The man with the eyeglass made a vain attempt to focus Beresford, and said, "Did we?"
"Yes, of course we did. You recollect, at Macarum's, near Elgin?"
Mr. Monkhouse dropped his glass from his eye, and looked up to the ceiling for inspiration; then, re-fixing it, said, "Oh, ah! Elgin! I know!--where the marble comes from?"
The Levison subject now being evidently exhausted, and the conversation becoming hopelessly-idiotic, Captain Lyster strikes in at a tangent, and asks Mrs. Schröder whether she has seen any thing recently of her friend, Mrs. Churchill,--Miss Lexden that was.
Mrs. Schröder replies in the negative, adding that she had called upon Barbara "in, oh, such a strange street!" but had not found her at home: the Churchills had been asked to dine there that day, but had declined on account of Mr. Churchill's engagements. It was, however, probable that they might come in the evening. Hearing the name of Churchill mentioned, Mr. Beresford chimes in.
"Ah, by the way, the Churchills! friends of yours, Mrs. Schröder? How are they getting on? Love-match, and all that kind of thing, hey? Clever man, Churchill; but should have kept to his own set; married the daughter of his printer or publisher, or some fellow of that sort; not taken away one of our stars."
"What do you mean by his own set, Mr. Beresford?" said Lyster, rousing himself. "Mr. Churchill, I take it, is a gentleman in every sense of the word. I don't know whom you have been accustomed to associate with, but I never saw a better-bred man."
Mr. Beresford pauses for a moment, startled at the attack; then a smile passes over his face as he says, "I didn't impugn your friend's breeding, Captain Lyster; but I suppose even such a Corydon as you would allow the folly of a love-match with no money on either side?"
It is probable that Captain Lyster might have replied, even seeing, clearly as he did, that the tendency of the conversation was towards an argument in which he would have to exert himself; but the cinnamon-whiskered man, who had been waiting for an opportunity of speaking, now saw his chance, and burst forth--"Love-match!" said he; "no money on either side! What then? Do you imagine that two people, young, attached to each other, who risk a--a--what d'ye call um?--fight in the great battle of life"--looking round and repeating "in the great battle of life--are not much happier than those who make, what you may call, sordid matches? Thus, for the sake of argument, an elderly man marries a young girl; nothing in common between them; she simply married for position, or to oblige her parents; and he--well, I think we know the contemptible figure he cuts; a case of buying and selling, as you would say in the City, eh, Schröder?" and the cinnamon-coloured man, who was great at a debating-society, looked in triumph at his host.
Mr. Schröder, more leaden-coloured than ever, said, "Certainly." Mrs. Schröder, who had been looking down at the table, and playing with her dessert-knife, rose with the rest of the ladies, and left the room. After their departure, the West-end section, including Beresford, Lyster, and Monkhouse, seemed to get silent and abstracted; while Mr. Schröder's particular friends from the City, the bank-directors and public-company men, re-invigorated themselves with port, and discussed the politics of Threadneedle Street and the chances of change in the discount rate in hoarse whispers. Solemn dulness fell upon the West-end division: Lyster dropped into a semi-dose; Mr. Monkhouse tried to focus the talkers one by one, but failing, fell to polishing his eyeglass and admiring his nails; the cinnamon-whiskered man cut into the conversation once in the wrong place, and, having plainly showed himself to be an idiot, was promptly extinguished; and Beresford fell into a dreamy state, in which his liabilities ranged themselves in horrible array before him, and he went into wild speculations as to how they might be met. While in this state, he became conscious of old Mr. Townshend's voice, laying down the law, in most imperative style, on matters of finance, and suddenly he remembered his promise to Simnel. He waited for his opportunity when Mr. Townshend ceased for an instant, and then said: "My dear Mr. Schröder, you can't tell how horrible it is for us impecunious people to listen to this tremendously ingotted talk. We look upon you as a dozen Sinbad the Sailors, each having found his own peculiar treasure in the Valley of Diamonds. Ah! if it were only given to me to fathom the secret of money-making!"