Horace D’Almayne had won his point, Horace D’Almayne was happy! yet he did not clap his hands, neither did he hurrah wildly, nor dance a lively measure around Kate Crane, whom he believed he had circumvented in a different manner; but he forced his imperturbable countenance into an expression of philanthropic benevolence and gratitude, and arranged with Mrs. Crane a plan by which, during her husband’s daily worship in the temple of Mammon his god—an edifice more familiarly known in the good city of London as the Stock Exchange—she should visit unfortunate Mrs. Leonard, and witness with her own eyes how justly the prince of this world (who is identical with the monarch of a lower kingdom still) distributes his subjects’ property.
About this time all the members of this disunited party assembled, and jointly and severally ended their day’s enjoyment (?) by returning home tired, dejected, and suffering more or less from that ailment which defies those guinea-pigs, “the faculty”—an ailment as rife in St. James’s as are cholera and smallpox within the precincts of St. Giles’s—an ailment which, thanks to those bitter curses, the forms, ceremonies, requirements, and prejudices of society, afflicts and hangs heavily on many an honest man and loving woman—an ailment indigenous even in our glorious constitution, and which has as many aliases as shapes, the spleen, ennui, but truest name of all, the Heart-ache!
“Ogni Medaglia ha il suo reverso,” there is no rule without its exception! Horace D’Almayne was the exception to this particular rule—he was not troubled with heart-ache, because, in the metaphysical sense of the word, he did not possess a heart; but nature had made it up to him by giving him a very clear head, and thus it reasoned:—
“Yes, my pretty Kate, tout va bien; you have grown civil, almost kind—not yet affectionate, but that is to come. Yet she is clever; doubts, suspects me!—what children women are, even clever women; once appeal to their feelings, their impulses—bah! their reason lies captive before you—they are puppets in your hand. Ah! c’est bien drôle cette petite existence ici bas! for the rest, all goes well; the beautiful Kate shall compromise herself—the millionaire shall open wider his purse strings—the bank wins for me—the little Alfred plays my game—courage, Horace! thy star is in the ascendant, you will die a rich man yet!”
The morning after the Horticultural Fête, Coverdale suggested to his wife that they had, in his opinion, spent sufficient time and money in the gay metropolis, and that agricultural and manorial duties called him to the country forthwith; but Alice pleaded so earnestly for only one week more of dissipation, with Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s soirée dansante at the end of it, that Harry could not find it in his heart to refuse her. Scarcely had he yielded the point, when a letter arrived from Tom Rattleworth, Magistrate, and Master of Fox-hounds, to inform him that, owing to the baneful influence of a certain grand seigneur in the neighbourhood, it was proposed to enclose a common and turn a road, which would destroy a favourite fox cover, and give Coverdale half-a-mile further to drive to the nearest railway-station—that the matter was to be decided at the next meeting of Magistrates—that he (Thomas) had striven tooth and nail to get up an opposition, in which he had been tolerably successful, and that he considered it only required Coverdale’s presence to prevent the evil altogether. Thus urged, Harry had but one course to pursue, viz., commend his wife to Mrs. Crane’s safe custody, and start for Coverdale Park forthwith, promising to return in time for “Lady Tat. Trott.‘s benefit,” as he was pleased to term it. Alice at first opposed his going, but when she found the question resolved itself into one of these alternatives, either that she must let him go alone, or give up her ball and accompany him, her opposition ceased. So Harry packed his carpet-bag and departed—and the hours rolled by on their patent noiseless wheels, until the time appointed for that notable solemnity, Lady Tattersall Trottemout’s soirée dansante, arrived.
On that day Lord Alfred Courtland invited to a quiet dinner, at his comfortable bachelor lodgings, Horace D’Almayne, Monsieur Guillemard, and a youth who, because he was in every particular Lord Alfred’s exact opposite, was an especial crony of his.
Jack Beaupeep, ætatis twenty-five, was a clerk in a public office with a salary of £150 per annum, on which, by means of his talents, he contrived to live at the rate of——anything under a thousand. As, however, we shall not have very much to do with him in the course of this history, we will spare the reader further details by summing up his character in the two expressive words, “fast” and “funny.” Everybody knows a fast, funny man; and his was a bad case of the complaint. At a quarter to eight, P.M., on the day in question, this excellent young buffoon of private life betook himself to Lord Alfred’s lodgings, and finding himself first in the field, looked around with a practised eye for the best means of turning the situation to comic effect. First he perceived a valuable statuette of Venus, as she appeared before the discovery of the art of dress-making, for which his innate sense of propriety led him to improvise a petticoat, by means of a doyley and a small portion of the red tape of old England, purloined from her Britannic Majesty’s stores that morning, and secreted by the delinquent for any possible exigencies of practical jesting. Having attired this young lady to his satisfaction, he obligingly bestowed on her a real Havannah cigar, which, thrust through an opening left by the sculptor in her clenched hand, with the end resting against her ambrosial lips, resembled a speaking-trumpet, and gave her that “ship-ahoy!” kind of appearance with which early engravers were pleased to endow Fame. He then wrote and watered on the pedestal of the statuette thus embellished a label, bearing the inscription, “Eugénie, Empress of the French,” murmuring to himself, “Delicate little compliment to the illustrious foreigner who is coming.” Next he availed himself of a pair of boxing-gloves; “unearthing,” as he termed it, the rolls inserted in two of the dinner napkins, and substituting for them these elementary instructors in the noble art of self-defence; and, lastly, espying the cruet-stand, he had just time to reverse the contents of the pepper and sugar casters, and confuse all the sauces, when to him entered Lord Alfred Courtland.
This young nobleman’s appearance had considerably changed since first we had the pleasure of describing him. By abstruse study, and unflagging attention to the sayings and doings of men-about-town, he had acquired many noble attributes—he could lounge and dawdle, and walk with a pert yet lazy roll in his gait, as of a tipsy dancing-master, or of a cock-sparrow afflicted with sciatica; he could lisp as though his very tongue was too about-town-ish to speak plain, unadulterated English; he could make play with his eyes half shut, like a timid girl, or stare with them offensively wide open, like an insolent coxcomb, though he was not quite perfect in this last manœuvre as yet. Also, his clothes were large and loose enough for himself and half another man-about-town besides; and he had a bunch of baby’s toys, modelled in gold, dangling from his watch-chain—Lilliputian house furniture, and a gun, and a sword, and a pistol to match, and a little man in armour with impossible features, accompanied by a horrid little skull of the same after his decease, with two of his little golden marrow-bones crossed under it, as if they were saying their prayers; there was likewise a ridiculous fish, which wagged its tail, and a fox’s mask, as it is “knowing” to term the physiognomy of that astute quadrupedal martyr; the whole to conclude with a limp and jointed Punchinello, or Tomfool, as a pendant (in every sense of the word) to the fool of larger growth who wore these childish absurdities. Thus attired and adorned, Lord Alfred Courtland withdrew one white hand from a pocket of his liberal trousers, and, laying it on Beaupeep’s shoulder, with a want of energy, general lassitude, and fish-out-of-water-ishness of manner, which did him infinite credit, drawled forth—
“Ah! my dear fellar! this is very good of you, to come at such short notice!”