthens upon his mind crowned with a lawsuit, and all resulting from
+his own empty vanity, in putting himself forward as the hero of the
+day; a piece of absurdity rendered more objectionable to the plaintiff
+Grindleston, because he thought proper to puff himself into possession
+of the said plaintiff’s property. However, it was of no use thinking it
+over, then--morning was the time for business; and so Jack, relieved
+from the presence of the harpy, proceeded to read the paper and drink
+his port, till he fell again into a profound slumber from which he
+awoke only to ring the bell, order his candle, and go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The morning again dawned, and again was Brag “up and stirring.” He read
+and reread the narrow strip of paper which had been fastened upon him
+by the emissary from Messrs. Tapps, Tatlock, and Shackleton, of Pump
+Court, and was very little the wiser for the information he derived
+from its contents. Instinct, however, made him very much dislike the
+affair, upon which, he concluded, he must consult some lawyer of
+his own; but not having such an officer regularly retained in his
+household, and knowing but little of the routine of legal business, he
+proceeded, in the first instance, to act upon the directions of the imp
+from whom he had received the “strip,” and put it into his pocket.
+
+During breakfast he seriously repeated the usual fruitless inquiries
+after his servant and equipage, and received the anticipated negative
+to his questions with an affectation of high displeasure, strengthened
+by one of those brief but emphatic exclamations, which, if uttered
+before one of his Majesty’s worshipful justices of the peace, would
+have subjected him to a fine of five shillings.
+
+Having despatched his morning meal, he repaired to the stables, and
+ran his eye over the horses which were standing in them,--at times
+looked knowingly at some of the best,--and spoke technically to the
+coachmen or grooms about some of the worst. One pair of coach-horses
+particularly struck his fancy:--To whom did they belong?--was his
+question to a servant, wearing bright orange plush unmentionables,
+who was, without coat, waiscoat, or jacket, working away at one of
+them, polishing him up to a degree of brightness and smoothness very
+difficult of attainment in horse-skins at the sea-side.
+
+“Whose horses did you say these were?” said Jack.
+
+“Mrs. Peckover’s, sir,” said the man.
+
+“What!” said Jack--“the lady of my friend Mr. Heneage Peckover of
+Womanswould in Kent?”
+
+“The same, sir,” said the servant.
+
+“Is Mr. Peckover dead?” said Jack.
+
+“Not particularly, sir,” said the man, continually rubbing and hissing
+as hard as he well could; “on the contrary, he is as lively as ever.”
+
+“Because you said Mrs. Peckover’s horses,” said Jack.
+
+“Yes,” said the man, “we calls everything missus’s. What’s master’s is
+her’s--and what’s her’s is her own, sir. Master don’t much interfere.”
+
+“Where are they staying?” said Jack.
+
+“At that house, sir,” said the man, stepping out of the stable-door and
+pointing, “with the bow-window there, sir.”
+
+“Oh,” said Jack, “I must go and call on them.--Very fine pair of nags
+as ever I clapped my eyes upon--good colour, shape, and make: fast
+trotters, I take it.”
+
+“Uncommon, sir,” said the man, “and step together like winkin’.”
+
+“All right that,” said Jack, “and no mistake:”--and out he walked,
+not sorry, however much he might wish for retirement, at finding an
+acquaintance in the place, who was not very well known either to,
+or by the persons with whom he, for the present, desired to have no
+particular connexion.
+
+Jack had met Mr. Peckover out with hounds round London. He was a hale,
+portly man, of some fifty-six, with rosy cheeks and strong limbs; the
+voice of a Stentor; and a laugh which, when excited, might be heard “a
+goodly league at sea.”
+
+It is said that men’s characters sometimes agree with their names,
+although James Smith has given us an excellent song to exhibit “the
+rule of contraries” in this particular. Certain it is, however, that
+Heneage Peckover, of Womanswould in the county of Kent, Esq. was--tall
+as he was, broad as he was, heavy as he was, and loud as he was--the
+mere slave of his wife, from whom, it may be necessary to observe, he
+had derived nearly the whole of the fortune which enabled him to make
+the figure he made in society. What he originally _had_ been, history
+has not accurately recorded; but the aristocratic character of the
+former of his two names (christian-name it can scarcely be called)
+led people to suppose that his connexions must somehow have been of a
+superior order.
+
+Jack had never seen the lady,--nor indeed had any of the “friends” with
+whom Mr. Peckover was in the habit of hunting.--Not to hear of her,
+after having been five minutes in her husband’s society, would have
+been impossible. It was not enough that she directed his conduct and
+controlled his actions; nor that he paid her every deference whilst in
+her society, and followed her instructions with the implicit obedience
+of a well-broken spaniel, whenever she thought fit to fulminate them.
+The habit of submission was so strongly impressed upon his mind,
+that it had induced something like a veneration for her opinions and
+decisions, by which his whole conduct in life was regulated; so that
+although, when away from her, he really was what may be called a
+capital jolly country gentleman; and laughed, and joked, in _his_ way,
+with the greatest earnestness and fervour, still he had neither taste
+nor judgment of his own; and his conversation was therefore made up of
+continued references to “Mrs. Peckover,” and her views, her opinions,
+her _dicta_, and her decisions upon all subjects, which were rendered
+the more strikingly absurd to his ordinary companions, inasmuch as they
+had never seen the lady, nor ever were likely to see her, since she
+peremptorily declined receiving her husband’s sporting acquaintance,
+the exclusion of whom from _her_ house, (as she invariably called it,)
+was the condition alone upon which she permitted him to enjoy what are
+called the pleasures of the chase.
+
+The extent of the present scene of action was so small, that all the
+inhabitants of the comfortable Kraal were visible to each other in the
+course of any one hour of any one day; and not much more than half that
+period of time had elapsed, when Jack espied his friend walking with
+Colonel Stiffkey, whom he also knew, from having met him occasionally
+at Mrs. Dallington’s. This was rather a drawback to the gratification
+he experienced in seeing Mr. Peckover, who looked glowingly bright; his
+rubicund face shining well over a buttoned-up blue coat, “leathers” of
+the old school, and “tops” to match.
+
+“Bless my soul!--Mr. Brag,” exclaimed Peckover; “who the deuce would
+have thought of finding you here?”
+
+“I might say the same to you, sir,” said Jack. “How d’ye do, sir?
+Needn’t ask--charming well, I am sure.”--“How d’ye do, Colonel?” added
+Brag, waiting to see what sort of recognition the colonel would afford
+him.
+
+The Colonel’s “Quite well!” was as gracious as possible.
+
+“As for _me_,” said Peckover, “Mrs. Peckover says she never saw me
+looking better. True enough;--I’m hearty and hale, and all _that_--ha,
+ha, ha! Are you come to stay here, Mr. Brag?”
+
+“For some time, I think,” said Brag. “I have just got away from the
+Ilfracombes, and the Dawlishes, and Lord Tom, who have been at Dover.
+Lord Tom wanted me to go to Paris to ride his horses, but I know a
+trick worth two of that--sure of a wrangle wherever he is concerned; so
+I backed out, smack, smooth, and no mistake.”
+
+“Mrs. Peckover says,” said Peckover, “that horse-racing is but ticklish
+work, after all:-too much in the hands of other people--jockeys,
+trainers, and friends--eh?--ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“I never have been on the turf,” said Stiffkey, with an air of
+self-satisfaction which would have induced anybody who did not know
+him, to believe that his abstinence had not proceeded from the positive
+want of money and horses.
+
+“Mr. Brag,” said Peckover, “is a capital jockey, if you come to that.
+Well--where do you dine to day?”
+
+This question was asked, first, in the hope that Brag was engaged; and
+secondly, because Peckover flattered himself that he could prevail
+upon his lady to admit him and the colonel to her table, by explaining
+to her that the colonel was _not_ one of his hunting friends, and
+concealing from her the fact that Brag _was_.
+
+“I am not engaged anywhere,” said Brag--“I’m at the hotel.”
+
+“So am I,” said the Colonel.
+
+“I’m sure Mrs. Peckover will be delighted to see you,” said Heneage.
+“She dines at six--‘because,’ as, she says, ‘early hours, good air,
+and plain feeding, are good for one’s health’--and I believe it to be
+so--ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“I shall be most happy,” said the Colonel.
+
+“And I,” said Jack.
+
+“That’s a large ship in the offing,” said the Colonel.
+
+“Mrs. Peckover tells me she thinks it’s a man-of-war,” said Peckover.
+“I don’t know much about ships, but I dare say it is. She has been
+watching it through her glass.”
+
+“For a sea place,” said Jack, “this is uncommon snug--and I like the
+look of the country round it.”
+
+“Why,” said Peckover, “Mrs. Peckover’s opinion is, that the mixture of
+trees, and sea, and corn-fields, and downs, and good roads, and fine
+cliffs, is extremely beautiful. For my own part, I don’t profess to
+know much about such things; but I take it all as it comes. Ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“That’s the only way to get on in this world,” said the Colonel. “Pray
+have you been over to Hurstmonceaux?” added the gallant officer.
+
+“No,” said Peckover; “Mrs. Peckover went there last Tuesday, I think
+it was. She has great taste for ruins, and remnants, and relics, and
+all that. She took over two or three young ladies, the Miss Gubbinses,
+who are here, and there was no room for me in the carriage, so I staid
+here, and played billiards with the marker’s boy till she came back.”
+
+“There seems to be no news in the London papers this morning?” said the
+Colonel.
+
+“No,” said his friend; “Mrs. Peckover tells _me_, that if Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia were to join against France, the odds would be
+greatly in favour of the coalition; but I don’t trouble my head much
+about politics. Ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“Well,” said Brag, “is there anything to see near at hand? Where is
+what they call ‘South,’ because I suspect my fool of a servant has lost
+himself and my phaeton, somewhere in the Wilds of Sussex, and I may,
+perhaps find him stalled up at ‘The Lamb,’ I think the hotel people
+call it.”
+
+“Oh, ah!” said Peckover; “South--they call it South, Mrs. Peckover
+tells me, to distinguish it from East, which they call this. Mrs.
+Peckover gets all our meat from a butcher at South. I’ll walk with you.”
+
+“With all my heart,” said the Colonel.
+
+“That’s right!” said Jack; “I think a toddle along the road will do us
+good, and no mistake!”
+
+“Mrs. Peckover says walking exercise is the best,” said her husband,
+“yet, somehow, she generally drives about herself; however, I don’t
+pretend to understand these matters. Ha! ha! ha! Come, let’s start.”
+
+And away the trio went, Jack extremely well pleased with his
+reception, and resolved to keep quiet and easy, more than ever struck
+with his fat friend’s perpetual reference to his better half, and
+convinced, by Colonel Stiffkey’s manner towards him, that he had not
+been enlightened in any degree upon the subject of the affair with Mrs.
+Dallington and Miss Englefield.
+
+The day was delightful, and they had got on the road just as far as
+where foot passengers generally strike into the fields, when Brag
+perceived a man, who, by the azure hue of his coat, and the bright
+orange-colour of his plushes, he knew to be one of Peckover’s footmen,
+coming at what he considered a splitting pace in pursuit of them.
+
+“One of your servants, I think,” said Jack.
+
+“Oh,” said Peckover, “most probably Mrs. Peckover wishes to be of our
+party.--Well, Stephen, what is it?”
+
+“My missus, sir,” said Stephen, “wants you to come in, if you please.”
+
+“Oh, come in, does she?” said the Herculean infant;--“Why doesn’t she
+come out?--it would do her a vast deal more good. What, is she in the
+house?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Stephen, “and bid me say she was waiting.”
+
+“Why, then, gentlemen,” said Peckover, “I am afraid I must leave you. I
+know she has some project for this morning, but I don’t pretend to know
+anything of her movements.--I’m coming, Stephen.--I’ll just step home,
+and if I can get away I’ll follow you--only don’t mind _me_. Back at
+six;--don’t forget--punctual to the minute, for as Mrs. Peckover says,
+you can never expect to have a good dinner or a good cook, if you are
+not punctual--so mind. Ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“Never fear,” said Jack; “I’ll be at the post, afore the bell rings for
+saddling, and no mistake.”
+
+“And I will be the very shadow of Mr. Brag,” said the Colonel.
+
+“That’s one of the comforts of matrimony,” said the Colonel, after
+watching Peckover’s hurried return homewards. “That gentle giant is
+tied to his lady’s apron string, and beyond its tether, wander he must
+not.”
+
+“I think,” said Jack, “if I was as big as he, I should try if I
+couldn’t break it.”
+
+“Did you ever see Mrs. Peckover?” said the Colonel.
+
+“Never set eyes on her,” replied Jack.
+
+“She is a delicate looking woman,” said the Colonel; “her figure
+small and slight; her nose long, her mouth wide, her voice shrill,
+and her tongue exhibiting to the curious in ‘natural mechanism’ the
+long-sought-for desideratum of perpetual motion. The only relief she
+gives that active member, or her husband, is when she is sulky, upon
+which occasions she keeps him sitting in her boudoir, or wherever it
+may be, the whole day, without letting him stir out, or speaking a
+syllable to him while he stays at home.”
+
+“But why does not he kick?” said Jack;--“rebel; run rusty?”
+
+“Because he believes her to be the cleverest woman in all the world,”
+said the Colonel. “As for disputing the excellence of her taste, or
+doubting the infallibility of her opinions, he would as soon think of
+flying; and such has been the nature of her management in breaking him
+in, that he does not in the slightest degree consider her tyranny as
+oppressive; on the contrary, he thinks her so far above every other
+living creature, that his homage and submission are voluntary tributes
+to her perfection.”
+
+“I suppose,” said Jack, “we must not venture to contradict anything she
+says at dinner, even in the way of joke?”
+
+“You need not be apprehensive of her doing anything in that line,” said
+the Colonel. “I once, and only once, dined with them at their place
+Womanswould, and she took offence in the early part of dinner because
+Peckover drank wine with somebody without asking _her_ which wine he
+ought to drink; and from that moment she stopped her loquacity dead
+short, and moped for the rest of the evening.”
+
+“Wouldn’t it be a good thing to affront her a little at starting?”
+said Jack; “perhaps it might give him a chance of throwing in a word.”
+
+“Not a bit,” said the Colonel: “if _she_ won’t speak, _he_ mustn’t; so
+we should have to keep up the ball between us, unless one or two of
+those Miss Gubbinses, who are a good deal with her, should happen to
+be of the party. However, we must trust to Fate.--You say you are just
+from Dover?”
+
+“Came off the day before yesterday,” said Jack.
+
+“Did you happen to see some old friends of mine there?” said the
+Colonel--“the Gunnersburys?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Jack; “I dined there the day before I left. Very
+pleasant party. The Dullinghams, and Sir Henry Rockley, and a Mr. and
+Mrs. Carnaby. What a queer body Lady Gunnersbury is!”
+
+“Monstrous spirits,” said the Colonel.
+
+“Talk of perpetual motion,” said Jack; “I think she’d give Mrs.
+Peckover two stone and a distance, and beat her in a canter.”
+
+“Yes, she is an entertaining old lady,” said the Colonel.
+
+“To be sure, how she did go on!” said Jack.
+
+“It is through _her_,” said Stiffkey, “that I am connected with the
+family. She is my great-aunt; and I mean to pay them a visit before I
+go to London. Indeed, George Gunnersbury has more than half promised to
+come over to me here, and in that case we should return together. He is
+a capital fellow!”
+
+“Oh, very pleasant indeed!” said Jack.
+
+“He has more real fun about him when he is in a good humour, than
+anybody I know,” said Stiffkey.
+
+“Yes,” thought Jack, may be so--at the same moment congratulating
+himself that the Colonel’s developement of his connexion with the
+family, saved him from something very like a repetition of the
+Dullingham affair, out of which he had so recently escaped.
+
+“By the way,” said the Colonel, wishing, as it should seem, to vary the
+topics of conversation to suit Jack’s particular taste, “when did you
+see our fair friends, the widow and her sister?”
+
+“The day before I left town,” said Jack; “I--in fact--I thought it
+better to--withdraw. I like candour--hate what I call sham-abraham.
+Give me sincerity--all straight up, right down, and no mistake. And I
+thought in my own mind that they were playing what I call a shuffling
+game. It looked somehow like a regular cross.”
+
+“I don’t exactly see,” said the Colonel.
+
+“Why, what I say, Colonel, is this,” said Jack;--“if you mean a thing,
+say so; and if you don’t mean it, don’t go on worriting and fretting
+people about nothing. I saw that Lydiard and Rushton,--two deuced good
+fellows in their way--were making themselves miserable about these two
+females, so I says to Lydiard, says I, ‘Put a face upon this; don’t be
+trifled with:’--and I said the same to Rushton:--and, in course,--as
+I know the sex, and shouldn’t speak without knowing regularly what I
+was about,--they took my advice: and I’m sure--as you know all the
+parties, and,--in course, we are tiled--I brought the whole thing
+about, smack, smooth, and no mistake whatever:--opened their eyes to
+their own situation; and the night before I left town,--which I did in
+uncommon high glee at having made up the matter,--I set them down to
+supper, two regular couple, all wrangles over--and _they_, matched for
+life as nice as nip, and no mistake.”
+
+It was Jack’s misfortune, whenever he became eloquent, to fall
+immediately into his own peculiar style of oratory; and this burst, to
+which he had been encouraged by the colonel’s evident ignorance of all
+the real facts, brought the gallant officer’s eyes into an almost full
+stare of astonishment at the mode in which his voluble, volatile friend
+expressed himself.
+
+“I have thought sometimes,” said the Colonel, “when I have had the
+pleasure of meeting you there, that you were in the field yourself. It
+struck me that you thought Miss Englefield’s singing very charming.”
+
+“So I did,” said Jack, still clinging to the _eclat_ of having been
+favoured by anything so charming as Blanche, and yet wishing to convey
+the idea that he had been smiled on by both--“so I did; but then I
+was taken uncommonly by Mrs. Dallington’s talking. They are both
+delightful creechurs! No: I admired them both as a friend--a sincere
+friend--nothing more; and so I thought the best thing I could do was,
+to pair them off with the men whom they liked, and who liked them.”
+
+“Most marvellous self-denial!” said the Colonel.
+
+By this time they had reached “South,” and the colonel accompanied Brag
+to “The New Inn,” and thence to “The Lamb,” in order that he might
+go through the ceremony of enquiring for his “fool of a servant, and
+his phaeton,” which, to do his acting credit, he performed with the
+greatest apparent earnestness.
+
+These matters adjusted, they returned by a circuitous route, and as
+they were wending their way through the open gardens at the back of
+“The Sea Houses,” they beheld the glittering equipage of Mrs. Peckover
+trailing along the road, containing herself and her two favourite
+friends, the Gubbinses, and proceeding towards Westham and Pevensey.
+
+“Our friend, taking the air,” said the Colonel.
+
+“Mr. P. isn’t there?” said Jack.
+
+“No, she very seldom takes him out with her,” said the Colonel. “She
+says he is too big for the inside of the carriage, and she cannot
+dispense with her footman, who, upon these occasions, shares the box
+with the coachman. I dare say we shall find him somewhere about; or
+perhaps she has sent him to pick up laver for her, which is found here
+in plenty and perfection.”
+
+“Well,” said Jack, “if I were Mr. Peckover, sooner than stand _that_, I
+would dig stones in a quarry on my own account.”
+
+“There is no accounting for taste,” said the Colonel; “besides,
+there are secrets in all families, and we do not perhaps know what
+the reciprocal obligations of the parties to each other may be; one
+thing is certain, he wears his chains merrily. I never saw a man more
+perfectly happy: however, let us proceed to the library, where, if
+his lady-wife have not ordered him on some fatigue-party, we shall in
+all probability find him knocking the balls about as usual, either by
+himself or with the marker’s boy.”
+
+Anything makes a pursuit at a watering-place. A glassblower, whose
+performances have been before your eyes for years in London, without
+exciting your attention in the slightest degree, at a watering-place
+becomes an object of wonder and surprise;--a sick rattle-snake, who
+would slumber unseen and disregarded in his flannel waistcoat, at the
+Zoological Gardens in London, is visited with the greatest avidity: and
+a fish caught the night before, which happens to be two feet longer, or
+one foot thicker, than fishes of the same kind generally are, attracts
+a crowd of astonished spectators, and elicits a thousand interesting
+remarks and observations.
+
+It turned out that Mr. Peckover was not at the library, nor was he
+gathering laver; on the contrary, he was sitting on a bench facing the
+sea, at which he was looking wistfully, and evidently much depressed.
+When he saw Brag and the colonel advancing, he rose to meet them--and
+they perceived in a moment that something had worried him.
+
+“I am glad I have found you,” said he. “Upon my life! I am almost
+ashamed to say what I am going to say:--Mrs. Peckover tells me that
+she has engaged herself to go to Hastings to buy some French things at
+a smuggling shop, and that she shan’t be able to have the pleasure of
+receiving you at dinner to-day.”
+
+“Oh,” said the Colonel, “never mind--don’t care about _that_:--some
+other day. As Mr. Brag and I are both staying at the same hotel, we can
+have our little “_portions_” _tête-à-tête_, and you’ll let us come to
+you when you are quite disengaged.”
+
+“I saw the carriage going along the road,” said Jack:--“capital
+steppers those bays--never saw better: all right that, sir, and no
+mistake.”
+
+“Why! Mrs. Peckover tells _me_,” said the husband, “that the Marquess
+of Whitechapel says they are the best pair of carriage-horses in
+London. I don’t trouble myself much about carriage-horses--she
+does:--ha, ha, ha!”
+
+“But suppose,” said the Colonel, “as Mrs. Peckover will not be back in
+time for dinner, that you were to join us, _en garçon_, at the hotel.”
+
+“Why,” said Peckover, “that would be very agreeable; but if that were
+to be the order of the day, you two might as well dine with _me_ _en
+garçon_, at our house; only you see, Mrs. Peckover tells me that she
+shall be back early, and--”
+
+“Well,” said the Colonel, “but see, if we were to dine with _you_, we
+might be in the way of Mrs. Peckover and her _dames d’honneur_, when
+they returned, tired, perhaps, with the excursion; but if _you_ came to
+us--”
+
+“Ah!” said the obedient husband, “I don’t think Mrs. Peckover would
+like _that_--no, I must be at home to receive her; besides, there are
+several letters which Mrs. Peckover has desired me to write--and--no,
+some other time Mrs. Peckover will be most happy to receive you; so let
+it be as it is. I am very sorry I did not consult her beforehand. I
+did not know of her engagement; have you forgiven me, gentlemen?”
+
+“Oh, in course,” said Jack, “and many thanks for your offer.”
+
+“Well,” said the Colonel to Brag, “then we had better go to our inn,
+and order our dinner; we will dine early, if you please.”
+
+“Whenever you like,” said Jack. “I’m always agreeable, and no mistake.”
+
+Jack--upon whose heart or mind, events which would have been of killing
+interest to others, made no deep impression--was so pleased by the
+encouragement of Colonel Stiffkey, that he entirely “forgot his own
+griefs.” The melancholy fate of his sister, now and then flashed across
+his mind, but since he had ascertained the nature of her defection,
+he was less anxious for a letter from his mother, upon the subject.
+His defeat at the widow’s had almost become a matter of joke with him;
+his rejection by Lord Tom was counterbalanced by the receipt of the
+money he had recovered from him, and so upon casting his eye over the
+balance-sheet, the debtor and creditor sides seemed pretty equal; and
+just now the turn lay rather on the credit side, since he had made good
+his footing with his fashionable companion.
+
+Still, one of those clouds which must almost constantly hang over the
+heads of quacks and pretenders, was rising in the horizon, in the shape
+of the arrival of young Gunnersbury. To quit Eastbourne, where he had
+strangely enough secured the society of such a man as Stiffkey, was
+most painful. Stiffkey looked down with an air of placid contempt upon
+the few inhabitants of Sea Houses, and yet he strolled about familiarly
+with Jack. This was agreeable in the highest degree to the little
+man’s vanity, although really and truly the gay colonel fell into the
+association without reflecting or thinking about it for one moment. He
+had met Brag in good society, and in places where he felt evidently
+at home; he had heard Lord Tom speak of him in high terms, as what is
+called a “sporting chap,” and, moreover, he was somebody to talk to.
+There can be little doubt if a more aristocratic friend had arrived,
+Jack would have been cast off; for the colonel was one of those who,
+soaring eagle-high above the Brags of Jack’s school, was known as one
+of the most decided tuft-hunters about town.
+
+The colonel, too, observed with great care the different grades and
+degrees of the peerage in the selection of the invitations which he
+received; like Brag, he possessed, only upon the greater scale, what
+Foote calls, “the paltry ambition of levying and following titles; the
+poverty of fastening upon men of distinction in public, for no other
+reason but because of their rank, adhering to Sir John till the baronet
+is superseded by my lord, quitting the puny peer for an earl, and
+sacrificing all three to a duke.”
+
+It is greatly to be lamented in the present much-complained-of--how
+justly I do not pretend to decide--absence of talent in dramatic
+writing, that the rich and abundant humour of Foote, should, because it
+is certainly overlaid by much of that, which, in these days of delicacy
+and refinement would not be endured upon the stage, be altogether lost.
+Having quoted a line or two from one of his comedies, illustrative of
+Colonel Stiffkey’s passion for tufts, I cannot resist the temptation
+of extracting that part of the scene, in the “Lame Lover,” in which
+he justifies the young lady’s expressed opinion of his addiction to
+titles, and practically works it out. The passage is curious as well
+as humorous--humorous, because the satire strikes at all ages; and
+curious, inasmuch as in twenty lines it familiarises us with customs
+and habits characteristic of the time at which it was written (the year
+1770), of which now no trace or vestige remains.
+
+Sir Luke, the tuft-hunter, is on the stage, with Serjeant Circuit and
+Charlotte, a servant enters and delivers a card to Sir Luke.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+(_Reads_) “Sir Gregory Goose desires the honour of Sir Luke Limp’s
+company to dine. An answer is desired.”--Gad-so! a little unlucky--I
+have been engaged for these three weeks.
+
+SERJEANT.
+
+I find Sir Gregory is returned for the corporation of Fleece’em.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Is he?--Oh, ho!--that alters the case.--George, give my compliments to
+Sir Gregory, and say I’ll certainly come and dine there.--Order Joe to
+run to Alderman Inkle’s, in Threadneedle-street: sorry can’t wait upon
+him; but confined to my bed for two days with the influenza.
+
+CHARLOTTE.
+
+You make light, Sir Luke, of this sort of engagements?
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+What can a man do? These fellows (when one has the misfortune to meet
+them) take scandalous advantage; teazing one with, “Pray when will you
+do me the honour, Sir Luke, to take your mutton with me? Do name the
+day.” What’s to be done?--they are as bad as a beggar, who attacks your
+coach going up-hill, there’s no getting rid of either without a penny
+to one, and a promise to the other; not but that upon these occasions
+there is no man in England more punctual than--
+
+_Enter a servant, who gives_ SIR LUKE _a letter_.--From whom?
+
+SERVANT.
+
+The Earl of Brentford, Sir Luke. The servant waits for an answer.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Answer!--By your leave, Mr. Serjeant and Charlotte. (_Reads._) “Taste
+for music!”--umph!--“Mons. Dupont--fail--dinner upon table at five.”
+Gad-so!--I hope Sir Gregory’s servant is not gone.
+
+SERVANT.
+
+Immediately, sir, on receiving the answer.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Run after him, as fast as you can. Tell him--“quite in
+despair:--recollect an engagement that can’t in nature be missed:”--and
+be back in an instant.
+
+  [_Servant runs out._
+
+CHARLOTTE.
+
+You see, sir, the knight must give way to my lord.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+No: it isn’t that, my dear Charlotte. You saw that it was quite an
+extempore business. No, it isn’t for the title; but, to tell you the
+truth, Brentford has more talent than any man in the world: it is
+_that_, which makes me fond of his house.
+
+CHARLOTTE.
+
+By the choice of his company he gives an unanswerable instance of
+_that_.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+You are right, my dear girl. But now, to give you a proof of his
+wit:--Brentford’s finances are a little out of repair, which procures
+him some visits he would very gladly excuse. One morning a Welsh
+coachmaker came to him with his bill; my lord had him up. “You are
+called Mr. Lloyd, I think?” said Brentford. “At your lordship’s
+service, my lord.” “What!--Lloyd with an L?” “With an L, my lord,”
+said the coachmaker. “--Because,” said my lord, “I have heard that in
+_your_ part of the world, Lloyd and Floyd are synonymous--the very
+same names.” “Always, my lord,” said the coachmaker. “That,” says my
+lord, “is rather unlucky: for, you must know, I am paying off my debts
+alphabetically; and in four or five years you _might_ have come in
+with an F; but I can give you very slight hopes for your L.”--Ha, ha,
+ha!--(_Enter a servant abruptly, who runs against_ SIR LUKE.)--Can’t
+you see where you are running? you rascal!
+
+SERVANT.
+
+Sir, his grace the Duke of ----
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Grace!--where is he?--where?
+
+SERVANT.
+
+In his coach at the door. If you a’n’t better engaged, would be glad of
+your company to go into the City, and take a dinner at Dolly’s.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+In his own coach, did you say?
+
+SERVANT.
+
+Yes, sir.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+With the coronets--or----?
+
+SERVANT.
+
+I believe so.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+There’s no resisting that:--bid John run to Sir Gregory Goose’s.
+
+SERVANT.
+
+He is already gone to Alderman Inkle’s.
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Then do you step to the knight’s. Hey!--no--you must go to my lord’s.
+Hold, hold!--no--I have it:--step first to Sir Greg’s; then pop in at
+Lord Brentford’s, just as the company are going to dinner.
+
+SERVANT.
+
+What shall I say to Sir Gregory?
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+Anything!--what I told you before.
+
+SERVANT.
+
+And what to my lord?
+
+SIR LUKE.
+
+What?--why, tell him that my uncle from Epsom----no,--that won’t
+do,--for he knows I don’t care a farthing for _him_. Hey!--tell
+him--hold!--I have it:--tell him, that as I was getting into my
+chair, to obey his lordship’s commands, I was arrested by a couple of
+bailiffs, forced into a hackney-coach, and carried to “The Pied Bull”
+in the Borough.--I beg ten thousand pardons for keeping his grace
+waiting--but his grace knows my misfor----
+
+And away goes Sir Luke, without taking the slightest notice of either
+his learned friend the serjeant, or the dear girl Charlotte, both of
+whom he leaves perfectly satisfied with the justness of the character
+the latter had drawn of her “lame lover.”
+
+The spirit of this bit, and the peculiarities of contemporaneous
+society which it exhibits, will perhaps excuse the quotation. The duke
+inviting the knight to a dinner at Dolly’s; the knight getting into
+his chair to go to dine with the earl, and resting his apology upon an
+arrest by bailiffs, and a transfer to “The Pied Bull” in the Borough,
+all sound marvellously strange to modern ears: and yet there are still
+those alive who well remember Foote, and who speak of him as a correct
+painter of manners, and whose inherent humour received additional
+brilliancy from his unquestioned power of “holding the mirror up to
+Nature.”
+
+Stiffkey, however, was not Limp, and when he and Jack strolled to
+the hotel to order their repast, his countenance brightened up
+considerably when the waiter handed him a letter, which had been sent
+over by somebody coming from Hailsham, to which place it had been
+forwarded by the cross-road coach from Dover, and which he in a moment
+recognised as being from George Gunnersbury. His announcement to Jack
+of this happy arrival was not quite so well received by the little
+gentleman in the cords as he imagined it might have been.
+
+Jack walked about the room while his new friend was reading the
+despatch, very much in doubt what the nature of its contents might be;
+and hoping, with all possible fervour and earnestness, that at all
+events it might announce some insurmountable obstacle in the way of the
+writer’s visit to Eastbourne.
+
+“Gad!” said Stiffkey, “George is a capital fellow; he will be here
+to-morrow afternoon; he writes the best letter of any fellow I know: he
+is particularly shy to strangers, but when one knows him thoroughly,
+his sly humour, that I spoke of this morning, is capital. He gives
+a description of a dinner party they had the other day, which is
+admirable. He says, ‘My dear good father, who is certainly the
+best-disposed general in his Majesty’s service, contrives to pick up
+the oddest tigers imaginable; we had a day or two ago a German baron,
+who spoke no English, and, as nobody in our family, except my sister
+Eliza, understands three words of German, the poor gentleman--or, by
+courtesy--nobleman, had a bad time of it; but we had also a fellow
+presented to us, under the fostering protection of a worthy friend
+of ours, who beat anything I had ever seen out of a travelling
+caravan,--an animal which certainly talked, and was therefore human,
+otherwise I should have taken it for an astounding cross in the breed
+between an ape and a horse-jockey: he affronted half the party, after
+having disgusted all of it, and made his escape from a pelting of
+decanters and wine-glasses by affecting to save some people from a
+stranded brig, near which he never went, but, instead of venturing
+ancle-deep into the water to rescue the sufferers, retired to bed
+‘half-seas-over,’ at least, so I have heard; but of these matters we
+will discourse more anon. I will be with you by six at the latest.’”
+
+“Capital fun,” said the Colonel, “isn’t it? A cross between an ape and
+a horse-jockey! uncommon good!”
+
+“Deuced funny, indeed!” said Jack, whipping his boots; “that’s a
+capital fellow,--eh? straight up, right down, and no mistake. We
+_shall_ have fun when _he_ comes.”
+
+The detestation which Mr. George Gunnersbury’s personal conduct had
+engendered in Jack’s heart in the first instance, had now grown to
+its fullest growth; nor was it in the slightest degree qualified by
+the accidental omission of his name, or that of his introducer, (as
+Jack called it,) which would certainly have rendered the rest of the
+day more disagreeable than it promised to be in the company of the
+colonel. For the next, Jack, “in course,” was prepared,--a letter from
+Town would call him away; and so everything seemed at the moment to
+turn up well, out of all the ills that threatened him; his mother’s
+answer to his letter from Hythe would, in all probability, come to
+hand in the morning, which would give an air of consistency to his
+sudden departure, and satisfy his aristocratic friend of the absolute
+necessity for breaking up the agreeable party.
+
+After having ordered dinner, the colonel and Jack strolled down on to
+the sands, wrote words on the sand with their sticks; sat down on the
+shingle; then wandered towards the watch-house; then came back and
+talked to the vestals at the baths,--inquired about laver,--found it
+too early in the season to have it good; then looked at the half-dozen
+carriages which were standing in the coach-house of the hotel; then
+went to Weston’s, and bought some gingerbread nuts; then into the
+Library, and played with a little ball that went into a hole at the
+top of a twisted tube, and came out at the bottom, and rolled about
+a little, and at last settled into a hole of its own; then Stiffkey
+looked through a glass, and saw a schooner pitching disagreeably, and
+Jack went out and helped a little fat-faced child who wore a straw hat
+and feather, and trousers, and scarlet morocco slippers, on to the
+back of a donkey; and then the colonel puffed little pellets out of a
+pea-shooter, across the shop, at a doll, which one of the young ladies
+of the establishment immediately removed; and then Jack looked up at a
+little bay-window where a prettyish girl was sitting, who immediately
+got up and pulled the blind down; and then they both betook themselves
+to throwing stones from the beach into the sea, during which operation
+they had the satisfaction of seeing Mrs. Peckover and her party draw
+up to the door of _her_ house, it then wanting one hour of their time
+of dining, and at least two of that, at which Peckover proposed their
+dining with _him_. This settled that affair, and convinced them, as
+Mrs. Peckover intended it should, that into _her_ house no such persons
+as Jack should set foot. The colonel might have been received; but
+the moment that Mrs. Peckover, with her lynx eyes, perceived Jack’s
+unfortunate white cords and tops, from her balcony, _his_ fate was
+decided. She taxed Peckover with the fact of his being one of his
+hunting friends, and P. could not endure the trial;--it was so,--and
+admitted,--but then, Mrs. Peckover knew everything intuitively.
+
+In divers and sundry pursuits, equally interesting and exciting with
+those which have just been described, the two new friends killed the
+enemy, until it was time to dress for dinner; they accordingly repaired
+to their rooms, Stiffkey’s servant being in readiness to attend him,
+and Jack swearing at the incalculable stupidity of his man who was not
+there to dress _him_. Jack affected to bear it all with good-nature and
+complacency, and it all went very well till he actually found himself
+alone, and then it was that he began to calculate whither he should
+next go,--for go he must; the arrival of the hated Gunnersbury would
+be the signal for his extinction and extermination; but thought Jack,
+“At all events, I’m safe till the morning; and then the letter, and all
+that, will get me clear off, if it comes; and if it don’t, I must write
+one myself.”
+
+Accordingly Jack proceeded to dress, and made himself look uncommon
+nice, with an olive-green coat, and a Pomona-green waistcoat, and a
+pair of uncommonly smart black kerseymere trousers, with stockings and
+shoes to match: in short, he felt that he had done it; and when he
+made allowance for the absence of a servant, the approbation of his
+elegant friend would no doubt be unqualified: and so down he went to
+the dining-room, where, in a few minutes, he was joined by Stiffkey,
+who without any effort had achieved that, which Jack could never have
+accomplished with a two-hundred horse power. He looked like a gentleman.
+
+The dinner was served, and put down. Stiffkey proposed some of Toone’s
+sherry, and one bottle of champaign between the two;--should it be
+_moussu_?--well iced;--certainly--the soup was--soup;--the fish not
+entirely blameable, and whatever other things there were, were all
+tolerable,--each in its way. Claret followed the champaign; and in
+about half an hour after they sat down, they were tranquilly sipping
+their wine, with a few watering-place pears and cricket-ball peaches
+by way of dessert, discoursing upon topics the most interesting and
+agreeable.
+
+“If I stayed here,” said the colonel, “I should get some house or
+lodging; this hotel is all very well, but it isn’t quite the thing;
+and yet I don’t know about a house for a single man,--and, probably, I
+shall go back with George in two or three days.”
+
+“There’s certainly a difference,” said Jack, “between this and the
+‘Ship’ at Dover: the ‘Ship’ is, in course, the only house fit to go to
+there: for my own part, I think that _is_ the worst of travelling;--the
+chances and changes,--and then to be ‘run to earth’ here without a
+slavey. It is the very deuce,--eh!--uncommon slow, and no mistake.”
+
+“Help yourself to some claret,” said the colonel, cracking a biscuit;
+“yes,--it _is_ a bore to be sure. I think you live in Grosvenor street,
+when you are in town?--at least I have seen your name on a door there.”
+
+“Yes,” said Jack; “I’m very little at home;--I’m what you call,
+everywhere;--I hate being still; whenever I can, I run down to a little
+place I have out of town, where I shut myself up whenever I am able.”
+
+“Have you much wood about your place?” said Stiffkey.
+
+Jack recollected the carpenter’s-shop, and said, confidently,--“Yes,
+lots.”
+
+“Well,” said the colonel, “I declare I thought you would have married
+that Mrs. Dallington.”
+
+“No,” said Jack; “there are many things more than meet the ear;--there
+_are_ objections,--so I made way for those, who couldn’t make their
+own.”
+
+At this moment the waiter entered the room, and announced that the
+London coach had just arrived, and that a lady and gentleman, on the
+outside, were inquiring for Mr. Brag.
+
+“For me!” said Jack, a thousand horrid ideas rushing into his brain.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, “they are in the hall.”
+
+This announcement startled Jack most tremendously:--a lady enquiring
+for him--just arrived. Who could it be?--neither the widow Dallington
+nor Miss Blanche Englefield--certainly not. But might it not be
+Anne--Nancy? That she had been most violently agitated at beholding
+him, was perfectly certain; that the only account he had received of
+her feelings or wishes as to breaking off their acquaintance for ever,
+was derived from her husband, who might have assumed a tone which,
+after all he was not justified by facts in adopting. Perhaps she still
+loved him,--still resolved to prove her affection: after struggling
+for years, her firmness had yielded, and she had eloped from her new
+husband to pass the rest of her life with him.
+
+The first flash of this thought was delightful:
+interest--adventure--escape--pursuit--vanity--notoriety--action for
+crim. con.--damages--a duel--“a bullet in the thorax”--all whirled
+through his well-curled head, as he jumped from his seat at table to
+shield and screen the interesting object of his hopes and wishes from
+the gaze of Stiffkey, until he was quite sure of his bird;--when,
+before he could reach the door, his eyes were greeted, and his ears
+astounded, by the appearance of his exemplary mother, and a cry of
+“Jack, my boy, how are you?” uttered by that respectable matron.
+
+“My dear ma’am,” said Jack, almost petrified, and extending his
+arms,--not for an embrace, but to endeavour to prevent her farther
+entrance into the room--“what on earth has brought you here?”
+
+“The stage-coach,” said the old lady. “Come, git out of the way; let us
+come in and sit down.”
+
+Saying which, she pushed by her son, to the astonishment of Stiffkey,
+who immediately rose from his seat.
+
+“Don’t disturb yourself, sir,” said the lady; “there’s plenty of
+room:--only coming outside, the wind blows up all about one, and I’m as
+cold as charity--though Jim made me have a glass of hot rum and water
+at the last place we stopped at.”
+
+“Very nice beverage, ma’am,” said Stiffkey, with one of his most
+graceful bows.
+
+“My dear ma’am,” said Jack, “wouldn’t you rather have another room? We
+have scarcely finished dinner, and it would be more comfortable to have
+a sitting-room to yourself.”
+
+“They haven’t got another sitting-room disengaged,” said the lady; “Jim
+asked them. No matter: what’s good enough for _you_, Jack, is good
+enough for _me_; so this will do for us till bed-time.”
+
+“My dear colonel,” said Jack--
+
+“My dear sir,” said Stiffkey, “no apologies. I am too glad to see any
+friends of yours--if I don’t intrude.”
+
+“Intrude!” said the lady--“not a bit: we have no secrets, sir. To be
+sure, things have turned out queerish: however, you have as much right
+here as we, and we as you--so we won’t make no words of that. Why, you
+dine late, Jack!”
+
+“No, on the contrary, rather early,” said Jack, perfectly at a loss
+what to do, overcome by the unexpectedness of the visit, from its
+being so particularly ill-timed, and by the malicious determination
+which Stiffkey had too evidently formed of not stirring: indeed,
+the announcement of the fact, that there was no other sitting-room
+disengaged, would of itself have justified his remaining in what really
+was his own apartment, even if he had not wished to stay out a scene
+which promised him some amusement.
+
+“Jack,” said the lady, “I want you just to look out and see if Jim is
+getting in all the bundles and things.”
+
+“Who is Jim?” said Jack in an under tone.
+
+“Jim Salmon,” said the lady.
+
+“What! is _he_ with you?”
+
+“Yes,” said his mother, “where else should he be?”
+
+At this moment Jem made his appearance, dressed in a tight light
+green coat, and a buff-waistcoat, with striped blue and white cotton
+trousers, made tightish to his plump figure, a coloured check
+handkerchief round his neck, and a white hat stuck on one side of his
+head, with a bunch of whitish-red curls sticking out from under it.
+
+“Ah!” said Jem, “Brag, how d’ye do?”--“didn’t expect us. I
+reckoned--skimming down here--eh? Titsy would come--agreeable
+surprise--twig?”
+
+“Very agreeable, indeed!” said Brag, drawing back somewhat indignantly
+from the familiar approach of the _ci-devant_ shopboy.
+
+“Have you got all the parcels up to the bed-room, J. S.?” said the lady.
+
+“Yes, Titsy,” said Jem.
+
+“Got the umbrella, J. S.?” said the lady.
+
+“No, Titsy,” replied Jem, “but I’ll be after it in no time--twig?”
+
+Jack’s dismay and mortification had now risen to a considerable height.
+What could have induced his mother to make Jem Salmon her travelling
+companion?--what could have induced her to undertake the journey?--or
+what Jem could mean by calling his respectable parent “Titsy,” were
+to him questions unsolvable. One thing, however, appeared necessary:
+the old lady had evidently planted herself for the evening where she
+was; Stiffkey, who had scarcely begun his wine, and had no engagement
+elsewhere, had quietly deposited himself in an arm-chair: Jack,
+therefore, felt it absolutely essential to introduce the colonel
+to their fair visiter, resolving, afterwards, to check her in her
+conversation, so as to prevent the developement of all the real
+circumstances of the case, and trust to chance and impudence to wriggle
+through and out of this most “untoward affair.”
+
+“This, Colonel,” said Jack, “is my mother:--Colonel Stiffkey, madam.”
+
+Mutual bows ratified the treaty.
+
+“I say,” said the lady, “put a chair for Jim. P’raps, he is taking a
+drop of something.”
+
+“Mr. Salmon, ma’am,” said Brag--“is he coming in?”
+
+“I s’pose so,” said the lady.
+
+“Oh!” said Brag.
+
+“Here he is,” said the lady. “All right now, Jim?”
+
+“Yes, Titsy,” said Jem.
+
+Jack’s astonishment at the repetition of this “familiar word” was too
+great to admit of concealment, and accordingly betrayed itself in his
+countenance.
+
+“Ah!” said his mother, “that’s it--isn’t it, Jim? He doesn’t know all.”
+
+“No,” said Jem--“don’t twig, Titsy.”
+
+“I told you, John, I should surprise you one of these days,” said his
+mother:--“J. S. and I are married!”
+
+“Married!” exclaimed Jack.
+
+“Yes,” said Jem, “Titsy is Mrs. Salmon--d’ye twig?”
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “are you serious?”
+
+“No, Jack,” replied Mrs. James Salmon,--for such she really
+was,--“never less serious in my life since your daddy died. All
+true:--Jim and I were married last Friday was a week at Hornsey church,
+and passed the honey-day--we couldn’t stop out longer on account of the
+business--at ‘The Sluice House.’”
+
+“This _is_ really a surprise!” said Stiffkey, sipping his claret,
+looking, how--it is impossible to describe.
+
+Jack was, as Major Downing says, “catawampously stumped,” and could say
+nothing.
+
+“It oughtn’t to be, sir,” said Mrs. Salmon, addressing herself to the
+dandy. “Jack knowed well enough what a lone life I led. He never came
+near me--never, except for what you could get, Jack--did you? He
+advised me to marry, sir--and I could tell you a pretty story about
+_that_, if I liked--eh! Jack?--the pickle-shop. Well, so things went
+on, till at last--praise afore people’s faces sometimes spoils them--I
+took Jim for better or worse.”
+
+“A very prudent resolve, indeed, ma’am,” said the Colonel, taking a
+huge pinch of snuff.
+
+“My dear Colonel,” said Jack, “I am sure we ought to apologize for
+troubling you with our family affairs. I wish--eh!--isn’t there any
+other room--are you sure?”
+
+“A’nt I?” said Jem--“first thing as I axed about--twig?”
+
+“Get yourself something warm, Jim,” said the ancient bride: “I’m sure
+if the cold once gets into your poor little stomach, you’ll have no
+rest all night. I know what it is myself to be troubled with cold:--and
+I tell you what, Johnny, we shall want a bit of something by way of
+supper; for though we had three or four mutton-chops at Godstone, which
+were very nicely done, and fine meat too, and uncommon fat, still that
+was some time ago--and I get peckish at night somehow.”
+
+“Fat!” said Mr. Salmon--“yes, they _were_ fat--reminded me of the shop,
+Brag--twig?”
+
+“I should venture to recommend,” said the colonel with the most studied
+politeness, “something to drink--a glass of claret--or----”
+
+“Oh, Lor’ no!” said Mrs. Salmon, “no claret for me, sir: as I used to
+say to my poor dear first--Jack’s father--don’t talk to me of claret:
+it’s a waste of time as well as of money to drink them sort of thin
+stuffs! If Jack was to have behaved like what he is, he might have
+asked me to take some kind of refreshment before this; for since the
+rum and water at--what do they call that last place we stopped at,
+Jemes?”--
+
+“Wholesome, Titsy,” said the bridegroom.
+
+“Hailsham, mother,--Hailsham,” said Jack, “is the name of the place.”
+
+“I haven’t had the least drop as is, in my mouth, since Godstone,”
+continued Mrs. Salmon.
+
+“And there,” said Salmon, “the hale was uncommon ’eavy.”
+
+“What! ma’am,” said Stiffkey, “had you a storm, coming down?”
+
+“No, no,” said Jack,--who, although he could not, as his mother
+would have said, “exasperate” the _h_ himself, was nervously alive
+to the absurdity of anybody else who laboured under a similar
+incapacity--“ale--the ale was heavy.”
+
+“Come, Mr. Brag,” said the Colonel, “the wine is with you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Jack, “and I’m not the man to stop it--eh? I like it to
+go--keep circulating, as we say, right up, straight down, and no
+mistake?”
+
+“What do they charge, John, for claret here?” said Mrs. Salmon,
+addressing her son.
+
+“Can’t say, I am sure,” said Jack.
+
+“I say,” said Salmon, leaning over towards his wife, with his hand up
+to his mouth to hide a very audible whisper--“that’s _it_--they never
+pay!--twig? But, I say, Titsy, what will you have--something hot?”
+
+“Whatever you like, dear,” said the respectable matron.
+
+“I tell you what,” said Salmon, “I’ll just go out and brew for you
+myself. I know your taste--eh?--don’t I? Sugar, rum, nutmeg--eh?--twig?”
+
+With this most affectionate speech Mr. Salmon left the room, Jack
+regularly used up, and the colonel, who was now convinced that
+his particular friend must be the identical creature described in
+Gunnersbury’s letter from Dover, having thrown himself back in his
+chair, waited to hear what might happen next.
+
+“Sad business about Kitty!” said Mrs. Salmon.
+
+“Yes, mother,” said Jack, “but don’t you think we might as well defer
+any discussion of that sort till the morning.”
+
+“Why,” said Mrs. Salmon, “I don’t know; if the gentleman is _your_
+friend, there’s no harm speaking out before him,--and I can’t stop here
+long. I thought I would surprise you; and I think a bit of a-washing
+to-morrow in the sea won’t do me no harm. It’s now two-and-thirty--aye,
+let me see, more than that--five-and-thirty years since I was in a bath
+of any kind, and I thought if I could manage to see _you_, and tell
+you all about my wedding, and talk over poor Kitty’s business, and get
+a bit of a wash, all under one, it would be doing a great deal; and as
+the whole front of the shop has been new painted, and James has had all
+those dangling dips, which you didn’t like, taken down--I said to him,
+‘Jim,’ says I, ‘now we’ve got this letter from John, what d’ye say of a
+bit of a holiday till the stink of the paint goes off, and then we can
+tell him all, how, and about it?’ Don’t you think I was right?”
+
+“Perfectly, ma’am,” said Jack, “perfectly--only I don’t quite
+comprehend what you are talking about.”
+
+“I say, sir,” said Mrs. Salmon, appealing to the Colonel, who was
+enjoying the scene, and gathering in, all he could collect, wherewith
+to amuse his friend Gunnersbury when he should arrive--“isn’t that
+good? John’s father and I carried on a most excellent business for
+five-and-twenty years:--I’ve got the shop-cards in my pocket now, with
+the new name introduced ‘Salmon, successor to Brag:’--and yet he
+doesn’t comprehend what I am talking about when I tell him about new
+painting the shop, and dowsing the danglers, as Jim says.”
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “hadn’t you better go to bed? I assure you
+this travelling--eh?--don’t you think--it has upset you--?”
+
+“Upset! no,” said Mrs. Salmon, “I’m not going to bed at half-past seven
+o’clock to please the pope--no, nor the lord-mayor neither: I’m going
+to have a nice bit of sum’mut for supper. Here, John, jump up and open
+the door--I hear Jim knocking: he has got the grog, or whatever it is.”
+
+Jack, utterly discomfited, did as he was bid.
+
+“Scaldings!” cried Mr. Salmon, his father-in-law--“scaldings!--here it
+is, Titsy, as hot as hot. Mind your eye, Brag--shut the door: that’s
+right--clever lad--eh?--twig?”
+
+Things had gone so far at this period of the business, that Jack,
+seeing it was perfectly impossible longer to blind the colonel to the
+real state of the case, gave himself up in despair, and felt convinced
+that the morning must afford him safety in flight. The coolness of
+Stiffkey during the whole of the proceedings, the unbounded civility
+with which he treated the old lady, the dignified goodnature with
+which he permitted Mr. Salmon to tread over his feet, and even scatter
+the “honey-dew” of the hot mixture, which he had himself prepared
+and brought into the room, over his shins, killed Jack, who knew by
+experience the mode in which good-breeding receives the coarsenesses
+and vulgarities of the world, and saw that the whole fabric of his
+favour with the colonel, in erecting which he had passed the entire
+day, was fast crumbling to atoms.
+
+“Shall we have some more wine?” said the colonel to Brag, doing the
+elegant with as much unaffected grace as if Jack’s mother had been a
+duchess who had married a fool for the sake of his title.
+
+“As you like, colonel,” said Jack, “only I fear--”
+
+“Fear nothing,” said Stiffkey, “I never was happier; and if I don’t
+bore you----”
+
+“Oh!” said Jack bowing.
+
+“Not in the least, sir,” said Salmon, “we are too happy to have you
+stay. I’ve always heard say that it is one of the great advantages of
+these watering-places getting into genteel company--eh!--twig?”
+
+Jack could have annihilated the shopboy, although he _was_ his
+father-in-law.
+
+“But, as I was saying, John,” said Mrs. Salmon, “because, as the
+gentleman tells us, we _may_ speak out before _him_--poor Kitty made
+a bad mess of it; she was always a wayward girl,--she quite run away
+from George, at last,--so he writes me,--went and lived with other
+people,--just as it happened;--all came from drinking, John,” here the
+old lady mended her draught. “Wasn’t it shocking, sir?”
+
+“Dreadful ma’am!” said Stiffkey, “very dreadful.”
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “don’t trouble the Colonel.”
+
+“The trouble is a pleasure,” said Stiffkey; “some unfortunate creature,
+who, being in the habit of drinking, I suppose, ran away from her
+husband: a thing that will happen, ma’am, amongst servants even of the
+best character.”
+
+“Servants, sir?” cried Mrs. Salmon.
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “never mind.”
+
+“But I _do_ mind, John,” said the lady, who had just arrived at a
+point of obfuscation, at which the main points under discussion
+are always forgotten, and the minor incidents shine forth most
+brilliantly--“why should the gentleman call _my_ daughter Kitty a
+servant?--she never was a servant! she made a foolish match,--ran away
+with a serjeant--a reglar common soger,--and then ran away _from_
+him,--all ill treatment, sir, and the heat of the climate;--and--”
+here Mrs. Salmon burst into a flood of tears; whereupon, Jem, in
+order to enlighten the Colonel, and utterly annihilate Jack, gave him
+a familiar tap on the shoulder, and said, in a confidential tone,
+“bolted,--altogether--quite--entirely,--twig?”
+
+The Colonel drew back shrinkingly from the unexpected familiarity,
+and signified by a distant bow that he was sufficiently aware of the
+circumstances to which the lady had so feelingly alluded.
+
+“However,” said Mrs. Salmon, recovering, “what’s done can’t be undone;
+she is now gone to her long home, and it’s of no use raking up old
+grievances: she had a good education, and made a bad use of it; and
+what’s more, she was cheated into marrying him; and Nance Brown,--she
+was at the bottom of it, and yet she has contrived to get up in the
+world; and so has George himself,--how, I don’t pretend to say.”
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “let us talk of something else; it cannot
+be very entertaining to the colonel to hear all our grievances.”
+
+“Entertaining!” said Mrs. Salmon, “I’m sure I don’t mean to entertain
+anybody. When I feels, I speaks; and why shouldn’t I, John?--an’t it
+natural for a mother to feel?”
+
+“Don’t take on so, Titsy,” said Salmon. “There’s some cold boiled leg
+of mutton and pickles coming; they are only waiting to get a bit of
+potato mashed. I didn’t forget to order your early supper,--twig?”
+
+“You are a kind-hearted creetur,” said Mrs. Salmon to her husband, “and
+that makes one feel neglect from others the more; however, we won’t
+talk about that. J. S. dear, tell John what alterations we are going to
+make at home.”
+
+“To be sure,” said Jem. “I say, Brag, you know that big copper on
+the left-hand of the melting-house? I mean to have that put farther
+back, and git a door made into the lane, behind the cart-house, so
+as we can bring the fat in all reg’lar, without coming through the
+front-shop,--twig?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Jack, “a very good arrangement--and no mistake.”
+
+“Then, I mean to clap a sky-light on the top of the back-parlour,”
+continued Mr. Salmon, “which will make it uncommon lively to what
+it was. Why, in the old gentleman’s time, when I was a bit of a
+boy, it used to be as dark and as dismal as the Plenipotentiary on
+Milbank,--twig?”
+
+“And round it, John,” said Mrs. Salmon, “I mean to have ever so many
+flower-pots with gerenums, and fooshies, and you can’t think how nice
+they will look in the summer if the cats don’t knock ’em down in the
+night.”
+
+“Here’s the mutton, Titsy,” said Jem.
+
+And sure enough, in came the waiter, accompanied by a female assistant
+with a tray, on which the promised leg appeared, with pickles and other
+condiments,--a dish of mashed potatoes, and a plate of chopped onions.
+The maid spread out a second table, and speedily dressed it in a snowy
+cloth: the waiter handed and arranged the viands; and while doing so,
+announced that some hot chops were on their way.
+
+“Waiter, why don’t you bring us another bottle of claret?” said
+Stiffkey, to Jack’s most perfect and entire mortification; who, with
+all his vanity and self-love, could not shut his eyes to the certainty
+that his elegant friend Stiffkey was merely prolonging his stay, in
+order to be amused at his expense; and equally well aware that his
+mother and the creature whom he was told was his father-in-law, would,
+in the course of the evening, afford him as much entertainment as he
+could reasonably expect.
+
+“Now, Titsy,” said Mr. Salmon, “let me put you a chair by the
+table,--ready ag’in the chops come. I suppose it’s a compliment to ask
+you to join us?” added the engaging Jem, himself to Colonel Stiffkey
+and addressing Jack.
+
+“We have just dined,” said Colonel Stiffkey, with the most
+imperturbable gravity.
+
+The old bride and young bridegroom having drawn close to the board,
+Jack considered he might contrive to manage a few minutes’ explanatory
+conversation with the colonel, and therefore drew his chair nearer to
+him, as if with a view of facilitating, what an Irish gentleman would
+call,--the circulation of the bottle between the two.
+
+“To be sure,” whispered Jack, whose whole character for smartness
+and sprightliness, and that sort of slang conversation in which he
+ordinarily indulged, had been completely destroyed by the appearance of
+visitors, not only unexpected _then_, but never to be expected in their
+present relative position--“To be sure, Colonel, there _are_ odd things
+in the world. Who, when we sat down here, would have expected this
+curious coincidence. By Job! what folly,--eh? a woman at her time of
+life to throw herself away upon a fellow of that sort!”
+
+“Very odd,” said Stiffkey, in an equally low tone of voice; “but, at
+that time of life, these turns will happen. Of what profession is the
+young man?”
+
+“A candle-maker,” said Jack, whispering directly in the colonel’s
+ear; having hoisted up one of his little fat hands, trumpet-wise, to
+prevent the affectionate chop-eaters from hearing the avowal, and
+hoping, even at this straw-catching minute, to devolve the whole of
+the responsibility of so disgraceful a business upon his respectable
+mother, leaving it to be inferred that she had been love-led into a
+connexion much beneath herself.
+
+“Oh!” said Stiffkey.
+
+  “Love levels ranks: lords down to cellars bears,
+  And bids the candle-maker walk up stairs.”
+
+“Very true,” said Jack, “all right,--and no mistake.”
+
+“I say, John,” said Mr. Salmon, who fortunately had not heard this
+little colloquy, “just come here: did you ever see closer fat than
+this cold mutton? I should like to have twenty or thirty ton of it
+down, ready for melting. I could sport a dash of hog in him, and no
+fear of spluttering.”
+
+“It’s curious to see,” said Jack, in an under tone to the colonel,
+“how, when a man sets himself to trade, he turns everything to shop.”
+
+“Very,” said Stiffkey.
+
+And so it is; but it was much more curious to observe the total
+alteration produced in Jack’s manner and language by the unexpected
+visitation of his parent, and her hopeful help-mate. It seemed as if he
+was altogether unstarched; his hair seemed to uncurl itself, and upon
+his pale cheek, and contracted brow, evidently lay the whole weight of
+his mortification and dismay.
+
+“Titsy,” said Salmon, “don’t you malt?”
+
+“No, my dear J. S.” replied the lady. “I’m all for something more in
+the warm line.”
+
+“That’s right;” said Salmon. “Rum and water, hot, I
+consider,--eh?--twig?”
+
+“Exactly so,” replied Mrs. Salmon. “I can’t think how you two,”
+turning herself round, and addressing the gentlemen at the other
+table, “can go on drinking that wishy-washy stuff,--paying, too, so
+much as you do for it. As I said before, I consider it a dead waste of
+time,--there’s no goodness, no nourishment in it:--they call riding
+in a hack cab, taking danger at eight-pence a mile;--but I call
+claret-drinking getting the stomach-ache at ten shillings a bottle.”
+
+“Little and good is Titsy’s motto,” said Jem.
+
+“Yes, J. S. dear,” said the matron, smiling; “that’s the reason I took
+_you_.”
+
+“Well said, Titsy,” said Salmon, “she shan’t be a bad un after all.”
+
+That Mr. John Brag was not blessed by nature with any superabundant
+proportion of feeling, we have had several opportunities of
+ascertaining; but it is only fair to say, that during this, in
+every point of view humiliating scene to the pretender, his
+uneasiness--misery it might almost be called--upon his own personal
+account, was not equal to that which he felt on account of his mother.
+That she had made herself, at her time of life, a fool, by marrying
+her shop-man, or shop-boy rather, was bad enough; but such things--or
+things as extraordinary and silly--happen, _matrimonially_, every
+day; and besides, he palliated her absurdity in this affair by the
+reflection that he himself had first advised her to marry somebody, in
+order to rescue his name from the trammels of trade, and that he had
+probably accelerated the consummation of her discredit by his facetious
+pranks upon Waterloo Bridge, when he himself contrived to expose her
+infirmities for the amusement of his fashionable friends; but, what
+_did_ nevertheless pain even _him_, was the sight of his parent--of
+the being who had given him birth--associated with such a creature as
+Jem Salmon, and by him and his endearing diminutives and nick-names
+rendered an object of universal ridicule. To hear this wretched animal
+calling a woman three times his age and four times his size, Titsy, was
+really and truly tormenting, separated from any prospective feeling
+of certainty that the degradation of his once respectable relative
+would form the subject of Stiffkey’s most animated description of the
+humours of Eastbourne, to be hereafter given to his expected visitor
+and surrounding friends.
+
+“I say, John,” said Mrs. Salmon, warming with her refreshment, “John,
+when you were at home last, you did not think I should get the start of
+you, however much you advised it. I haven’t heard of your marrying a
+Lady Sally, or a Lady Susan, with forty or fifty thousand pounds tacked
+to the title;--I’ve heard of your doings though, in other places.”
+
+“Probably,” said Jack, “one can’t help being talked about.”
+
+“I mean with Mrs. ----, what’s the name? J. S.” said Mrs. Salmon;--“up
+there, by ----.”
+
+“Dallington, d’ye mean,” said Jem.
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” said the matron; “we heard that story last week--not
+half a day after it happened.”
+
+“What is that?” said Stiffkey, _sotto voce_ to Brag.
+
+“I’m sure I don’t know what my mother means,” said Jack; nor did he,
+nor could he comprehend how she came to know the name of the lady.
+
+“Don’t you, Johnny? I do,” said his mother; “so does J. S., don’t
+_you_? Now, I think I owe you a turn, for playing me off on the bridge,
+so I’ll have a laugh at your expense--all in fun, now it’s over.”
+
+“My dear mother,” said Jack, “pray don’t talk about that affair.”
+
+“No, not a syllable,” said Mrs. Salmon; “only we know all about your
+making love to the two sisters at once--don’t we, Jemes?”
+
+“I believe we do too, Titsy,” said Salmon; “two at a time, that’s all,
+John--eh--twig?”
+
+“What, ma’am?” said Stiffkey, who found he had completely succeeded in
+making Mrs. Salmon consider him “quite the gentleman;” “did our friend
+try his ambidextrous fortune with both ladies?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Salmon, “about whose fortune he tried; all I
+know he got none--between two stools, Johnny--”
+
+--“I know, my dear mother,” said Jack, “the proverb is by no means new.”
+
+“No,” said the lady, “nor the moral of it neither; the way we come to
+know of it was through the lady’s housekeeper; they deal with us for
+coarse stock, stores and rushlights.”
+
+“And ile, Titsy,” said Salmon.
+
+“Yes,” said the lady; “and so Jemes, you see, went round collecting,
+and so--but you tell the story, J. S., dear.”
+
+“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, sir,” said Jack.
+
+“Pray go on, Mr. Salmon,” said Stiffkey.
+
+“Why, I tell you how it was,” said Salmon; “I was a just stepping round
+and collecting, as Titsy says,--for we had an unmerciful heavy bill to
+pay our broker, and I happens to call at Mrs. Dallington’s--so--the
+family was just gone out o’ town--lets see--when was it, Titsy?--one
+day late in last week--and so I sees the housekeeper--Mrs. Cropper--I
+know’d her in her last place--so I tells her about our little account,
+and she says, says she, looking at the bill, ‘I wonder, now, if your
+master’s any relation to the little man which my missus sent away a
+night or two ago, with a flea in his ear.’”
+
+“I must beg,” said Jack,--“I--shall leave the room if this goes on
+any farther--I don’t want to know the secret history of people of my
+acquaintance, squeezed out of servants--I don’t want to know about any
+little man.”
+
+“No, love, _do_ hear,” said Mrs. Salmon; “it only shows how things gits
+round.”
+
+“So, I says, says I,” continued Salmon, “I can’t judge unless you tell
+me what sort of a little man he is.--‘Why,’ she says, says she, ‘his
+name’s Brag--he’s a smartish kind of a chap, with a curly head; and as
+full of the gab as an egg’s full of meat.’--‘A sporting chap?’ says
+I.--‘Always a hunting,’ says she.--So then I just rubs up my hair,
+and puts up my collar, and gives her a bit of a take-off of you, jist
+after your manner, ‘smack, smooth, right up, straight down, and no
+mistake.’ Whereupon Mrs. Cropper--she’s an uncommon good-natured old
+thing--she claps her two hands together and says, says she, ‘By gosh
+that’s he--that’s the chap as wanted somehow to marry my mistress and
+her sister too, and got kicked out according_ly_,’--twig?”
+
+“Mr. Salmon,” said Brag, trembling with rage, or something else, and
+looking as white as a sheet, “the unfortunate connexion which my mother
+has formed with you, keeps me quiet--if--it was not for that----”
+
+“Don’t agitate yourself,” said Stiffkey, with the most perfect _sang
+froid_. “Mr. Salmon means no harm, I’m sure.”
+
+“Harm, not he,” said Mrs. Salmon, “he’s only lively, and wants a bit of
+fun.”
+
+“Fun! the devil, ma’am!” said Jack: “I shall say nothing; but as for
+staying in this room a minute longer, I will not; nor, ma’am, will I
+ever set foot in any place in which that person is to be found. I never
+was consulted in _your_ match--and sure you might run your own race
+without coming crossing and jostling me on _my_ course. Colonel,” added
+Jack, “I am quite sure this business must be as disagreeable to you
+as it is disgusting to me--perhaps you will follow my example. I shall
+be glad, ma’am, to say a few words to _you_ in the morning--and I wish
+_you_ a good evening.”
+
+“I am extremely sorry, Mr. Brag,” said the Colonel, “that you are
+annoyed. It only seems a little playfulness,--it _must_ be all a joke.”
+
+“No joke at all, sir,” said Mrs. Salmon; “it’s all true, only what I
+say to Jack is, them as throws stones shouldn’t live in glass houses.”
+
+“Well, I’m sure, Titsy,” said Jem. “I’d no notion of this blow up when
+we came in--I meant to be all pleasant and agreeable.”
+
+“Come, Colonel,” said Jack.
+
+“Good evening, ma’am,” said the Colonel. “I suppose I _must_ go, but I
+assure you I am particularly sorry to leave such agreeable society.”
+
+“Where’s Jack?” said Mrs. Salmon.
+
+“Gone out, Titsy,” said Jem.
+
+“Like one of his own rushlights, ma’am,” said the Colonel, who
+immediately followed him, putting his finger to his nose, archly, as he
+quitted the room.
+
+“Bravo, Colonel,” said Salmon;--“that’s a prime chap, anyhow--eh? Who’d
+have thought of John’s bristling up in that kind of hedge-hog fashion.
+I’m sure I only wanted to give the Colonel a little touch of _my_ way
+of taking off.”
+
+“Yes, my dear J. S.,” said the matron, “and the Colonel seems to have
+returned the compliment. I’m sorry you offended Jack, for I wanted you
+to be friends.”
+
+“Then, Titsy, why did you set me on,” said Jem;--“you know’d when once
+my spirit’s up, I can’t stop it.”
+
+“Why, somehow,” said Mrs. Salmon, “the rum and water was strong.”
+
+“’Twas stiffish--twig?” said Salmon.
+
+“However,” continued the lady, “a fine morning is a good peace-maker,
+and I dare say we shall all be friends again for the short time we have
+to stay; besides, to tell _you_ the truth, I never quite believed that
+Mrs. Cropper’s story.”
+
+“I’d trust her with my life,” said James, “as steady a going cretur,
+full of fun as she is, as ever trod shoe leather,--takes a tip of two
+pounds per annum, and is quite satisfied; can’t get off with Mr. Evans,
+the butler, for twice that. No, no, Titsy, as Jack says, leave me alone
+to deal with the fair sex.”
+
+“Oh you divil!” said Mrs. Salmon, “ring the bell, J. S., and let us
+retire for the night; early as it is, I’m tired, and a little vexed
+into the bargain.”
+
+“Don’t worry yourself, Titsy,” said James. “I dare say it will be all
+right to-morrow--eh? smack, smooth, and no mistake,--twig?”
+
+“Now, J. S.,” said Mrs. Salmon, “don’t go on doing _that_, that’s a
+dear--there’s nothing folks is so sore about, as being taken off in
+that way--don’t do it.--Johnny lives in good company, as you see; it
+is true he has got a particular way of talking, and all that you said
+about what he had done, and all about the ladies, and Cropper and all,
+never stirred him no more than you could stir a fire without a poker;
+till you come to mimic him--that it was set his blood up. I saw his
+little eyes winking, winking, and his face get as white as a sheet,
+and I’m sure I never meant to put him in a passion--only--no--it was
+that----”
+
+“Are you cross, Titsy?” said Jem.
+
+“Not a bit cross,” said Mrs. Salmon, “only he’s as touchy as
+touch-wood--so don’t go and aggravate him to-morrow.”
+
+“I promise and wow, Titsy,” said Salmon, “I will _that_ do--only you
+see, being as I consider now, his superior, what the sogers call
+commanding officer, I think he might have treated me with a little more
+respect.”
+
+“Never mind _that_,” said the lady, “ring the bell, and let’s bundle.
+I’m dead tired--the wind blew so fresh--and I can tell you the top of a
+coach is not as soft to sit on, as the cushion of my arm-chair, I’m all
+shaken to pieces.”
+
+J. S. did as he was bid, and the chamber-maid speedily appeared to
+attend the matronly bride to her chamber, J. S. remaining below as he
+thought it proper to do, until he was summoned to his roost. This dull
+interval he occupied by imbibing a refreshing glass of some favourite
+mixture, and in reflecting upon the unexpected sort of reception he had
+met with from his son-in-law. However, he had scarcely finished his
+“tipple,” as he called it, when he was summoned by the attendant sylph,
+the respected Mrs. Salmon not occupying any very considerable period of
+time in making her preparations for what she called “tumbling in.”--Jem
+drained his goblet, and ascended the stairs, and “maid-directed,” found
+the door of the room which contained his treasure.
+
+By a preconcerted arrangement the waiter had been engaged to go, or
+send over, to the library, whither _faute de mieux_, the colonel
+and Jack had retreated from the unbearable fire of Mr. Salmon’s
+extraordinary liveliness, to let them know when the happy pair
+were gone to bed, inasmuch as they might return to their temporary
+domicile, and enjoy a few tranquil moments before _they_ retired to
+rest. The moment, therefore, that the Salmonean savages had “quitted
+the ground,” a message was conveyed to the dandy and his friend,
+informing them that the coast was clear; and this message arrived at
+the library precisely at the moment when Jack had declined playing any
+longer billiards, because he knew nothing of the game, and because he
+preferred _ecarté_.
+
+The word _ecarté_ sounded mellifluously to the colonel’s ear--_he_
+could play the game a little; should they go back to the hotel and try
+a hand or two--first directing his servant to open the windows and
+“freshen” the room--order broiled bones at twelve, and not play later
+than two--positively?
+
+Brag, the moment he heard this proposition from the colonel, was
+convinced that all was right, and “no mistake;” the absurdities of
+his poor mother, and the grossnesses of his youthful father-in-law
+had evidently made no impression. The colonel saw the gentleman in
+_him_, and the very suggestion of broiled bones, ventilated rooms, and
+_ecarté_ till two, settled the affair. It was all arranged, and Stiff
+key’s man was to teach the willing hostess of the hotel how to concoct
+a particular sort of punch, which Sir Stumpey Dubs, a wealthy friend
+of his master, had invented,--of which composition, averse as the
+colonel was from strong drink, the weakest ingredient was Jamaica rum,
+the whole compound forming a sort of beverage which reminded you, in
+the morning, that you had swallowed it the night before, by a sensation
+very much like that which would have been occasioned by the dislocation
+of every limb belonging to your body.
+
+Colonel Stiffkey was the most perfect “gentleman”--not to use the term
+as Brag would use it, but in its purest and most unquestioned shape.
+He was not brilliant as a wit, but he played his part as well as his
+associates in the every-day give-and-take conversation of the best
+society. The immovable quietude and imperturbable civility which he
+displayed before the bride and bridegroom, were part of his system.
+Nobody who did not know his heart of hearts could find out whether he
+was delighted or distressed by that, which was passing before him. His
+mind, with regard to Brag, had been for some hours made up; and in all
+probability the next morning would be the last on which he even would
+endeavour to recollect his name: but before that morning came, there
+intervened an evening,--that evening was to be passed, somehow. Mr.
+Brag preferred _ecarté_; we have seen the preparatory arrangements in
+consequence of that preference.
+
+Stiffkey and Brag walked back from the library to their sitting-room,
+whence had been removed, besides the nuisances, which had removed
+themselves, all the “provender,” upon which they had battened. A
+card-table had been placed by the colonel’s man, and a small table by
+the side of it, on which stood two well-sized glasses, out of which
+they were to imbibe a certain quantity of the West-Indian mumbo-jum,
+punctiliously prepared according to the recipe of Sir Stumpy.
+
+The room had resumed its former pleasing aspect. Jack found no
+difference in the manner of his friend, who, in the kindest manner,
+kept periodically praising England as the only nation perhaps in the
+world which furnished the brightest ornaments to society from trades
+and professions--throwing in an agreeable observation now and then,
+that if such were the facility in other countries, the intellects
+of the people would prevent their availing themselves of it; and,
+in short, that what the French sage had said of our population in
+comparing it with our porter, that the top was all froth, the bottom
+all dregs, and the middle the “stout and efficient,” was most true.
+This encouragement, wonderfully aided by the arrival of Stiffkey’s
+servant with a closely covered jug of the invaluable compound, raised
+Jack’s spirits so high, that for the moment he threw overboard all the
+previous occurrences of the evening, and felt satisfied in his own mind
+that the fact of his mother’s having married injudiciously, could and
+would have no possible effect upon his future fashionable career.
+
+“Now then,” said the Colonel, “taste _that_: if you don’t like it, I’m
+mistaken.”
+
+Jack filled a glass and sipped. “Like it!--Gad! who wouldn’t--eh?--goes
+down like milk, and no mistake.”
+
+The resumption of his pet phrases, the renewed twiggle of his
+hair, and the revived pull up of his collars, proclaimed “_Johannes
+redivivus_.”
+
+“Well,” said the Colonel, with a tone of perfect indifference, “shall
+we have a touch at _ecarté_? The broiled bones will come at twelve.”
+
+“All right, and no mistake,” said Jack.
+
+“What shall we play?” said the Colonel, listlessly shuffling one of the
+two packs of cards which his servant had put down--“don’t let it be
+high--five pound points, and ten pound consequences?”
+
+“Anything you like,” said Jack. “I lost twenty pounds to that man at
+billiards. How he pulled up in his play after the bet!”
+
+“Did he?” said the Colonel--“I didn’t observe. Do try some more of that
+excellent stuff. We will go to-morrow, if you stay here, to an old
+friend of mine who lives about five miles from this, and I’ll show you
+how _he_ drinks it: he’ll be delighted to see you.”
+
+This put Jack upon the top of a pinnacle. Colonel Stiffkey, after all
+he had seen and heard, proposed the very next day to take him to visit
+an old friend at his place five miles off! Poor Jack! Colonel Stiffkey
+had no such friend; neither if he had, would he have taken Jack with
+him: furthermore, he knew, _that_ which Jack at the moment had himself
+quite forgotten, that he could not stay out the following day where his
+mother was: but Stiffkey wanted Jack to play _ecarté_ at his ease--and
+so he did, knowing no more of the game than a child of ten years old.
+
+The results of the sitting were--broiled bones at half past twelve,
+more of Sir Stumpy Dubs’s mixture at half past one, and a retreat at
+half past two o’clock in the morning, at which time Mr. John Brag
+handed over to Colonel Stiffkey two hundred and fifty pounds of the
+cash he had received from Lord Tom Towzle two days before; and an I.
+O. U. for three hundred and forty more, which the gallant colonel,
+in consideration of the ready money already received, very readily
+accepted in part payment of a balance of five hundred and ninety
+pounds, which, under the influence of Sir Stumpy Dubs’s mixture, the
+curly-headed adept at _ecarté_ had lost to his aristocratic associate.
+
+The friends separated and retired to rest, the colonel’s servant
+kindly assisting Mr. Brag to his room,--the colonel, who required no
+assistance, going to his room by himself.
+
+It was not, however, until both these worthies--either of them
+curiously instructive in his way,--had betaken themselves to their
+respective beds--that the innate truth of their characters was made
+manifest. Jack, broken down by the most extraordinary combination of
+circumstances,--abused, degraded, and exposed by the man whom his
+mother had by way of an agreeable surprise, brought down to see and
+present to him, in the hope of conciliating everything, lay desponding,
+as deeply as he could in his peculiar state, as to the mischief his
+unhappy parent might have done him by her appearance there; consoling
+himself, on the other hand, in his blessed ignorance of human nature,
+with the belief that the colonel was so entirely his friend, that not
+only what had occurred had made no change in his sentiments, but that
+not a syllable of the events of the preceding evening would transpire;
+and absolutely revelling in the idea that the loss of his five hundred
+and ninety pounds would not only ensure this much-desired secrecy, but
+cement a long and lasting friendship between them.
+
+The colonel, who, like a skilful practitioner, had carefully abstained
+from swallowing the draughts which he had prescribed, laid his cool
+unthrobbing head upon his pillow, perfectly satisfied with having so
+well executed his ingenuity in the up-turning of kings, and other
+curious arrangements of the cards; consoling himself with the justice
+of outwitting so complete a charlatan as his temporary companion of the
+tallow tribe; and concluding if he never received one farthing’s worth
+of value for the I. O. U., the worth of which he considered somewhat
+equivocal, that he had adequately paid himself for the smell of onions
+and hot rum and water, and the still more oppressive conversation of
+his friend’s intimate connexions immediately after dinner, by the
+first receipt of the two hundred and fifty pounds cash in Bank notes.
+
+Such were the thoughts and reflections of Mr. John Brag and his
+aristocratic friend as they dropped off to their slumber on this
+memorable night. What visions might have occupied the minds of Mrs.
+Salmon and her dear J. S. it is not our province even to surmise: they
+are asleep, and lest the reader should fall into a similar state of
+quiescence, the chapter ends.
+
+
+                       END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                       PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
+                      Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+  1. Page 33, line 4: miuutes --> minutes (two or three minutes).
+  2. Page 291, last line: repectable --> respectable (said the respectable
+     matron).
+  3. In text file: Italic text represented with surrounding _underscores_.
+  4. In text file: Small caps represented with ALLCAPS.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78709 ***