“Ay, I hear that your machinations have succeeded,” returned Frere gruffly, “and that De Grandeville is about to marry Lady Lombard. I’ll tell you what it is, Bracy; it strikes me that in assisting people to make fools of themselves and each other, you are just wasting your time and perverting your talents: depend upon it you may very safely leave folks to perform that operation on their own account, they are not likely to class that amongst their sins of omission.”
“Make fools of themselves!” repeated Bracy. “My dear Frere, it’s nothing of the sort, that was an ‘opus operatum,’ a deed done for our friends by beneficent Nature, long before I had the pleasure of their acquaintance. Moreover, in the present case, I am seeking to diminish, rather than to increase, the standing amount of folly—man and wife are one, you know; ergo, by uniting Lady Lombard and the mighty De Grandeville, the ranks of the feeble-minded are one fool minus.”
“Well, that certainly is an ingenious way of putting it,” rejoined Frere, laughing in spite of himself; “and pray how have you contrived to bring about this delectable affair; for I conclude the match is your handiwork?”
“Oh! the thing was easy enough to accomplish,” replied Bracy. “I invented pretty speeches, which I declared to each that the other had made about them; I exaggerated De Grandeville’s position to Lady Lombard, and Lady Lombard’s wealth to De Grandeville; in short, I lied perseveringly and judiciously until I fancied I had got the affair thoroughly en train. But I soon found out there was a hitch somewhere; it was clearly not on the lady’s side, for she was so far gone as to believe in De Grandeville to the extent of estimating him at his own valuation, which I take to be the ne plus ultra of credulity; so I set steadily to work to investigate him, and if possible find out what was the matter. I tried various schemes, but none of them would act, his reserve was impenetrable; at last, in despair, I gave him a champagne dinner at the Polysnobion, taking care to ply him well with wine, and to walk home with him afterwards. That did the business—he must have been most transcendently drunk and no mistake, for before we reached his lodgings, having confessed to me that his grandfather had been a tallow chandler, he went on to relate that the bar to his union with Lady Lombard was his inability to discover that she possessed any pedigree.”
“Well, for that matter,” interrupted Frere, “having admitted the tallow chandler, I don’t see that he need have been so very particular as to the aristocratic tendencies of Lady Lombard’s ancestry.”
“De Grandeville did not think so,” resumed Bracy; “he argued that no amount of chandlery could infuse vulgarity into the blood of one of his illustrious house; external circumstances, he declared, were powerless to affect the innate nobility of a De Grandeville: whole years of melting days would fail to drop a spot upon that illustrious name. But for a man, the founder of whose family came over with the Norman William, to marry a woman without a pedigree, one who probably never had so much as a grandfather belonging to her, was impossible: he had a warm regard for Lady Lombard; he considered that his name and influence, supported by her wealth, would place him in one of the proudest positions to which a mortal could aspire; but even for this he could not sacrifice his leading principle, he could not ally himself to any one without a pedigree.
“Seeing that he was in earnest, I forbore to laugh at him; and merely throwing out hints that I had reason to believe he was in error, and that although Lady Lombard’s father (an amiable soap-boiler, whose virtues simmered for sixty years in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch) had been engaged in commerce (he paraphrased the tallow chandler into a Russian merchant), as well as his grandfather, still the arguments which applied to the one case would hold good in the other, and at all events I begged him to take no rash or precipitate step in the matter till I had applied to a friend of mine (of course invented for the occasion) who was a genealogist, and used my best endeavours to clear up the difficulty—for which disinterested offer he, being still more or less inebriated, blessed me reiteratedly and fervently, and so, having seen him safely home, we parted. The next morning I visited Lady Lombard, led her on sweetly and easily to talk of her family, gained some information, and learned where to obtain more, and in less than two days had the satisfaction of proving her fiftieth cousin sixteen times removed to Edward the Third. De Grandeville was introduced to my friend in the Heralds’ Office——.”
“Whom you declared a minute ago to be invented for the occasion,” interrupted Frere.
“For which reason he was the more easily personated by Tom Edgehill of the Fusileers,” resumed the unblushing Bracy. “De Grandeville was allowed, as a great favour, to peruse the pedigree, believed in it——”
“Or pretended to do so,” suggested Frere.