So saying, Frere shook hands with Bracy, and the oddly consorted companions, between whom their very eccentricities appeared to constitute a bond of sympathy, each went his way, the practical joker to apply his acute intellect to the details of that mighty machine, the executive government of England, and the savant to investigate the recently discovered small rib (it was only eight feet long) of a peculiar species of something-osaurus, the original proprietor of the rib being popularly supposed to have “lived and loved,” cut its awful teeth, and been gathered to its amphibious fossil forefathers two thousand years and some odd months before the creation of man.
CHAPTER XXXVII.—WHEREIN IS FAITHFULLY DEPICTED THE CONSTANCY OF THE TURTLE-DOVE.
It was the important Thursday on which Lady Lombard’s chief dinner-party of the season was to take place, and the mighty coming event cast a proportionate shadow before. For a day or two previous a gloom, as of an approaching tempest, hung over the devoted mansion. Visitors were scarce; the invited would not call because they were invited, and the non-invited avoided the place as though it were plague-stricken, lest it should be supposed they wished to be invited, which for the most part they did. As the event drew nearer signs appeared heralding its approach: shoals of fishmongers, laden with the treasures of the deep, poured down the area steps; the number of oysters which entered that house would have surprised Neptune himself; squadrons of poulterers’ men brought flocks of feathered fowls, and of fowls unfeathered; there was not a single species of edible ornithology of which Lady Lombard did not possess one or more specimens—she would have ordered a Podiceps Cornutus had she ever heard of such a creature. The eighty-guinea advertisement-horse, with the plated harness, in Messrs. Fortnum & Mason’s spring cart, began to think his masters must have established a depot in the far west, and that he was engaged in transporting thither the major portion of their seductive stock. In the interior of that dwelling-house confusion reigned supreme. Upstairs Mrs. Perquisite, the housekeeper, rendered life a burden to the female servants, and tyrannised over her hapless mistress till free will became a mockery mentioned in connection with that ever-thwarted widow. It was enough for Lady Lombard to express a wish; Mrs. Perquisite, a living embodiment of the antagonistic principle, was instantly in arms to oppose it.
“What, your ladyship!” would she exclaim (and be it observed, her voice was at least an octave higher than any good-tempered woman’s ever was, and pitched in a most aggravating key); “what! not uncover the marble table! I never heard of such a thing! Her Ladyship will have it taken off, Jane—not uncover that bootiful Paria marble! inlaid with Lappuss Lazily. Why, your Ladyship must be a-dreaming!”
“I thought that the satin cover matching the chairs, and having poor dear Sir Pinchbeck’s arms embroidered on it, perhaps it might have been better to leave it on, Mrs. Perquisite,” pleaded Lady Lombard meekly.
“Of course your Ladyship can do as your Ladyship pleases; if your Ladyship likes to demean yourself by looking after such things, which was never the case when I lived with the Dowager Marchioness of Doubledutch, now no more, having remembered all her faithful servants handsomely on her death-bed, without a dry eye about her, in the seventy-sixth year of her age. Perhaps I had better go downstairs, which is only in the way, and your Ladyship can direct Jane to set out the rooms according to your Ladyship’s fancy.”
Poor Lady Lombard, when once that defunct Dowager Marchioness was let loose upon her, felt that her fate was sealed. It was not for her, the widow of a man who had been knighted, to fly in the face of the peerage; so she humbly authorised the removal of the Lombard arms, implored Perquisite to arrange the rooms as she had been accustomed to set out those of the poor dear Marchioness, and betook herself to the sanctity of her own boudoir, leaving the field to the virago, to whom she paid £60 per annum for keeping her in a continual state of moral bondage.
But while such scenes as the foregoing were enacting in the upper portions of the establishment, the French chef de cuisine, Monsieur Hector Achille Ulisse Abelard d’Haricots, was making a perfect Pandemonium of the lower regions. The physical energy displayed by that accomplished foreigner was truly admirable, his ubiquity was marvellous; the tassel at the top of his white night-cap appeared to have been multiplied infinitesimally and to pervade space, the sound of his polyglot exhortations and reflections re-echoed through the lofty servants’ offices. Wonderful were the strange oaths he poured forth, when Antoine, a long, limp, shambling French lad, “son élève, zie son of—hélas! baigné des larmes, he even till at present scarcely could pronounce her name—his angelic sister, since some time entombed, having espoused un brave Anglais, his long-lost Louise Amélie Marie-Antoinette de Brownsmit, née d’Haricots,”—when this unworthy offspring of international alliance committed some unpardonable artistic error, and unlike “Polly” of lyrical celebrity, did not “put the kettle on,” or “take it off again,” exactly at the critical moment. Deep and nasal were his ejaculations when some obtuse butcher’s boy would not understand his “Anglishe,” which that somewhat apocryphal personage, “ce brave garçon Brownsmit” (who was Hector Achille’s Mrs. Harris, and was consequently brought forward on all occasions), had declared he spoke like a native.