"We shall see a good deal of you now, I hope, Alsager; you won't stand on any ridiculous ceremony, or anything of that sort, but come in and out just as you like. There's no one who will be more welcome here, and no one who's earned the right so much, for the matter of that. It rests with you now entirely how far you pursue the acquaintance."
"Goodbye, Colonel Alsager," said Lady Mitford with a sweet smile; "and I'll promise, when you do come to see us, not to give you so much trouble as I did yesterday."
Laurence was equally averse to commonplaces and to committing himself, so he bowed and smiled, and went away.
"Kismet," he muttered to himself as he strode down the street,--"Kismet in full force. Laura Hammond back in England, and an acquaintance formed between her and Mitford already. Taken with her, he seemed too. She's just the woman that would fetch such a man as he. Well, let Kismet do its worst; I shall stand by and see the play."
[CHAPTER IX.]
MR. EFFINGHAM'S PROCEEDINGS.
When Mr. Effingham found himself with fifty pounds in his pocket outside the bank where he had changed Sir Charles Mitford's cheque, he could scarcely contain his exultation. His dealings with bankers had been few, and not always satisfactory. He had had cheques in his possession which he had been too bashful to present in his own proper person, but had employed a little boy to take to the counter while he waited round the corner of an adjacent street; he had had cheques which he had presented himself, but the proceeds of which, when asked "how he would have," he had always taken in gold, as a more convenient and untraceable medium. On the present occasion, however, he had walked boldly in; had rapped on the counter, to the horror and dismay of the old gentleman behind banking-firm, passing through the public office on his way to the private parlour, peered at Mr. Effingham. under his bushy-grey eyebrows curiously; but Mr. Effingham did not mind that. The porter sitting on a very hard stool just inside the swing doors rubbed his nose and winked significantly at the policeman in plain clothes stationed just outside the swing-doors, whose duty was to help rich old-lady customers in and out of their carriages. Both porter and policeman stared very hard at Mr. Effingham, and Mr. Effingham returned the stare with all the eye-power at his command What did he care? They might call him back and inspect the cheque if they liked, and then they would see what they would get for attempting to molest a gentleman.
In his character of gentleman, Mr. Effingham felt that his costume was scarcely so correct as it might have been; in fact, that in the mere quality of being weather-tight it was lamentably deficient. So his first proceeding was to visit an outfitter's, and then and there to procure what he termed "a rig-out" of the peculiar kind most in accordance with his resonant taste. The trousers were of such an enormous check pattern that, as the Jew tailor humorously remarked, "it would take two men to show it;" the hat shone like a bad looking-glass; the coat, though somewhat baggy in the back, was glossy, and had a cotton-velvet collar; and the Lowther-Arcade jewelry glistened in the midst of a bird's-eye scarf of portentous height and stiffness.
His outer man satisfied, Mr. Effingham thought it time to attend to his inner; and accordingly turned into a City chop-house of renown, where his elegant appearance made an immense impression on the young stockbroking gents and the junior clerks from the banks and Mincing-Lane houses, who commented, in no measured tones, and with a great deal of biting sarcasm, on the various portions of his costume. Either not hearing or not heeding this banter, Mr. Effingham ordered a point steak and potatoes and a pint of stout; all of which he devoured with an appearance of intense relish. An old gentleman sitting in the same box opposite to him had a steaming glass of fragrant punch, the aroma of which ascended gratefully into Mr. Effingham's nostrils and almost impelled him to order a similar jorum; but prudence stepped in, and he paid his bill and departed, Not that he did not intend to indulge in that after-dinner grog, which was customary with him whenever he had the money to pay for it himself, or the luck to get anybody to pay for it for him; but he wished to combine business with pleasure; and so started off for another tavern nearer the West End, where he knew the combination could be accomplished.
The chosen place of Mr. Effingham's resort, though properly designated the Brown Bear, was known to all its frequenters as "Johnson's," from its proprietor's name. It was a commonplace public-house enough, in a street leading out of the Strand, and sufficiently near the large theatres and newspaper offices for its parlour to be the resort of actors and press-men of an inferior grade. The more eminent in both professions "used" the Rougepot in Salad Yard, a famous old place that had been a house of call for actors, wits, and men-of-letters for generations, and where strangers seldom penetrated. The habitués of "Johnson's" were mostly young men just affiliated to their professions, and not particularly careful as to their associates; so that you frequently found in Johnson's parlour a sprinkling of questionable characters, men who hung on to the selvage of theatrical life, betting-book keepers, and card-sharpers. The regular frequenters did not actually favour these men, but they tacitly allowed their presence, and occasionally would join in and listen to their conversation, from which they gleaned new notions of life.