“All! my dear sir? all! Why, what would you have? When a man like Bullbait says he’ll think about a thing, I consider it a case of opus operatum—reckon the deed done. If he meant to refuse your paper, what need has he to think about it? No, Mr. Dace, if you’re not correcting a proof of the ‘Cough’—psha, ‘Curse,’ I mean—(when one once takes a wrong idea into one’s head how difficult it is to get it out again!) before the week is over, I’m no prophet. By the way,” he continued, as Rose, looking better than pretty in the whitest of muslin frocks, resigned a comfortable seat to a cross old lady in a gaudy turban, which gave her the appearance, from the neck upwards, of a plain male Turk, liberally endowed with the attributes commonly assigned to his nation by writers of fairytales and other light literature for the nursery, amongst which man-stealing and cannibalism are two of the least atrocious—“by the way, I must introduce you to this young lady; a kindred soul, sir, one of the most rising authoresses of the day.”
“No, I really——” began the Dace, flapping about in the extremity of his shyness like one of his fishy namesakes abstracted from its native element.
“Nonsense,” resumed Bracy, enjoying his embarrassment. “Miss Arundel, let me have the pleasure of making you acquainted with one of our men of genius, a writer to whom a liberal posterity will no doubt do justice, however the trammelled sycophants of a clique may combine to delay his intellectual triumphs.” Then in an aside to J. D. D. he added, “Make play with her; Bullbait wants her particularly to write for the Olla, and she hangs back at present: she would merely have to say a word to him, and you might obtain the run of the magazine.”
Thus urged, John Dace, Dackerel Dace, Esq., called up all the energies of his nature, and by their assistance overcoming his habitual sheepishness, he caused to descend upon Rose a torrent of pathetic small-talk which overwhelmed that young lady till dinner was announced, when he claimed her arm and floated with her down the stream of descending humanity until he found himself safely moored by her side at the dinner-table.
Bracy having thus, as he would himself have expressed it, taken the change out of that odd fish Dace, and frustrated, for the time being, the matrimonial tactics of the Brahmin’s widow, was making his way through the various groups of people in search of Miss MacSalvo, whose rampant Protestantism might, he considered, afford him some sport if judiciously handled, when he was suddenly intercepted by the innocent Susanna with the inquiry, “Pray, Mr. Bracy, can you explain this wonderful metamorphosis in your friend Mr. Frere? He’s grown quite handsome.”
Thus appealed to, Bracy regarded attentively the individual in question, who was good-naturedly turning over a book of prints for Lady Gudgeon, a little shrivelled old lady, so deaf as to render conversation with her a pursuit of politeness under difficulties. Having apparently satisfied himself by this investigation, Bracy replied, “To the best of my belief, I should say he had only had his hair cut, and was for once dressed like a gentleman.”
“He is wonderfully clever, is he not?” inquired the lady.
“Clever!” repeated Bracy. “That’s a mild word to apply to such acquirements as Frere rejoices in. He knows all the languages, living or dead; possesses an intimate acquaintance with the arts and sciences, has all the ‘ologies’ at his fingers’ ends, and is not only well up in the history of man since the creation, but will tell you to a fraction how many feeds a day kept a Mastodon in good condition two or three thousand years before we tailless monkeys came into possession of our landed property.”
“I suppose, as he dresses so strangely in general, that he’s very poor: all clever people are, I believe,” returned Susanna, with an air of the most artless naïveté, the idea having for the first time occurred to her that, faute de mieux, the philosopher might do to replace the man of war.
Bracy read her thoughts, and kindly invented a few facts and figures by which he increased Frere’s income about sevenfold, and gave him a magnificent stock of expectations, regarding the realisation whereof not the most forlorn hope ever existed.