“Conceited ass!” all of which evidently bore reference to his late companion. Having let off a little of his extra steam by this means, he gave vent to the following soliloquy: “Well, I’m nicely in for it this time! Because a love affair, with the chance of possible consequences, wasn’t trouble enough, I must have a rival step in—and such a rival—why, the very sight of that man disagrees with me; and then to hear him talk, it’s positively sickening! I’ll be off to London to-morrow morning; and yet I do like the girl,—I know I do, because it is continually occurring to me that I am not half good enough for her. I suppose she looks upon me as a mere fortune-hunter—thinks I only care about her for the sake of her money. I wish she hadn’t a farthing! I wish—eh! what am I talking about? Heigho! that’s another curse of poverty: a poor devil like me can’t even afford the luxury of a disinterested attachment. Then that man—that De Grandeville—to hear an animal like that debating whether she was good enough for him! I declare he’s made me feel quite feverish! I’d no idea it was possible for anything to excite me to such a degree. If the notion were not too preposterous, I should really begin to fancy I must be falling in love! She never can have the bad taste to like him—in fact, there’s nothing to like in him—and yet the fellow seemed confident; but that is the nature of the brute. Though I don’t know, women are such fools sometimes, she might take him at his own price—that military swagger of his might go down with some of the sex. Once let a woman fancy a man to be a hero, or a martyr, or a patriot, or any other uncomfortable celebrity certain to make a bad husband, and she will be ready to throw herself at his head,—just as if such a fellow were not the very last man in the world whom she ought to select! I suppose it’s the additional odds in favour of widowhood that constitute the great attraction—females are naturally capricious. Well, I shall try and take the matter easily, at all events. I dare say it won’t break my heart whichever way it goes. I shall make observations, and if she really has the bad taste to prefer this man, he’s welcome to her—a woman who could love him would never do for my wife; that one fact would argue an amount of incompatibility of temper which would be furnishing work for Doctors’ Commons before the first year’s connubial infelicity was over. I wonder whether there’s any lunch going on; it’s astonishing how thirsty anything of this kind makes me! Pale ale I must have, or mit colum!” And having arrived at this conclusion, he thrust his hands—of whose delicate appearance he was especially careful—into his pockets to preserve them from the cold, and strolled off to put his resolution into practice.
In the meantime, Marmaduke De Grandeville, while listening with his outward ears to General Grant’s dull electioneering details, was inwardly congratulating himself on the favourable impression he had made on that very sensible young man, the Honourable Charles Leicester, and thinking what a useful ally he had secured to assist him in carrying out his matrimonial project.
Verily, there are as many comedies performed off the stage as upon it!
The ball at Broadhurst took place on the evening of the day on which the above conversation had passed, and was a wonderful affair indeed. It was given for a special purpose, and that purpose was to conciliate everybody, and induce everybody to promise General Grant their vote and interest at the ensuing election. Accordingly, everybody was invited—at least everybody who had the slightest pretension to be anybody—and everybody came; and as almost everybody brought somebody else with them, a wife, or a daughter, or the young lady from London who was spending Christmas with them, there was no lack of guests. The object of the entertainment was no secret; and the king of the county, the Marquis of C—————, being in the conservative interest, and consequently anxious to secure the General’s return, not only came himself, but actually brought a real live duke with him to exhibit to the company. This was a great stroke of policy, and told immensely, particularly with the smaller anybodies who were almost nobodies, but who, having associated with a duke, straightway became somebodies, and remained so ever after. Moreover, in all cases of incipient radicalism, chartist tendencies, or socialist symptoms, his Grace was an infallible specific. Depend on it, there is no better remedy for a certain sort of democracy than a decoction of strawberry-leaves; apply that to the sore place and the patient instantly becomes sound in his opinions, and continues a healthy member of the body politic. The particular duke on the occasion in question was a very young one, little more than a boy in fact (if a duke can ever be considered in the light of a boy). This youthful nobleman had a leading idea—though you would hardly have supposed it, to look at him—he believed that he was the best match in England; and so, in the conventional sense of the term, he undoubtedly was, although he would have been very dear at the price to any woman with a head and a heart. His pastors and masters, backed by the maternal anxieties of a duchess unambitious of the dignities of dowagership, had sedulously cultivated this one idea till it had assumed the character of a monomania, under the influence of which this unhappy scion of aristocracy looked upon life as a state of perpetual warfare against the whole race of women, and was haunted by a frightful vision of himself carried off and forcibly married to the chief of a horde of female pirates, with long tongues, longer nails, and an utter absence of creditable ancestry. His outward duke (if we may be allowed the expression) was decidedly prepossessing. He was tall and not ungraceful in figure, and had a bright, round, innocent face, as of a good child. His hair was nicely brushed and parted; whiskers he had none; indeed, the stinginess of nature to him in this particular was so remarkable, that, as the eldest Miss Simpkins afterwards observed to an eager audience of uninvited younger sisters, “So far from whiskers, my dears, now I come to think of it, his Grace had rather the reverse!” However, take him “for all in all,” he was a very creditable young duke, and a perfect godsend on the occasion in question. Then there was a descending scale from his Grace downwards, leading through the aristocracy of birth to the aristocracy of riches, till it reached the élite of the country towns, and the more presentable specimens of yeomen farmers. But let us join a group of people that we know, and hear what they think of the guests who are so rapidly assembling.
In a snug corner of the reception-room, not far from a door leading into the large drawing-room, stands one of those mysterious innovations of modern upholstery, a species of the genus ottoman, which resembles a Brobdignagian mushroom, with a thimble made to match stuck in the middle of it. Seated at her ease upon this nondescript, half-buried by the yielding cushions, appeared the pretty figure of Laura Peyton; by her side, attired in much white muslin, crinolined to a balloon-like rotundity, but which apparently had shrunk abominably at the wash in the region round about its wearer’s neck and shoulders, sat another—well, from the juvenility of her dress and manners we suppose we must say young lady, though it was a historical fact that she had been at school with Annie Grant’s mother; but then poor Mrs. Grant married when she was quite a child, and died before she was thirty, and of course Miss Singleton must know her own age best, and she had declared herself eight-and-twenty for the last five years. This lady possessed one peculiarity—she always had a passion for somebody; whether the object was of the gentler or the sterner sex was all a matter of chance; but as she was in the habit of observing, “there existed in her nature a necessity for passionately loving.” and it has become proverbial that necessity has no law. The object of her adoration just at present was “that darling girl,” Laura Peyton; and really that young lady was in herself so lovable, that to endeavour to account for Miss Singleton’s devotion by insinuating that the heiress was usually surrounded by all the most desirable young men in the room would be the height of ill-nature.
“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Singleton, whose troublesome nature had another necessity for liking to hear its own voice as often as possible. “Dear me! I wish I knew who all the people were! Dearest Miss Peyton, do not you sympathise? Ah, that tell-tale smile! We girls certainly are sadly curious, though I believe the men are just as bad, only they’re too proud to own it. But really, we must contrive to catch somebody who will tell us who everybody is. There’s that handsome, grave, clever Mr. Arundel: I shall make him a sign to come here—ah! he saw me directly—he is so clever. Mr. Arundel, do tell me, who are all these people?”
“Rather a comprehensive question,” returned Lewis, smiling; “moreover, you could scarcely have applied to any one less able to answer it, for beyond our immediate neighbours I really do not know a dozen people in the room.”
“Mr. Arundel’s acquaintance lies rather among illustrious foreigners,” observed Miss Peyton demurely. “Were any members of the royal family of Persia present, for instance, his intimate knowledge of the language, manners, and habits of that interesting nation would be invaluable to us.”
“As you are strong, be merciful,” returned Lewis, in a tone of voice only to be heard by the young lady to whom he spoke.
“Dear me! How very delightful! What a thing it is to be so clever!” exclaimed Miss Singleton, arranging her bracelet and rounding her arm (which was now one of her best points) with an action that expressed, as plainly as words could have done, “There, look at that—there’s grace for you!”