CHAPTER XXXVIII.--DESCRIBES THE HUMOURS OF A LONDON DINNER-PARTY IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Dear Rose Arundel (excuse us the adjective, kind reader, for we frankly own to being very fond of her), having been a perfect godsend to everybody during the whole morning of the party day, having thought of everything and done everything, and looked on the bright side of everything, and sacrificed herself so pleasantly that an uninitiated beholder might have imagined her intensely selfish and doing it all for her own personal gratification,--Rose having, amongst other gymnastics of self-devotion, run up and down stairs forty-three times in pursuit of waifs and strays from Lady Lombard’s memory, committed the first bit of selfishness of which she had been guilty all day, by sitting down to rest for five minutes before she began her toilet; and leaning her forehead on her hand, thought over her own chances of pleasure or amusement during the evening. She had had one disappointment: Lewis had been invited, and Lewis would not come. He did not say he could not come, but he put on what Mrs. Arundel called his “iron-face,” and said shortly, “the thing was impossible;” and no one could have looked on his compressed lips and doubted the truth of the assertion. It grieved Rose, for she read his soul as it were an open book before her, and she saw there pride, that curse of noble minds, still unsubdued. Lady Lombard patronised them, and Lewis could not submit to witness it. Rose had hoped better things than this; she had not failed to observe the change that had taken place in her brother during his residence at Broadhurst; she saw that from an ardent, impetuous boy he had become an earnest-minded, high-souled man, and in the calm dignity of his look and bearing she recognised the evidence of conscious power, chastened by the discipline of a mind great enough to rule itself. Nor was she wrong in her conjectures; only she mistook a part for the whole, and arguing with the gentle sophistry of a woman’s loving heart, concluded that to be finished which was but in fact begun. Lewis had learned to _control_ (except in rare instances) his haughty nature, but he relied too much on his own strength, and so he had failed as yet to subdue it. Rose was too honest to disguise the truth from herself when it was fairly placed before her, and she acknowledged, with an aching heart that the great fault of her brother’s character yet remained unconquered. Poor Rose! as this conviction forced itself upon her, how she sorrowed over it. He was so good, so noble, and she loved him so entirely--oh! why was he not perfect? If Lewis could have read her thoughts at that moment he would have assuredly made one of the guests at Lady Lombard’s hospitable board.

As the clock struck the half-hour, forming the _juste milieu_ between seven and eight, post meridiem, the goodly company assembled in Lady Lombard’s drawing-room, being warned by the portly butler that dinner was served, paired off and betook themselves two by two (like the animals coming out of Noah’s Ark, as represented on the dissecting puzzles of childhood) to the lofty dining-room, where much English good cheer, disguised under absurd French names, awaited them. During the short time that Bracy had been in the house he had not been altogether idle. He first took an opportunity of informing Lady Lombard that De Grandeville was directly descended from Charlemagne, and that he was only waiting till the death of an opulent relative should render him independent of his profession to revive a dormant peerage, when it was generally supposed his colossal intellect and unparalleled legal acumen would render him political leader of the House of Lords; he then congratulated her on her good fortune in having secured the presence of this illustrious individual, who, he assured her, was in such request amongst the aristocracy of the kingdom that he was scarcely ever to be found disengaged, and wound up by running glibly through a long list of noble names with whom he declared the mighty Marmaduke to be hand and glove. Accordingly, good Lady Lombard, believing it all faithfully, mentally elected De Grandeville to the post of honour at her right hand, deposing for the purpose no less a personage than General Gudgeon. When we say no less a personage, we speak advisedly, for that gallant officer, weighing sixteen stone without his snuff-box, and being fully six feet high, was, if not exactly “a Triton amongst minnows,” at all events a Goliath amongst gudgeons, which we conceive to be much the same thing.

Having achieved his object of placing De Grandeville in exactly the position he wished him to occupy, Bracy next proceeded to frustrate a scheme which he perceived the fair Susanna (who was his pet antipathy) to have originated for the amatory subjugation and matrimonial acquisition of John Dace Dackerel Dace, Esq., of Roachpool, in the West Riding. The aforesaid John D. D. had a weakness bordering indeed on a mental hallucination; he fancied he was born to be a popular author--“to go down to posterity upon the tongues of men,” as he himself was wont to express it--and the way in which he attempted to fulfil his exalted destiny and effect the wished-for transit, _viâ_ these unruly members of his fellow-mortals, was by writing mild, dull articles, signed J. D. D., and sending them to the editors of various magazines, by whom they were always unhesitatingly rejected.

The frequent repetition of these most unkind rebuffs, and the consequent delay in the fulfilment of his mission, had tended to depress the spirit (at no time an intensely ardent one) of John Dace Dackerel, and had induced a morbid habit of mind, through which, as through a yellow veil, he took a jaundiced view of society at large; and even the acquisition of the surname of Dace, and his accession to the glories of Roachpool, had scarcely sufficed to restore cheerfulness to this victim of a postponed destiny. Bracy, from his connection with Blunt’s Magazine, knew him well, and had rejected, only a fortnight since, a forlorn little paper entitled “The Curse of Genius, or the Trammelled Soul’s Remonstrance;” in which his own cruel position was touchingly shadowed forth in the weakest possible English. Accosting this son of sorrow in a confidential tone of voice, Bracy began--

“As soon as you can spare a minute to listen to me, I’ve something rather particular to tell you!”

“To tell me?” returned the blighted barrister in a hollow voice, suggestive of any amount of black crape hatbands. “What ill news have I now to arm, or I may say, to steel my soul against?” And here be it observed that it was a habit with this pseudo-author to talk, as it were, a rough copy of conversation, which he from time to time corrected by the substitution of some word or phrase which he conceived to be an improvement upon the original text.

“Perhaps it may be good news instead of bad!” remarked Bracy encouragingly. The blighted one shook his head.

“Not for _me_” he murmured; then turning to Susanna, he continued, “Excuse my interrupting our conversation, but this gentleman has some intelligence to impart--or I may say, to break to me.”

Mrs. Brahmin smiled sweetly such a sympathetic smile that it went straight through a black satin waistcoat, with a cypress wreath embroidered on it in sad-coloured silk, and reached the “crushed and withered” heart of J. D. D. .

“You know,” continued Bracy, “I was obliged, most unwillingly, to decline that touching little thing of yours. The--what is it? the Cough of Genius?”

“The Curse,” suggested its author gloomily.

“Ah! yes. I read it cough--you don’t write very clearly--yes, * the Cursing Genius.’ You know, my dear Dace, we editors are placed in a very trying position. A great responsibility devolves upon us; we are scarcely free agents. Now your article affected me deeply” (this was strictly true, for he had laughed over the most tragic touches till the tears ran down his cheeks), “but I was forced to decline it. I could not have put it in if my own brother had written it. You will naturally ask, Why? _Because it did not suit the tone of Blunt’s Magazine!_” And as Bracy pronounced these awful and mysterious words he shook his head and looked unutterable things; while the “child of a postponed destiny,” seeing the shadow of a still further postponement clouding his dark horizon, shook his head likewise, and relieved his elaborately-worked shirt-front of a sigh.

“But,” resumed Bracy, “thinking the paper much too original to be lost, I took the liberty of handing it over to Bullbait, the Editor of the Olla Podrida. Well, sir, I saw him this morning, and he said----”

“What?” exclaimed the fated one eagerly, a hectic tinge colouring his sallow cheek.

“Don’t excite yourself, my dear Dace,” rejoined Bracy anxiously; “you’re looking pale: too much brain work, I’m afraid. You must take care of yourself; so many of our greatest geniuses have died young. But I see you’re impatient. Bullbait said--he’s a very close, cautious character, never likes to commit himself, but he actually said, _he’d think about it!_”

“Was that all?” groaned the disappointed Dace, relapsing into despondency.

“All! my dear sir? all! Why, what would you have? When a man like Bullbait says he’ll think about a thing, I consider it a case of _opus operatum_--reckon the deed done. If he meant to refuse your paper, what need has he to think about it? No, Mr. Dace, if you’re not correcting a proof of the ‘Cough’--psha, ‘Curse,’ I mean--(when one once takes a wrong idea into one’s head how difficult it is to get it out again!) before the week is over, I’m no prophet. By the way,” he continued, as Rose, looking better than pretty in the whitest of muslin frocks, resigned a comfortable seat to a cross old lady in a gaudy turban, which gave her the appearance, from the neck upwards, of a plain male Turk, liberally endowed with the attributes commonly assigned to his nation by writers of fairytales and other light literature for the nursery, amongst which man-stealing and cannibalism are two of the least atrocious--“by the way, I must introduce you to this young lady; a kindred soul, sir, one of the most rising authoresses of the day.”

“No, I really----” began the Dace, flapping about in the extremity of his shyness like one of his fishy namesakes abstracted from its native element.

“Nonsense,” resumed Bracy, enjoying his embarrassment. “Miss Arundel, let me have the pleasure of making you acquainted with one of our men of genius, a writer to whom a liberal posterity will no doubt do justice, however the trammelled sycophants of a clique may combine to delay his intellectual triumphs.” Then in an aside to J. D. D. he added, “Make play with her; Bullbait wants her particularly to write for the Olla, and she hangs back at present: she would merely have to say a word to him, and you might obtain the run of the magazine.”

Thus urged, John Dace, Dackerel Dace, Esq., called up all the energies of his nature, and by their assistance overcoming his habitual sheepishness, he caused to descend upon Rose a torrent of pathetic small-talk which overwhelmed that young lady till dinner was announced, when he claimed her arm and floated with her down the stream of descending humanity until he found himself safely moored by her side at the dinner-table.

Bracy having thus, as he would himself have expressed it, taken the change out of that odd fish Dace, and frustrated, for the time being, the matrimonial tactics of the Brahmin’s widow, was making his way through the various groups of people in search of Miss MacSalvo, whose rampant Protestantism might, he considered, afford him some sport if judiciously handled, when he was suddenly intercepted by the innocent Susanna with the inquiry, “Pray, Mr. Bracy, can you explain this wonderful metamorphosis in your friend Mr. Frere? He’s grown quite handsome.”

Thus appealed to, Bracy regarded attentively the individual in question, who was good-naturedly turning over a book of prints for Lady Gudgeon, a little shrivelled old lady, so deaf as to render conversation with her a pursuit of politeness under difficulties. Having apparently satisfied himself by this investigation, Bracy replied, “To the best of my belief, I should say he had only had his hair cut, and was for once dressed like a gentleman.”

“He is wonderfully clever, is he not?” inquired the lady.

“Clever!” repeated Bracy. “That’s a mild word to apply to such acquirements as Frere rejoices in. He knows all the languages, living or dead; possesses an intimate acquaintance with the arts and sciences, has all the ‘ologies’ at his fingers’ ends, and is not only well up in the history of man since the creation, but will tell you to a fraction how many feeds a day kept a Mastodon in good condition two or three thousand years before we tailless monkeys came into possession of our landed property.”

“I suppose, as he dresses so strangely in general, that he’s very poor: all clever people are, I believe,” returned Susanna, with an air of the most artless _naïveté_, the idea having for the first time occurred to her that, _faute de mieux_, the philosopher might do to replace the man of war.

Bracy read her thoughts, and kindly invented a few facts and figures by which he increased Frere’s income about sevenfold, and gave him a magnificent stock of expectations, regarding the realisation whereof not the most forlorn hope ever existed.

Having done this small piece of mischief also, he continued his search after Miss MacSalvo. The result of these machinations was that Lady Lombard signified to De Grandeville that he was to hand her down to dinner; John Dace Dackerel Dace, Esquire, performed the same office by Rose, much to the disgust of Richard Frere, who had intended to secure that pleasure for himself, and who being, at the moment in which he first became aware of his misfortune, captured by the Brahminical widow, whose silky manner he could not endure, went downstairs in a frame of mind anything but seraphic. Mrs. Arundel contrived to gain possession of General Gudgeon, with a view, as she observed to Bracy, to discover, firstly, his system of feeding, which, from its results, she felt sure must be an excellent one; and secondly, to ensure his obtaining a liberal supply of port wine, to the end that she might satisfy a reprehensible curiosity as to the precise nature of the “gentleman’s stories” Lady Lombard was so anxious to suppress; which act of un-_English_-woman-like _espièglerie_ must be set down to the score of a foreign education, than which we know not a better receipt for unsexing the minds of the daughters of Albion. When we add that Bracy, with a face of prim decorum, escorted Miss MacSalvo, a gaunt female, whose spirit appeared to have warred with her flesh so effectually that there was little more than skin and bone left, we believe we have accounted for every member of the party in whom our readers are likely to feel the slightest interest.

During the era of the fish and soup, by which our modern dinners are invariably commenced, little is discussed except the viands; but after the first glass of sherry mute lips begin to unclose, and conversation flows more freely. Thus it came about that John Dace Dackerel Dace, Esquire, of the Inner Temple (we admire his name so much that we lose no opportunity of repeating it), having revolved in his anxious mind some fitting speech wherewith to accost the talented young authoress, of whom he felt no inconsiderable degree of dread, fortified himself with an additional sip of sherry ere he propounded the very original inquiry, “Whether Miss Arundel was fond of poetry?” Before Rose could answer this query her neighbour on the other side, one Mr. James Rasper, a very strong young man with a broad, good-natured, dullish face, demanded abruptly, in a jovial tone of voice, “Whether she was fond of riding?”

As soon as she could collect her senses, scattered by the raking fire of this cross-examination, Rose replied “that she was particularly fond of some kinds of poetry,” which admission she qualified by the apparently inapposite restriction--“When she was on a very quiet horse.”

J. D. D. was about to follow up his attack by a leading question in regard to the gushing pathos of the bard of Rydal, when Rasper prevented him by exclaiming, “No! Do you really?” (which he called “railly”). “Then I know just the animal that would suit you.” And having thus mounted his hobby-horse he dashed at everything, as was his wont when once fairly off, and rattled away, without stopping, till dinner was finished, and he had talked Rose completely stupid; while the unfortunate Dace, foiled in his weak attempt to captivate the influential authoress, plunged again into the deep waters of affliction, where, pondering over this further postponement of his destiny, he sank, and was heard no more.

Exactly opposite to Rose and her companions sat Frere and the simple Susanna, who, labouring zealously at her vocation--viz., husband-hunting--threw away much flattery and wasted an incalculable amount of “sweetness on the desert air.” To all her pretty speeches Frere returned monosyllabic replies in a tone of voice suggestive of whole forests full of bears with sore heads, while a cloud hung heavy on his brow, and his bright eyes flashed envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness at the unconscious James Rasper. At last Susanna chanced to inquire whether he were fond of music; and as, without falsifying facts, he could not answer this negatively, he was forced to reply, “Yes; I like some sort of music well enough.”

“Some sort only,” returned Susanna in a tone of infantine artlessness. “Oh! you should like every kind, Mr. Frere. I never hear a merry tune without longing to dance to it, and pathetic music affects me even to tears. But what class of music is it that you particularly prefer?--though I need scarcely ask--operatic, of course.”

“Not I,” growled Frere; “I hate your operas.”

“Oh, Mr. Frere!” exclaimed Simplicity, fixing its large eyes reproachfully upon him, “you can’t mean what you say. Not like operas! Why, they are perfectly delicious. Look at a well-filled house--what a magnificent _coup d’oil!_”

“A set of pigeon-holes full of fools, and a long row of fiddlers,” rejoined Frere; “I can’t say I see much to admire in that. I went to one of your operas last year, and a rare waste of time I thought it. It was one of Walter Scott’s Scotch stories bewitched into Italian. There was poor Lucy of Lammermoor dressed out like a fashionable drawing-room belle, singing duets all about love and murder with a pale-faced, moustachioed puppy, as much like Edgar Ravenswood as I am like the Belvidere Apollo--a brute engaged, on the strength of a tenor voice, to make love to all and sundry for the space of four calendar months, for which ‘labour of love’ he is paid to the tune of £500 a month, a salary on which better men than himself contrive to live for a whole year. Then Lucy’s cruel mamma, who is the great feature in the novel, was metamorphosed into a rascally brother, who growled baritone atrocities into the ears of a sympathising chorus of indigent needle-women and assistant carpenters, who act the nobility and gentry of Scotland at half-a-crown a head and their beer. The first act is all love and leave-taking, the second all cursing and confusion, and the third all madness and misery: and that’s what people call a pleasant evening’s amusement. The only thing that amused me was in the last scene, when the stipendiary lover kills himself first and sings a long scena afterwards. I thought that very praiseworthy and persevering of him, and if I’d been Lucy such a little attention as that would have touched me particularly, and I dare say it would have done her, only--seeing that she had died raving mad some five minutes before, and was then drinking bottled porter in her dressing-room for the good of her voice--she was perhaps scarcely in a situation to appreciate it.”

“But if you don’t like the singing, I dare say you prefer the ballet?” suggested Susanna.

“No, I don’t,” was the short, sharp, and decisive reply.

“Not like the ballet? Oh! Mr. Frere, what can be your reason?” inquired the surprised turtle-dove.

“Well, I have a reason good and sufficient, but I shan’t tell it to you,” growled Frere; then muttered as an aside, which was, however, sufficiently audible, “A set of jumping Jezebels skipping about in white muslin kilts, for they’re nothing better; respectable people ought to be ashamed of looking at ’em.” Having enunciated this opinion, Frere cast a doubly ferocious glance at Mr. Rasper, then eloquently describing to Rose the points of his favourite hunter, and relapsed into surly monosyllables, beyond which no amount of cooing could again tempt him.

Marmaduke de Grandeville, enthroned in state on the right hand of the lady of the house, gazed regally around him, and in the plenitude of his magnificence was wonderful to behold. But, after all, he _was_ human, and the evident depth and reality of Lady Lombard’s admiration and respect softened even him, so that ere long he graciously condescended to eat, drink and talk--not like an ordinary mortal, for that he never did, but like himself. For instance, the topic under discussion being the new Houses of Parliament, then in even a more unfinished state than they are at present, De Grandcville elaborately explained the whole design, every detail of which he appeared to have at his fingers’ ends--a fact for which he accounted when he allowed it to be understood that--“Ar--he had--ar--given Barry a hint or two--ar--that Barry was a very sensible fellow, and not above--ar--acting upon an idea when he saw it to be a good one;” and it must be owned that as De Grandeville had only once been in Mr. Barry’s company, on which occasion he had sat opposite to him at a public dinner, he had made the best use of his time, and not suffered his powers of penetration to rust for want of use. Having in imagination put the finishing-stroke to the Victoria Tower (one of the furthest stretches of fancy on record, we should conceive), he contrived to work the conversation round to military matters, set General Gudgeon right on several points referring to battles in the Peninsula at which the General had himself been present, and gave so graphic an account of Waterloo, that to this day Lady Lombard believes he acted as Amateur Aide-du-Camp and Privy Counsellor-in-Chief to the Duke of Wellington on that memorable occasion. He then talked about the De Grandeville estates till every one present believed him to be an immense landed proprietor, and wound up by the anecdote of William of Normandy and the original De Grandeville, which, with a slight biographical sketch of certain later worthies of the family (one of whom, Sir Solomon de Grandeville, he declared to have suggested to King Charles the advisability of hiding in the oak), lasted till the ladies quitted the room, when, by Lady Lombard’s request, he assumed her vacant chair, and did the honours with dignified courtesy.

Bracy, who during dinner had appeared most devoted to Miss MacSalvo, now endeavoured to render himself universally agreeable. He applauded General Gudgeon’s stories, and plied him vigorously with port wine, which, as Mrs. Arundel had taken care the servants did not neglect to replenish his wine-glass at dinner, began to tell upon him visibly. He elicited the names, pedigrees, and performances of all Mr. James Rasper’s horses, and received from that fast young man a confidential statement of his last year’s betting account, together with a minute detail of how he had executed that singular horticultural operation yclept “hedging on the Oaks,” during which dry recital his throat required constantly moistening with wine, in spite of which precaution his voice grew exceedingly thick and husky before the sitting concluded. On two individuals of the party, however, all Bracy’s efforts were thrown away: Frere continued silent and moody, only opening his lips occasionally, shortly and sternly to contradict some assertion, and relapsing into his former taciturnity; while J. D. D. sat silently bewailing his postponed destiny over a glass of water and two ratafia cakes, which seemed to possess the singular property of never diminishing.

At length the gentlemen rose to go upstairs, a matter easily accomplished by every one but General Gudgeon, who made three unsuccessful attempts to get under weigh, and then looked helplessly round for assistance. Bracy, the ever-ready, was at hand in an instant.

“My dear General, let me lend you an arm. You’re cramped from sitting so long.”

“Tha-a-ank you, my dear bo-o-oy,” returned the gallant officer, who appeared to have been seized with a sudden, wild determination to alter the English language by dividing monosyllables into three parts, and otherwise fancifully to embellish his mother-tongue. “Tha-a-ank you! It’s that confou-wow-wow-nded gun-shot wound in my knee-ee. I got it at Bu-Bu-Bu--no! not Bucellas. What is it, eh?”

“Busaco,” suggested Bracy, fearing he had over-dosed his patient.

However, when once the General got upon his legs he used them to better advantage than might have been expected, and proceeded upstairs, “rolling grand,” as that prince of clever-simple biographers (to adopt one of Mrs. Browning’s double-barrelled adjectives), Boswell, said of his ponderous idol. Encountering Frere at the foot of the staircase, he stumbled against that gentleman with so much force as nearly to knock him down. As he recovered his footing Frere turned angrily towards his assailant; but his irritation changed to an expression of contemptuous pity as his eye fell upon the white hair of General Gudgeon, and stepping on one side, he allowed him to pass. He was quietly following, when Mr. James Rasper, who had witnessed his discomfiture with an ill-bred laugh, excited by the wine he had drank, attempted, by way of a stupid practical joke, to repeat General Gudgeon’s involuntary assault, and reckoning Frere a good-natured, quiet sort of person, not likely to resent such a jest, pretended to stumble against him, and pushed past him when about half-way up the first flight of stairs. Never did a man (to use a common but forcible expression) “mistake his customer” more completely. In an instant Frere had collared him, dragged him down a step or two, then retaining his grasp of the coat-collar, seized him by the waistband of his trousers, and by a great exertion of strength, swung him clear over the banisters, lowered him till his feet were about a yard from the floor, and then let him drop. After which performance, having glanced round to see that his victim was not injured by the fall, he coolly pursued his way upstairs.