Meanwhile the Marquess of Tiverton was doing his best to give me a competent knowledge of the Court-end of the town. He had a spacious mansion in Bloomsbury Square, but this was now let to a great nabob, and he himself lived in close-shorn splendour in a small house in St. James's. Here I saw much of him, for commonly I would stroll round late in the forenoon and rout him out of bed. By an odd turn we took to each other greatly, and while he drank chocolate in bed or trifled with his breakfast we had many talks on the few subjects that mattered to him.
Our favourite theme was Margaret, whom he outspokenly worshipped. He rhapsodized over her in great stretches, calling me to testify with him to her divineness, and rating me soundly if, in the bitterness of my heart, I was a little laggard in my devotions. And, at irregular intervals, like Selah in the Psalms, he would intone dolefully, "And I can't marry her!"
It was no use my protesting that an unmarried man could marry any woman he liked if she would have him.
"A man can," he would reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he can't. He'll never be more than an earl and I'm a marquess. Curse my luck! Fancy me a marquess! I'm a disgrace to my order and as poor as a crow."
The 'jade' referred to was the nabob's only daughter and heiress, who was, as all the town knew, to make a great match. My Lord Brocton was keenly in pursuit of her, but she inclined to the Marquess, who could have had her and her vast fortune any day for the asking. She was certainly not overdone with charms, but Tiverton in his anger had made her out worse than she was.
The morning after my encounter with Margaret in the recess, Tiverton was more than usually talkative, the fact being not unconnected, I imagine, with an unsuccessful bout at White's the night previous. We got through our usual talk about Margaret and the nabobess, and then he struck out a new line.
"Now if the divine Margaret," he said, "rightly so named as the pearl of great price among women, were only Freake's daughter and heiress, I'd be on my knees before her in a jiffy. They say he made cartfuls of money over that Jacobite business. Everybody here was selling at any price the stocks would fetch, and he was buying right and left on his own terms. He was back here, knowing of the retreat from Derby, over twenty-four hours before the courier came, and the old fox kept the news to himself. He's the first man out of the city to set up house in the Court-end. Old Borrowdell shifted his tabernacle as far west as Hatton Gardens in my father's time, and that was thought pretty big and bold, but here's Freake right in the thick of it, and holds his own like a lion among jackals. Fact is, he's a right-down good fellow. Being a marquess, I ought to despise him, 'stead of which I feel like a worm whenever he comes near me, and that, mark ye, Noll, not because I owe him close on ten thousand. I used to owe a rascal named Blayton quite as much, and every time he came whining round here I either wanted to kick him out or did it. Heigh-ho! I'm in the very devil of a mess but I'll cheat scraggy-neck yet. I'll reform outright, Noll. I'll never touch a card again as long as I live."
"That's the talk!" said I heartily. "Eat something and let's have the horses out for a gallop across Putney Heath."
Next evening, early, being very miserable, I went round to the Blounts, with whom I was very friendly. I forgot myself for a time, it being impossible to think of anything while lying on my back on the hearth, with baby Blount trying to pull my hair out by the roots and cutting a stubborn tooth on my nose. He was a delightful, pitiless, young rascal and would leave anything and anybody to maul me about.
I had, however, for once mistaken my billet, for while thus engaged who should come in with his mother but Margaret?