CHAPTER XI.—TOM BRACY MEETS HIS MATCH.
The position in which we left Lewis and his friends at the conclusion of the preceding chapter was decidedly more peculiar than agreeable, and afforded no bad illustration of the American expression, “a pretty tall fix.” Bracy, the fertile in expedients, was the first to hazard a suggestion, which he did by whispering to Frere, “You had better be taken suddenly ill; I shall say you have had too much tongue (if you have not, I have), and that it has disagreed with you.”
“Wait a bit,” returned Frere; “you have seen the real Prince, haven’t you?”
Bracy nodded in assent, and Frere continued, “He’s something like me, is he not?”
“Better looking,” was the uncomplimentary rejoinder.
“Well, never mind that,” resumed Frere. “I don’t set up for a beauty, but if I am sufficiently like to pass for him I might contrive to humbug the fellow for a few minutes, and then we could manage to slip away quietly without any shindy at all.”
“You can try it on if you choose, but he is safe to find you out, unless he is a perfect fool, and that is too great a mercy to hope for,” returned Bracy dejectedly. “If the worst comes to the worst, pretend to pick a quarrel with him, draw your carving-knife and make a poke at him; then Arundel and I will bundle him out of the room bodily, and swear we are doing it to save his life. I can see nothing else for it, for there go the women, and, by Jove, here’s the learned Pundit himself! Oh! isn’t he pretty to look at? Why, he is a fac-simile of the picture in the old editions of Gay’s Fables, of ‘the Monkey who had seen the World.’”
While this dialogue was proceeding, Lady Lombard, having gathered the ladies under her wing, had marched them off to the drawing-room, Miss Peyton finding an opportunity as she passed Lewis to say, in German, “Tell your Prince that when I sell myself I shall want a great deal more than £500.”
“In fact, that your value is quite inestimable,” returned Lewis.
“Exactly so,” was the reply. “I am glad you have sufficient penetration to have found it out already.”
The description given by Bracy of the Doctor’s outward man was by no means inapt. His hair and whiskers were grey, and, still adhering to the fashions of his younger days, he wore powder and a pig-tail. His dress consisted of a black single-breasted coat with a stand-up collar, knee breeches, and silk stockings; a profusion of shirt-frill rushed impetuously out of the front of his waistcoat, a stiff white neckcloth appeared thoroughly to deserve the appellation of “choker” which Bracy applied to it, while a shirt-collar starched to a pitch of savage harshness invaded the region of his cheeks to an extent which rendered the tract of country lying between the ears and the corners of the mouth a complete terra incognita. Constant study of the Eastern hieroglyphics had probably rendered his wearing spectacles a matter of necessity; at all events a huge pair in a broad tortoiseshell setting garnished his nose, which, truth compels us to confess, was more than slightly red, in which particular it afforded a decided contrast to his general complexion, which was, we say it distinctly and without compromise, yellow.
To this gentleman, who entered with a hasty step and glanced round him with a quick, abrupt, and rather startling manner, did Bracy address himself with much empressement.
“My dear sir, this is most fortunate; the Prince is quite delighted at the rencontre, but you must expect to find his Highness greatly altered. The cares of life, my dear sir, the anxieties attending—ah! I see you are impatient; I won’t detain you, but I wished to warn you that if you should perceive any great change in his appearance, you must not be surprised, and above all be careful not to show it by your manner. You have no idea how sensitive he is on the point; quite morbidly so, really. Don’t let me detain you—how well you are looking!”
A good deal of pantomimic action had accompanied the delivery of this speech, the Doctor being engaged in making vain and futile attempts to get past his persecutor, who on his part continued, with an affectation of the deepest respect, constantly, and with the utmost perseverance, to frustrate them. The concluding words of his address, however, elicited the following rejoinder, spoken in a quick, cross manner:—
“You have the advantage of me, sir, for I do not remember ever setting eyes on you before in my life. I never forget a face I have once seen.”
“Confound his memory!” thought Bracy, “Frere won’t have a chance with him;” he only said, however, “You are right, Doctor; the fact of your looking well is so self-evident that I ventured to remark it, without having any previous data to go upon—but here is his Highness,” and as he spoke, he at length moved on one side and allowed the man of learning to pass.
Frere coming forward at the same minute, Bracy whispered, while the Doctor bent in a low salaam:
“I have bothered his brains sweetly for him, he hardly knows whether he’s standing on his head or his heels; so now you must take care of yourself, and joy go with you.”
Frere, thus apostrophised, returned the Doctor’s salute with much cordiality, and Bracy, feigning some excuse, left them to entertain each other, having before his eyes a wholesome dread of the newcomer’s addressing him in Persian, and thereby discovering his deplorable ignorance of that interesting language.
Time, which does not stand still for princes any more than for private individuals, passed on with its usual rapidity. Most of the gentlemen having eaten as much, and drunk probably more (looking at it in a medical point of view) than was good for them, had rejoined the ladies, and it became evident to Bracy that a crisis in his evening’s amusement was approaching. On his return to the drawing-room he must of course resume his duties as interpreter, and this inconvenient Persian professor would inevitably discover the imposture. This was the more provoking, as Frere’s likeness to the Prince must evidently have been much stronger than he had imagined, and his acquaintance with the rules of Persian etiquette more extensive than he had believed possible, for the Doctor continued to converse with the utmost gravity, and appeared to believe in him implicitly. While he was still pondering the matter in his anxious mind, the few last remaining guests conveyed themselves away, and the Prince and his party were left to dispute possession of the supper-room with empty champagne bottles and half-tipsy waiters. Frere, when he perceived this to be the case, beckoned Bracy to approach, and as soon as he was within earshot, whispered—
“I have humbugged the old fellow beautifully on the score of our Persian recollections, but he has just been questioning me about you,—where you acquired your knowledge of the language, whether you have been much in the East, how I became acquainted with you, and all the rest of it. I put him off with lies as long as I could, but it would not do, and as a last resource, I have been obliged to refer him to you.”
“The deuce you have!” was the reply; “that is pleasant. He’ll be jabbering his confounded lingo, and I shall not understand a word he says to me; besides, my jargon won’t go down with him, you know. I tell you what, I shall be off, and you must say upstairs (he can interpret for you) that I have been sent for by the prime minister at a minute’s notice, à la De Grandeville.”
“’Tis too late,” replied Frere; and at the same instant the Doctor seized Bracy by the button, and in a stern and impressive manner asked some apparently searching question in Persian. Few men had enjoyed the delight of seeing Tom Bracy in the unenviable frame of mind expressed by the nautical term “taken aback,” but of that favoured few were the bystanders on the present occasion. Never was an unhappy individual more thoroughly and completely at a loss; and it must be confessed the situation was an embarrassing one. To be addressed by an elderly stranger in an unintelligible language, in which you are expected to reply, while at the same time you are painfully conscious that your incapacity to do so, or even (not understanding the question) to give an appropriate answer in your native tongue, will lead to a discovery you are most anxious to avert, is an undeniably awkward position in which to be placed. That Bracy found it so was most evident, for he fidgeted, stammered, glanced appealingly towards Frere for aid, and at last was obliged, between annoyance and an intense appreciation of the absurdity of his situation, to get up a fictitious cough, which, irritating the membrane of the nose, produced a most violent genuine sneeze. From the effects of this convulsion of nature he was relieved by a hearty slap on the back, while at the same moment the tones of a familiar voice exclaimed in his ear—
“Sold, by all that’s glorious! Bracy, my boy, how do you find yourself?” and on looking up he recognised in the laughing face of the Addiscombe doctor, now divested of its spectacles, the well-known features of Charley Leicester.