CHAPTER XXIII.--DE GRANDEVILLE THREATENS A CONFIDENCE AND ELICITS

CHARLEY LEICESTER’S IDEAS ON MATRIMONY.

IT was the morning of Twelfth-day, and in Broadhurst’s ancient mansion confusion reigned supreme; for Twelfth-night to be celebrated with high festivities. A grand ball was about to be given to the county, and legions of upholsterers’ men had taken the house by storm, and were zealously employed in turning it out of the windows. Minerva was great upon the occasion; starched to the nth, she rustled through the apartments like an austere whirlwind, striking an icy terror into the hearts of the stoutest workmen, and leading the chief upholsterer himself the life of a convicted felon on the treadmill--solitary confinement, implying separation from Minerva, would have been a boon to that harassed tradesman. Whatever he put up she instantly had taken down; all his suggestions she violently opposed; he never gave an order that she did not contradict; when he was downstairs she required him at the top of the house; if he appeared without his hat, she took him out of doors. Foxe’s Martyrs would seem a mere book of sports beside a faithful chronicle of all that upholsterer suffered on the occasion at the hands of Minerva Livingstone. Had he not been endowed with remarkable tenacity of life, ere he had set that house in order he would have died.

Amongst others of the dispossessed, Charley Leicester, having retreated from room to room before the invaders, at last, fairly driven out, was fain to seek refuge in the garden. In this extremity he betook himself to a certain terrace-walk, where he trusted to find sunshine and quiet. Having, as he fondly imagined, secured these necessary ingredients to his happiness, he was proceeding to recruit exhausted nature with a mild cigar, when a footstep was heard approaching, and immediately afterwards the erect and portly form of _the_ De Grandeville hove in sight and bore down upon him. Now it must be known that these two gentlemen regarded each other with very different feelings--Leicester, albeit by no means given to discovering faults of character in his acquaintances, could not but perceive the absurd self-consequence and pompous pride which were so palpably displayed in De Grandeville’s every look and action, and while this revolted his good taste and produced in him a passive feeling of dislike, the style of conversation usually adopted by the redoubtable Marmaduke, which, however it might begin, invariably ended in some form of self-glorification, actively bored him. Accordingly, it was with anything but a feeling of satisfaction that he now witnessed his approach. De Grandeville, on the other hand, looked up to Leicester on account of his connection with the peerage, and knowing his popularity among the best set of men about town, regarded him as an oracle on all points of _etiquette_ and _bienséance_. Being, therefore, at that moment in the act of revolving in his anxious mind a most weighty matter on which he required good advice, Charley was the man of all others he most wished to meet with. Marching vigorously onward he soon reached the spot where, half-sitting, half-lying, on the broad top of a low stone balustrade, Leicester was ruminating over his cigar. Having halted immediately in front of his victim, De Grandeville raised his hand to his forehead in a military salute, which manouvre, acquired partly in jest, partly in earnest, had now become habitual to him.

“Ar--enjoying a weed? eh! Mr. Leicester?” he began. “ ’Pon my word, you’ve selected a most picturesque spot for your bivouac. If it’s not against the standing orders to smoke here, I’ll join you in a cigar, for--ar--to tell you the truth, I rather want five minutes’ conversation with you.”

“I’m in for it,” thought Leicester. “Well, what must be, must; the sun will be off here in about half-an-hour, and I suppose I can endure him for that space of time.” He only said, however, holding out his cigar-case languidly, “Can I offer you one?”

“Ar--many thanks, you’re one of the few men whose taste I can, rely on; but--ar--really, the things they sell now, and pretend to call genuine, are such trash, that--ar--I am forced to import my own. I sent out an agent to Cuba express--ar--at least, Robinson, who supplies my club--ar--the Caryatides, you know--sent him on a hint from me, and I can’t match the cigars he brought me anywhere; I’ve never met with anything like them. Ask your brother; he knows them--ar--I let him have half a box as the greatest favour.”

“Bell lives on cigars and gin-and-water when he’s in his native state,” returned Leicester, slightly altering his position so that he could rest his back more conveniently against a statue. “If he’s been going too fast, and gets out of condition, he takes a course of that sort of thing, and it always brings him right again; it’s like turning a screwy horse out to grass.”

De Grandeville, who had appeared somewhat abstracted during this interesting record of the domestic habits of Lord Bellefield, changed the conversation by observing, “Ar--you see, when a man of a certain--ar--position in society gets--ar--towards middle life--ar--say, three or four-and-thirty, it appears to me that it adds very much to his weight to--ar--to----”

“To drink brown stout instead of pale ale,” exclaimed Leicester more eagerly than his wont. “I observed you did so at----, when we were treating the incorruptible electors, and it struck me as a decided mistake.”

“Ar--yes, I believe--that is, of course--you are right; but that was not exactly what I was going to observe,” returned De Grandeville, slightly embarrassed. “In fact, I was going to say that it adds to a man’s weight in society, increases his influence, and improves his general position to be--ar--well married!”

“About that I scarcely know; it’s not a matter to decide on hastily,” returned Leicester, coolly lighting a fresh cigar, which, being of an obstinate disposition, required much scientific management and considerable hard puffing to induce it to perform properly. “In regard to (puff) marriage, Mr. De Grandeville, looking at it philosophically--and I can assure you it’s a subject on which I’ve expended much (puff, puff) serious thought,--looking at it in a reasonable businesslike point of view, it becomes a mere (puff) affair of debtor and creditor,--a question of what you lose and what you gain. Let us try the matter by various tests and see how the account stands. We’ll begin with the watchwords of the day, for instance: ‘Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.’ Liberty,--a single man can do as he likes without consulting anybody; a married man can do as he likes only when his wife shares the inclination, which, as no two people ever look at anything in exactly the same point of view, appears a somewhat stringent restriction. Fraternity,--a single man may choose his friends where he feels inclined, male or female, as it may have pleased Providence to create them; a married man dare not, unless he has a taste for domestic misery, and possesses eyes which are nail-proof, cultivate a female friendship, and somehow one feels if one were married one should not exactly wish to have a set of men always dangling about one’s house. Equality,--a single man, if he has received a gentleman’s education, wears a good coat, and has wit enough to keep himself warm, is anybody’s equal; a married man must bear all his wife’s burdens as well as his own, and doesn’t get asked by the Browns because the Smiths have told them her great-grandfather was transported for stealing a pewter pot. Now, let us look at the per contra side. A single man soon gets tired of his unlimited Liberty; there’s no fun in having your own way if you’ve no one to contradict you. A little opposition becomes a positive luxury, and this you’re sure to obtain _by_ matrimony. Then, as to Fraternity, friends are better than acquaintances, certainly, just as a mule is preferable to a jackass, but they’re not much comfort to one after all. My most intimate friend lives in Ceylon and writes to me once in five years about hunting elephants. Now, your wife is part of your goods and chattels, belongs to you as completely as your bootjack, and when in hours of indolence you wish to sit with your soul in slippers, she, if she is worth her salt, is ready to pull off the psychological boots that are pinching your mind, and prevent the _dolce far niente_ from becoming meaningless and insipid. Lastly, there’s no such Equality in the world as between husband and wife when they are really suited to each other, appreciate their relative positions justly, and endeavour to make practice and principle coincide. These are my ideas regarding the marriage state, Mr. De Grandeville; but ’tis no use discussing the matter. Society has long since decided the question in favour of wedlock, and there are only enough exceptions to prove the rule. Byron enunciated a great truth when he declared:

“‘Man was not formed to live alone;’

the animal’s gregarious, sir, and the solitary system is totally opposed to all its tastes and habits.”

So saying, Charley emitted a long puff of smoke, and caressing his whiskers, calmly awaited his companion’s reply; but this demands a fresh chapter.