Volume One—Chapter Eight.
In Borrowed Plumes.
There was a good deal of excitement in the Hampton Court dovecote, and a general touching up of plumage, for Lady Littletown, who resided at Hampton, so as to be near her dear old friend Lady Anna Maria Morton, who had rooms up a narrow dingy stone staircase in the corner of a cloistered court, in the private apartments at the Palace, had sent out cards for her dinner-party and “at home.”
Lady Littletown was rich, and her position in the society of the neighbourhood was that of queen. A widow for many years, she was always thinking of marriage. Not for herself. She had been through the fire, and found it hot. In fact, she bore her mental scars to her elderly age, for it was a well-known fact that the late Viscount Littletown was the extreme opposite of an angel. He had possessed a temper which grew and blossomed in wild luxuriance, and the probabilities are that he inoculated her ladyship with this peculiarity of spirit, for more than one of her domestics had been known to have declared that they would not live with the “old devil” any longer.
This was very wicked, and the domestic young ladies who had made use of such expressions were much to be censured. But certain it was that the Viscountess was far from perfect, and that she was an inveterate match-maker.
Probably she was of opinion that it would be a pleasant little piece of revenge on human nature to inveigle as many of her sex as possible on to the stormy sea of matrimony. At all events, a good many fashionable marriages resulted from plans laid by her ladyship and her female friends.
Lady Littletown’s friends were many, and included Lady Millet, whom she always addressed as “my dear,” in spite of a pique which had arisen consequent upon the latter marrying her eldest daughter to that wealthy parvenu, Mr Frank Morrison.
Now, according to Lady Littletown’s code, this was not correct. Dear friends as they had been, Lady Millet should have obtained her help, seeing that marriages were her métier; but she had obstinately gone her own way, invited her to the wedding, and latterly had actually shown that she was scheming something about two gentlemen whom Lady Littletown had marked down for her own—to wit, Lord Henry Moorpark and Mr Elbraham, the great financier.
“But, poor thing! she did not know how to manage Elbraham,” said Lady Littletown to herself; “and as for dear Lord Henry, not if I know it, dearest I think I can manage that, and you may marry pink-and-white wax-doll Gertrude to someone else.”
So her ladyship issued her cards most discriminatingly and well, in her determination to let no rival in her circle interfere with her rights as high-priestess of Hymen to her dearest friends.
Lady Littletown’s invitations on this occasion had included the Honourable Misses Dymcox and their nieces Clotilde and Marie Riversley; and, like Cinderella of the story, Ruth had rather a hard time with her cousins. For, to the astonishment of the latter, a fashionable dressmaker had been down expressly from London, and their excitement over the handsome robes that had arrived knew no bounds.
Their aunts had been a long time in making a move, and divers had been the consultations with Viscountess Littletown and Lady Anna Maria Morton. When at last that step was taken, it was with firmness and judgment combined.
Poor Ruth was divided between longings to go to the dinner-party and admiration of her cousins’ appearance, which, when they stood at last dressed, an hour before the time, parading the shabby bedroom and sweeping the skimpy pieces of Kidderminster carpet here and there with their stiff trains, was dazzling.
Certainly a handsomer pair of women rarely graced a party, and the Honourable Misses Dymcox, after a careful inspection through their square florid gold-edged eyeglasses, uttered sighs of satisfaction.
For the modiste had done her duty well. The dresses were in the latest style, they fitted to perfection, and the girls’ youth and the luxuriance of their hair quite made up for the want of jewellery to enhance their charms.
The Honourable Misses Dymcox were almost as excited as their nieces, for they, too, managed to get dressed an hour before time in their lavender silk straight-up-and-down garments, to which were tacked a few old pieces of very yellow lace, supposed to be an heirloom, but certainly very unattractive, whatever it may have been when young.
A very weak cup of tea had been taken, the elder ladies being in fear and trembling all the while.
“No, no, children, wait!” exclaimed Miss Philippa. “Joseph, put down the cups, and tell Markes to bring here two large pocket-handkerchiefs.”
In due time Markes appeared.
“Now, children,” said Miss Philippa, “stand up. Markes, have the goodness to tie a handkerchief by two of the corners just under the young ladies’ chins. It would be ruin to those dresses if they spilt any of their tea.”
“If you please, aunt, I don’t want any tea,” said Clotilde.
“Neither do I, aunt,” said Marie.
“Hush, children! You must take your tea. It is imperative that you should enter Lady Littletown’s drawing-room calm, self-possessed, and without any sign of being flushed. Markes, tie on those handkerchiefs.”
A red spot burned in the girls’ cheeks as they submitted to the childish indignity, and when they were duly provided with their bibs they were allowed to drink their thin, washy, half-cold tea, exchanging glances the while, for their emancipation had not yet arrived.
“Ruth, ring the bell,” said Miss Philippa, as soon as the tea was finished, and the handkerchiefs, which had been rising and falling in a troubled fashion, had been removed.
“Take away these teacups, Joseph,” said Miss Philippa. “Has the carriage arrived?”
“No, mum. It wants more than half an hour to the time. Buddy hasn’t been in yet.”
“Hush! Silence!” cried Miss Philippa harshly; “and dear me, Joseph, there is a large place on the back of your head not powdered.”
Joseph was heard to mutter something, and then he went forth in his best livery of pale blue with yellow facings and black knee-breeches, to finish his toilet for the night.
“Oh, here you are, then,” exclaimed Joseph, upon reaching his pantry, a peculiarly close, stuffy little room, smelling very strongly of sink, and furnished with two cupboards, a bracket-flap, and what looked like a third detached cupboard, but which was really the turn-up bedstead on which Joseph slept.
“Yes, here I am, Joey,” said a husky-voiced little red-nosed man, with a very blotchy, pimply face, to wit Isaac Buddy, the sole proprietor of a roomy old-fashioned Clarence fly, which was drawn by a very small shambling horse.
This conveyance was Mr Isaac Buddy’s means of livelihood, for it was to let, as his cards said, “by the day, night, or job,” and the hiring of Mr Isaac Buddy’s fly meant not only, as a matter of course, the hire of the horse to draw it, but of Mr Isaac Buddy himself.
For, out of deference to the feelings and aristocratic ideas of certain of the ladies residing in the private apartments, Mr Buddy had become an actor, who played many parts, and though the fiction was perfectly well understood, nobody ever thought of smiling if they saw Mr Isaac Buddy in a hat with a tarnished gold band on Mondays as Lady Anna Maria Morton’s coachman, or in a hat with a silver band on Tuesday, as Miss Tees’, or on Wednesday in a very hard shiny glazed hat without any nap, as Mrs Mongloff’s, or on other days in costumes to suit.
The Clarence fly of course remained the same, but it was always disguised in a more sounding name, and became “the carriage.”
“There ain’t a drop o’ nothing about handy, is there, Joey?” said Mr Buddy, as the thin footman set the tray down upon the bracket-flap.
“No, that there ain’t,” said Joseph, “without you’d like the pot filled up and have a cup o’ tea.”
“G’orn with yer. Did you ever know me wash myself out with warm water? How’s the old gals?”
“Old style,” replied Joseph; “but I say, Buddy, just cast your eye round as they’re getting in: the young ladies have been done up to rights.”
“I wish someone would find the money to get my old fly done up to rights,” said Mr Buddy, who, apparently quite at home, was standing before a shaving-glass hung against the wall, persuading, with Joseph’s brush, a couple of very obstinate little whiskers to stand out straight forward in the direction their owner wished. “’Spose there’ll be a wedding, then, some day.”
“Well, I dunno,” said Joseph.
“Looks like it, if they’re having ’em fresh painted,” said Mr Buddy, who now touched up his very greasy grey hair, making it stick up in points, in unconscious imitation of that of a clown.
“Here, you’d better look sharp, old man,” said Joseph, “they’re all ready and waiting, and time’s getting on.”
“Which we ain’t, Joey, or we should be doing better than we are, eh?”
“Ah, we should,” said Joseph, making a powder-box squeak as he unscrewed the top; and then taking out the puff, he placed a tea-cloth over his shoulders, and gave his hair a few dabs. “Now then, old man. Have the tea-cloth on?”
“Ah, you may as well,” was the reply; and the cloth having been adjusted by Joseph, the little man stood blinking solemnly while his dingy hair was duly powdered and turned white.
“Why, you might stand a bit o’ wilet powder cump’ny nights, Joey,” said the flyman, solemnly removing a little white meal from amongst the ruddy pimples of his face with the corner of the cloth in regular use for wiping the tea and breakfast service.
“How am I to stand best vi’let powder out o’ what they allow?” replied Joseph. “Flour’s just as good, and don’t cost me nothing. Now then, look sharp.”
As he spoke Joseph pulled open a drawer, from which he drew a drab greatcoat, inside which the little man placed himself, for it was manifestly so much too large that he could hardly be said to have put it on. Then a blue hat-box was pushed off the top of one of the cupboards, out of which a rather ancient hat was extricated, and mounted by the flyman, whose head seemed to have become suddenly wonderfully small; for it was an imposing structure of beaver with very curly brims, apparently kept from coming uncurled by a rigging or series of stays of tarnished silver cord, which ran from the lining up to a Panjandrum-like round button at the top, also of tarnished silver; while a formidable-looking and very spiky black cockade rose something like a patent ventilator from one side.
“That’s about the ticket, ain’t it, Joey?” said the little man, shaking his head so as to get the big hat in a good state of balance, and buttoning himself to the chin.
“Yes, that will do, old man.”
“The ladies want to know if the carriage has come, Joseph,” said Markes, suddenly making her appearance.
“Which you may take your solemn oath it ain’t,” said Mr Buddy, “for not one inch will that there horse stir till I wakes him up.”
“Then do for goodness’ sake, man, look sharp and fetch it,” exclaimed Markes. “I’m sure it’s past the time!”
“Wants five minutes,” said Mr Buddy, nodding his head, and having to dart one hand up to save the hat, which came down over his nose, and would have continued its course to the floor. “I say, your old coachman must have had a head like a bull, to have worn that hat without stuffing. There, I’m off. Soon be back. I say, though,” he whispered, thrusting back his head, and this time holding on by the rigging of the hat, “if it comes to a wedding, the old gals ought to stand some new togs.”
Within a quarter of an hour Mr Isaac Buddy, who had entered the private apartments as flyman, and came out the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s coachman, was at the door with the transformed fly. The ladies were duly packed inside, with many tremors as to their dresses, and Joseph, also in a drab greatcoat and a fearful and wonderful hat—the twin-brother of that upon Mr Buddy’s head—mounted to the seat. Then the carriage jingled and jangled off—a dashing brougham and pair, with flashing lights and the windows down, rattling by them, making Buddy’s nervous nag shy to the near side, as if he meant to mount the side walk out of the way.
“Rie,” whispered Clotilde, with her ruddy lips touching her sister’s ear.
“Yes.”
“That funny little officer was inside.”
“Yes,” muttered Marie to herself, “and the tall one as well; and you know it. I wonder who they are?”