by A. A. Milne
* * *
And yet, somehow, the British doggedness does not always answer. "Do you know that old woman in the drab jacket, Titmarsh?" my hereditary legislator asks of me. "What the devil is she bothering ME for, about my aunts, and setting her daughter at me? I ain't such a fool as that. I ain't clever, Titmarsh; I never said I was. I never pretend to be clever, and that—but why does that old fool bother ME, hay? Heigho! I'm devilish thirsty. I was devilish cut last night. I think I must have another go-off. Hallo you! Kellner! Garsong! Ody soda, Oter petty vare do dyvee de Conac. That's your sort; isn't it, Leader?"
* * *
"You will speak French well enough, if you practise," says Leader with a tender voice; "practice is everything. Shall we dine at the table-d'hote? Waiter! put down the name of Viscount Talboys and Mr. Leader, if you please."
* * *
The boat is full of all sorts and conditions of men. For'ard, there are peasants and soldiers: stumpy, placid-looking little warriors for the most part, smoking feeble cigars and looking quite harmless under their enormous helmets. A poor stunted dull-looking boy of sixteen, staggering before a black-striped sentry-box, with an enormous musket on his shoulder, does not seem to me a martial or awe-inspiring object. Has it not been said that we carry our prejudices everywhere, and only admire what we are accustomed to admire in our own country?
* * *
Yonder walks a handsome young soldier who has just been marrying a wife. How happy they seem! and how pleased that everybody should remark their happiness. It is a fact that in the full sunshine, and before a couple of hundred people on board the Joseph Miller steamer, the soldier absolutely kissed Mrs. Soldier; at which the sweet Fanny Kicklebury was made to blush.
* * *
We were standing together looking at the various groups: the pretty peasant-woman (really pretty for once,) with the red head-dress and fluttering ribbons, and the child in her arms; the jolly fat old gentleman, who was drinking Rhine-wine before noon, and turning his back upon all the castles, towers, and ruins, which reflected their crumbling peaks in the water; upon the handsome young students who came with us from Bonn, with their national colors in their caps, with their picturesque looks, their yellow ringlets, their budding moustaches, and with cuts upon almost every one of their noses, obtained in duels at the university: most picturesque are these young fellows, indeed—but ah, why need they have such black hands?
* * *
Near us is a type, too: a man who adorns his own tale, and points his own moral. "Yonder, in his carriage, sits the Count de Reineck, who won't travel without that dismal old chariot, though it is shabby, costly, and clumsy, and though the wicked red republicans come and smoke under his very nose. Yes, Miss Fanny, it is the lusty young Germany, pulling the nose of the worn-out old world."
* * *
"Law, what DO you mean, Mr. Titmarsh?" cries the dear Fanny.
* * *
"And here comes Mademoiselle de Reineck, with her companion. You see she is wearing out one of the faded silk gowns which she has spoiled at the Residenz during the season: for the Reinecks are economical, though they are proud; and forced, like many other insolvent grandees, to do and to wear shabby things.
* * *
"It is very kind of the young countess to call her companion 'Louise,' and to let Louise call her 'Laure;' but if faces may be trusted,—and we can read in one countenance conceit and tyranny; deceit and slyness in another,—dear Louise has to suffer some hard raps from dear Laure: and, to judge from her dress, I don't think poor Louise has her salary paid very regularly.
* * *
"What a comfort it is to live in a country where there is neither insolence nor bankruptcy among the great folks, nor cringing, nor flattery among the small. Isn't it, Miss Fanny?"
* * *
Miss Fanny says, that she can't understand whether I am joking or serious; and her mamma calls her away to look at the ruins of Wigginstein. Everybody looks at Wigginstein. You are told in Murray to look at Wigginstein.
* * *
Lankin, who has been standing by, with a grin every now and then upon his sardonic countenance, comes up and says, "Titmarsh, how can you be so impertinent?"
* * *
"Impertinent! as how?"
* * *
"The girl must understand what you mean; and you shouldn't laugh at her own mother to her. Did you ever see anything like the way in which that horrible woman is following the young lord about?"
* * *
"See! You see it every day, my dear fellow; only the trick is better done, and Lady Kicklebury is rather a clumsy practitioner. See! why nobody is better aware of the springes which are set to catch him than that young fellow himself, who is as knowing as any veteran in May Fair. And you don't suppose that Lady Kicklebury fancies that she is doing anything mean, or anything wrong? Heaven bless you! she never did anything wrong in her life. She has no idea but that everything she says, and thinks, and does is right. And no doubt she never did rob a church: and was a faithful wife to Sir Thomas, and pays her tradesmen. Confound her virtue! It is that which makes her so wonderful—that brass armor in which she walks impenetrable—not knowing what pity is, or charity; crying sometimes when she is vexed, or thwarted, but laughing never; cringing, and domineering by the same natural instinct—never doubting about herself above all. Let us rise, and revolt against those people, Lankin. Let us war with them, and smite them utterly. It is to use against these, especially, that Scorn and Satire were invented."
* * *
"And the animal you attack," says Lankin, "is provided with a hide to defend him—it is a common ordinance of nature."
* * *
And so we pass by tower and town, and float up the Rhine. We don't describe the river. Who does not know it? How you see people asleep in the cabins at the most picturesque parts, and angry to be awakened when they fire off those stupid guns for the echoes! It is as familiar to numbers of people as Greenwich; and we know the merits of the inns along the road as if they were the "Trafalgar" or the "Star and Garter." How stale everything grows! If we were to live in a garden of Eden, now, and the gate were open, we should go out, and tramp forward, and push on, and get up early in the morning, and push on again—anything to keep moving, anything to get a change: anything but quiet for the restless children of Cain.
* * *
So many thousands of English folks have been at Rougetnoirbourg in this and last seasons, that it is scarcely needful to alter the name of that pretty little gay, wicked place. There were so many British barristers there this year that they called the "Hotel des Quatre Saisons" the "Hotel of Quarter Sessions." There were judges and their wives, serjeants and their ladies, Queen's counsel learned in the law, the Northern circuit and the Western circuit: there were officers of half-pay and full-pay, military officers, naval officers, and sheriffs' officers. There were people of high fashion and rank, and people of no rank at all; there were men and women of reputation, and of the two kinds of reputation; there were English boys playing cricket; English pointers putting up the German partridges, and English guns knocking them down; there were women whose husbands, and men whose wives were at home; there were High Church and Low Church—England turned out for a holiday, in a word. How much farther shall we extend our holiday ground, and where shall we camp next? A winter at Cairo is nothing now. Perhaps ere long we shall be going to Saratoga Springs, and the Americans coming to Margate for the summer.
* * *
Apartments befitting her dignity and the number of her family had been secured for Lady Kicklebury by her dutiful son, in the same house in which one of Lankin's friends had secured for us much humbler lodgings. Kicklebury received his mother's advent with a great deal of good humor; and a wonderful figure the good-natured little baronet was when he presented himself to his astonished friends, scarcely recognizable by his own parent and sisters, and the staring retainers of their house.
* * *
"Mercy, Kicklebury! have you beco
me a red republican?" his mother asked.
* * *
"I can't find a place to kiss you," said Miss Fanny, laughing to her brother; and he gave her pretty cheek such a scrub with his red beard, as made some folks think it would be very pleasant to be Miss Fanny's brother.
* * *
In the course of his travels, one of Sir Thomas Kicklebury's chief amusements and cares had been to cultivate this bushy auburn ornament. He said that no man could pronounce German properly without a beard to his jaws; but he did not appear to have got much beyond this preliminary step to learning; and, in spite of his beard, his honest English accent came out, as his jolly English face looked forth from behind that fierce and bristly decoration, perfectly good-humored and unmistakable. We try our best to look like foreigners, but we can't. Every Italian mendicant or Pont Neuf beggar knows his Englishman in spite of blouse, and beard, and slouched hat. "There is a peculiar high-bred grace about us," I whisper to Lady Kicklebury, "an aristocratic je ne scais quoi, which is not to be found in any but Englishmen; and it is that which makes us so immensely liked and admired all over the Continent." Well, this may be truth or joke—this may be a sneer or a simple assertion: our vulgarities and our insolences may, perhaps, make us as remarkable as that high breeding which we assume to possess. It may be that the Continental society ridicules and detests us, as we walk domineering over Europe; but, after all, which of us would denationalize himself? who wouldn't be an Englishman? Come, sir, cosmopolite as you are, passing all your winters at Rome or at Paris; exiled by choice, or poverty, from your own country; preferring easier manners, cheaper pleasures, a simpler life: are you not still proud of your British citizenship? and would you like to be a Frenchman?
* * *
Kicklebury has a great acquaintance at Noirbourg, and as he walks into the great concert-room at night, introducing his mother and sisters there, he seemed to look about with a little anxiety, lest all of his acquaintance should recognize him. There are some in that most strange and motley company with whom he had rather not exchange salutations, under present circumstances. Pleasure-seekers from every nation in the world are here, sharpers of both sexes, wearers of the stars and cordons of every court in Europe; Russian princesses, Spanish grandees, Belgian, French, and English nobles, every degree of Briton, from the ambassador, who has his conge, to the London apprentice who has come out for his fortnight's lark. Kicklebury knows them all, and has a good-natured nod for each.
* * *
"Who is that lady with the three daughters who saluted you, Kicklebury?" asks his mother.
* * *
"That is our Ambassadress at X., ma'am. I saw her yesterday buying a penny toy for one of her little children in Frankfort Fair."
* * *
Lady Kicklebury looks towards Lady X.: she makes her excellency an undeveloped curtsy, as it were; she waves her plumed head (Lady K. is got up in great style, in a rich dejeuner toilette, perfectly regardless of expense); she salutes the ambassadress with a sweeping gesture from her chair, and backs before her as before royalty, and turns to her daughters large eyes full of meaning, and spreads out her silks in state.
* * *
"And who is that distinguished-looking man who just passed, and who gave you a reserved nod?" asks her ladyship. "Is that Lord X.?"
* * *
Kicklebury burst out laughing. "That, ma'am, is Mr. Higmore, of Conduit Street, tailor, draper, and habit-maker: and I owe him a hundred pound."
* * *
"The insolence of that sort of people is really intolerable," says Lady Kicklebury. "There MUST be some distinction of classes. They ought not to be allowed to go everywhere. And who is yonder, that lady with the two boys and the—the very high complexion?" Lady Kicklebury asks.
* * *
"That is a Russian princess: and one of those little boys, the one who is sucking a piece of barley-sugar, plays, and wins five hundred louis in a night."
* * *
"Kicklebury, you do not play? Promise your mother you do not! Swear to me at this moment you do not! Where are the horrid gambling-rooms? There, at that door where the crowd is? Of course, I shall never enter them!"
* * *
"Of course not, ma'am," says the affectionate son on duty. "And if you come to the balls here, please don't let Fanny dance with anybody, until you ask me first: you understand. Fanny, you will take care."
* * *
"Yes, Tom," says Fanny.
* * *
"What, Hicks, how are you, old fellow? How is Platts? Who would have thought of you being here? When did you come?"
* * *
"I had the pleasure of travelling with Lady Kicklebury and her daughters in the London boat to Antwerp," says Captain Hicks, making the ladies a bow. Kicklebury introduces Hicks to his mother as his most particular friend—and he whispers Fanny that "he's as good a fellow as ever lived, Hicks is." Fanny says, "He seems very kind and good-natured: and—and Captain Hicks waltzes very well," says Miss Fanny with a blush, "and I hope I may have him for one of my partners."
* * *
What a Babel of tongues it is in this splendid hall with gleaming marble pillars: a ceaseless rushing whisper as if the band were playing its music by a waterfall! The British lawyers are all got together, and my friend Lankin, on his arrival, has been carried off by his brother serjeants, and becomes once more a lawyer. "Well, brother Lankin," says old Sir Thomas Minos, with his venerable kind face, "you have got your rule, I see." And they fall into talk about their law matters, as they always do, wherever they are—at a club, in a ball-room, at a dinner-table, at the top of Chimborazo. Some of the young barristers appear as bucks with uncommon splendor, and dance and hang about the ladies. But they have not the easy languid deuce-may-care air of the young bucks of the Hicks and Kicklebury school—they can't put on their clothes with that happy negligence; their neck-cloths sit quite differently on them, somehow: they become very hot when they dance, and yet do not spin round near so quickly as those London youths, who have acquired experience in corpore vili, and learned to dance easily by the practice of a thousand casinos.
* * *
Above the Babel tongues and the clang of the music, as you listen in the great saloon, you hear from a neighboring room a certain sharp ringing clatter, and a hard clear voice cries out, "Zero rouge," or "Trente-cinq noir. Impair et passe." And then there is a pause of a couple of minutes, and then the voice says, "Faites le jeu, Messieurs. Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus"—and the sharp ringing clatter recommences. You know what that room is? That is Hades. That is where the spirited proprietor of the establishment takes his toll, and thither the people go who pay the money which supports the spirited proprietor of this fine palace and gardens. Let us enter Hades, and see what is going on there.
* * *
Hades is not an unpleasant place. Most of the people look rather cheerful. You don't see any frantic gamblers gnashing their teeth or dashing down their last stakes. The winners have the most anxious faces; or the poor shabby fellows who have got systems, and are pricking down the alternations of red and black on cards, and don't seem to be playing at all. On fete days the country people come in, men and women, to gamble; and THEY seem to be excited as they put down their hard-earned florins with trembling rough hands, and watch the turn of the wheel. But what you call the good company is very quiet and easy. A man loses his mass of gold, and gets up and walks off, without any particular mark of despair. The only gentleman whom I saw at Noirbourg who seemed really affected was a certain Count de Mustacheff, a Russian of enormous wealth, who clenched his fists, beat his breast, cursed his stars, and absolutely cried with grief: not for losing money, but for neglecting to win and play upon a coup de vingt, a series in which the red was turned up twenty times running: which series, had he but played, it is clear that he might have broken M. Lenoir's bank, and shut up the gambling-house, and doubled his own fortune—when he would have been no happier, and all the balls and music, all the newspaper-rooms and p
arks, all the feasting and pleasure of this delightful Rougetnoirbourg would have been at an end.
* * *
For though he is a wicked gambling prince, Lenoir, he is beloved in all these regions; his establishment gives life to the town, to the lodging-house and hotel-keepers, to the milliners and hackney-coachmen, to the letters of horse-flesh, to the huntsmen and gardes-de-chasse; to all these honest fiddlers and trumpeters who play so delectably. Were Lenoir's bank to break, the whole little city would shut up; and all the Noirbourgers wish him prosperity, and benefit by his good fortune.
* * *
Three years since the Noirbourgers underwent a mighty panic. There came, at a time when the chief Lenoir was at Paris, and the reins of government were in the hands of his younger brother, a company of adventurers from Belgium, with a capital of three hundred thousand francs, and an infallible system for playing rouge et noir, and they boldly challenged the bank of Lenoir, and sat down before his croupiers, and defied him. They called themselves in their pride the Contrebanque de Noirbourg: they had their croupiers and punters, even as Lenoir had his: they had their rouleaux of Napoleons, stamped with their Contrebanquish seal:—and they began to play.