Meantime the wine circulates again; and the earl, who has already taken too much, takes a little more.
And every man has had some little irritation on that unfortunate day; poor Arthur, who expected so much from his little dinner! For Arthur has been thinking now of Gracie, and there is some uneasy feeling on his mind he does not seek to analyze. Though, indeed, it was by her wish that they had never been engaged.
No small talk seems to be quite ready; and Birmingham goes on. “Of course, it’s all very well for you fellows to talk,” says he, as if he meant to be amicable, “and I’m sorry that I said what I did. But you must all know well enough that it’s ridiculous for Americans to talk of family. Why, the country was settled by the very scum and refuse of Old England; and all your ancestors were either thieves, or slaves, or prostitutes and domestic servants shipped out here by the carload——”
He stammers a moment; for John Haviland, eying him calmly, as one might eye some servant seeking for a place, rises, folds his napkin with great deliberation, and stalks out of the room. Gower follows him, assuring the Englishman first, with great particularity, that “he is a confounded blackguard and knows where he may find him.” With which grandiloquent speech, a little out of date perhaps, the other five are left to continue their instructive conversation. Arthur is a little pale, but Charlie Townley, when they have fairly left the room, breaks into a roar of laughter, and Tony Duval seems to think it all good fun; his grandfather, a French barber, had married a Paris grisette, and both had come to America to make their fortunes.
“That’s like ’em all,” says the bellicose Briton, “they court our company, just like the snobs at home, and then are vexed if we don’t treat them as our equals. And all the fuss about a Kitty Farnum! I mean to take her back with me, but damme if I’ve yet decided to marry her first!”
“You will oblige me first by taking your name off this club; or as I put you down, I’ll save you the trouble by doing that myself. Perhaps I had better pay your bill for you too, lest you should forget it, as you did that hundred I lent you last year. And I will write to Mrs. Farnum and the ladies to whom I have introduced you, and apologize to them for the disgrace of bringing you,” says Arthur. “Waiter, you need give this gentleman no more wine; he has had too much already.” Arthur speaks in a loud tone, so that all the other men in the dining-room have heard; and then he too stalks away. “Oh, dammit, no, don’t do that,” begins Birmingham, in answer to the last of Arthur’s threats but one; but our hero is already beyond his hearing.
Charlie is still laughing, but now he finds his breath again. “Never mind, old fellow, you were drunk,” he says, consolingly. “It’ll be all right, to-morrow.” Birmingham is red and puffing like a turkey-cock: and at the same time struggling with some clumsy speeches of repentance.
“Upon my word,” says Wemyss, who has been most uncomfortable throughout this scene, “there has been no such time since the declaration of independence.”
“The fact is,” adds Charlie, soothingly, “you touched them both on a tender point; that fellow Haviland I suspect of being a rejected suitor for Kitty F. herself; and Arthur, I know, has had a soft spot for his cousin since he was a calf.”
But by this time Birmingham is going maudlin; his drunkenness has come on him so quick that Wemyss and Townley have much ado to get him home to bed. He is full of fulsome expressions of regret; and ends with blubbering that he is sorry for what he did.