Chapter Nineteen.
Tom and the Tartar.
All the same though, consequent upon thinking so much about his sister, Tom made very little progress with his own love affairs.
Tryphie Wilder’s was not a very pleasant life at Lady Barmouth’s. She felt that she had been adopted out of charity, and in her bitterness she would sometimes call herself her ladyship’s abuse block, for that lady would call her “little wretch” in private with as much vigour as there was sweetness in the “my dear” of public life. Her ladyship had before now gone so far as to strike her. That very day Tryphie had her revenge, for, going into the drawing-room, she found Tom fast asleep on the sofa, and snipped off the ends of his moustache, wax and all. Tom awoke, and caught and kissed her, and she flew at him, boxed his ears, and then ran out of the room and upstairs, to strike her hand against the wall for being so cruel.
The girl’s bright spirits and unvarying tenderness to his father, for whom she was always buying Bath buns or finding snacks, made Tom desperately in love with her, but he had only received chaff as his amatory food in return. Tryphie meantime went on as a sort of upper servant, with the entrée of the drawing-room; and while Justine was the repository of much that was false in Lady Barmouth, she alone was admitted to the secrets of her aunt’s first and second sets of teeth, which she had to clean in her own room with the door locked, it being supposed that it was her ladyship’s diamond suite then undergoing a renovating brush, while poor Tryphie all the time was operating upon what looked like a ghastly grin without any softening smile given by overhanging lips.
“I tell you what it is, Tryphie,” said Tom one day, as he met her on the stairs—“but I say, what’s that?” and he pointed to a little case which she tried to conceal.
“Don’t ask impertinent questions, sir,” was the reply. “Now then, what is it?”
“Well, I was going to say—oh, I say, how pretty you look this morning.”
“You were not going to say anything of the kind, sir.”
“Well then, I was going to say if I am worried much more, I shall hook it.”
“Slang!” cried Tryphie.
“Well, I must slang somebody. I mustn’t swear. I’m half mad, Tryphie.”
“Poor fellow! you have been smoking yourself so.”
“Nonsense!” he said, “a fellow must do something to keep off the blues.”
“Yes; smoke in bed.”
“I shouldn’t if I was married. If I had a wife now—”
“Married!” said Tryphie, “without any money, sir! What would you do? Keep a billiard table or open a cigar shop? I suppose I might sit behind the counter—”
“Go it,” said Tom. “How down you are on a fellow.”
“While my little liege lord wore his elegant shawl-pattern smoking trousers, dressing-gown and cap, and showed his prowess to customers at the billiard table.”
“Little, eh?” said Tom. “Well, I am little, but you must have some little fellows in the world, to sort up with. We can’t all be great handsome black chaps like Captain Bellman.”
“Captain Bellman is not always smoking.”
“I don’t care, I’m getting reckless. I own it all: I do go to sleep with a cigar in my mouth. I can smoke as many cigars for my size as any man in London and there are not many men who can beat me at billiards.”
“How is the new cue, Tom?” said Tryphie, mockingly.
“All right,” he said. “I tried it last night at the rooms, and played a game with an uncommonly gentlemanly Frenchman, who made the most delicious little cigarettes. I thought I’d met him before. Who do you think it was?”
“Don’t know, and—”
“Don’t care, eh? Well, it was Launay the barber.”
“Tom!”
“Well, I don’t care; home’s wretched and I’m miserable. Besides, other people enjoy seeing me so. Maude is always going about the house like a ghost, or listening to that organ man. She’s going mad, I fancy. Then Charley Melton has turned out a fool to cave in as he has done, and Tryphie cuts me—”
“As you deserve.”
“That’s right, go it. The governor’s miserable, and that mummy Wilters is always here. Nice place to stop in. Perhaps I ought to aim higher than billiards, and keeping one’s cue in a japanned case hanging up in a public room. But look at me; hang it, I hardly get a shilling, if I don’t have some fellow at billiards. What have I to look forward to?”
Tryphie made a movement to continue her way, but Tom spread his hands so as to stop her descent.
“Will you have the goodness to allow me to pass, Lord Diphoos?” she said, demurely.
“Lord!” he cried, peevishly.
“Very well, then, most spoiled child of the house,” said Tryphie, maliciously, “Master Diphoos.”
“You make my life quite miserable, Tryphie, you do, ’pon my honour. You’re the most ungracious—”
“There’s pretty language to use to a lady, sir,” cried Tryphie, speaking as if in an angry fit. “Say I’m the most disgraceful at once, sir.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Tom; “I meant ungracious and unyielding.”
“Of course, sir. Pretty words to apply to a lady.”
“Bother!” cried Tom. “I never looked upon you as a lady.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, making him a most profound curtsey.
“Well, you know what I mean,” grumbled Tom; “I always think of you as Cousin Tryphie, whom I—there,” he whispered, “I will say it—I love with all my heart.”
“Bosh!” exclaimed Tryphie.
“There’s pretty language to use to a gentleman,” retorted Tom.
“I never look upon you as a gentleman,” said Tryphie in her turn; and she darted a mischievous look at him.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom, who was now quite out of heart and temper. “And so you go on snub, snub, peck, peck, till a fellow feels as if he would like to make a hole in the water, he’s so sick of his life.”
“But he only makes a hole in his manners instead,” cried Tryphie.
“I say, Tryphie, you know,” cried Tom, now appealingly. “Don’t be so jolly hard on a fellow who loves you as I do. I can’t bear it when you snub me so. I say, dear,” he continued, taking her hand, “say a kind word to me.”
“Let go my hand, sir, and don’t be stupid,” she cried.
“Tryphie!”
“Well, Tom! Now look here, I’ve got to be so that I can hardly believe in there being such a thing as sincerity in the world, after what I’ve seen in this house: but all the same I do think you mean what you say.”
“Thankye, Tryphie; that’s the kindest thing you’ve said to me for months,” said Tom.
“Stop a bit, sir, and listen. I was going to say—”
“No, don’t say any more, dear,” cried Tom, imploringly. “You’ve said something kind to me, and I shall go and get fat on that for a month.”
“Listen to me, sir,” cried Tryphie, unable to repress a smile—“I was going to say—Do you think I am going to promise to marry an idle, thoughtless, selfish man, with only two ideas in his head?”
“Two?” said Tom, dolefully. “No, you’re wrong. I’ve only got one.”
“I say two, sir—cigars and billiards. Do you think I want to marry a chimney-pot, or an animated cue?”
“Chimney-pot! Animated cue!” said Tom, with a groan, as he took off his little scarlet smoking-cap, and wrung it in his hands as if it were wet.
“Let me see, sir, that you’ve got some energy in you as well as good sincere feeling, before you speak to me again, if you please.”
“I may speak to you again, then?” cried Tom.
“Of course you may,” said Tryphie, tartly.
“And then?” cried Tom.
“Well, then we shall see,” replied the sarcastic little lady.
“Energy, eh?” said Tom. “Well, I will: so now to begin again. You know I have been energetic about Maude?”
“Ye-es, pretty well,” said Tryphie. “Not half enough.”
“Well, now then, dear—may I say dear?”
“If you please, Lord Diphoos,” said Tryphie. “I can’t help it.”
“Well, I’m going to be energetic now, and see if I can’t do something for Maude.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See Charley Melton and stir him up. Then I shall stir up the gov’nor and Maude, and if none of these things do any good I shall have a go at Wilters.”
“Ah,” said Tryphie, “now I’m beginning to believe in you, and there is some hope that I shall not be forced into a marriage with that odious Captain Bellman.”
“Tryphie,” whispered Tom, as he stared, “just say that again.”
She shook her head.
Tom looked upstairs and then down, saw nobody, and hastily catching the little maiden in his arms, stole a kiss before she fled, when, giving his head a satisfied shake, he went down to the hall, saw that his hat was brushed, and went off to Duke street, in utter ignorance of the fact that his father had been sitting in the curtained recess on the landing, where the flowers dwindled in a kind of conservatory, calmly devouring a piece of Bologna sausage and half a French roll.
“He, he, he,” chuckled the old gentleman, “that’s how they make love when they’re young. I was—was—was a devil of a fellow among the ladies when I was Tom’s age; but somehow now I never want to meet her ladyship on the stairs and kiss her. I’d—I’d—I’d a doosed deal rather have a nice piece of chicken, or a bit of tongue.”