“I dine there?” said Mr. Eales, who would have dined with Beelzebub if sure of a good cook, and when he came away, would have painted his host blacker than fate had made him.
“You might, you know, although you do abuse him so,” continued the wag. “They say it’s very pleasant. Clavering goes to sleep after dinner; the Begum gets tipsy with cherry-brandy, and the young lady sings songs to the young gentlemen. She sings well, don’t she, Fo?”
“Slap up,” said Fo. “I tell you what, Poyntz, she sings like a whatdyecallum—you know what I mean—like a mermaid, you know, but that’s not their name.”
“I never heard a mermaid sing,” Mr. Poyntz, the wag, replied. “Whoever heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?”
“Don’t make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz,” said Foker, turning red, and with tears almost in his eyes, “you know what I mean: it’s those what’s-his-names—in Homer, you know. I never said I was a good scholar.”
“And nobody ever said it of you, my boy,” Mr. Poyntz remarked, and Foker striking spurs into his pony, cantered away down Rotten Row, his mind agitated with various emotions, ambitions, mortifications. He was sorry that he had not been good at his books in early life—that he might have cut out all those chaps who were about her, and who talked the languages, and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her album, and—and that—“What am I,” thought little Foker, “compared to her? She’s all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as easy as I could drink a glass of beer. Beer?—damme, that’s all I’m fit for, is beer. I am a poor, ignorant little beggar, good for nothing but Foker’s Entire. I misspent my youth, and used to get the chaps to do my exercises. And what’s the consequences now? Oh, Harry Foker, what a confounded little fool you have been!”
As he made this dreary soliloquy, he had cantered out of Rotten Row into the Park, and there was on the point of riding down a large old roomy family carriage, of which he took no heed, when a cheery voice cried out, “Harry, Harry!” and looking up, he beheld his aunt, the Lady Rosherville, and two of her daughters, of whom the one who spoke was Harry’s betrothed, the Lady Ann.
He started back with a pale, scared look, as a truth about which he had not thought during the whole day, came across him. There was his fate, there, in the back seat of that carriage.
“What is the matter, Harry? why are you so pale? You have been raking and smoking too much, you wicked boy,” said Lady Ann.
Foker said, “How do, aunt,” “How do, Ann,” in a perturbed manner—muttered something about a pressing engagement,—indeed he saw by the Park clock that he must have been keeping his party in the drag waiting for nearly an hour—and waved a good-bye. The little man and the little pony were out of sight in an instant—the great carriage rolled away. Nobody inside was very much interested about his coming or going; the Countess being occupied with her spaniel, the Lady Lucy’s thoughts and eyes being turned upon a volume of sermons, and those of the Lady Ann upon a new novel, which the sisters had just procured from the library.