CHAPTER XL.—SHOWS, AMONGST OTHER MATTERS, HOW RICHARD FRERE PASSED A RESTLESS NIGHT.
The hysterical affection of the praiseworthy antipolygamist having taken place late in the evening, may be said to have broken up the party. Mrs. General Gudgeon, who, when the catastrophe occurred, was more or less asleep over the same book of prints to which she had devoted herself on her first arrival, originated, as she witnessed the confusion, a faint idea—(all this lady’s ideas, and they were not many, were of a dim and hazy character, so that a good impression of her thoughts—if we may be allowed the term—was a rarity hardly to be met with)—that her better half was in some way connected with the matter; and knowing that dining out usually “produced an effect upon him” (as she delicately and indefinitely phrased it), she forthwith instituted an inquiry after her carriage, and that “vehicle for the transmission of heavy bodies” being reported in readiness, she issued marching orders, and as soon as the honourable and gallant officer could be got upon his legs, took him in tow, and in his company departed.
The Dackerels hastened to follow this example, the maternal Dackerel having come in for her share of the General’s “good things,” and appearing much inclined to “trump” Miss MacSalvo’s hysterics with a fainting fit; J. D. D., with a face even longer than usual, supported her retiring footsteps. He had been warming his chilly spirit in the sunshine of the widow’s smiles, till, in the possibility of some day calling that delicate creature his own, the outline of a new and fascinating destiny had been traced upon the foolscap paper of his imagination; but the doom was still upon him, and in the calls of filial piety he recognised a fresh postponement even of this last forlorn hope. Frere had shaken hands with Rose, apologised for not being able to lunch with them the next day—a thing which nobody had asked him to do—and, having set the butler and both the tall footmen to look for his cotton umbrella, and put on consecutively two wrong greatcoats, was about to walk home, when Mr. James Rasper interfered; he would drive his friend home—anywhere—everywhere—so that he would but accompany him. He wanted to show him his cab; he wished to learn his opinion of his horse—in short, he would not be denied; and Frere, beginning to think his friendship a worse alternative than his animosity, was forced to consent, which he did thus—
“Well, yes, if you like. I shall get home sooner, that’s one comfort; and I’ve got three hours’ work to do before I can go to bed. Is this your trap? The brute won’t kick, will he? Ugh! what an awkward thing to get into. I believe I’ve broken my shin. Go ahead! Mind you steer clear of the lamp-posts. I can’t think why people ride when they’ve got legs to walk with.”
Bracy waited patiently to hand Miss MacSalvo downstairs, which he did with much gravity and decorum, lamenting the disgraceful conduct of General Gudgeon, of whom he remarked, with a portentous shake of the head, that “he greatly feared he was not a man of a sober or edifying frame of mind,” which observation was certainly true as far as the sobriety was concerned.
Whether Jemima of the sour countenance had, in arranging Frere’s bed, imparted somewhat of the angularity of her own nature to the feathers, or whether the events of the evening had excited that part of his system in regard to the existence whereof he indulged in a very bigotry of scepticism, namely, his nerves, certain it is that when (having read Hindostanee till daylight peeped in upon his studies) he went to bed he did not follow his usual system of dropping asleep almost as soon as he had laid his head upon his pillow; neither could he apply his ordinary remedy for insomnolency, for when he tried to concentrate his attention on some difficult sentence in his Hindostanee, or to solve mentally an abstruse mathematical problem, a figure in white muslin obscured the Asiatic characters or entangled itself inextricably with rectangular triangles, so that the wished-for Q. E. D. could never be arrived at. Frere had never thought Rose Arundel pretty till that night—one reason for which might have been that he had never thought about her appearance at all; but now, all of a sudden, the recollection of her animated face as, carried away by the impulse of the moment, she had begun to tell him how she admired his noble conduct, occurred to him, and all its good points flashed upon him and haunted and oppressed him. The smooth, broad forehead—he had observed that before, and decided it to be a good forehead in a practical point of view—i.e.> a capacious knowledge-box; but now he felt that it was something more, and the mysterious attribute of beauty forced itself upon his notice and flung its charm around him. Then her eyes—those deep, earnest, truthful eyes—seemed yet to gaze at him, with a bright expression of interest sparkling through their softness. He could not, try as he pleased, banish the recollection of those eyes; as he lay and thought they came across him, and bewitched him like a spell. And her mouth—what a world of eloquence was there even in its silence; there might be traced the same firmness and resolution which marked the haughty curl of Lewis’s short upper lip; but the pride and sternness were wanting, and in their place a chastened, pensive expression seemed to afford a guarantee that the strength of character thus indicated could alone be aroused in a good cause; but the true expression of that mouth was to be discovered only when a smile, suggestive of every softer, brighter trait of woman’s nature, revealed the little pearl-like teeth. All this seemed to have come upon Frere like a sudden inspiration; he could not banish it from his recollection, and the more he reflected upon it, the less he understood it. And so he tossed and tumbled about, restless alike in mind and body, till at last, just as the clock struck six, he fell into a doze. But sleep afforded him no refuge from his tormentress. Rose, changed and yet the same, haunted his dreams; but a halo appeared to surround her—she had acquired a character of sanctity in his eyes. Never again could he inadvertently address her as “sir,” and he would as soon have thought of connecting the idea of a “good fellow” with one of Raphael’s Madonnas as with Rose Arundel. At half-past seven Jemima—a very chronometer for punctuality—knocked at his door, and receiving no answer, sans cérémonie walked in, to see what might be the matter; and finding her master rather snoring than otherwise, invaded his slumbers by exclaiming in a shrill voice—
“It ain’t of much use me getting out of my blessed bed with the rhumatiz in the small o’ my back to bring your hot-water by halfpast seven, if you lay there snoring like a hog, Master Richard, and won’t answer a body when they call you;” to which appeal she received the somewhat inconsequent reply—
“Well, suppose I wouldn’t let him shoot me, there’s nothing very fine in that, Rose.”