CHAPTER XXXVI.--RECOUNTS “YE PLEASAUNTE PASTYMES AND CUNNYNGE DEVYCES

OF ONE THOMAS BRACY.

Annie Grant introduced herself to Rose with that easy courtesy which adds so great a charm to the manners of a perfectly well-bred woman, and Rose, as she gazed on her, thought she had never beheld anything so lovely before. She was dressed in--_Halt là!_ attention, young ladies! _favete_--no, _not linguis_; in the amiability of your natures you are always ready enough to do that---_favete auribus_, listen and learn; for I myself, the chronicler of this veritable history, am about to vindicate the good use I made of those halcyon days when

“My only books

Were woman’s looks,”

and to prove that “follies” were not _all_ they taught me--for this I assert and am prepared to maintain, that good taste in dress is not in itself a folly, and only becomes so when the mind of a fool (or fool-_ess_ as the case may be) exalts it to an undue pre-eminence. Annie, be it remembered, was a _blonde_, with just enough of the rose in her cheeks to prevent the lily from producing an appearance of ill health. The month was June, the London season was at its height, and the young lady had called upon Rose in her way to the second horticultural fête at Chiswick Gardens. Her bonnet was of white chip, from which a small white ostrich feather tipped with blue drooped lovingly, as though it sought to kiss the fair face beneath it. A _visite_ of light _blue glacé_ silk had been fashioned by the skill of an ingenious Parisian _modiste_, so as to suggest rather than conceal the exquisite form it covered, beneath which the rich folds of a gown of pale fawn-colour _Gros de Naples_, as uncreased as if, cherub-like, its wearer never sat down, completed the costume; and a very becoming one it was, as we feel sure all young ladies of good taste will allow. Richard Frere, being slightly acquainted with Minerva Livingstone, good-naturedly devoted himself to that indurated specimen of the original granite formation, who from her name and nature might possibly possess a geological interest in his eyes, and by trying to macadamise her into small-talk, enabled the two girls to prosecute their acquaintance undisturbed. Rose, little used to society, was shy and reserved before strangers, though there was a quiet self-possession about her which prevented her manner from appearing _gauche_ or unformed. Annie, on the other hand, being in the constant habit of receiving and entertaining guests, made conversation with a graceful ease which completely fascinated her companion The only subject on which her fluency appeared to desert her was when she spoke of Lewis, his kindness to Walter, and the valuable services he had lately rendered her father; but the little she did say showed so much good taste and evinced such genuine warmth of heart and delicacy of feeling, that his sister was more than satisfied, and settled in her own mind that if all the family were as charming in their different ways as was Miss Grant in hers, Lewis’s contentment with his present situation was no longer to be wondered at.

“What a lovely, fascinating creature!” exclaimed Rose enthusiastically, as the door closed on her visitors; “she is like some bright vision of a poet’s dream.”

“She seems a cute, hard-headed old lady, but she struck me as having rather too much vinegar in her composition to induce one to covet much of her society; olives are well enough in their way, but a man would not exactly wish to dine upon them, either,” returned Frere.

“Who on earth are you talking about?” inquired Rose in astonishment.

“Why, who should I be talking about, except Miss Livingstone?” returned Frere gruffly. “Have you ‘gone stupid’ all of a sudden?”

“_You_ must have become blind,” retorted Rose, “not to have observed Miss Grant’s unusual grace and beauty; I wonder Lewis has never said more about her.”

“Bah!” growled Frere, “do you think your brother has nothing better to do than to chatter about a woman’s pretty face? Lewis is, or was (for his opinions on the subject seem to have been modified lately), a confirmed misogynist, and I’m very glad of it. Nothing makes me more savage than to hear the confounded puppies of the present day talk about this ‘doosed fine woman’ or that ‘uncommon nice gal.’ If I happened to have a sister or any other womankind belonging to me, and they were to make free with her name in that fashion, I should pretty soon astonish some of their exquisite delicacies. Well,” he continued, buttoning up his coat all awry, “I’m off, so goodbye;” and taking Rose’s hand in his own, he wrung it with such force that a flush of pain overspread her pale features. Observing this, he exclaimed, “Did I squeeze your fingers too hard? Well, I am a bear, as Lewis says, that’s certain.” As he spoke he laid her hand in his own broad palm, and stroking it gently, as though trying to soothe an injured child, he continued, “Poor little thing, I didn’t mean to hurt it;” then looking innocently surprised as Rose somewhat hastily withdrew it, he added, “What! isn’t that right either? well, I see I’d better be off. I’ll look you up again in a day or two, and if you want me you know where to find me.” So saying, he clattered downstairs, put on his hat hind-side before, and strode off, walking at the rate of at least five miles an hour. As he passed the church in Langham Place he overtook two gentlemen engaged in earnest conversation: regardless of this he quickened his pace and struck the younger of the two a smart blow on the back, exclaiming, “Bracy, my boy, how are you?” The individual thus roughly saluted immediately reeled forward as if from the effects of the blow, and encountering in his headlong career an elderly female, whose dress bespoke her an upper servant or thereabouts, he seized her by the elbows and twirled her round in the bewildering maze of an impromptu and turbulent waltz, which he continued till an opportune lamp-post interposed and checked his Terpsichorean performance. Before his astonished partner had recovered breath and presence of mind sufficient to pour forth the first words of a tide of angry remonstrance, Bracy interposed by exclaiming in a tone of the most bland civility--

“My dear madam, excuse this apparent liberty; really I am so completely overpowered that I would sink into the ground at your feet if it were not for the granite pavement which is----”

Here the good woman, having scarcely recovered breath, gasped vehemently, “It’s very hard, so it is----”

“Which is,” continued Bracy, louder and with still deeper _empressement_, “as you justly observe, so very hard; but, my dear madam, the facts of this case are yet harder. Let me assure you my offence, if you choose to stigmatise my late lamented indiscretion by so harsh a name, was perfectly involuntary; simply an effect produced by a too vehement demonstration of fraternal feeling on the part of my particular friend Mr. Frere. Allow me to introduce you--Outraged Elderly Lady, Mr. Frere--Mr. Frere, Outraged Elderly Lady. Ah, what a happy meeting! As the ever-appropriated Swan observes, ‘Fair encounter of two most rare affections!’ or again, ‘Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love accompany your hearts.’”

“Yes, it’s all wery fine,” exclaimed the outraged one (suddenly finding her tongue), “to go frightening of respectible parties out of their wits, and then think to smooth ’em over with your blarneying words; but if I could set eyes on one of them lazy pelisemen which is never to be found when wanted, blessed if I wouldn’t give you in charge for your imperence, so I would.”

During the delivery of this speech Bracy had listened in an exaggerated theatrical attitude of entranced attention, and at its conclusion he exclaimed, in a voice so intensely impassioned that it would have ensured his success at any of the minor theatres--

“Oh! speak again; let mine enraptured ear

Drink the sweet accents of thy silvery voice.”

Which sentiment procured for him the applause of a small male spectator of the tender age of ten years, clad in much dirt and a pair of adult trousers on their last legs in every sense of the term, who expressed his approval by nodding complacently and remarking, “Wery well done; ancore, I says.”

“Come along,” exclaimed Frere, seizing Bracy’s arm and almost forcing him away; “you’ll have a crowd round you directly. Your companion has taken himself off long ago.”

“So he has,” returned Bracy, looking round. “Now I call that mean, to desert a friend in difficulties; more especially,” he added, as they walked away together, “as the said difficulties were undertaken wholly and solely on his account.”

“On his account?” returned Frere in surprise; “why, I should have thought the mighty De Grandeville was the last person likely to appreciate a street row.”

“For which reason I never lose an opportunity of involving him in one,” replied Bracy, rubbing his hands with mischievous glee. “He can’t bear walking with me, for I always get him into some scrape or other, and injure his dignity irreparably for the time being. Why, the last severe frost we had I met him in Pall Mall, drew him on to talk of architecture, pointed out to him a mistake which didn’t exist in the front of one of the club-houses, and while he was looking up at it beguiled him on to a slide and upset him, quite inadvertently, into an itinerant orange basket, just as Lady B--------, with whom he has a bowing acquaintance, was passing in her carriage. Look at him now, prancing along as if all Regent Street belonged to him! Walk a little faster, and we shall overtake him; and, by the way, lend me that wonderful cotton umbrella of yours; I’ll make him carry it right down to the Home Office. You are bound for Westminster, are you not?”

“What made you guess that?” asked Frere, handing him the umbrella.

“Because there’s a meeting at the Palaeontological to-day at three, and I know you’re one of their great guns,” was the reply.

“It’s my belief that you know everything about everybody,” returned Frere, laughing.

“And you know everything about every-_thing_” rejoined Bracy, “so between us we form an epitome of human knowledge. I say, De Grandeville,” he continued, as they overtook that gentleman, “you are a treacherous ally, to desert your comrade in the moment of danger. That ferocious old woman abused me within an inch of my life, and wanted to give me in charge to a policeman.”

“Knowing you have an equal aptitude for getting into and out of scrapes of that nature,” returned De Grandeville, “I--ar--considered you fully equal to the situation--and--ar--having no taste for bandying slang with vituperative plebeian females, I left you to fight your own battles. Was I not justified in doing so, Mr. Frere?”

“Well, Bracy being the aggressor, I suppose you were,” was the answer; “but as I was the innocent first cause of the scrimmage I felt bound to remain, and dragged Bracy away by main force, just in time, as I imagine, to save him from the nails of the insulted matron.”

“By Jove! what a nuisance. I do believe I’ve broken my trouser strap,” exclaimed Bracy, stopping and elevating his boot on a doorstep. “Hold this one moment while I try to repair damages, there’s a good fellow,” he continued, thrusting the umbrella into De Grande-ville’s unwilling hand; “I’ll be with you again directly.”

The damages must have been serious, judging by the length of time they took to remedy; for ere Bracy rejoined them, Frere and De Grandeville had proceeded half the length of Regent Street, the latter carrying the umbrella--which he regarded from time to time with looks of the most intense disgust--so as to keep it as much out of sight as possible, even secreting it behind him whenever he perceived a fashionably dressed man or woman approaching.

“I was trying to recollect that very interesting anecdote you told me of the attack on the barrack in Galway when you were staying with the 73rd--Frere has never heard of it,” observed Bracy as he rejoined his companions.

Now this said anecdote related to an episode in De Grandeville’s career to which he delighted to refer, and which, accordingly, most of those who boasted the honour of his acquaintance had heard more than once.. Such indeed was the case with Frere, and he was just going to say so when he caught a warning look from Bracy, which induced him to remain silent.

“Ar--really, it was a very simple thing,” began De Grandeville, falling into the trap most unsuspiciously. “I happened to know several of the 73rd fellows who were quartered down in Galway at a place called--ar--here’s your umbrella.”

“I beg your pardon! I did not quite catch the name,” returned Bracy, who, having buried his fingers in the pockets of his paletot, did not seem to have such a thing as a hand about him.

“At a place called Druminabog,” continued De Grandeville. “The country was in a very disturbed state; one or two attacks of a rather serious character had been made upon the police, and the military had been called out to support them; ar--here’s your um---”

“Was it three or four years ago that all this took place?” inquired the still handless Bracy.

“Four years on the second of last April,” returned De Grandeville.

“Are you sure it wasn’t the first?” muttered Frere aside.

“I was travelling on a business tour in the sister island,” continued the narrator, “and meeting Osborne, a 73rd man, who was going down to join his regiment, he persuaded me to come on with him to Druminabog--ar--here’s your-----”

“Was that Tom Osborne, who sold out when the rifles were going to Ceylon?” interposed Bracy, studiously ignoring the proffered umbrella.

The victimised De Grandeville replied in the affirmative, and resuming his tale, soon grew so deeply interested in the recital of his own heroic exploits that the umbrella ceased any longer to afflict him; nay, so absorbed did he become, that in a moment of excitement, just as he was passing the Horse Guards, he waved that article in the air and led on an imaginary company of the 73rd therewith, after the fashion of gallant commanders in panoramas of Waterloo, and battle scenes enacted at the amphitheatre of Astley. As they approached the Home Office, and De Grandeville had arrived at the concluding sentence of his narrative, which ran as follows:--“And so, sir, the Major shook me warmly by the hand, exclaiming, ‘De Grandeville, you’re worthy to be one of us, and I only wish you were, my boy!’” the trio paused, and Bracy extracting one hand from the pocket in which it had been reposing, remarked, with the air of a man who considered himself slightly aggrieved but meant to make the best of it--

“Now, if you please, I’ll trouble you for my umbrella; I did not like to interrupt your story by asking for it sooner, but now, if you have no objection, I shall be glad of it.”

“Certainly,” replied De Grandeville, only too glad (his attention being once more attracted to it) to get rid of his incubus.

As Frere turned aside to hide a laugh, Bracy inquired, “By the way, De Grandeville, do you dine at Lady Lombard’s next Tuesday?”

“_I_ do,” replied Frere; “and I suppose it’s to be one of her Lord Mayor’s feasts, as I hear she’s beating up recruits in all quarters.”

“Ar--really--I’ve received an invitation--but I--ar-- ’pon my word, I don’t know whether one’s justified in going to such places; one must draw the line--ar--somewhere.”

“It will be a first-rate feed,” resumed Bracy. “Lady Lombard’s _chef_ is a capital hand, and her wine is by no means to be despised.”

“Yes, but the woman herself,” rejoined De Grandeville in a tone of the deepest disgust, “just retrace her degrading career--ar--not an ancestor to begin the world with.”

“Well, I should have supposed she possessed her fair share in Adam and Noah, too,” remarked Frere drily.

“Plebeian in origin,” continued De Grandeville, not heeding the interruption, “she sinks herself still lower by espousing first a pickle-merchant, secondly a pawnbroker; the first--ar--repulsive, the second sordid.”

“She did not play her cards altogether badly, though,” observed Bracy. “Old Girkin died worth a plum, and Sir Pinchbeck Lombard was a millionaire, or thereabouts.”

“Money, sir,” returned De Grandeville sententiously, “is by no means to be despised, and those who affect indifference on the subject usually do so to screen a grasping and avaricious temperament. But money becomes really respectable only when it enables those who are connected with the old historical families of England, those in whose veins runs the ‘blue’ blood of aristocracy, to assert their rightful position as lords of the soil. Among the landed gentry of England are to be found------”

“Some thoroughly jolly fellows,” interposed Bracy, “especially to show you the way across country, or help to kick up a shindy at the Coal Hole. But we must part company here; Frere’s booked for the Palaeontological, and I am going to attend a Committee at the House You’ll be at Lady Lombard’s?”

“I shall give the matter full consideration,” returned De Grande-ville. “It is--ar--by no means a step to decide on hastily. In these levelling days men of--ar--position are forced to be particular as to the places to which they afford the--ar--sanction of their presence. I wish you a very good morning;” so saying, he raised his hat slightly to Frere, drew himself up with his broad chest well thrown forward, and marched off majestically like a concentrated squadron of heavy dragoons.

“Here’s your umbrella, Frere,” remarked Bracy, handing it to him as he spoke; “many thanks for the loan. I don’t wonder you are careful of it; it’s a most inestimable property, and has afforded me half-an-hour’s deep and tranquil enjoyment. But of all the pompous fools that ever walked this earth Grandeville is _facile princeps_.”

“He’s no fool either,” returned Frere.

“Then why does he behave as _sich?_” demanded Bracy. “His conceit and egotism are inconceivable. He’s a regular modern Cyclops; he has one great ‘I’ in the middle of his forehead, through the medium of which he looks at everything. One really feels an obligation to poke fun at that man. Well, I can’t accuse myself of neglect of duty in that particular, that’s a consolatory reflection; but he’s enough to convert the slowest old anchorite that ever chewed peas into a practical joker.”

“He was severe on the excellent Lady Lombard,” observed his companion.

“Did you not notice his remark about riches being respectable only when in the possession of ‘--ar--those connected with the old historical families of England’? That gave me a new idea.”

“A thing always worth having, if but from its rarity,” replied Frere. “What was it?”

“Why, it occurred to me what fun it would be to marry him to Lady Lombard--more particularly after his abuse of her to-day.”

“A project more easy to conceive than to execute,” returned Frere, laughing.

“I don’t know that,” answered Bracy confidently; “if I once set my mind on a thing, I generally contrive to accomplish it. It did not at first sight appear likely that De Grandeville would carry your old cotton umbrella through some of the most fashionable streets in London at three o’clock in the afternoon, yet you see he did it.”

“You’re a remarkable man, my dear Bracy, and I have the greatest faith in your powers of management, but if you can induce Marmaduke de Grandeville to marry the widow of the pawnbroker and the pickle-man, you must be the very--well, never mind who--here we are at the Palaeontological.”

So saying, Frere shook hands with Bracy, and the oddly consorted companions, between whom their very eccentricities appeared to constitute a bond of sympathy, each went his way, the practical joker to apply his acute intellect to the details of that mighty machine, the executive government of England, and the _savant_ to investigate the recently discovered small rib (it was only eight feet long) of a peculiar species of something-osaurus, the original proprietor of the rib being popularly supposed to have “lived and loved,” cut its awful teeth, and been gathered to its amphibious fossil forefathers two thousand years and some odd months before the creation of man.