Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  “To dine and stay all night, your Greece,” observed Mr. Jorrocks to the Duke, letting fall his coat laps, preparatory to offering his hand to the Marquis.

  The Marquis bowed and grinned,’ and laid his hand upon his heart, as if perfectly overcome by the honour — proudest moment of his life! —

  “Where I dine I sleep, and where I sleep I breakfast, your Greece,” observed Mr. Jorrocks, resuming his position, finding it impossible to compete with the Marquis in bows.

  “Let me introduce you to Mrs. Jorrocks,” said the Duke, taking his son by the arm, and leading him up to the plume, the bearer of which rose and bobbed and curtsied till the Duke and Marquis passed on to Emma, whom the Duke introduced as Miss Jorrocks; and the Marquis thinking she seemed more like the thing than any one else in the room, continued to bow and simper and shuffle before her, leaving the Duke to finish the circuit alone, and bear up before the now triumphant and all-gratified Mrs. Flather — who was listening to the painful recital of how Mrs. Smith’s little girl had got two double teeth, and how her brother George had gone through the whole of —

  “Whene’er I take my walks abroad,

  How many poor I see!”

  without a single mistake or wrong pronunciation.

  The author of “Cecil,” we think, says there is nothing so difficult of settlement (except a pipe of port), as a peer’s eldest son; and some other conjurer says, it is less difficult to arrange a party of duchesses than a string of justices’ wives. On this occasion it certainly was so. Notwithstanding the Duchess had done all she could to drum into the Duke’s dull head how they were to go, his natural obtuseness and self-sufficiency made him confound them all together; and at the moment that the folding-doors were thrown open, and dinner announced, he knew no more than the man in the moon whether. Mrs. Hamilton Dobbin’s husband, or Mrs. Grumbleton’s, were first on the commission, or whether Jorrocks or Jenkins had most votes at command. Indeed, he forgot which was Mrs. Jorrocks; at all events he went bolt up to Mrs. Flather, who could by no possibility do them any good; and the Marquis having reconnoitred the room, and satisfied himself that Miss Hamilton Dobbin and all the Miss Smiths were infinitely inferior to the model of propriety, offered her his arm in the most supplicating manner, and tripped through the now greatly agitated group with an air as though he were leading her out to a dance instead of a dinner.

  Mr. Jorrocks, thinking there seemed likely to be a good deal of bother in the arrangement of couples, very considerately tendered his arm to the Duchess, to the exclusion of Lord Aubrey, and a couple of Honourables; and the two having got in the rear of the flock, drove them “pell mell” before them, some with their neighbours’ wives, some with their own, some without anybody’s wives at all.

  The Marquis being much out of practice, was glad of an opportunity of rubbing up his small talk, especially with a girl who did not look sheepish, and be-lord and be-lordship him as country dowdies are in the habit of doing. Indeed, before he had got through his soup, he found that Emma was quite a “half-way meet” sort of girl; and looking upon everything below a nobleman’s daughter as fair game, he began to make play, very strong.

  Of course the conversation began about flowers. Flowers in the country, fancy-balls in London. Fancy-balls are safe specs: they are within the reach of every one.

  “Was she fond of a garden?” Oh, Emma doted upon a garden! Nothing she liked so much as running about with her watering-pot, picking up daisies, pulling up weeds, tying up roses. “Was the Marquis fond of flowers?”

  “He adored them!” at the same time diving his nose into his bouquet.

  Emma admired them.

  “Would she allow him to present her with one?”

  Emma pressed it to her lips, and put it into her bosom. We forgot to say that the pink satin was made with a peak.

  Then they talked about horses. Was Emma fond of riding? Oh, nothing she-liked so much! just riding about the country alone, wherever fancy led her.

  “Alone!” rejoined the Marquis; “you should always have a gentleman with you.” He liked sauntering along a green lane, with a pretty girl in a nice tight-fitting habit, and a well-set-on hat — not those confounded butter-and-eggs-poke sort of bonnets country misses rode the family horse about in. Then he asked Emma to take wine, and gave her a look as he bowed, that as much as said, “You are the girl for me.”

  Meanwhile the Duke, having exhausted his small talk with Mrs. Flather, and made as many blunders as he could during the time they had been together, began to look up the table to see whom he should inflict his politeness upon. Mr. Jorrocks’s sky-blue coat and rubicund visage forming an attractive feature at the top of the table, procured the honour of a holloa from the Duke’s voice, who had good lungs, and made free use of them.

  “Pray, Mr. Jorrocks,” roared he, “how old are you?”

  “Please your Greece, I’m fefty-five,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, knocking half-a-dozen years off at a blow.

  “Indeed!” exclaimed the Duke, “quite a young man! may live these twenty years yet!”

  “I intend so, your Greece!” replied Mr. Jorrocks.

  “Take a glass of wine, Mr. Jorrocks!”

  “With all my ‘eart, your Greece — champagne, if you please.”

  “Pray, Mr. Jorrocks, who was your mother?” inquired his Grace, after he had bowed and drank off his wine. “Please your Greece, my mother was a washerwoman.”

  “A washerwoman, indeed!” exclaimed his Grace—” that’s very odd — I like washerwomen — nice, clean, wholesome people — I wish my mother had been a washerwoman.”

  “I vish mine had been a duchess,” replied Mr. Jorrocks. Mrs. Flather, who sat on the Duke’s right, on the opposite side of the table to that at which Emma and the Marquis were planted, was in ecstacies at the apparent prosperity of the scheme. Scheme indeed, she thought, it could hardly be called, seeing it was a mutual arrangement — the Duke taking her, the Marquis taking Emma, and so on. The consequence was, Mrs. Flather felt far more at ease, and underwent far less trepidation than her opposite neighbour, Mrs. Thomas Chambers, who would have given anything to have been restoring her old spangled turban to the band-box, for another twelvemonth’s slumber. A country turban lasts for ever. Meanwhile the Duke chattered, and talked, and eat, and drank, and called people by their wrong names; and as the wine began to operate, confidence began to creep in, and before the sweets commenced their circuits, neighbours began plucking up courage sufficient to ask each other to wine; and the popping of champagne corks formed a pleasing variety to the chatter and clatter of the table.

  So the dinner progressed.

  The Marquis’s left-hand neighbour, Mrs. Tomkins, having at length found her tongue, and got into the midst of a most interesting, oft-repeated ramble, about a ragged-coated man, who had knocked at their door, and asked for some cold chicken and punch, the Marquis and Emma went at it harder than ever, a listener always acting as a clog on the free vent of conversation, as Mr. Jorrocks and Mrs. Flather had found in the morning.

  “Have you much gaiety in your part of the world?” asked the Marquis; “many balls, many parties?”

  “Oh dear no,” replied Emma, “we are shockingly dull.”

  “Short of beaux, perhaps?” observed the Marquis. “Indeed, we haven’t such a thing in our part of the country: there are only five young men at Sellborough, and four of them are engaged.”

  “And you have bespoken the fifth, I suppose.”

  “Not I, indeed replied Emma, with a toss of the head.

  “But are there no officers? surely it’s a garrison town.”

  “It’s a new regiment,” observed Emma; “besides, you know, we are a good way from the town. We never see such a thing as a redcoat in our little village, except perhaps a stray fox-hunter, now and then asking his way. Do you hunt?” —

  “God forbid!” replied the Marquis, with a shake of his head and shrug of his shoulders, for he had gone out once, and soon found himself in a wet ditch, wi
th his horse on the top of him.

  “I hate fox-hunters,” observed Emma, half to herself and half to the Marquis.

  “Horrid fellows!” ejaculated the dandy. “It seems a sort of uncivilised process, fit only for heavy dragoons, and flying artillery men. By the way, though, your pa is a fox-hunter, is not he?” continued the Marquis, looking significantly at Mr. Jorrocks.

  “He’s not my pa,” observed Emma, somewhat disconcerted, more at the unfavourable aspect it threw on affairs than any shock the insinuation occasioned her feelings.

  “But didn’t my pa introduce you as Miss Jorrocks?” inquired the Marquis. —

  “It’s not the case for all that,” observed Emma tartly, “my name is Flather; that is my mamma sitting beside the Duke.”

  “True!” observed the Marquis, “how stoopid I am. Lor’, I know your ma as well as I know myself. Your pa, too, I knew, poor man. Well, but tell me now about the old boy in the sky-blue and yellow shorts — the fireman’s or Thames waterman’s uniform, in fact. Isn’t he some relation? Your uncle, or something?” —

  “Mr. Jorrocks, allow me the honour of taking wine with you,” continued he, seeing his eyeing had attracted our hero’s attention.

  “Champagne, if you please!” replied Mr Jorrocks.

  “No, he’s no relation whatever,” replied Emma, “only a neighbour.”

  “He seems a desperate old quiz,” observed the Marquis, putting down his glass, after touching his lips with it. “I wonder what he’d take for his wig.”

  “Vulgar old man,” said Emma, “but country life makes us acquainted with strange companions.”

  “You are a great fox-hunter, I understand, Mr. Jorrocks,” screamed his Grace, down the table. “Have you killed many foxes this summer?”

  “No, your Greece, we don’t ‘unt in the summer,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, with a slight curl of his upper lip— “farm, i’ the summer, fox i’ the winter, that’s the ticket.”

  “True!” rejoined his Grace, “I’m glad you’re a farmer — am a great one myself — prize bull, prize pig, prize ram, prize turnip, prize spade — should like to talk to you about farming.”

  “Nitrate o’ sober! guano! sub-soilin’! Smith o’ Deanston! top dressin’ wi’ soot, and all that sort o’ thing!’ added Mr. Jorrocks. “Shall be ‘appy to take wine with your Greece.”

  “With all my heart,” replied the Duke. “What shall we have?” —

  “Champagne, if you please,” said Mr. Jorrocks; adding, in an audible whisper to himself, “can get sherry at ‘ome.”

  “The Duke don’t ‘unt, I think,” observed Mr. Jorrocks to the Duchess, setting down his glass with a thump that almost broke the slender stalk. “Wish he’d got some ‘ounds; winter’ll be dull without them — knows a man with five-and-twenty couple to dispose on — fifteen couple o’ dogs, and ten couple o’ betches — no offence, my lady,” added he, with a bow and shake of the head, “letch is female dog.” The sweets were now in full swing. Mrs. Flather sat on thorns as the dishes were taken to Emma; and she helped herself in succession to pastry, jellies, creams, tipsey cakes, and all sorts of trash.

  Oh, how she grieved for the loss of the buns, and dreaded the effect on the complexion in the morning! In vain she tried to catch the model’s eye — she either would not see her, or was too absorbed with the sweets on her plate, or the sweet things the Marquis was saying to her, and eat and crammed away in a most determined way. Fortunately, the Marquis was a spoon-food man, and having been laying back for the sweets, was too busy “dieting” himself, as the Poor-Law people call it, to pay much attention to his neighbour. At length both Emma and the Marquis got surfeited, and the latter having let off the old piece of sentiment “about sweets to the sweet” as Emma magnanimously declined a third offer of Maraingues, again took wine with her; and laying his napkin across his legs, turned slightly in his chair, and began whispering soft nothings in her ear ——

  “Was she fond of dancing?” —

  “Oh! she delighted in dancing!” —

  “Would she be in London next spring?” —

  Emma feared not — oh! she should like it so much — but she had nobody to take her.

  She should get her ma; everybody should go to London in the spring, Paris in the autumn, Italy in the winter. Almack’s was not what it was, still the rooms were good, and the floor excellent. The little anteroom was so nice for platonics — his ma was a patroness. — Did she know the Princess of Quackenbruck?

  (How could the poor girl? But these London chaps always fancy that everybody knows whom they do.) Well, the Princess Orel Quackenbruck was going to be married to Lord Plantagenet Hay, the Duke of Drossington’s son. Did she know Taget Hay?

  (How the devil should she?)

  Well, he understood it was all settled. Indeed he knew it was; for he had it from Storr & Mortimer, who had been sending him down some pattern wristband studs that morning, and the diamonds were ordered there — fifteen thousand pounds’ worth — no great quantity, to be sure, but then she would come in for the family ones at last. His ma’s diamonds were worth forty thousand.

  Emma wondered when they would be hers.

  “Matrimony seems all the rage just now,” observed the Marquis, breaking off in the middle of his strawberry ice, “Lord George Noodleton wants to marry Miss Dumps, the banker’s daughter, but his pa won’t hear of it unless old Dumps will come down with a hundred thousand pounds.”

  “Mercenary creature!” exclaimed Emma, stuffing her mouth as full as ever it would hold.

  The Marquis then rehearsed several weddings that had taken place among his friends during the previous year, to all of which Emma listened with the greatest interest; for though she had never heard the names before, still there is a something about weddings, high or low, that all women like to listen to, and the Marquis having about exhausted his stock of matrimonial reminiscences, observed casually, as he drank off his glass of sherry, that all the world seemed marrying mad, and he supposed it would be “their turn next.”

  Just then the Duchess gave the signal, and Emma rose, with a maiden blush upon her maiden cheeks, having, as she considered, all but captured the coronet.

  CHAPTER XII.

  LOOK ON THIS picture and on that.”

  A RATHER difficult passage in our history now draws near — namely, what the ladies did when they got back to the drawing-room at Donkeyton Castle. In these points authors disclose their sex. A lady would be great here, whereas we of the breeches, at least legitimately of the breeches, are “quite out.” In this dilemma we inquired of a female friend, who happened to be teaing with our grandmamma (a most remarkable old lady of eighty-three, who reads without specs), what ladies did when they retired from the diningroom. “Oh,” said she, “they generally go to the fire, dawdle and stand about a little, and then sit down and talk scandal.”

  We will then, gentle reader, with your permission, suppose the fire, and standing about part done, and that the ladies are pairing off, or grouping for the scandal stakes. Emma, who could hardly contain herself, and had given sundry nods, and made several significant grimaces at her mamma, all indicative of “I’ve done it” now got to her, and giving her a most loving squeeze of the elbow, whispered in her ear, “All right.”

  “All right, my dear! what d’you mean?” inquired Mrs. Flather. —

  “All right” repeated Emma, with a most triumphant smile.

  “You don’t say so!” exclaimed Mrs. Flather, in a somewhat louder tone. “Has he offered?” —

  “Have you seen these beautiful views of Copley Fielding’s?” inquired the Duchess, with one of those bugbears of company-making, a portfolio of drawings. What iniquitous work that is. The Duchess had set three groups to their books, just as a jailor would set his prisoners to their task work. Indeed, we think the prisoners have the best of it, for they see what they have to do; while, in a case of this sort, you must reckon on having to run the gauntlet of all the portfolios in circulation, without knowin
g how many more there may be in reserve.

  Oh, Emma was “ so obliged”— “there was nothing she liked so much as drawings — scenery of all things.” So the Duchess, having pushed her into a chair, and placed her mother beside her, went and got Mrs. Hamilton Dobbin to join the party to make up the trio, and left them to the enjoyment of their intellectual treat. How Mrs. Flather wished Mrs. Hamilton Dobbin at home. Here let us leave them for a time.

  The ladies being comfortably swept out, and the champagne having supplied a certain degree of animation and confidence, the gentlemen drew towards the Duke with less apparent embarrassment than had marked their approaches during the earlier part of the evening. Mr. Jorrocks, whose maxim of “Perfect ease being perfect gentility” never allowed him to feel out of his element, having got rid of the Duchess, took his napkin and large wine-glass (very large it was too), and strutting to the other end of the room, planted himself most consequentially on the right of the Duke, to the great relief of Mr. Thomas Chambers, who, but for him, would have been driven into that dangerous position on the retirement of Mrs. Flather.