Part 18
The Earl of Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe came into the room at that moment, and Mr. Vernon, who had been feeling a little outside the intimacy of the company, made haste to propose that, everybody save Charles being present, the wine should be brought in.
Everybody agreed that nothing fitted in more exactly with their wishes than Mr. Vernon's timely suggestion and everybody selected his chair with that preciseness which stamps the beginning of an entertainment. Everybody sat down and the nuts were circulated.
Presently John entered with twelve quart-bottles of Burgundy on a huge tray. All of them had been gently warmed before a slow fire, and all of them were wiped clean of the cobwebs and dust of the several years spent in the ample cellars of the _Blue Boar_.
Vernon had prepared a short oration for the entrance of the liquor and while John reverently stationed a bottle at everybody's right hand, he made haste to deliver it. Perhaps his utterance was a shade too reminiscent of one of the many prologues spoken by his mother at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but that did not matter since nobody in the room was old enough to remember that lady's inimitable delivery of Mr. Dryden's rhymed Alexandrines.
"The life of Burgundy," said Mr. Vernon, "is very like the life of a butterfly. At first the grape or caterpillar-grub, feeding upon the richness of the soil, then the cocoon or bottle stage when it languishes for many years in darkness below the earth until--until it emerges glowing with a thousand varied tints of crimson--and, like a butterfly, wings its airy way into the brain of mankind."
The company, with the exception of my Lord Squall who was sometimes taken in the old family coach of the Winds to hear his father speak in the House of Lords, were not accustomed to lengthy speeches and looked at each other bashfully.
Lieutenant Blewforth with nautical tact saved the situation by drinking Mr. Vernon's health in a very large and brimming pint bumper which he emptied in two sonorous gulps.
As everybody else proceeded to follow this good example, everybody was soon very cheerful, and the advent of the second dozen of bottles was mightily applauded.
However, the master mind was still absent and the drinking, though steady, had not yet enlivened the company to uproarious spirits.
"Where's Charles?" bellowed Blewforth munching a devilled biscuit. "Where's that fellow Charles. Demme! He'll never catch us up at this rate and we shall have him sober as a post-captain when we are beginning to amuse ourselves."
"What, you rogue," cried our hero entering just as the Lieutenant bellowed his inquiry. "I wager five guineas, I am two bottles ahead of any gentleman present." In order to clinch the bet he flung his purse in the direction of the table. The gauntlet snuffed in its course two of the candles and fell with a plump into a piping bowl of punch splashing Tom Chalkley as high as his stock and imparting to His Majesty's uniform an odour of hot squeezed lemons that lasted for quite a couple of weeks.
"Charles! Charles!" bellowed the burly Lieutenant, "Huzza for Charles!"
The latter lurched into the vacant chair next to his friend Tony without a word to the host. However, nobody observed this breach of good manners, because everybody was anxiously leaning over to fill every glass in reach of the newcomer as a preliminary to drinking his very good health a score of times, without a heeltap to any one of them.
"Z--ds! Charles. Where have you been?" said Chalkley.
"Drinking old Burgundy with a rogue of a bagman who looked like Ranelagh Garden en Fete, for his face was illuminated with every hue of crimson lamp and I stake my wig his nose was as large and round as the Rotunda."
With the arrival of Charles, everybody woke up and there were calls for a song. The gallant Lieutenant was the first to respond with my Lord Dorset's _To you fair ladies now at Land_.
Let me remind you of that fine old ballad:
_To you fair ladies now at Land We men at Sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write_.
"Not at all," cried Charles.
_The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you;_
"and chorus, gentlemen, please,"
_With a Fa, la, la, la, la, la The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you_.
and so on to the last
_With a Fa, la, la, la, la Let us hear of no Inconstancy We have too much of that at Sea_.
And a proper noise everybody made with the _Fa la-la-la-la_ accentuating every _Fa_ with a bottle and every _La_ with one of Mr. Jeremy Daish's handsome silver spoons.
The song being a very lengthy one allowed everybody plenty of time to drink another quart of Burgundy before its rousing conclusion, and if the company cheered loudly at the beginning, by heavens, they cheered so loudly at the end that the noise was heard above the fiddlers in the new ballroom of Daish's famous Rooms and put everybody out of step in the last Cotillon notwithstanding the heroick efforts of the disreputable, but nimble-footed Captain Mann.
Then Charles gave a new ballad (new that is in the reign of Queen Anne) sung first at Messieurs Brook and Hellier's Club at the Temple Tavern in Fleet Street, but slightly altered by him to suit present company,
_Since I'm in the Chair and every one here Appears in gay humour and easy; Say, why should not I, a new Ballad try, Bright Brethren o' the Bottle to please ye. This wine is my theme, this is all on's Esteem, For Jeremy Daish cannot wrong us; Let them get Wealth who keeps us in health. By bringing neat liquor among us_.
(with chorus of last two lines repeated).
_Each Vintner of late, has got an Estate By brewing and Sophistication With cyder and sloes, they've made a d----d dose, Has poisoned one half of the nation_.
and so on until
_Now God Bless the King, Peers, Parliament Men, And keep 'em like us in true concord; And grant that all those, who dare be his foes, At Tyburn may swing in a strong cord; We'll Loyalists be, and bravely agree With lives and estates to defend her--him So then we'll not care come Peace or come War For Lewis, the Pope, or Pretender._
"Ah!" said Mr. Antony Clare whose father had been a Jacobite, "you've spoilt more than the rhyme by the last word."
This treasonable remark was the signal for more noise than ever because all the young gentlemen of the _Blue Boar_ who held His Majesty King George's commission felt bound to uphold the honour of the Royal Navy and the British Army by flinging a large number of Spanish nuts at the head of the disloyal Clare who retorted by emptying a whole ram's horn of snuff over Mr. Golightly so that for a while nothing was to be heard but vollies of gigantick sneezes. Exhaustion reigned for a moment, but presently the sound of hustling and bustling in the street outside roused everybody to fresh vigour of mischief.
My Lady Bunbutter's rout was over, and those of the Exquisite Mob who had been invited were standing on tiptoe on the steps of Daish's Rooms peering into the darkness and blinking in the glare of waving flambeaux. The chairmen were so busy quarrelling over their positions that they paid no attention to their fares and everything was in a very great state of confusion indeed; nor was the clamour abated by Mr. Lovely cleverly hitting the long red ear of the nearest chairmen with a Barcelona nut because the injured chairman instantly floored a linkboy who was standing by his side and the linkboy's torch severely burnt the legs of Lord Cinderton's tall footman in his ash-grey livery and the tall footman with a yell of dismay punched a flat-footed waiter on the nose and the flat-footed waiter butted an inoffensive fop in the middle of his sprigged silk waistcoat and the inoffensive fop struck out with his tasselled cane left and right with such force that presently everybody in the street below was fighting with his next door neighbour to the entire delight of the young gentlemen from the _Blue Boar_. Their next diversion was to empty the dregs of the Burgundy bottles upon the heads of the crowd, whereupon all the ladies of Curtain Wells screamed very loud to see such a number of bloody polls and faces.
Then Charles snatched off little Peter Wingfield's tie-wig and, having set fire to it, began to drop tufts of burning hair out of the window, which tufts made an immense smell and blew round and round in the gusty March air in a very alarming manner.
Little Peter Wingfield, having lost his own wig and being too little to snatch Lovely's wig, mounted one of the stout Windsor wheelback chairs and, taking down the print of a famous cock-fight extracted the hook from the wall and laid an embargo on the black silk ties of three of his friends in order to fish from the window for another wig. He succeeded in catching the Marquis of Hurricane's to the intense delight of his undutiful sons the Earl of Squall and Lord Augustus Wind. Of course after such a successful display of angling, everybody else had to try his hand with the picture hook and two more wigs were captured but proved so frowsy that they were burnt immediately. However, Mr. Chalkley caught the hem of Lady Jane Vane's petticoat just as she was stepping into her chair and would without doubt have injured that virgin's modest reputation for ever, had the garment been made of more durable stuff; as it was, the hook would not hold and nothing was disclosed beyond what is allowed by any wet day.
Then Mr. Daish came hurrying in and begged their honours to desist because the watch was coming, and what Mr. Ripple would say when he heard of the riot he did not dare surmize.
Poor Mr. Daish bowed and scraped and was so full of excuses that all the young gentlemen felt quite sorry for him and put ham seat foremost into the biggest bowl of punch in order to drown his troubles, whereupon Mr. Daish grew quite cholerick and vowed he would never let one of 'em enter his inn again and made such ado that the culprits all protested he was more noisy than anybody else, and offered to fetch in the watch and have him arrested in his own bowl of punch.
But presently they lifted him out and subscribed ten guineas by sending round Mr. Golightly's hat; and poor Mr. Daish was more full of excuses than ever and hoped that anything he had said that could by the most spirited gentleman be considered derogatory would be forgiven and ascribed to the dismay caused by the hot punch scalding his hinder parts and goading him beyond the bounds of polite remonstrance.
Everybody vowed that withered little Daish was a prince of good fellows and begged him to buy himself a new pair of cinnamon cloth breeches as soon as possible, while Thomas Chalkley of the Foot created much amusement by shouting that he was holding Dunquerque against the French. In order to hold Dunquerque against the French, it was very necessary that Mr. Chalkley should fling out of the window nineteen quart-bottles of Burgundy in quick succession, whereupon Lieutenant Blewforth of the _Lively_ not to be outdone vowed Portobello must be taken and proceeded to take it by climbing with amazing dexterity on to the mantelpiece armed only with a long Churchwarden's pipe. Yet notwithstanding all the efforts of Ensign Chalkley to hold Dunquerque against the French, notwithstanding that he was valiantly assisted by Cornet Golightly of the Grey Dragoons, who led a desperate cavalry charge round the whole room mounted upon one of the stout Windsor chairs, Dunquerque capitulated. In other words the dignified Curtain Wells watch marched upstairs with their lanterns and their staves and, standing in a knot by the doorway, demanded the reason for such a riotous breach of the King's peace, not to mention Mr. Ripple's and the Mayor's. But the young gentlemen were all so merry and the watch was so cold that it consented to taste the punch and presently left Dunquerque in the hands of the Allies and marched off warmer in mind and body to a quieter quarter of the ancient borough of Curtain Wells. I am sorry to add that, in passing the door of the Great House, they so far forgot their standing orders as to cry with enormous fervour the hour and the weather exactly underneath Mr. Ripple's window.
With the departure of the watch, peace fell upon the company for a while; a dice box was produced and some packs of cards, but play lasted a very short time and was voted too confoundedly dull for so joyful an evening. So more songs were sung, and it was exceedingly pleasant to hear these young gentlemen shouting the refrains and hammering Encores upon the polished mahogany table. It was exceedingly pleasant to see the wigs on their knees and the long clay pipes keeping time to the tune; but perhaps the pleasantest sight of all was the two sleepy waiters who leaned against the jambs of the door and, with kindly grins on their tired faces, tapped their flat feet to the more alluring measures.
The night was wearing away when somebody called 'Vernon for a song!'
The latter, to tell the truth, had felt out of his element, except during the brief interval of play, but on being called upon to occupy the centre of the room, he cheered up and announced his very great pleasure in acceding to the gentlemen's request.
I wonder if you are at all sorry for Mr. Vernon.
He was very lonely sitting in his high armchair at the head of the table. I wonder if you will forgive him for singing this song, which you will find in Mr. D'Urfey's _Pills to Purge Melancholy_.
_In the merry month of May, On a morn by break of day, Forth I walked the wood so wide, When as May was in her Pride Here I spy'd all alone, all alone, Phyllida and Coridon._
_Much ado there was God wot, He did love, but she could not, He said his love was to woo, He said none was false to you; He said he had lov'd her long, He said love should take no wrong._
_Coridon would have kissed her then, She said Maids must kiss no men Till they kiss for good and all; Then she bade the shepherds call All the Gods to witness truth, Ne'er was loved so fair a youth._
_Then with many a pretty oath, As Yea and Nay and Faith and Troth, Such as silly shepherds use, When they would not love abuse; Love which had been long deluded Was with kisses sweet concluded._
_And Phyllida with garlands gay Was crowned the Lady May._
The words were poor, as you will allow, and the tune a mere tinkle, but it had the effect of rousing our hero from the half-sleep into which he had fallen.
"Sing that song again, will you."
"G---- forbid," whispered little Peter Wingfield.
"Nay, sir," said Mr. Vernon, "'Tis too long to sing over again, but I'll toast the heroine if that will please your zest."
"No, sir," said Charles, "it will not please me at all."
The rest of the company began to wake up to the fact that something was happening.
"I should have thought," Vernon replied, "that Mr. Lovely would have cordially welcomed such a toast, for we all know his partiality to the name."
"Gentlemen," said our hero. Did I not promise you some pretty heroicks a score of pages back? "Gentlemen, I have a tale to tell you."
Charles looked very stiff and very fierce as, clapping on his wig, he began:
"A short while ago I perpetrated an indiscretion in mistaking Mr. Francis Vernon for a gentleman, for which I beg the pardon of everybody present. Mr. Vernon for some reason best known to himself saw fit to bribe my bookseller to insert in a volume I have just published twelve scurrilous lines reflecting upon the character of a young lady whom I--whom I----"
"Admire," suggested our villain.
"No, sir, respect."
"Sir, your virtue should make us all blush," sneered Vernon, cold and contemptuous.
"D---- n you and your blushes; blush deeper, then," shouted Charles, slinging the contents of a wineglass into Mr. Vernon's pallid face.
There was silence for a moment until the honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe proclaimed----
"The affair should be settled at once."
And this was the only remark that the Honourable gentleman uttered in the whole of the evening.
"With all my heart," cried Charles. "Tony, you'll act for me?"
Mr. Vernon had delicately wiped his face with a handkerchief of Mechlin lace. A single drop of the wine lingered above his left cheekbone. There, it was not unbecoming.
"I shall be proud to walk with Mr. Lovely in a month's time," said our villain, "but for the present my honour is pledged to a lady."
"Sure, you borrow on mighty small security, sir," said Charles.
The lingering drop of wine that stained Mr. Vernon's cheek seemed to expand for a brief moment.
"I have named my day," was all he answered.
"Mr. Vernon is within his rights, Charles," said Mr. Golightly, "and moreover the weather will be finer next month and we can make up a jovial party."
"'Tis hardly fair to poor Daish to fight in his rooms," said Blewforth. "Ripple would put his shutters up at once."
"H---- take you all," cried Charles, in an access of fury, as he sprang to strike Vernon.
The latter stepped back and with a well-aimed blow sent Charles flying backwards over two chairs.
"'Slife, Charles," said Mr. Golightly very stiffly. "Your conduct is d----d irregular, Sir."
"Most improper," said Mr. Chalkley.
"Devilish unrestrained," said little Peter Wingfield.
"Charles was two bottles ahead of us, gentlemen," said Blewforth who held a broad mind in a broad body.
Our hero was still lying where Vernon had sent him among cards and broken glass.
"D---- n you all," cried Clare. "Charles is worth the rest of you puppies in red and blue coats put together, and by G----, Mr. Vernon, he shall kill you for that blow."
Everybody was so surprized to hear Mr. Anthony Clare, cool and placid Tony Clare, break out like this that a wave of embarrassment swept over the room. One by one they hurried from the scene of such an irregular quarrel.
It was very entertaining to see them march out so stiff and straight, with nutshells crackling underneath their feet.
_Chapter the Twenty-sixth_
AND THE DREGS OF THE SAME
Mr. Anthony Clare stayed behind to help our hero home to bed. His effort to achieve sobriety had completely exhausted such faculties as remained after so many quarts of Burgundy, and he babbled to his companion foolish threats and impotent defiance in such an incoherent voice that I doubt his enemy, had he been present, would scarcely have been able to discover common sense in any one of his remarks. Charles woke up in the morning full of bile, dressed himself in a splenetick fury and ate a breakfast, conspicuous for its peppery flavours, with petulance and aversion. Then he crammed his gold-laced Kevenhuller hat on his head and went out to interview Mr. Horace Ripple.
In crossing the courtyard of the inn he passed Mr. Chalkley, and for a moment debated seriously the wisdom of challenging him out of hand. This he was the more inclined to do because he fancied the gallant Ensign was regarding him with some disfavour. However, the latter gave him a 'good morning,' and excused his want of geniality on the score of a liver teased out of endurance by hard and violent exercise.
So Charles forgave him his supposed breach of good manners and decided to hear from Tony a full account of the evening's events.
Clare presently overtook him under the archway, and, on being informed of our hero's destination, tried to dissuade him from the projected visit to the Beau.
"Z----ds! I tell you that blackguard shall be turned out of the Wells with ignominy." So much Charles vowed.
"But 'tis no business of yours, Charles," argued his friend.
"No business of mine? Eh! is that so? Then, by heaven! I'll make it my business."
"Ripple does not believe in settling disputes of this nature by the personal encounter."
"Then, by heaven!" said Charles, "that being the case there is the greater necessity for expelling him from the company of gentlemen."
"That is all very well," expostulated Clare, "but you are neither the young woman's brother nor, as I believe, her lover. What right have you to interfere?"
"I tell you, Tony," said Charles, "that Ripple has already pondered the advisableness of interfering with Mr. Francis Amor-Vernon and, indeed, begged me to disclose his pseudonym, but I would not."
"You owed him money, in fact?" said Clare, gently tapping the kerb of the pavement with his cane.
"Yes, I owed the dog money."
"And now he is paid?"
"Thanks to your generosity he is paid."
"Charles," said Mr. Clare, laying his hand affectionately on that indignant gentleman's right shoulder, "oblige me, who was able and glad to oblige you, by not proceeding further in this affair."
"'Tis monstrous ill-bred in you to remind me of an obligation under which I laid myself with the most profound disinclination." Charles was growing angry.
"Nay, you know that is not my meaning, but, consider Charles, this confounded, pasquinading pamphlet book has placed you in such an ill light that the world will be very loth to believe any good of you."
"Ripple is wiser than the raree-show over which he presides."
"Ay! but depend on't, he has already been informed of last night's affair and will be prejudiced against you on account of your quarrelsome overtures."
"'Sdeath! Tony, pray desist from further argument; you do not convince me and will soon rouse my choler."
"As you will," said Tony, and, leaving the company of his friend, betook himself to the solitude of green fields. In the pleasures of country sights and sounds he found some consolation for the undeserved reproaches of a gentleman whom he had gratified at considerable expense to himself.
Charles continued in the direction of the Great House. Being arrived on the topmost doorstep he rang the bell with complete assurance and knocked thrice with the heavy brass knocker.
He was admitted to an audience and walked upstairs to the tall white drawing-room without trepidation or bashfulness. Mr. Ripple had favoured him with so many compliments lately, had begged his advice on so many trifles of publick importance, had in fact adopted him so completely into intimate conversation, that Charles may be pardoned for supposing that, notwithstanding his unceremonious conduct of the night before last, notwithstanding his notoriety as the author of a book of satirical poems, he would still be received with that inimitable and charming condescension which the Great little Man reserved for few indeed.
He found the Beau seated among the roses of his wide-winged armchair sipping what looked uncommonly like a cordial physick. He did not rise to Mr. Lovely's entrance, did not even turn his head, but merely said in a tone, indifferent, lifeless and chill,
"To what may I ascribe the honour of this visit, sir?"
Conceive the shocked feelings of Madam Semele when he, whom she had hitherto regarded with the familiarity born of many amorous meetings, assumed at her own request the attributes of divinity. She died, if you can recall the sad event.
Charles experienced a particle of that dismay when the Great little Man for whom he had hitherto felt an almost playful affection suddenly appeared to him with the attributes of majesty--remoteness, scorn, and inaccessibleness. The pattern upon the Aubusson rug swam before his eyes in changes of tint and form as frequent as a child's Kaleidoscope, and he found himself in humble obeisance. The Beau twirled the fluted stem of the green Venetian glass that contained his physick and waited for Mr. Lovely to explain his business.
"Well, sir," he said at last.
The abashed favourite stammered his reasons for the visit.