‘All right,’ replied Jack, as if no recognition were called for on his part, and that he was not sorry to be separated from one with an unpleasant memory.
‘I am shocked, sir,’ said the lady, addressing me in her blandest accents, ‘at our depriving you of your place, but Mr. Carrisbrook will, I ‘m sure, give you his.’
While I protested against such a surrender, and Mr. Carrisbrook looked very much annoyed at the proposal, the lady only insisted the more, and it ended in Mr. Carrisbrook—one of the youths already mentioned—being sent down to 83, while I took up my position in front of the party in his place.
I knew to what circumstance I was indebted for this favourable notice; she looked up to me as a kind of king’s evidence, whenever the Honourable Jack should be called up for trial, and already I had seen a great deal into the history and relative position of all parties. Such was the state of matters when the soup appeared.
And now, to impart to my readers, as is my wont, such information as I possessed afterwards, and not to keep them waiting for the order in which I obtained it: the party before me consisted of Sir Marmaduke Lonsdall and his lady—he, an old general officer of good family and connections, who, with most unexceptionable manners and courtly address, had contrived to spend a very easy, good-for-nothing existence, without ever seeing an hour’s service, his clubs and his dinner-parties filling up life tolerably well, with the occasional excitement arising from who was in and who was out, to season the whole. Sometimes a Lord of the Treasury, with a seat for a Government borough, and sometimes patriotically sitting among the opposition when his friends were out, he was looked upon as a very honourable, straightforward person, who could not be ‘overlooked’ when his party were distributing favours.
My Lady Lonsdall was a soi-disant heiress, the daughter of some person unknown in the city, the greater part of whose fortune was unhappily embarked in Poyais Scrip—a fact only ascertained when too late, and, consequently, though discoursing most eloquently in a prospectus about mines of gold and silver, strata of pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-rings, all ready to put on, turned out an unfortunate investment, and only realised an article in the Times, headed ‘another bubble speculation.’ Still, however, she was reputed very rich, and Sir Marmaduke received the congratulations of his club on the event with the air of a conqueror. She married him simply because, having waited long and impatiently for a title, she was fain to put up at last with a baronet. Her ambition was to be in the fashionable world; to be among that sect of London elect who rule at Almack’s and dictate at the West End; to occupy her portion of the Morning Post, and to have her name circulated among the illustrious few who entertain royalty, and receive archdukes at luncheon. If the Poyais investment, in its result, denied the means of these extravagances, it did not, unhappily, obliterate the taste for them; and my lady’s ambition to be fashionable was never at a higher spring-tide than when her fortunes were at the ebb. Now, certes, there are two ways to London distinction—rank and wealth. A fair union of both will do much, but, without either, the pursuit is utterly hopeless. There is but one course, then, for these unfortunate aspirants of celebrity—it is to change the venue and come abroad. They may not, it is true, have the rank and riches which give position at home. Still, they are better off than most foreigners: they have not the wealth of the aristocracy, yet they can imitate their wickedness; their habits may be costly, but their vices are cheap; and thus they can assert their high position and their fashionable standing by displaying the abandonment which is unhappily the distinctive feature of a certain set in the high world of London.
Followed, then, by a train of admirers, she paraded about the Continent, her effrontery exalted into beauty, her cold insolence assumed to be high breeding; her impertinence to women was merely exclusiveness, and her condescending manner to men the simple acknowledgment of that homage to which she was so unquestionably entitled.
Of her suite, they were animated by different motives. Some were young enough to be in love with any woman who, a great deal older than themselves, would deign to notice them. The noble lord, who accompanied her always, was a ruined baron, whose own wife had deserted him for another; he had left his character and his fortune at Doncaster and Epsom; and having been horsewhipped as a defaulter, and outlawed for debt, was of course in no condition to face his acquaintances in England. Still he was a lord—there was no denying that; Debrett and Burke had chronicled his baptism, and the eighth baron from Hugo de Colbrooke, who carried the helmet of his sovereign at Agincourt, was unquestionably of the best blood of the peerage. Like your true white feather, he wore a most farouche exterior; his moustaches seemed to bristle with pugnacity, and the expression of his eye was indescribably martial; he walked as if he was stepping out the ground, and in his salute he assumed the cold politeness with which a second takes off his hat to the opposite principal in a duel; even his valet seemed to favour the illusion, as he ostentatiously employed himself cleaning his master’s pistols, and arranging the locks, as though there was no knowing at what moment of the day he might not be unexpectedly called to shoot somebody.
This noble lord, I say, was a part of the household. Sir Marmaduke finding his society rather agreeable, and the lady regarding him as the cork-jacket on which she was to swim into the ocean of fashion at some remote period or other of her existence.
As for the Honourable Jack Smallbranes, who was he not in love with— or rather who was not in love with him? Poor fellow! he was born, in his own estimation, to be the destroyer of all domestic peace; he was created to be the ruin to all female happiness. Such a destiny might well have filled any one with sadness and depression; most men would have grieved over a lot which condemned them to be the origin of suffering. Not so, Jack; he felt he couldn’t help it—that it was no affair of his if he were the best-looking fellow in the world. The thing was so palpable; women ought to take care of themselves; he sailed under no false flag. No, there he was, the most irresistible, well-dressed, and handsomest fellow to be met with; and if they didn’t escape—or, to use his own expression, ‘cut their lucky’ in time—the fault was all their own. If queens smiled and archduchesses looked kind upon him, let kings and archdukes look to it. He took no unfair or underhand advantages; he made no secret attacks, no dark advances—he carried every fortress by assault, and in noonday. Some malicious people— the world abounds in such—used to say that Jack’s gallantries were something like Falstaff’s deeds of prowess, and that his victims were all ‘in buckram.’ But who could believe it? Did not victory sit on his very brow; were not his looks the signs of conquest; and, better than all, who that ever knew him had not the assurance from his own lips? With what a happy mixture of nonchalance and self-satisfaction would he make these confessions! How admirably blended was the sense of triumph with the consciousness of its ease! How he would shake his ambrosial curls, and throw himself into a pose of elegance, as though to say, ‘’Twas thus I did it; ain’t I a sad dog?’