THE COMMISSIONER'S SHELL EXPLODES.
When the party assembled for dinner on the day of Mr. Churchill's hurried departure from the Grange, they found they had an addition in the person of Mr. Commissioner Beresford, who arrived late in the afternoon, and did not make his appearance until dinner-time. A man of middle height and dapper figure, always faultlessly dressed; slightly bald, but with his light-coloured hair well arranged over his large forehead; with deep-sunk, small, stony-gray eyes, a nose with the nostrils scarcely sufficiently covered, and a large mouth, with long white teeth. He had small white--dead-white--hands, with filbert nails, and very small feet. There was in the normal and ordinary expression of his face something sour and mordant, which, so far as his eyes were concerned, occasionally faded out in conversation, giving place to a quaint, comic look; but the mouth never changed; it was always fox-like, cruel, and bad. There was no better-known man in London; high and low, rich and poor, gentle and simple, all had heard of Charley Beresford. Citizen of the world, where was he out of place? When there was a tight wedge on the staircase of Protocol House on the Saturday nights when Lady Helmsman received; when at a foot-pace the fashionable world endured hours of martyrdom in procession to the shrine which, once reached, was passed in an instant, according as sole trophy the reminiscence of a bow,--Mr. Beresford was to be seen leaning over the stoutest of dowagers, and looking fresh and undrooping even when pressed upon by the pursiest of diplomatists. When the noble souls of the Body Guards were dismayed within the huge carcasses which contained them because it was whispered that the 180th Hussars intended to wear white hats on their drag to the Derby, and to deck their persons and their horses with blue rosettes--both which insignia had hitherto been distinctive of the Body Guards--it was Charley Beresford who was applied to on the emergency; and who, on the Derby morning, turned the tables completely by bringing the Body Guards from Limmer's straw-thatched and amber-rosetted to a man. The 180th and their blue were nowhere; and "Go it, yaller!" and "Brayvo, Dunstable!" were the cries all down the road. When Mr. Peter Plethoric, the humorous comedian of the Nonpareil Theatre, wanted some special patronage for his benefit, "Charley, dear boy!" was his connecting link with that aristocracy whose suffrages he sought. He went into every phase of society: he had an aunt the widow of a cabinet minister, who lived in Eaton Square; and an uncle a bishop, who lived in Seamore Place; and he dined with them regularly two or three times in the season, lighting his cigar within a few yards of the house, and quietly strolling down to the Argyll Rooms, or to the green-room of the theatre, or to the parlour of a sporting-public to get the latest odds on a forthcoming fight. He turned up his coat-collar of late when he visited these last-named places, and the pugilistic landlords had orders never to pronounce his name, but to call him "Guv'nor;" it would not do for an official high in her Majesty's service to be recognised in such quarters. Before his aristocratic friends obtained for him his commissionership, his name was one of the most common current amongst the Fancy; but since then he had eschewed actual presence at the ring, as he had blue bird's-eye handkerchiefs, cigars in the daylight, and nodding acquaintance with broughams in the park. "Il faut se ranger," he used to say; "it would never do for those young fellows down at the Office to think that I was or ever had been a fast lot; and those confounded Radical papers, they made row enough about the appointment, and they'll always be on the look-out to catch me tripping." He little knew that his fame had preceded him to the Tin-Tax Office; that all the old clerks were prepared to receive him with something between fear and disgust, all the young ones with unmingled admiration; that daily bulletins of his dress and manners were circulated amongst the juniors, and that those who could afford it dressed at him to a man.
He was four-and-thirty when he got his appointment, and he had held it about two years. There was even betting that the promotion would "go in the office;" that Mr. Simnel, the secretary, a very clever man, would get it; that the vacancy would not be filled up; and various other rumours. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer felt that Mr. Simnel had been going a little too much ahead lately, acting on his own responsibility; and as the widow of the cabinet minister (who owned a borough in Devonshire) and the bishop concurrently attacked the Premier, that nobleman gave way, and Charles Beresford exchanged the dreariness of Bruges, in which dull Belgian city of refuge he had been for some months located, for a seat in the board-room at Rutland House. His uncle and aunt, through their respective solicitors, bought up his outstanding debts, and settled them at a comparatively low rate (his Oxford ticks had been settled years ago out of his mother's income); and he came into a thousand a year, paid quarterly, free and unencumbered. A thousand a year, in four cheques on the Bank of England in January, April, July, and October, ought to be a sufficiency for an unmarried man; but with Charles Beresford, as with a good many of us, the mere fact of the possession of money gave rise to a wild desire for rushing into unlimited expense. To belong to three clubs--the Beauclerk in Pall Mall, aristocratic and exclusive; the Minerva (proposed thereat by the bishop), literary and solemn; the Haresfoot, late and theatrical;--to have capital rooms in South Audley Street; to keep a mail-phaeton and pair, with a saddle-horse and a hunter during the season; to give and join in Greenwich and Richmond dinners; to be generous in the matter of kid-gloves and jewelry; to have a taste (and to gratify it) in choice wines; to make a yearly excursion to Baden, and when there to worship extensively at the shrine of M. Benazet; to be a connoisseur in art, and a buyer of proofs before letters, and statuary, and tapestry, and antiques; to be miserable without the possession of an Opera-stall; all these vagaries, though pleasant, are undeniably expensive; and at the end of his second year of office Charles Beresford found that he had spent every farthing of his income, and owed, in addition, between three and four thousand pounds.
He could not compound with his creditors; he dared not go through the Court, for "those rascally papers" would then have been down on him at once, and his official appointment might have been sacrificed. The Government just then had two or three black sheep, about whom people had talked, among their subordinates; and Beresford might have been the Jonah, sacrificed to allay the storm of virtuous public indignation. Besides, though his great soul might have been won over to include in his schedule Messrs. Sams and Mitchell, Mr. Stecknadel, the tailor of Conduit Street, and Hocks, with whom his horses stood at livery, he could not inscribe the names of the Irrevocable Insurance Company, to whom for the money borrowed he had given the names of two substantial friends as sureties; or of Mr. Parkinson, solicitor, of Thavies Inn, who "did his paper," but required another signature on the back. So Mr. Charles Beresford was forced to confess himself "done up," "cornered," and "tree'd;" and only saw one way out of his difficulties--a good marriage. There was no reason why his final chance should not succeed, for he was a very pleasant, agreeable fellow when he chose; had a capital tenor voice, and sang French and German songs with sparkling effect and irreproachable accent; acted well in charade; talked all sorts of styles,--could be earnest, profound, sentimental, flippant, literary, or ribald, as occasion presented; waltzed with a gliding, long, swinging step, which was the envy of all the men who saw him; was sufficiently good-looking, and had something like a position to offer.
Behold him, then, seated at Sir Marmaduke's table next to Miss Townshend, and with Barbara Lexden immediately opposite to him. He has been rattling on pleasantly enough during dinner, but has never forgotten the object of his life; he is aware that Barbara for him is not an available parti, with position certainly, but without money, and with extravagant notions; but he has some recollection of having heard that Mr. Townshend was something approaching to a millionnaire, and he determined to satisfy himself upon the point without delay.
"Not at all," he says, referring to something that has gone before; "not at all. It's all very well for you, Sir Marmaduke, whose lines have been cast in pleasant places, to talk so; but for us poor fellows who have to work for our living, this rest is something delightful."
"Work for your living!" growls out the old gentleman. "A pack of lazy placemen. Egad! the fellow talks as though stone-breaking were his occupation, and he'd just straightened his back for five minutes. Work for your living! Do you call sticking your initial to the corner of a lot of figures that you've never read, work? Do you call scrawling your signature at the bottom of some nonsensical document, to prove that you're the 'obedient, humble servant,' of some idiot whom you've never seen, work? Do you call reading the--"
"Now stop, Sir Marmaduke," said Beresford, laughing; "I bar you there. You mustn't repeat that rococo old rubbish about reading the newspaper and poking the fire as the sole work in a Government office. That is slander."
"I am bound to say," said Mr. Townshend pompously, "that when, in my capacity either as one of the directors of the East-India Company, or Prime Warden of the Bottle Blowers' Company, I have ever had occasion to transact business with any of the Government establishments, I have always found myself well treated."
"I am delighted to hear such testimony from you, sir," said Beresford, with some apparent deference, and inwardly thinking that the two positions named looked healthy as regards money.