Jack Brag, vol. 1 (of 3)

By Theodore Edward Hook

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Title: Jack Brag, vol. 1 (of 3)

Author: Theodore Edward Hook


        
Release date: May 14, 2026 [eBook #78686]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Richard Bentley, 1837

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK BRAG, VOL. 1 (OF 3) ***




                               JACK BRAG.

                                VOL. I.




                                LONDON:
                       PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
                      Dorset Street, Fleet Street.




                               JACK BRAG.

                            BY THE AUTHOR OF

                 “SAYINGS AND DOINGS,”--“MAXWELL,” &c.

                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:

                            RICHARD BENTLEY,

                         NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

                                 1837.




                               JACK BRAG.




                               CHAPTER I.


“My dear Johnny,” said the respectable widow Brag to her son, “what
is the good of your going on in this way? Here, instead of minding
the business, you are day after day galloping and gallivanting,
steeple-chasing, fox-hunting, lord-hunting, a wasting your time and
your substance, the shop going to old Nick, and _you_ getting dipped
instead of your candles.”

“Mother,” said Jack, “don’t talk so foolishly! You are of the old
school,--excellent in your way, but a long way behindhand: the business
is safe enough. You cannot suppose, with the education I have had, I
can meddle with moulds, or look after sixes, tens, fours to the pound,
or farthing rushlights;--no, thanks to my enlightenment, I flatter
myself I soar a little higher than that.”

“No nonsense, Johnny!” said Mrs. Brag. “All you have now, and all you
have spent since your poor father’s death, was gained by your father’s
enlightenment of his customers: and how do you suppose I can carry on
the trade if you will not now and then attend to it?”

“Take my advice, my dear mother,” said Jack, “and marry. I’m old enough
now not to care a fig for a father-in-law;--marriage is the plan, as I
say to my friend Lord Tom--straight up, right down, and no mistake. Get
a sensible, stir-about husband, who does not mind grubbing, and hasn’t
a nose----”

“Hasn’t a nose?” interrupted Mrs. Brag.

“I don’t mean literally,” said Jack, “but sportingly;--does not mind
the particular scent of tallow--you understand. Let him into the tricks
of the trade: you will still be queen-bee of the hive,--make _him_ look
after the drones while you watch the wax.”

“And while _you_, Johnny, lap up the honey,” said the queen-bee.

“Do what you like,” said her son, “only marry--‘marry come up,’ as
somebody says in a play.”

“But, John,” said Mrs. Brag, “I have no desire to change my condition.”

“Nor I that you should,” said Jack; “but I wish you would change your
name. As long as ‘Brag, wax and tallow-chandler,’ sticks up on the
front of the house, with three dozen and four dangling dips swinging
along the shop-front, like so many malefactors expiating their crimes,
I live in a perpetual fever lest my numerous friends should inquire
whether I am one of the firm or the family.”

“Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “you are a silly fellow. What is there to
be ashamed of in honest industry? If all the fine folks whom you go
a-hunting with, and all the rest of it, like you, and are really glad
to see you, it is for yourself alone: and if they, who must know by
your name and nature that you can never be one of themselves, care a
button for you, your trade, so as you do not carry it about with you,
will do you no harm. What difference is it to them how you get your
thorough-bred horses, your smart scarlet coat, neat tops, and white
cords, so as you have them?--they won’t give you any new ones when they
are gone.”

“It is all very well talking,” said Johnny, “but I never should show my
face amongst them if I once thought they guessed at my real trade. I
live in a regular worry as it is. If ever a fellow asks me if I was at
Melton last year, that moment I think of the shop--‘pretty mould of a
horse’ tingles in my ears--‘sweet dip of the country’ sets me doubting;
and, only last week, a proposal to go ’cross country and meet Lord
Hurricane’s harriers at Hampton Wick nearly extinguished me.”

“And what now, Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do you think these lords take
you for, if not for a tallow-chandler?”

“An independent gentleman,” said Jack.

“That is to say,” replied his mother, “a gentleman who has nothing to
depend upon.”

“They look upon me as an agreeable rattle,” said John.

“One that has often been in the watchman’s hands too,” said the old
lady.

“I talk big and ride small,” said Jack, “I am always up with the
hounds--never flinch at anything,--am the pride of the field wherever I
go,--and in steeple-chases of infinite value.”

“And very little weight, my dear Johnny,” interrupted his mother.

“One of my dearest friends,” continued Brag, “Lord Tom Towzle, a deuce
of a fellow amongst the females, is going to put me up as a candidate
at the Travellers.”

“What, riders for respectable houses?” said Mrs. Brag: “and a very
proper club too.”

“Respectable houses!” said Jack. “Poh! not a bit of it! What!
bagmen in buggies with boxes of buttons in the boots? No, no! the
Travellers--_par excellence_.”

“Par what?” said Mrs. Brag. “What, d’ye mean the fine Club-house in
Pall Mall which you showed me the out side of, last King’s birth night?”

“The same,” said Brag. “Now, if I had stuck to the naked, as Lord Tom
says--told the plain unvarnished--I never could have qualified. Lord
Tom asked me if I should like to belong to the Travellers;--in course
I said yes--straight up, right down, and no mistake. Well, then he asks
me if I could qualify;--so not quite understanding him, he says, ‘Have
you ever been in Greece?’--‘Yes,’ said I:--I _might_ have added ‘up to
the elbows often;’ didn’t though. Had him dead. Down he whips my name,
and calls in Sir Somebody Something out of the street to second me.”

“If you should get in there Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do get ’em to
give up gas and take to oil on illumination nights. But what I think
is, somebody is sure to find you out, Johnny.”

“Time enough,” said Jack. “I’m going it now smooth and soft across
the country, increasing my acquaintance; falling into the society of
elegant females--women of fashion, with beautiful faces and liberal
hearts;--introduced to three last week--proud as peacocks to everybody
else, delighted with _me_;--met them at Ascot--cold collation in the
carriage--champaign iced from London;--got on capital--never was so
happy in my life--hottest weather I ever felt; spirits mounted--I was
the delight of the party--told them half a dozen stories of myself, and
made them laugh like cockatoos, but I was bundled all of a heap by the
Marquis of Middlesdale, who had been at luncheon with the King, who, in
passing the barouche, gave me a smack on the back you might have heard
to Egham, and cried out, ‘Jack, this is a melting day, isn’t it?’”

“He meant it, Johnny, depend upon it,” said Mrs. Brag.

“I’ve no doubt he did,” said Brag, “for it was as hot as ever I felt
it----”

“--In the back shop,” interrupted his mother. “But pray, Johnny, where
do these people think you live?”

“At a great house in Grosvenor-street,” said Jack, “next door to
What-d’ye-call-’em’s Hotel: my name is on the door, and my address on
my card.”

“But you don’t live there,” said Mrs. Brag.

“Not I,” replied the son: “I only rent the door.”

“How d’ye mean?” said his mother.

“Why, I went to the man,” said Brag, “who keeps the house. ‘Now, sir,’
said I, ‘I want to rent four square inches of your panels’. He was
puzzled for the moment; but I was down upon him in no time, and no
mistake.--Out I pulls from my pocket a brass plate of those precise
dimensions, whereon is engraven ‘Mr. Brag.’--‘What will you take per
annum,’ said I, ‘to let this be screwed on to your door, and let
your servant take in my cards and letters?’ Startled him a little
at first: however, he entered himself for the plate, acceded to my
proposition,--and so for the trifling consideration of four guineas per
annum, and a tip to the slavey, I get the credit of five windows in
front, three stories high, in one of the best streets in London.”

“But do none of your friends ever expect to be let in?” said Mrs. Brag.

“Yes,” said Brag, “for a good thing now and then,--and so they are,
pretty often. Long head, mother--have it here”--tapping his forehead
with his fore finger--“look simple with my fresh colour and curly hair,
but as deep as Garrick--cannot write your X’s, Z’s with me,--else,
in course, they might expect admission. ‘Not at home,’ is always the
answer. ‘Out of town?’ is the next question;--‘Yes,’ is the next
answer.--‘Where?’ comes next.--‘Down at his little place in Surrey.’
That finishes it. They lodge their pasteboard and away they go.”

“Little place in Surrey!” said Mrs. Brag;--“why, what d’ye mean?--have
you a country-house too?”

“Country-house!” said Brag. “Lord bless your dear heart, not I! Nothing
but my old lodging, on the second floor, No. 37, at the carpenter’s,
corner of Caterpillar-row, Kennington.”

“And _that_ you call your little place in Surrey, do you?” said Mrs.
Brag.

“Yes, mother, and no fib neither,” said Brag. “It is almost the
littlest place I ever saw in my life; and as for Caterpillar-row, if
it isn’t in Surrey I know nothing of going ’cross a country.”

“Ah, Johnny, Johnny,” said his respected parent with a mingled look of
sorrow and admiration, “you never will mend till it is too late!”

“Mother,” said Jack, “now you say that, I think I shall be too late
for Lord Tom Towzle. We are going off for Wigglesford to mark out a
line. All ready for a run: we have got no mercy in us,--none of your
bowling-green, daisy-cutting work for us--no, we’ll try to pick out
rasping fences, bottomless brooks, and ditches as wide as rivers;--a
steeple-chase without killing a horse or two, cracking a collar-bone,
slipping a shoulder, or pitching an out-and-outer on the top of his
conk, is no fun in the world.”

“Ah! well, well,” said Mrs. Brag, “I wish you would give a little time
to the books and the business: some day you’ll repent this.”

“Not I, mother,” said Jack; “I can pull up any day and marry. I never
yet saw the woman I could not win--they are all ready to eat me up: in
course, as the book says, I am the more wary--hang back a bit. Don’t
you see, as I get on in the world, I get up; and if I can marry a Lady
Sally or a Lady Susan--eh! won’t that be nice!--’specially if there
happens to be an odd thirty or forty thousand pounds tacked to the
title.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Johnny,” replied Mrs. Brag, shaking her head:
“_that_ scheme will never answer.”

“You’ll see,” said Jack;--“I say nothing, but you’ll see. If I were
to sit down and write an account of my adventures with the females, I
should be run after like a sight. The females of fashion that I meet at
the races call me ‘dear Johnny’ as it is.”

“I wonder you are not afraid of seeing the ghost of your poor father,”
said the widow.

“What! the Governor?” cried Jack; “never mind ghosts nor Governors,
here is my Leporello. So I’m off. Good-b’ye, dear mother!--you’ll see
me soon again,--I shall be back by Saturday, and so keep snug Sunday.”

“Where? at your town-house in Grosvenor-street,” said the old lady,
“or your little place in Surrey?”

“Neither, I take it,” said Jack, looking as wise as a very
foolish person could. “I devote Sunday afternoon to a very select
society--eh!--females of fashion, delightful creatures, and all that.
So adieu!”

Kissing the matron’s cheek, away went our hero in order to revel in
all the luxuries of sport, and in the society which, he admitted,
kept him in a fever while he was in it: not that the true circle of
his aristocratic acquaintance was particularly large, however much he
nominally increased it by dubbing every man his friend with whom he had
happened to hunt in the same field or dine in a public company of three
hundred and fifty; and every well-dressed woman a lady of fashion whom
he happened to see with the tigers in whose set he mingled.

Mrs. Brag, who felt extremely anxious about her son and herself, saw
that the business was rapidly “burning down.” The introduction of oil
had superseded wax; and since that, the adoption of gas had superseded
oil. No efforts were made to improve the concern, and all she heard,
was of considerable drafts from the account at the banker’s, and very
small payments into it; and Mrs. Brag, a comely, hearty-looking body
of her time of life, began to ponder the words which her dutiful son
had with little apparent earnestness let drop, as to changing her
condition, with a view to increase the reputation of the house and
extend its sphere of action, while the name at sight of which her son
trembled, might be withdrawn. She did not clearly see her way in this
proceeding: nor had she either fixed her affections upon any particular
object, nor was she conscious that she had attracted the regards of any
suitable partner. However, the notion was entertained--the idea had
been started; and how the exemplary matron set her means to work, in
order to effect the grand object, we may, if we live long enough, yet
discover.

The reader perhaps, in the few pages which he has yet either been
doomed to, or condescended to read, has already discovered what sort of
man Mr. John Brag is, or was. It seemed best to give a short domestic
scene in the candle-manufactory by way of prelude to the genteel comedy
in which the gay deceiver is destined to perform; and it will be only
necessary to keep in mind the sage yet ineffective lesson of the dear
old body to whom her affectionate son recommended matrimony, in order
duly to appreciate the performance of her “pretty boy,” who, spite
of his colour and his curls, was verging upon what may be called the
“shady side” of thirty.

Old Mrs. Brag had, as Miss Scropps, married at seventeen; and although,
as far as my own experience goes, I admit I never saw such a thing,
she was said to be a lady of nearly fifty-five years of age, somewhere
about the period at which this glimpse at the history of her yet
unrecorded family begins.

It may be supposed that I should apologise for bringing the eyes, or
perhaps the noses, of my readers in contact with all the arcana of Mr.
John’s shop; but I have a reason for doing so. I propose not merely to
show by illustration how very ridiculous a pretender must always be,
but to exhibit a striking instance of the retributive justice which
seems somehow to keep the world in an equipoise, by exhibiting the
wonderful utility of which the meanest and stupidest animal extant
may prove; as _vide_ (to quote the words of James the First, about
Dæmonology) the fable of the Lion, the Mouse, and the Meshes.

Soar we then for a moment from the gloom of the tallow-chandler to a
more charming region, and to people of a different mould,--and yet who,
as the reader will see, may in the course of events become connected,
and intimately too, with our sprightly gentleman in the scarlet jacket
and white cords. Let us, therefore, betake ourselves to the _boudoir_
of one of the most charming young widows in England, where she is
sitting _tête-à-tête_ with her unmarried sister, talking over two
absent gentlemen, whose tempers and dispositions are the immediate
subject of their conversation.

Mrs. Dallington, the elder of the two ladies so engaged, had been
married at nineteen, merely to oblige her father, (who died six months
afterwards,) to a gentleman of the name which she still bore; who, to
all the other merits which distinguished his character, emulated in
a high degree the fox-hunting propensities of the tallow-man in the
white cords of whom we have just spoken. He was, however, rich, and
a gentleman, and had a right to make as great a fool of himself as
he pleased,--and so he did: and the foolery began in his leaving a
beautiful wife, with a pair of eyes as black as sloes and as bright as
diamonds, alone and moping, while he was amusing himself by following
his dogs, which dogs were following something certainly not sweeter
than themselves across the country.

Mr. Dallington, who rode about nine stone four, one fine morning, when
the scent lay “uncommon strong,” the dogs in full cry, the field in a
state of the highest excitement, the fox going away right on-end across
a heavy country, which would probably break the hearts of some of the
horses and the necks of some of the riders, met with a slight accident,
which in fox-hunting goes for very little, but which in its proverbial
or rather convivial parallel, matrimony, goes for something more. In
switching a rasper, the exemplary and high-spirited gentleman missed
his tip and pitched right upon his head in the middle of a ditch, where
he remained exactly long enough to make the lovely wife he had left at
home a very delightful widow.

Dallington, or at least what had been Dallington in the early part
of the day, was put upon a hurdle and taken to a farmhouse; whence
the melancholy intelligence was conveyed to his lady, who, with all
the respect she felt for her late father’s judgment in selecting him
for her partner for life, considered the event which had just taken
place as philosophically as any woman of strong feelings and a tender
disposition might be supposed to endure any sudden shock which results
from the death of a fellow-creature.

True, most true it is, she never had felt that sort of love for the
husband forced upon her, as a “fine match,” which a woman ought to feel
for the being who is destined (if he be fortunate enough) to share her
hopes, her wishes, and her happiness. Mrs. Dallington was a creature
all intellect, all vivacity, all fire; full of arch playfulness and
gaiety of heart, and as completely the reverse of her quiet, timid, and
sensitive sister, as light of darkness, fire of water, or any other two
unmeetable opposites.

There are many adages connected with love and matrimony which it
must be admitted are, however forcible in themselves, extremely
contradictory of each other. But, in the course of considerable
experience in such matters, I am apt to imagine that the real truth
is--supposing always exceptions to general rules--that women are most
apt to prefer men the least like themselves; and men, _vice versâ_.
It is the pride of a little man to have a large wife; it is the
taste of a tall man to possess a short one: a fair woman admires a
dark Lothario; while a bright-eyed brunette delights in blazing away
upon a fair Romeo. A learned man eschews a blue partner; he relaxes
into ease in the company of his ordinarily-educated better-half, and
reposes from his graver studies in the agreeable common-places of an
intelligent but not abstruse associate; while the learned lady prefers
the plodding spouse, and never desires that he should meddle with her
arts and sciences, but merely wishes him to exert his energies in the
comfortable arrangement of their establishment, and the acquirement of
the supplies necessary to set off her own attractions in their most
alluring form before the visitors whom she chooses to invite.

The assimilation of tempers and dispositions by which happiness
grows between married couples is, in fact, a habit most amiable and
advantageous: the handwritings of men and their wives become like each
other in the course of time. But whether the love of contraries in the
abstract, be or be not so general as some observers would have it to
be, certain it is that in the particular individual case before us it
did exist.

Sir Charles Lydiard had been, just about the period at which the
reader is introduced to him, some two years paying his addresses to
the vivacious widow Dallington. He was a man of high principle, rigid
honour, polished manners, and most amiable disposition; but he was
cold, reserved, and even suspicious of the object of his affections.
His suspicions, or perhaps they might be more justly called doubts,
arose not from the slightest want of confidence in the candour or
sincerity of the lady, but in a want of confidence in himself. He might
fairly have said to his heroine with Steele’s hero:--

          ----“Of you I am not jealous,--
    ’Tis my own indesert that gives me fears:
    And tenderness forms dangers where they’re not.
    I doubt and envy all things that approach thee.”

There he was, the constant, faithful lover, never away from the house,
sitting and sighing “like furnace,” listening to the gaieties of Mrs.
Dallington’s conversation, a very spectre of despair, not ill described
by the English Aristophanes in the person of one Harry Hectic, with
a bunch of jonquils in his button-hole, looking dead and dressed,
like the waxwork in Westminster Abbey. There was no animating him,
no rousing him into a proposal; his attachment had become habitual,
and day after day the affair went on without “progressing,” as the
Americans have it, one inch. And yet the widow was devoted to Sir
Charles. It must be admitted that she every morning expected _the_
question; but every evening that expectation was blighted, and the
worthy baronet returned from his placid state of negative happiness
to his solitary home, to lie awake for hours balancing the chances
of matrimony, and endeavouring to make up his mind to the deciding
inquiry which, if the real truth were told, he lingeringly delayed,
apprehensive that it might meet with a negative certain not only to
kill the hopes which sometimes outweighed his doubts, but to put an end
to his acquaintance with the charming widow altogether.

While Sir Charles Lydiard remained thus drooping in the bright sunshine
of Mrs. Dallington’s eyes, her timid sister Blanche was undergoing a
siege of a very different nature. Far from contenting himself, to use a
military phrase, with sitting down before the place, and establishing a
corps of observation merely to watch the enemy, Frank Rushton, who was
more madly in love than ever dandy had been found to be for many years,
had for the last three months,--the whole period, in fact, of his
acquaintance with her,--been assiduously and incessantly carrying on an
attack upon the heart of his adorable Dulcinea; and, as it appeared,
with as little chance of making an impression as her sister had of
exciting Sir Charles to an offer. In fact, the four players at this
love-game were equally divided into the fiery and frosty; but, which in
the sequel made all the sport, as Mr. Brag would have called it, the
partners were so curiously matched, and the icicles and sunbeams so
regularly and heraldically counter-changed, that the lovers and their
mistresses were the exact opposites of each other. It was extremely
amusing to hear the discussions in which Sir Charles and his friend
Rushton were in the habit of indulging.

“My dear Frank,” said Sir Charles, “your affection for Blanche is
madness,--the way in which you go on, sets me in a fever: and as for
the poor young creature herself, she is absolutely harassed out of her
wits.”

“So _you_ think, Sir Charles,” replied Frank; “but it strikes _me_ that
her sister would not be less pleased with your society if you were
to follow my example. Why there you sit, moping and melancholy, as if
you were on the edge of your own grave, instead of being on the verge
of all earthly happiness: you look and languish, sigh and say nothing,
and, like the Cardinal, ‘die, and make no sign.’”

“It may be so,” said the baronet,--“I suppose it _is_ so; but I
cannot,--struggle as I may with my feelings,--I cannot overcome the
doubts which seem to me to cloud the prospect of the felicity of which
you talk so easily.”

“Doubts! my dear friend,” said Rushton; “what doubts can you have? Your
doubts are, in fact, jealousies,--and how needless! Mrs. Dallington has
been a wife,--and never was a more exemplary wife in the world.”

“Her trial was short,” said Sir Charles; “nor should I call it a fair
one,--her marriage was not one of love.”

“Then so much the greater her credit for the conduct she observed,”
said Rushton.

“The struggle did not last long,” replied Sir Charles: “her husband was
killed within eight months of their marriage.”

“She bore her loss like a Christian,” said Rushton.

“Yes,” sighed the baronet; “it is wonderful to behold the pious
resignation of ladies in her position.”

“Well,” said Rushton, “if your apprehensions overcome your affection,
and your doubts transcend your hopes, break off the acquaintance at
once,--take your hat and go--”

“--And be neither missed nor inquired after, in all probability,” said
Lydiard.

“There you wrong your fair friend,” said Rushton. “She values you,
esteems you, and with a very little trouble on _your_ part would love
you. Your flame is so gentle, that it scarcely warms; and, like the
fire in the grate there, if she did not occasionally stir it with good
nature and kind looks, my belief is, it would go out entirely.”

“My dear Rushton,” said Sir Charles, “you entirely misunderstand my
character, and the character of my affection for our charming friend:
my doubts are the ‘fruits of love.’”

“A most disagreeable harvest, Lydiard,” replied Rushton.

“True,” said Sir Charles, “but I cannot conquer them. You blame my
caution and coldness; but when I see you devoting yourself, hand over
head, if I may so say, to the mild, quiet, timid, blushing creature,
Blanche, I cannot, since I had the honour of introducing you to the
family, but feel anxious on your account. I don’t believe one word of
all those professions of meekness, and mildness, and modesty of which
that young lady is so profusely liberal. I have seen her exchange
looks with her sister,--while you, blinded by your passion, have seen
nothing--which convince me that you would do well to scrutinise and
consider before you plunge into the stormy ocean of matrimony.”

“Why,” said Rushton, “Blanche is something like Moore’s beautiful Nora
Creena:

    ‘Few her looks, but every one
    Like unexpected light surprizes.’”

“Egad!” said Lydiard, “the light I saw was both surprising and
unexpected. I have some little experience in family telegraphs, but the
signal she threw out was one not altogether complimentary to _you_,
for she seemed to me to be laughing at you.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Charles,” said Rushton. “I too have seen
those telegraphic symptoms; and my opinion is, that if _you_ were to
adopt _my_ style of proceeding, you would find the widow much less
attentive to her sister’s evolutions. But no;--you have fallen into a
custom of going there day after day; you feel at your ease, you enjoy
the society and conversation of a delightful person; and because you
have nothing to excite you to action, so the affair goes on--not even a
dash of jealousy to create a fermentation in your cup of nectar.”

“There you mistake,” said Lydiard. “I--I--certainly never have touched
upon the subject--never opened my lips to a human being about it; but
I am not quite so sure that it is not jealousy which keeps me backward
and depresses me.”

“Indeed!” said Rushton; “jealous! What of somebody who visits at the
house?”

“Yes,” said Sir Charles.

“Do you mean Sir Baggs Waddilove?” said Rushton.

“Psha--no.”

“Perhaps that Colonel Scramshaw?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“The Count?”

“What, Swagandstraddle!--No.”

“Lord Tom Towzle?”

“You burn,” said Sir Charles, “as the children say to the blinded
one;--not of him, Frank--what think you of his friend.”

“What, that horrid, vulgar dog, Brag,” said Rushton, “his toady--his
spaniel?”

“Upon my honour, yes,” said Sir Charles.

“The deuce you are!” said Rushton; “that’s very odd.”

“It is,” said Lydiard. “I confess I am almost ashamed of being ruffled
by such a fellow; but, somehow, Mrs. Dallington seems so much at her
ease with him, notwithstanding his vulgarity, his glaring ignorance,
and his unbounded impertinence, that, upon my honour, I cannot help
thinking----you know women are very odd creatures, and I----”

“You surprise me, Lydiard,” said Rushton, “but not disagreeably. I have
thought,--only don’t mention it--that Blanche has a sort of,--eh--you
understand me--a partiality for him--I don’t know how it is; she
certainly looks at the monster, now and then.”

“What,” interrupted Lydiard, “some more of her few unexpected lights,
eh?”

“I cannot understand it,” said Rushton: “I suppose he entertains them
with his absurdities, and his nonsense, and even his vanity, and his
vulgarity. But I think we may both be pretty secure, that neither of
such women as your widow and my Blanche could entertain a serious
thought of a fellow of whom nobody knows anything except as Lord Tom
Towzle’s tiger, especially in a house into which Lord Tom himself finds
it particularly difficult to get the _entrée_.”

“No,” said Lydiard, “one would not think there was much danger; and
yet--yet you _will_ allow it is very odd indeed that we should both
have been struck with the same notion?”

“So it is,” replied Rushton. “However, as far as _I_ am concerned, I
am determined to fathom the affair to the bottom. I love Blanche better
than my life; but if I thought--”

“Stop, stop, Rushton,” interrupted the worthy baronet. “What has gone
with your stern reproof of my scepticism? Here are _you_ who have been
just rallying me upon my doubts with regard to the loveliest of her
sex, now coming to fathom an affair to the bottom which implicates in
your mind the sincerity and single-heartedness of one of the purest,
gentlest Nora Creenas that ever walked with her eyes cast down upon the
earth.”

“Hang the fellow!” said Rushton; “it is too ridiculous! Besides, he is
not often there. Yet, never mind--he may do good: the smallest wheel in
a great piece of machinery has its work to perform to keep all the rest
going. This stupid animal may serve to equalize our passions, and make
us see clearer; he will cool _me_ and warm _you_, and who knows but it
may turn out all for the best?”

“Why,” said Lydiard, “the fact is pretty clear:--As we have not, even
in this age of liberality, arrived at so great a reform of the church
as to establish the toleration of bigamy, he can marry but one of the
ladies; and, as far as I am concerned, if my adorable widow has a taste
which would lead her to admit the pretensions of that miserable little
animal, I am quite sure it never could be diverted into a passion for
me: and so, Mr. Rushton, if he conquer, he is perfectly welcome to the
fruits of his triumph.”

“Ah, that’s it!” said Rushton: “there are prudence, philosophy, wisdom,
and half a dozen other splendid qualities, combined! But as for _me_,
if he were to be smiled upon in earnest by Blanche, it would be the
last gleam of sunshine one of us should see: he never should live to
enjoy the happiness of which he had deprived me!”

“Now, Rushton,” said Sir Charles, “how unjust, how inconsiderate that
is! If Blanche smile on him and not on you, it is a clear proof that
she prefers him. Why make her miserable by killing the little man? You
might as well shoot her poodle or wring the neck of her canary-bird.”

How much farther this dialogue which was hereabouts interrupted,
might have been carried, it is not in my power to say; but sufficient
has been developed to the reader to show that the incomparable Jack
Brag, by dint of the equivocal introduction of his master Lord Tom
Towzle, had obtained footing at least in one respectable and agreeable
house. It is, as Sir Charles Lydiard says, a matter of impossibility
to ascertain the particular qualities or circumstances by which
women of station and talent, as well as their inferiors in rank and
intellect, are captivated. Certain it is, that after once Mr. Brag
had been admitted to Mrs. Dallington’s house, he was a visitor there
as frequently as he could contrive to manage it; and, as we have
seen, although his other avocations were numerous, he had contrived
to unsettle the minds of two most respectable gentlemen of totally
different characters and dispositions, both pursuing similar objects by
different roads.

We must now recur to Mr. Brag himself, and his career in other places,
into which the bright eyes of the gay widow and her lovely sister
cannot be expected to penetrate.




CHAPTER II.


When Mr. John Brag left his respected mother, he hurried off to the
rendezvous of his sporting friends, whence they proceeded in a body to
mark out the line of country for the steeple-chase. In this operation
he exhibited, as he fancied, all the tactics of the most experienced
quartermaster-general. In endeavouring, however, to elucidate the
difficulties of a leap which, he thought essential to the effect of the
race, he came somewhat unexpectedly off his horse. A little dirt, and
a bruise or two out of sight, of which he gave no evidence, were all
the consequences of this performance; and having made every necessary
arrangement for the exhibition of the following day, he hastened to
a small public-house a little way removed from the high road, which
rejoiced in the sign of the “Duke of Marlborough,” in order to change
his clothes and prepare himself for a flying visit to the shop, to
which a promise made to his mother in the morning was carrying him in
the afternoon.

When some of Brag’s associates in the field questioned him as to his
cause of hurry, he made his excuses in so confused a tone, that he
left, as he meant to do, an impression upon the minds of his country
cronies, that he was under an enslavement to the illustrious descendant
of the hero of Blenheim and Malplaquet, rather than to the landlord of
the house where the pictured warrior swang “high in air” before the
door. However, it was all “straight up, right down, and no mistake;”
and the pretender “cut ’cross the country” to his hostelry, at which
had been deposited his portmanteau “down per coach,” which contained
his clothes for the two coming days’ performances,--his pet scarlet
coat and white cords by way of a show, and if necessary a pink silk
jacket with yellow sleeves for the steeple-chase.

When he arrived at the goal--the sign of the “Duke of Marlborough,”
he was surprised to find the only sitting-room of the “hotel”
occupied. A stranger, who had been driven into the house for
shelter from the “pitiless pelting” of a hail-storm, in which the
admirable tallow-chandler had been drenched, was sitting before the
fire--agreeable in any season in England, but particularly so in the
equivocal weather of a British spring--reading the County Press of the
preceding Saturday, redolent of tobacco, and stamped with the circular
impressions of sundry pewter-pot bottoms which had reposed upon its
columns.

“I say, Stubbs,” said our hero, who was known to the landlord as ‘the
most sportingest gentleman as ever come down to them parts,’ “what’s
this? I ordered my dinner this morning”--(his luncheon with the Duke of
Marlborough,)--“and find the room engaged;--what’s this?”

An attempt on the part of Stubbs to soothe the boiling rage of Brag,
by sundry qualifying expressions of regret, and a few “I dare says,”
and “The gentleman won’t be long,” and several such pacificatory
observations, was happily seconded by the occupant of the parlour
himself; who upon beholding the inflation of the little Cockney, whose
vulgar red and white face was illuminated by the fire which raged
within, rose from his seat and said, in the best possible humour, that
he feared he was an intruder, but that he had been driven in by stress
of weather; that he had ordered some luncheon, which he concluded was
nearly ready; and that if the gentleman would permit him to do so, he
should be happy to share the repast with him, which, as he seemed to be
himself wet and cold, would perhaps not be disagreeable to him.

“Oh,” said Brag, “I’m not the chap to quarrel about trifles: only, I
certainly, when I sent my horses down here, did say I should come and
dine here; and I have been here often before, and I never was served so
till to-day. However, I’m much obliged by your civility, and haven’t
the least objection to join you, each of us in course paying, share and
share alike.”

“Oh, as you please,” said the stranger, in whose eye there lurked a
laughing smile, and who seemed satisfied, by the little he had seen of
his new and important acquaintance, that he should find something like
amusement in the cultivation of a temporary friendship with him.

“I’ll just step up-stairs,” said Brag, “and cast my skin, as I call it;
and by that time, Stubbs, the luncheon will be ready.”

“In five minutes, sir,” said Stubbs.

“I say,” said Brag as he went along the passage, “who is that chap in
the parlour?”

“I haven’t a notion, sir,” said the landlord. “He came here in the
midst of that pelting hail-storm about half an hour ago, on a fine
strong horse which is now in the stable, and which seems to have had a
pretty sharpish run somehow; and he ordered a fire to be lighted and
some chops to be got ready, and said he would stop an hour or two.”

“No servant?” said Brag.

“No.”

“Don’t carry bags?” asked Brag.

“No,” replied Stubbs.

“Seems genteel,” said the tallow-chandler; “no chance of anything
wrong?--plain drest man on a fine horse--eh, don’t you understand?
straight up, right down--eh, no mistake. No chance of highwaymen
now-a-days?”

“Lor’, no, sir,” said Stubbs; “such a thought never entered my head. To
be sure, he looked at your two hunters in the stable, and asked Jem who
they belonged to.”

“What did he say?” said Brag.

“To one Squire Brag,” said Stubbs; “a gentleman from London.”

“Right, quite right,” said Brag: “no occasion to tell everybody the
truth. And he admired them, did he?”

“Indeed he did,” said Stubbs.

“Oh, all right, no mistake,” said Brag, delighted to have unconsciously
impressed upon the mind of his “promiscuous acquaintance” the character
of his pretensions to consideration and his right of swagger. “I’ll
just go and run my eye over _his_ nag before I go into the parlour, and
then we shall be on a footing, eh?”

Stubbs bowed; and Brag proceeded to change his clothes.

While he was performing that operation, the ever-active landlord
added another knife and fork to the table already prepared for his
other visitor: of which opportunity the stranger availed himself to
inquire who the curious little gentleman in the green jacket and
white cords might be; and in answer to his question touching that
important subject, he was accurately informed by mine host, as far
as he knew;--that he was a gentleman of large fortune from the City,
he believed, who was in the habit of hunting with all the hounds in
the metropolitan counties: that he usually kept his horses there;
that he was the owner of the two which the gentleman had so much
admired; that he was a choice spirit, and mixed in very high company;
all of which information the strange gentleman seemed to receive
with considerable satisfaction--probably, as Stubbs the landlord
thought, because he should feel himself honoured and gratified by the
countenance and society of so distinguished an individual as Brag, and
because he inwardly rejoiced at having made a point of showing so much
courtesy and attention on his first arrival to a gentleman of such
respectability and importance.

The stranger’s inquiries and the landlord’s elucidations had scarcely
ended, before the volatile Cockney made his re-appearance.

“Come, Stubbs,” cried he, rubbing his hands as he entered the little
sanded parlour, “be alive, my fine fellow! up with the chops! no
nonsense--sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion, eh?--straight up,
right down, and no mistake.”

“They will be ready in two minutes, sir,” said the landlord as he
quitted the apartment.

“That’s the way I manage ’em,” said Brag; “none of your crawlers for
me. I dare say you have been waiting ever so long for your feed; they
don’t mind strangers--everything is habit, sir,--used to _me_--know
I won’t stand upon trifles. I pay ready money, and don’t stint--eh?
that’s the way I keep ’em all alive.--Are you from town to-day?”

“No,” said the stranger; “I am on my road across the country. I rode
farther than I intended, and was caught in the last storm.”

“Oh,” said Brag, beginning to exercise what he considered his tact in
ascertaining the calling of his companion; “you are not going straight
along?”

“No,” replied his new friend, “merely taking a canter.”

“Blowing away the cobwebs, as my friend Lord Tom Towzle says,” said
Brag, looking at himself in the miserable glass which surmounted the
mantel-shelf, adjusting his shirt-collar, and combing out his curls,
of which he was as vain as a peacock of his tail. “I never had harder
work: pitched right over my little hack’s head, trying to show my
friend Lord Wagly, the right-earnest way of taking a double fence.
To be sure, it was too much for the poor little thing, and it served
me right. I was spilt--up again in a minute--all, as quick as Queen
Elizabeth. I say, that’s a fine horse of yours in the stable----Stir
the fire--hem,--or lend me the poker----eh?--capital nag, I calculate,
as the Yankees say?”

“Yes,” said the stranger, “a fine serviceable animal: I ride pretty
heavy, and require something strong to carry me. You have two clever
animals in the boxes here; I assure you I had been admiring them very
much before you arrived.”

“Yes,” said Brag, “nice tits, I flatter myself: I never had two horses
that suited me better. I have--let me see--eight--no, nine--yes,
nine--much of a muchness; four in Leicestershire, two here, and
the rest in London--nursing a bit, that’s my way. I say sport’s
sport--never overwork kind animals--don’t break their hearts even
if you break their backs. So I keep enough to do it easy: for, as I
said to Towzle, what’s the use of plenty of money if you don’t spend
it?--eh! The devil take this fellow! _his_ chops are not ready, though
ours are--he! Did you ever hear that before,--deuced good, eh?--old, I
guess, and no mistake. I’ll just give him a reminder.”

Saying which, Brag seized the bell-rope, and gave it so tremendous a
jerk, that down it came, bringing with it a cloud of dust, just at the
moment that the door opened, and presented to the view of the guests,
Stubbs, with the chops, and Rachel his daughter at his heels, bearing
a dish of potatoes, and a plate, whereon were deposited two vine leaves
of blue ware, filled, the one with gherkins green, the other with
walnuts brown.

Rachel was about seventeen, pretty and arch, with a pair of
expressively lively black eyes. It was clear that Brag had seen them
before, and that Rachel was not altogether insensible of their power;
and while the assiduous Stubbs was regulating the plates and knives and
forks at their proper angles on the table, the Nimrod of Cockaigne was
slyly pressing the elbow--rather of the reddest--of the amiable Rachel,
as she stretched one hand forward towards her unsuspecting parent, in
the act of offering him the vegetables wherewith to deck the table. The
stranger saw the dexterous manœuvre of his new companion, but appeared
to be wholly unconscious of his insinuativeness.

“That’s a pretty girl,” said Brag after the parent and child had left
the room,--“sly as a pussy cat. Dear me! the things one _does_ see in
this world! No matter where one goes, it is all the same! One has only
to look at a girl, or a woman older a deuced deal than that, down she
comes; I don’t know how it is, or how you find it, but, by Job,” (as
Brag always called Jove,) “it’s a difficult thing to keep clear of the
female sex; I suppose it’s something in one’s manner--eh,--don’t you
think so?--’pon my life I don’t know.”

“Why,” said the stranger, “I am not in the habit of generalizing upon
such subjects: a woman worthy of being won is not so easily won.”

“Oh! ah!” said Brag; “you mean tip-toppers, blue-stockings, nobs, and
all that kind of thing: I mean the sex taken what I call collectively.
What do you drink, eh? Ale, by Job! Here, here, just put your head out
of the door and call Stubbs; you are nearer than me: I wish I hadn’t
broken the bell. Call him,--or stay;--no, I’ll speak to him,--have up
_my_ tap--eh,--don’t you see?”

The volubility and vanity of the Cockney amused as well as surprised
the stranger, who, upon Brag’s resuming his seat, endeavoured to
draw him back--which there was little difficulty in doing--to his
old subject, by telling him one of the innumerable _bons mots_ of the
celebrated Sophie Arnould, who, when a Brag of her day, in descanting
largely upon his success with a certain demoiselle of the rank and
standing of Rachel Stubbs, told her that the affair had made a great
noise in the neighbourhood, asked whether it were not occasioned by the
lady’s pattens. Brag did not see the application, and went on, as his
acquaintance with his companion grew, and his familiarity ripened, to
be extremely communicative, most especially upon his own successes in
the way of “Don-Juanism.”

The _sederunt_ of the companions was considerably lengthened by
a return of bad weather. The rain and hail again poured down in
torrents; and Brag, who denounced wine in such a place, resolved upon
keeping out the cold with some hot mixture. The stranger, who was
also weather-bound, seemed not altogether disinclined to follow his
companion’s example; and they drew their chairs towards the fire, in
order to wait with patience for a brighter sky; which, as the spring
had set in with its accustomed severity, they were not soon certain of
seeing.

“I am told,” said a lady of rank to the Persian Ambassador, who was
in this country so many years since, that, for the sake of my female
friends, I will not say how many,--“I am told, sir, that in _your_
country they worship the sun.” “True, madam,” replied the Ambassador;
“and so they would in _yours_, if they ever saw him.” The hope of
catching a glimpse of him on the day of Brag’s adventure at the “Duke
of Marlborough” was but faint and remote: the storm pattered against
the casements of the humble apartment which he and his associate
occupied, and Jack was resolved to show that his spirits, however
mercurial, were not altogether dependant upon the weather.

“Blessing, good temper,” said Brag,--“eh?--makes no difference to
me--life is not long enough to be sorry; clouds or sunshine, on I go,
smack, smooth ’cross the country, and no mistake.--As I was saying just
now, if I were to write my life and adventures, what a book it would
make! to be sure, one could not publish it;--compromise so many dear
delicious creatures--eh?”

“But do you find,” said the stranger, “this facility of conquest
equally general in the higher classes, with whom, as you have already
said, you mix?”

“Equal,” exclaimed Brag, emptying at the same moment his first glass of
Stubbs’s punch,--“the same everywhere. I grant you, the females of the
aristocracy are more closely watched; the eyes of the world are more
on them. But, dear me, when they are out of sight--when we are what I
call tiled,--all snug and comfortable, and no mistake,--I think the
tip-toppers are livelier than the mediums.”

“And these females, as you call them,” said the stranger, “are they
most easily led away by person or manner, or accomplishments?”

“A little of all,” said Jack, running the dumpy fingers of one of his
little fat hands through his curls, and pulling up his shirt-collar
with the other as usual;--“manner is everything--that’s it, sir;
genteel, but bordering upon the lively--eh, don’t you understand?
Now there’s Lady Fanny Smartly, as nice a horse-woman as you’ll see
in a summer’s day;--why, Lor--just see me lend her my arm to mount!
Her brother looks with wonder--the groom retires with awe--and then
she gives me a smile, as much as to say, ‘You are a sharp little
fellow, Jack!’ Well, then in the evening, there I find her all gentle
and languishing--you wouldn’t think she had ever seen a horse in her
life;--and then she laughs,--and I look, and then she laughs again; and
you can’t think how one gets on in that way--eh, and no mistake!”

“Lady Fanny Smartly?” said the stranger; “I think I have occasionally
seen her riding in London.”

“Very likely,” said Jack; “but that’s not the way to know her. Now
there’s Mrs. Dallington--a friend of mine, and her sister--they live
close up by Grosvenor Square;--I go there almost every day; they are
as opposite as light from dark,--one all sharp, you know--sort of
daisy-cutting tit--smack smooth, and no mistake;--the other, Miss
Blanche Englefield, all meek, modest, quiet; what you call retiring,
soft, gentle.”

“A melting beauty?” said the stranger.

“No,” said Jack, colouring; “not melting;--a--not that sort of
thing,--but--distant, and shy. Why, now with _me_, she is all free and
easy. There I see a couple of men day after day dancing attendance
upon these two women, and dying to marry them. In course I shouldn’t
take any advantage of my friends, as I told Lord Tom--a crack crony of
mine--Lord Tom Towzle. I never would--no, I scorn the action,--but it
is hard to refrain.”

“Lord Tom Towzle,” said the stranger, “is a son of the Duke of
Ditchwater,--is he not?”

“He is,” said Jack: “I see you know some of their names. Did you
ever see Lord Tom? I always call him Tommy for shortness;--he is
an excellent fellow in his way,--not over respectable in money
matters--but an uncommon good un to go ’cross a country.”

“Have you seen much of his aunt, Lady Bloomville?” said the stranger.

“Oh, the old toad!” said Jack; “a regular scarecrow,--she is what
people call a respectable body--eh! reads him lectures and all that--he
can’t bear her;--we have a great deal of fun there sometimes--we go and
what he calls roast her.”

“I had always heard,” said the stranger, “that she was a remarkably
respectable amiable person. I hope you never found _her_ so complying
as you seem to have found the rest of your fashionable friends.”

“I tell you what,” said Brag, putting his finger to his nose--“if _you_
knew what _I_ know, you wouldn’t be surprised at anything.”

“She has a brother, hasn’t she?” said the stranger.

“What, Lady Bloomville?” asked Jack.

“Yes,” replied the stranger.

“Oh, yes, Lord Ilfracombe,” said Jack; “and a queer chap he is too.”

“Is he much at Lady Bloomville’s?” asked the stranger.

“More than we like,” replied Brag; “he is what I call a dull dog,--good
man in his way,--plain, and no show,--none of what I call gammon. I
say, I must have another jorum of this stuff--put your head out and
call, will you--eh! make yourself useful--nothing like sociability, and
no mistake--eh!”

The stranger obeyed, and called the waiter; Rachel appeared, and Jack
ordered a replenishment of punch, in doing which, having previously
expressed his admiration of the waitress, he suited the action to the
word, and then resumed.

“Old Ilfracombe is a queer one,” said he, “a bore,--won’t sit after
dinner. Now, as I say to Lord Tom, that is a fault of the young
ones;--no conversation,--no nothing now--up go the ladies, and then
comes ‘Will anybody have any more wine, or shall we have coffee?’ and
up we go after them,--no opportunity for what somebody calls the feast
of reason and the flow of soul, or, as I read it, ‘flow of bowl,’--eh!”

“So then,” said the stranger, “this Lord Ilfracombe is what may be
called a wet blanket!--he doesn’t look like one of the Kill-joys.”

“Do you think not?” said Jack. “I suppose you have only seen him by
chance, at some public dinner, or somewhere where smiles are always
ready. If you knew him as well as I and Lord Tom do, you would set him
down for as great a bore as ever lived.”

“And is Lord Tom, as you call him,” said the stranger, “in love with
either of the ladies you have mentioned to me?”

“Not a bit,” said Jack. “Tommy and I--or rather, I might say, I and
Tommy, take a different course,--butterflies, bees,--eh!--don’t
you see?--rove and sip--and no mistake. No, I think it would be an
injustice in either of us to marry. But, there are two very respectable
men dangling--you understand what I mean.”

“Perfectly,” said the stranger.

“But,” said Brag, “it is painful to see it--eh!--Lord bless
your heart--however--Oh! here is my second glass--put it down,
Rachel,--here--come round--this way,--don’t be frightened, the
gentleman won’t eat you.”

Rachel did as she was bid, but it was quite clear by the expression of
her pretty countenance as she left the room, that she did not think
quite so much of Brag as Brag thought of himself.

“If you,” said Brag, “had opportunities as I have of seeing the best
society,--what I call skimming the cream, you would be in the secret;
but without seeing it, as I said before, there’s no believing it--eh!”

“I am sure you are right,” said the stranger. “I think Lord Ilfracombe
has a son, hasn’t he?”

“To be sure he has,” said Brag, “Lord Dawlish,--and a nice chap he is
too; he married a Miss Linton, the daughter of a country gentleman in
my lord’s neighbourhood. I know all the facts from Lord Tommy. She
is like a doll in a toy-shop window--waxy and winky-eyed--eh! You
understand--money--the father sold the child to buy the title, and a
pretty swop too. Lord bless you! they live like cat and dog. I can’t
bear her--mawkish--eh! Don’t you take some more of this mixture?”

“Not yet,” said the stranger. “And does Lord Dawlish mix much in your
sports?”

“Why now,” said Jack, “before you carry this on too far, I _do_ think
you ought to tell me why you ask. I don’t think it fair, living with
these people as I do, what you call hand-in-glove, and all that, to
let out; you may, perhaps, have an interest in knowing particulars.
I am sure you won’t be offended, but I take it that you are in the
mercantile line, and what people in the city call travelling on your
own bottom--you want to know where credit may and where it mayn’t be
given--eh? I don’t think I ought to commit my friends, old cocky--eh!
all right and no mistake--don’t you think so?”

“Certainly,” said the stranger; “I didn’t know that Lord Dawlish _was_
a friend of yours.”

“The whole clique,” said Brag, looking very cunning; “and I can tell
you this--they _know_ I am rich, eh!--all snug, smug, and no mistake.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “I am much obliged for the mixture of
confidence in _me_, and the consideration of _them_, which regulates
your communications;--but I suppose old Ilfracombe himself is a steady
goer?”

“Umph!” said Jack, “pretty well--six o’ one side and half-a-dozen
of the other--much of a muchness--you understand, eh!--all
outside--plating, as I call it.”

Here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Stubbs, who
announced that Mr. Brag’s groom had just arrived from London, on the
top of the coach, which had set him down at the corner of the cross
road.

“Let him come in,” said Brag, with an air of the most exalted dignity.

The lad made his appearance, dripping, like Niobe, all tears.

“Well, what made you so late?” said Brag.

“Couldn’t git down afore, sir,” said the lad.

“Well,” said his master, “go get yourself something to eat, and see to
the horses.”

“I wanted to say a word about the horses, sir,--please,” said the lad.

“Well,” said Brag, “you may say what you have to say; you are not
afraid of that stranger, I suppose.”

“No, sir,” said the boy, “I’m not afraid o’ anybody, but I didn’t know
I was to say what I had to say, out.”

“Say,” said Jack, waving his half-emptied tumbler over his head--“‘Say
on,’ as the chap at the theātre says.”

“Mr. Figgs,” said the boy, “wishes to know whether you want both them
’ere horses as is here any longer this week, or if one will do, as he
has an opportunity of letting one or both on ’em to gemmen as pays
ready money; and if so be you keeps ’em both, you’ll be pleased to send
up the stumpy by to-night’s post.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” said Brag, his cheeks turning as white as chalk,
his hair seeming to uncurl, and his whole countenance assuming the
appearance of a detected pickpocket--“how good!--how deuced good, eh!
Ha, ha,--what! my own horses!”

“Not your own horses, sir,” said the boy, “they are _his_ horses, you
know, sir, and--”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Brag; “I think I ought to know whose
horses they are better than he;--get out,--go and look after the
nags--before you get anything to eat--and I will come out to you
presently.”

Of all the curs unhung, there is none so awfully contemptible as a
drivelling braggart. The wretched cockney seemed to quail before his
associate, whom, as we know, he imagined to be either a rider to some
respectable house in the button line, or a small dealer travelling,
as he called it, “on his own bottom.” He watched the glance of the
eye of this man, whom he had before despised and bullied, to see what
impression the detection of his miserable assumptions had made upon
him; but the stranger, who had his own business to attend to, and who
seemed fully occupied by his own thoughts, evinced no alteration either
in look or manner when he heard his contemptible companion exposed
by the stable-keeper’s menial. Why he was not much affected by this
_denouement_, we may perhaps shortly discover.

“What fools servants are!” said Jack, when he _could_ speak--stirring
up a bit of lemon-peel from the bottom of his glass, and keeping his
eyes steadily fixed upon the object and operation during the utterance
of his remark.

What the stranger thought of masters, was not to be collected from
either his words or his looks.

“Figgs is a fool too,” said Brag, when he had rallied; “I wonder what
_he_ means.”

The stranger, who merely recollected the history of his companion’s
stud, all elaborately detailed, did not by any means exert himself to
elucidate the mysteries of the liveryman’s stables. He was perfectly
satisfied with the affair as it stood, and there an end.

“I believe,” said Brag, breaking what appeared a most uncomfortable
silence, and which, as pretenders invariably do, he fancied arose from
a conviction in the other gentleman’s mind that he was a “humbug,”--“I
believe that these fellows try to worry one into buying, by such
tricks as these: however, I flatter myself I am pretty well known
about London, and if I have any interest with the Master of the horse,
not one of Figgs’s animals sets foot into the Royal stables,--there I
_have_ an influence.”

The stranger merely looked, and finished his one glass of Stubbs’s
particular, to Brag’s two; which one he had been persuaded to imbibe
upon the very just principle of repelling external cold by internal
warmth. It was clear that the cockney had been hit hard by the
stupidity of his boy, as he called him--who, in fact, was not his;
and odd enough to say, however pleased he might have been to escape
anything like a cross-examination from his companion, he was rather
vexed than not, that the said companion did not appear to take
sufficient interest in his proceedings to inquire any farther into
particulars.

“The weather does not seem to clear up,” said the stranger, walking
towards the window; “I am not quite sure what is best to be done.”

“As for me,” said Brag, “I shall be a fixture for the night, if it
holds on so badly.”

“I must get home by dinner-time,” said the stranger.

“Oh!” said Brag, “then this is not your dinner.”

“No,” said the stranger. “I believe in point of fact it _is_, but
nominally it is not; I have fifteen miles to ride before I get home. I
suppose one might on an emergency get a chaise here?”

“Not here,” said Brag; “I am always obliged, when I want horses, to
send down to the George,--two miles from this;--but that makes no
difference, I’ll tell my boy to run down if you want them:--are you
going towards town?”

“No,” said the stranger, and stranger he was in those parts, “my course
is _from_ London.”

“Eh! oh!” said Brag, evidently desirous of finding out his associate’s
pursuits. “I shall cobble up here for the night, I think;--I dare say
Rachel will make my tea for me, and I shall be uncommon comfortable,
and no mistake. I like the--what do the French call it?--the ‘despipere
in poco,’ or something of that sort, as Lord Tommy says;--so here I
stop. I have nothing to do, no business, no call, no tie, except that
unhappy Mrs.--did I tell you her name?--yes I did,--Mrs. Dallington and
her sister Blanche. They must wait--can’t ride through the rain for
them, eh!”

At this moment a remarkably neat, well appointed travelling carriage,
drawn by four bright bays, preceded by an outrider, and in the rumble
of which were two strapping servants, drove up to the door of the
small ostelry--the steeds all thorough bred, were foaming and champing
the bit, and the party within evidently in high spirits. The halt was
called just to wash out the mouths of the horses, which were, as it
appeared, making a long stage.

“I say,” said Brag, “these are somebodies:--what nags!--did you ever
see such a turn out;--that’s what I call going it--straight up, right
down, and no mistake. Let’s just go out and have a look at ’em.”

Brag led the way--the stranger implicitly followed; the moment he
exhibited his person by the side of the cockney, a shout of surprise
and delight echoed from the carriage.

“So, here you are!” cried the youngest of the _parti carré_. “What
_have_ you been doing here?”

“Doing!” said the stranger; “why you don’t expect a man to ride to an
archery meeting through a torrent!”

“My dear love,” said a lady in the carriage, “are you quite sure you
have not got wet?”

“Not the least,” said the stranger; “for I took the precaution of
halting here, and getting some luncheon in very agreeable society. But,
perhaps, you will let _me_ in turn inquire why you have taken this
road.”

“Partly, I believe,” said a young man who turned out to be the
stranger’s son, “by mistake,--the weather was so desperate that the
whole affair was a _coup manqué_, and we were glad enough to scramble
away as well as we could; but, however, you will now come with _us_;
they say it is an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

“You may rely upon my housing myself in the carriage,” said the
stranger, “even at the hazard of crowding you. Harrison, stay behind,
and bring home my horse in the course of the evening, and pay my bill
here; don’t hurry back, for I rode rather hard in coming.”

The ladies seemed delighted at the acquisition which they had made
to their party “inside,” and the stranger, with his foot on the step
of the carriage, took off his hat and made a low bow to Brag, who
stood looking on in a state of amaze and wonderment arising from the
extraordinary fact, that anybody who really lived in the society of
which he was permitted to catch occasional glimpses, could seriously
sit down and enjoy mutton chops in a small alehouse, without disclosing
his rank or talking of his connexions.

The carriage drove off,--splashed a little of the mud upon Brag’s
delicate nose, and left, according to the stranger’s directions, one
of the servants behind, who upon scanning the figure of the cockney
sportsman, turned away from him with an air of dignity which his master
had never assumed; and whose remarkably smart leathers and tops were
so much better “got up” than Brag’s ever were, (although when he wore
leathers he always devoted a certain portion of the morning to his own
personal care of them,) that the unhappy creature cowered before the
menial of the man, whom because he was plainly dressed, and assumed
nothing in his manner, he had treated as if he were an inferior.

“I say, sir,” said Brag to the man as he was walking towards the
stable, “may I ask who the gentleman is, who stepped into that
carriage, and has left you to take home his horse?”

“That’s _my_ lord,” said Harrison, so was the man named.

“And what lord may he be?” said Brag.

“Don’t you know _my_ lord, sir?” said Harrison; “I thought everybody
knew him,--Lord Ilfracombe. That’s my Lady, and his son Lord Dawlish,
and Lady Dawlish, and Lady Bloomville, in the carriage.”

“Indeed! five insides!” said Brag: “and who was the young lady with the
veil?”

“Lady Fanny Smartly,” said the man, and passed on to look after his
lord’s horse.

Jack stood as if petrified: he felt his ears tingle, his knees
shake,--the mingled impudence and folly of his conduct came full upon
him, like a double-headed shot. Here were all his intimate friends whom
he had never seen before, conjured up, as it were, to ruin him in the
estimation of the head of the family, whom he had denounced to himself
as a queer one, a bore, a kill-joy, and a wet blanket. He had not the
power to stir, nor would he have moved from the place where he stood,
with his eyes swimming and his head whirling, if the stable-boy from
Figgs’s had not just begged him to make up his mind as to the horse he
would keep.

Jack, for a minute roused to a sense of his absurdity, gave his answer,
and retired to the house; where having in due time recovered the
spirits or callousness which generally upheld him, he rang for some
tea,--a beverage in which the subjects of Cockaigne delight, and which
was in the course of half-an-hour brought him by a dirty red-headed
boy; Rachel Stubbs having gone over to her aunt’s, on purpose to get
out of the way of his nasty impertinences.




CHAPTER III.


Brag’s feelings at the period of this announcement were by no means
of the most agreeable character. It was quite certain that the scene
which had just been enacted by the noble lord and himself would furnish
materials for a _historiette_ in his lordship’s circle, whence it
would infallibly descend to the sphere of his own actions, as fashions
gradually sink from the duchess to the dowdy, until, as extremes meet,
they become extinct from their universality.

Then, for the Lothario to be slighted--avoided--cut by the waiting-girl
of a small inn, who ought to have been prouder than a peacock at
having attracted his eyes: altogether Jack was ill at ease, and fell
to ruminating upon his present not brilliant prospects, until he fell
asleep.

Not so his mother. She had pondered the words her son had spoken: she
felt that his recommendation to take unto herself a second husband,
although she had passed several years of widowhood, was not altogether
unreasonable, since the career which he appeared determined to pursue,
let it terminate as it might, was not very likely to end in a steady
settle-down to business, and since, as everybody allows, a “lone woman”
in trade is liable to be imposed upon.

It is odd enough, that an idea once formed in a mind where it never had
place before, becomes the leading subject of thought and consideration.
Mrs. Brag had never dreamt of a second marriage; and it is but fair
to say, that none of her male, middle-aged, marrying acquaintance had
ever, by word or deed, led her to moot the question. It was reserved
for her son to fire the train; and from the moment it was ignited, Mrs.
Brag became a different woman. She bestowed extra care upon her frill
and her front; had the one plaited, and the other curled, with peculiar
pains; took to the wearing of coloured ribands; looked into the shop
whenever she heard the sound of voices; and, in short, gave herself
more airs than she had ever thought of assuming for many years before.

Never, however, had she been driven into what may be called a
resolution upon the subject, until the morning upon which this little
history opens. Johnny had often suggested the measure, and she had at
first repelled the idea, out of respect to the departed Mr. B.; at
last, she listened more complacently; then, as I have just said, she
occupied herself in putting the scheme in execution practically; and
after that morning, finding that all solicitations to John in regard of
steadiness must prove fruitless, she came to a resolution of obliging
her darling boy, of whom she might justly have said--

  “Johnny, with all thy faults, I love thee still,”

and of making herself more comfortable at home. How to compass the
affair then became her only consideration; for the reader ought to
know, that although to the very last she maintained her profession of
disinclination for the step, she had, in fact, determined upon taking
it. The way she went to work will hereafter be developed.

The volatile John, himself, arose on the morning of his intended
steeple-chase, little refreshed from the sort of feverish night’s rest
he had enjoyed--if enjoyment it might be called. He could not rally
from the effects of his self-exposure, which affected him the more
strongly, as he began to anticipate (since it was evident that they
were staying somewhere in the neighbourhood) the appearance of some of
the branches of the noble family of Ilfracombe to witness what men of
desperate expedients consider “fine sport.” What should he do if this
very Lord Dawlish were to join the field, attended perhaps by Lady
Fanny Smartly, or the earl himself? Every word that he had uttered
the previous night would, of course, be repeated; and if not actually
kicked or horse-whipped by the indignant viscount, in revenge for the
description he had given of his father and his family, even Lord Tom
Towzle himself, who was his main-stay, might join in the general
execration of the pretender; the more especially as Lord Tom had at
various times borrowed sundry sums of Brag’s “loose cash,” and, having
been of late refused unlimited access to his purse, might perhaps not
be particularly sorry to find a cause for breaking off his acquaintance
with him.

The day however came, and Brag having breakfasted, began to rally; and
resolving to put the best face upon the affair, he mounted the horse he
kept, and proceeded to the scene of action, casting his eyes, it must
be admitted, in every direction, in dread of encountering his friend
of the preceding afternoon. Nothing of the sort, however, occurred to
annihilate him; and when he reached the inn at which the sportsmen
were to rendezvous, and found Lord Tom and his associates just the
same as usual,--all gay, lively, and warm in their reception,--he felt
reassured, and in less than an hour had forgotten, or resolved not to
remember, anything about his self-exposure to the noble lord.

The steeple-chase took place according to notice; and at its
conclusion Lord Tom, assisted by Brag, furnished a report of it for the
“Sporting Intelligence” of the London papers, in the following words:--

  “This event came off yesterday to the entire gratification of the
  numerous company who were present.

  “The course had been marked out on the previous day by Lord Wagley,
  Lord Thomas Towzle, and Mr. Brag, who judiciously selected a stiff
  line of country, including thirty-four leaps and three brooks,
  best calculated to try the mettle of both horses and riders. The
  winning-post was between two flags placed in a field belonging to Mr.
  Brag, who was also appointed umpire. Five horses started--

    “Mr. Tagrag’s ‘Washball’           _Owner._
    Capt. Snobb’s ‘Beggarboy’          _Owner._
    Sir Frederick Flapper’s ‘Stumpy’   _Mr. Martingale._
    Mr. Smith’s ‘Tommy’                _Owner._
    Colonel Ball’s ‘Blunderbuss’       _Mr. Flint._

  “They all went off at a slashing pace. ‘Tommy’ refused the second
  leap, and threw his rider over his head, and, falling backwards over
  the bank, broke his back, and died in a few minutes. ‘Washball’ was
  also unlucky in trying to jump a brook, which her rider did not know
  was fordable twenty yards lower down: she slipped her shoulder, and
  was obliged to be shot immediately after the race. We are sorry to
  add, that Mr. Tagrag, who rode her, unfortunately pitched upon the
  back of his neck, and severely injured his spine. He lies at the
  ‘Full Moon’ at Wigglesford, without hopes of recovery.

  “After these little mishaps, the play was made entirely by
  ‘Beggarboy’ and ‘Stumpy,’ ‘Blunderbuss’ having knocked up after the
  first two miles and a half, and being run to a dead stand in the
  middle of a ploughed field, whence neither flogging nor spurring
  could move him: in fact, the shine was taken out of him, and it
  became a clear case of ‘no go.’

  “‘Beggarboy’ and ‘Stumpy’ had had enough of it; and when they reached
  the last fence, entered the winning-field nearly neck-and-neck.
  ‘Stumpy’ tumbled into the ditch, and Captain Snobbs worked
  ‘Beggarboy’ through the flags in very fine style. ‘Stumpy’ was
  considerably damaged by the last fall, which is a pity, inasmuch as
  he is about one of the best horses in this part of the country.

  “The race was for ten sovereigns each, and was run in an incredibly
  short space of time. The numerous company assembled were highly
  delighted with the spirit-stirring sport, and, after the chase,
  proceeded to a field at the back of the ‘Full Moon,’ to see the ties
  shot off of the great pigeon match between Mr. Slack and Mr. Nibbs,
  for a silver jug and cover.

  “The name of Nibbs in itself was sufficient to create an unusual
  interest, and the ground was crowded with amateurs. The terms were,
  twenty-one yards at twenty-one birds--charge limited to two ounces.
  Betting, three to one the winner killed eighteen--five to four on
  Nibbs. They both went in, sure of doing the trick; but after Slack
  and Nibbs had each killed twelve birds, Nibbs had it all his own way,
  and won the jug by five birds, killing nineteen to Slack’s fourteen;
  thus winning the by-bets of three to one. Several other matches came
  off, and about a hundred and fifty pigeons were knocked over.

  “Nothing could exceed the gaiety of the scene. The weather was
  remarkably fine, and a proportion of the beauties who had honoured
  the race with their presence, were witnesses of the cheering sport.
  An old woman standing just outside the enclosure, received a whole
  charge of shot in her face, which is likely to cost her the sight of
  one eye at least; and a silly boy, who imprudently attempted to knock
  down one of the winged birds which was falling out of bounds, was
  badly wounded in the chest and throat. He was immediately attended
  to by the surgeon of the place, who extracted thirty-six shots from
  different parts of his person, and he was then forwarded in an easy
  cart to the county hospital. We hope these accidents will act as
  cautions to other equally inconsiderate individuals.

  “At the conclusion of the sports an admirable cold collation was
  served up at the ‘Full Moon,’ in Bunks’s best style. The evening
  passed off in the most delightfully convivial manner, and
  arrangements were made for a renewal of the exhilarating diversion of
  the day, on Thursday next, when a still more numerous assemblage is
  anticipated.”

This animated description, as a matter of course, figured in the
principal journals of the following morning, Brag having succeeded
in the interpolation of three or four words, conveying to himself a
field, and, by implication, a much more extensive estate, in a part
of the country where he did not possess even so much as called him
master at his “little place in Surrey.” The only drawback to his
happiness, however, upon this occasion, was a visit, three days after
the appearance of the intelligence, from the farmer to whom the field
actually did belong, who gave him to understand that he had directed
his attorney to prosecute the trespassers, who without his permission
had ploughed up his land at a season when it did not require tillage;
and having ascertained by the newspapers that the whole arrangements
had devolved upon Mr. Brag, the attorney thought it most advisable to
pounce upon _him_ in the first instance.

This visit, and the intelligence his visitor conveyed to him, were
anything but agreeable to the little man, whose feelings upon the
matter were in no degree tranquillized by the conviction that his
difficulties and responsibility were fastened upon him, because he
could not refrain from the indulgence of his besetting propensity, in
making himself not only the hero of the affair, but the owner of the
ground over which it had been decided.

The next race, however, which Mr. Brag was destined to run, was away
from the lawyer, and accordingly, with prudence, which in animals
unclothed, we designate instinct, but which in cases like that of
Johnny we by courtesy call reason, our hero quitted his head quarters
at the Duke’s Head, and proceeded to town per stage-coach; the second
message from Mr. Figgs, with regard to the horses, having been
accompanied with a peremptory demand that they might both be sent back.

Brag returned to town considerably damaged, and however bold he might
be in assuming consequence, and claiming friendships, never did human
being more clearly evince by his personal appearance the workings
of what served him for mind, than he; a blow like that which he had
just received from the farmer’s announcement completely upset him,
and in five minutes the sprightly, pert, impudent-looking wagling was
metamorphosed into a pale, downcast, miserable victim; and in a plight
thus indicative of defeat, he reached the metropolis, quite undecided
how to dispose of himself for the afternoon.

While he is in this state of suspense let us look for one moment at
those over whose destinies he almost unconsciously possessed a most
extraordinary influence. Sir Charles Lydiard, whose sensitiveness had
once been disturbed, and whose shyness had been excited by Rushton’s
observations upon the manner in which Brag was received at Mrs.
Dallington’s, could not get rid of the impression which he had at first
so hesitatingly received. None who have not felt jealousy--and, since
there never can be love without it, who has not?--can imagine the
pains which a patient once infected with the disease, the jaundice of
the mind, incessantly takes to keep up its virulence. It so happened,
that Sir Charles had never seen Brag since his conversation with
Rushton, and therefore had no opportunity of watching the “telegraph”
of which they had upon that occasion spoken; but upon a reference to
all that _had_ passed, he managed to combine a thousand “trifles light
as air,” an infinity of nothings, the consideration of which produced
an increased exhibition of coldness and reserve during his next two or
three calls at the widow’s.

Mrs. Dallington saw this accession of frigidity, and without exactly
hitting upon its true cause, did certainly “telegraph” Blanche into
an observance of it. This new glance gave new grounds for doubts and
apprehensions, and the worthy baronet passed four miserable hours in
the boudoir of the woman he best loved in the world, if he had but
known it, devoutly wishing to make his escape, but fearing to move lest
an _éclaircissement_ should take place.

Sir Charles felt more embarrassed from the fact that he had _not_ seen
his aversion during his last one or two visits; and because he was
extremely anxious to know the cause of an absence on his part longer
than usual; and because, above all, he could not induce himself to
make the smallest inquiry after him. Other men called, joined in the
conversation, and relieved Sir Charles from the restraint under which
the dread of a serious explanation kept him whenever the temporary
absence of Blanche reduced the circle to a _tête-à-tête_; but the
appearance of none of those worried or annoyed him. Mrs. Dallington’s
manner, kind to all, was in no degree particular to any one of them;
but certainly, now that Rushton had concurred with him in his views
upon the subject, he _did_ think that Brag was very differently
treated by both ladies. Still, he could not descend to touch upon the
topic; and after a feverish sitting on the third morning after Brag’s
departure, Sir Charles left the widow’s to dress for dinner, pleading
an engagement which he had not, for declining an invitation from her
and her sister to dine with them, which he would have been, if he
could have commanded his feelings, too happy to accept.

Rushton, who had been there, but was also absent in the evening, became
more actively employed in Brag’s business than his cold and calculating
colleague. In passing Grosvenor Street he encountered Brag proceeding
to visit his door-plate and inquire for letters, just arrived from the
Duke of Marlborough, having been let out of the coach (in the inside
of which he travelled to avoid the farmer’s lawyer) at the corner of
a back street in the Edgeware Road, so as not to be detected in his
descent; by which ingenious device, and the exhibition of a whip in his
hand and a pair of spurs on his heels, the pretender let it be inferred
that he had ridden up to town upon one of the nine horses, which did
not belong to him.

Rushton welcomed his _friend_ to London; and anxious to ascertain,
if he could, whether he proposed making an evening visit to Mrs.
Dallington’s, joined him in his walk down the street.

“Just returned?” said Rushton.

“This minute dismounted,” said Brag; “capital sport;--never
better!--all smack smooth, and no mistake. Killed two horses outright,
and one man, I fancy; however, he was well picked up, and the doctor
has got him in charge.”

“Much company?” said Rushton.

“Lots of people,” answered Brag, who, unable to repress that which was
certainly true, however dangerous the allusion to the family might be
elsewhere; “I myself did not stay at Wigglesford, I had rooms at the
inn where my horses stand. All quiet, snug; no nonsense;--civil people;
good landlord; pretty daughter, eh!--you understand--no mistake!”

“Were you alone, then?” said Rushton.

“Not altogether,” said Brag; “old Ilfracombe dined with me. He was
going to an archery-meeting to join his family. Weather turned out bad;
took part of my little dinner;--humble fare--mere soup, fish, cutlet
and capon. The rest of the party joined us after dinner. Dawlish
and his wife, and Lady Sarah Smartly--they did not get out of the
carriage--so I packed him off, and returned to finish my claret, and
wind up the evening in _my_ way, eh?”

“Are you going to the widow’s this evening?” said Rushton.

“Not certain,” said Brag: “I’m rather tired, and more than half
engaged. How is Sir Charles? Cold chap, that, eh? Don’t you think so?”

“Why,” said Rushton, “a trifle upsets him. He is the most
delicate-minded man I ever met with: an expression, a word, a look
affects him in a way one could scarcely imagine.”

“Proud, eh?” said Brag. “Distant, eh?”

“No,” replied Rushton. “There is a coldness in his manner, I admit;
and those who do not know him may fancy this proceeds from _hauteur_;
but the fact is, that however much he may warm in the course of the
evening, he falls back to his original state of chilliness the next
morning, and requires a new process to _degêler_ him. He is not
therefore popular, but, in truth, his apparent coldness has its origin
in diffidence and a distrust of himself.”

“Oh! that’s diffidence, is it?” said Brag. “I can’t say I quite
understand _that_: I thought it was pride--but for _that_, in course I
don’t care one farthing, and no mistake.”

It all at once struck Rushton (Sir Charles having naturally, although
unexpectedly, become the subject of their conversation) that the
present would be a favourable opportunity of sounding (the water not
being very deep) the views and intentions of his communicative friend.

“Why,” said he, “to tell you the truth, Brag, I do not think _you_ a
fair judge of Sir Charles. I have my quarrels with him upon different
shades of feeling; but you--_you_ are totally different.”

“I don’t see that,” said Brag. “It’s all one to me, you know. I don’t
care a fig, as I say to Lord Tom: take me as I am, eh!--all right up,
straight down, no mistake. I quite agree with you in differing with
_him_; but I don’t see how _my_ case differs from _yours_.”

“Ah!” said Rushton, “there it is: it is in that difference all the
difference lies.”

“How d’ye mean?” said Brag.

“He is afraid of you,” replied his companion.

“Afraid of _me_!” said Brag, pulling up his shirt collar, “that’s too
good.”

“You are too civil by half to the widow,” said Rushton.

“Me!”

“Yes,” said Rushton, “and what is even more to the purpose, he thinks
she is too civil by half to you.”

“Upon your honour!” said Brag, in an ecstasy of delight--“afraid of
_me_! Come, come--eh!--that’s too good!”

“Not a bit too good,” said Rushton. “I tell you what it is--I’ll be
candid with you--I am just as much afraid of you myself.”

“You, Rushton!” said Brag.

“Yes, more than Sir Charles is,” replied Rushton. “Recollect
now--remember--think how you go on with Blanch Englefield--a being all
shyness and reserve with everybody else, is with _you_, animated and
evidently interested in your conversation.”

“You don’t mean that _you_ are afraid of _me_, too,” said Brag, fully
convinced of the entire seriousness of the conversation, which after
all contained more of real apprehension than Rushton would have
willingly had him know. “I certainly have a way, eh!--I don’t know
what it is--it cannot be person--manner, I suppose. I am always ready
to talk, eh! The tongue is the very deuce in a sharp fellow’s head--a
little repartee, and all that, eh!--small-talk, and a good deal of
it--that’s it.”

“Clearly,” said Rushton.

“The women like little parties,” said Brag--“fêtes--water
excursions--_dejeuners_, and all that. Then they get so good-humoured;
and the champagne--and the return--and the moonlight--and the music,
and all _that_.”

“You have not yet opened your battery in that line,” said Rushton.

“Waiting for weather,” said Brag. “I’ll show you the way to do that
sort of thing as soon as summer is well in, eh!--and then, I think, you
_will_ have the heart-ache.”

“Are you, then, so general a lover?” said Rushton. “Will neither
content your love of conquest? Must you win both?”

“Oh! come,” said Brag, putting his finger to his nose, and winking,
“you are playing your tricks--what do _they_ care for _me_?”

“That remains to be seen,” said Rushton. “My firm belief is, that you
may obtain the hand of either of them; and my opinion, moreover, is,
that if you have not serious intentions that way, as far as one of them
is concerned, you do an injustice to both, by acting towards them as
you do.”

“Upon your life!” said Jack--“you are serious?”

“Perfectly,” said Rushton; “however, this is entirely between
ourselves: and whatever step you take, let me just mention, that the
widow is much the more lively companion of the two, and has rather the
better fortune; so turn your basilisk eyes towards her, and leave
the poor silent, sighing Blanche for me. Adieu! Here we are at your
door--you are at home. Do me the favour to remember what I have said,
and as you are great be merciful.”

Saying which, Rushton quitted his friend, who was completely overset
by the announcement of the opinion he had just heard delivered. It
took very little to convince him of his power over what he called
the “female sex,” and he had certainly for some time felt very much
inclined to coincide with Rushton in his views upon this particular
point. But then came the question--Which of the prizes should he
take?--which of the lovers should he immolate? Lydiard, he was assured,
was too cold and odd to charm the widow, and Rushton too violent and
jealous to be agreeable as a husband to Blanche. The notion once put
into his head, operated there like that with which he had a short time
before possessed his respectable mother on a similar subject, and all
that now remained for him to do was to make up his mind for a decision.
That he _did_ decide, the reader is destined soon to see; how, for the
present, must remain a secret.

There certainly is one part of the affair which did not make itself
evident to him. Blinded by his vanity, he did not perceive that the
whole object Rushton had in view in acknowledging his own fears,
which he really fancied had some foundation, and in encouraging his
pretensions, was the expulsion of the little man altogether; for
although he had succeeded in awakening Sir Charles’s suspicions, and
Sir Charles had been equally fortunate in arousing _his_, and that he
had moreover discovered, by Brag’s manner and admission, that the widow
was, at least of the two, the present object of his admiration, he felt
perfectly satisfied that he would receive his _congée_ the very hour in
which he made a formal declaration, and thus, without appearing in the
business, he should be relieved from all farther apprehensions from his
presence, while the affair of his expulsion would, in fact, be that of
Lydiard and the widow.

Brag, however, was about to be entangled in another little business,
which promised to interfere with the immediate execution of his
plan. He had resolved upon repairing to his “little place in Surrey,”
in order to look after certain affairs which were essential to the
production of the means for “carrying on the war,” and afterwards
proposed, at least when it should be sufficiently dark for the
purpose--to visit his mother, who, wisely enough, took care of the shop
as far as her abilities would permit her to watch one or two clerks and
shopmen, who undoubtedly, seeing that she was a “lone woman,” did every
day that, of which, in her own phrase, she was so much afraid “put upon
her;” which phrase, rendered into plain English, means, cheat her out
of her property whenever they were able.

As our story expands, it may be necessary here to observe, that Mrs.
Brag had a daughter, the sister of John, who had never been a favourite
with her father. People said her temper was bad: some people said one
thing, and other people, as they will do, said other things: certain it
is, that home was no home for her. And after a sort of half-and-half
education at a suburban boarding-school, where she learned astronomy,
the mathematics, netting, knitting, knotting, the use of the globes,
dancing, geometry, drawing, embroidery, rug-working, purse-making,
flower-painting, botany, singing, geology, plain needle-work, natural
history, stencilling, Italian, French, Spanish, and German, the harp,
guitar, piano-forte, tambourine, and triangle, together with many other
sciences and accomplishments, “too numerous for the brief space of an
advertisement,” she early in life married hastily, and clandestinely,
a gentleman in the army of the name of Brown. His military duties had
since called him to India, where his regiment had now been for several
years. Of him or his sister, Jack seldom spoke, and, when he did,
coldly referred to her husband as the major. Any little uneasiness
which her father had evinced about the marriage at the period at which
it occurred, had been decently buried in oblivion by the fond mother
and her son, who, whatever other feelings might have prompted him to
this acquiescence in the affair, it could not be doubted was in a
considerable degree acted upon by a desire to say nothing whatever
about it.

There was, however, a person for whom, in earlier life, and before the
doting fondness of his sire had spoiled him, he did feel as deep an
interest as such a mind as his was capable of--this was no other than
the major’s sister, Miss Brown--Anne christened, but called familiarly
in those times Nancy Brown. It does not sound romantic by way of a
name, but what _is_ in a name?

At the time of Brag’s acquaintance with her, she was a lovely girl just
eighteen, fair as the lily and fresh as the rose. Her mother was an
humble personage, no better, let it be understood, than a dress-maker,
to whom this daughter was assistant; for, lest we should ourselves fall
into the errors of which Brag was guilty, it may be as well to observe,
that the military functionary with whom Kitty became enamoured, and
who had the honour of leading her to the Hymeneal altar without her
father’s consent, derived his rank of major from Brag himself; in
giving him which brevet he felt himself probably justified, inasmuch
as it was derived from a mere abbreviation of his real title. Brown was
serjeant-major in the regiment to which he belonged; but the omission
of one half of his official denomination was adopted very early by
Jack, with, it must be confessed, the full acquiescence of his father,
who never could think of the misbehaviour of Kitty in making such a
match, with common patience.

When his father died, Johnny, as will be seen hereafter, became so fine
a gentleman, that he never paid the least further attention either to
Nancy Brown or the promises he had so earnestly made her; judge, then,
the surprise and mortification which overwhelmed the vain and foolish
creature when his mother, after the usual greetings upon his arrival at
home, placed in his hands a letter from his poor suffering victim.

To describe the face or the feelings of Brag when this appeal from
his once dear Anne was handed to him by his respected parent, (who
was not entirely aware of the real state of the case, but believed
the communication, in all probability, to have some reference to
her daughter, whom she in her heart had, with a mother’s feelings,
forgiven,) would be impossible. To come from a question of supplanting
Sir Charles Lydiard in the good graces of Mrs. Dallington, to a letter
from Nancy Brown of Walworth, was indeed a sinking in the sublime. He
turned pale, as usual; then flushed; then his lips quivered, and his
eyes opened; and then, without saying one syllable, he thrust the paper
unopened into his pocket, where it shall remain until a new chapter
gives us space for its perusal.




CHAPTER IV.


The letter which Jack, having hastily glanced at the superscription,
thrust out of sight, follows.

    “Walworth, Tuesday.

    “DEAR JOHN,

  “I hope you will not be angry with me for writing to-day. You
  remember what day it is? I think I need not remind you that it is
  your poor Anne’s birthday. For three or four years after Katharine’s
  marriage with George, and their departure for the Indies, you used to
  write to _me_ on this day, but you afterwards left off doing so; and
  I should not perhaps have broken in upon you now if the anniversary
  had been as bright and as cheering as it once used to be. No, my dear
  John, ‘hope deferred maketh the heart sick;’ and although I have by
  this time learned to give up all expectation of your fulfilling
  your promises made to me before your father’s death, I neither have
  forgotten my affection for _you_, nor mean to upbraid you with your
  forgetfulness of _me_.

  “When we were so much together, and when you said you could be happy
  with nobody else, and told me of your dread of your father’s anger,
  which he had indeed shown by never seeing poor Katharine after her
  marriage with my brother George, you led me to believe that the old
  gentleman’s objections were the only obstacles in the way of our
  marriage. I lived on--not in hopes of his death, for I could not be
  so wicked as to hope for that--but I lived on, certain that, when it
  should please Providence to take him, you would fulfil your promise
  and redeem your pledge. He died, John, but you came not to me, wrote
  not to me. Day after day I watched; listened to every knock at the
  door, fancying it might be you; and every time I saw the postman
  coming towards our lodging, my heart beat because I thought he might
  bring me a letter from you.

  “A year passed away, and then, as you know, I wrote to you, rather
  because I had heard from George and your sister, and wished you to
  have news of them, which I knew you could not otherwise get, than to
  worry you with my own importunities. You answered _that_ letter, but
  you came not yourself, neither did the letter which you wrote contain
  one kind word, or one allusion to other days, now past and gone. Yet
  I complained not. I heard of you in gay parties and gay places; I
  sighed to think how far we were parted, and perhaps I cried, John:
  but you were happy and prosperous, and doing well in the world; and I
  could only blame myself for having, when a girl, been so foolish as
  to fancy that you cared for me enough to make me your wife.

  “Six years and two months this very day was the first time we met,
  and God knows, although I have felt sorrow and sadness enough since,
  it seems to me as if it were but yesterday. It was to oblige and
  serve your sister Katharine, who was my friend, that I walked out
  with her, when she used to meet George. I did not see any harm in
  their courtship: I thought well of my brother; I knew he was kind and
  good; his officers gave him the highest character for steadiness,
  activity, honour, and integrity; he loved _her_, and she loved _him_.
  I ought, perhaps, to have known, that he was not what is called a
  suitable match for Katharine; but girls of seventeen, especially
  upon such matters, do not always calculate. I am sure _I_ did not,
  or I would not have helped her to take a step which was to make her
  parents so angry.

  “It was the same blindness in my own case that permitted me to listen
  to your professions. I am not ashamed to own, John, that I loved you
  fondly; nor am I ashamed to tell you, although perhaps you will not
  believe me, that the impressions made _then_ remain as strong as
  ever. I have not seen you here for more now than three years. Perhaps
  it is for the best. I _did_ see you once, now about four months
  since, riding with another gentleman; it was in the Kent Road. I
  thought you saw _me_, but I am sure I must have been mistaken.

  “What I now write about, cuts me to the soul! _My_ fate is sealed!
  and never shall a murmur of mine for myself cause you a moment’s
  uneasiness. The folly was mine: I alone will suffer!--But there _is_
  another to whom--I scarce can hold my pen to write the words--to
  whom, by the strongest ties of nature, and the sacred word of God, I
  am bound. I could not beg of a stranger; my heart would burst before
  I could confess my wretchedness;--to _you_, John, I _can_ speak. My
  poor mother is, I fear, dying. She has been confined to her bed for
  several days, and I have nobody to watch over her but myself. Her
  illness has prevented her working, and my constant attendance upon
  her, has hindered me from doing anything myself. Do not be angry with
  me, John; what I ask, is not for myself. She shall bless you for your
  care of her, and be grateful for any little aid you may afford her.
  When she recovers, she and I will struggle to repay you.

  “If you required any proof of my unshaken regard, you might find it
  in this request. As I have told you, time and reflection have taught
  me the folly of my ever considering you more than a friend,--it is
  in the character of a dear friend that I ask this favour for the best
  of parents.

  “I have put the address to this letter, which is the same as the
  one which was to my last; but I thought, perhaps, you might have
  destroyed it and forgotten the direction. We have not heard from
  George for more than two years, which makes my poor mother very sad;
  but we have been told that his regiment is coming home. You who are
  so much in the world could find out in a minute, I know: even if you
  did not care about George, you must be anxious to hear of Katharine,
  whom you fondly loved, and who I know loved you with equal affection.

  “I will not take up more of your time. Let me have one line, to say
  you have received this. I shall count the minutes till I get your
  answer, which may at all events assure me that you are not angry
  with me. God bless you, John--dear John! and assure yourself of the
  affectionate friendship of

    “Yours,
    ANNE BROWN.

  “You will see by the seal of this, how your present to me was valued,
  and how it has been treasured. Adieu.”

This was the letter which Mr. John Brag thrust into his coat pocket
in his mother’s presence, and which in five minutes afterwards was
as hastily withdrawn from it and thrown into the fire unopened and
unread. “John,” as poor Anne called him, knew the writing, and with
the low cunning of a vulgar mind, fancied he could justly anticipate
the contents of an appeal from an amiable woman whom he had deluded
and betrayed, leaving her no consolation in her desertion but that
which she could not fail to derive from the support of religion and the
consciousness of her own unspotted virtue.

Yes, Anne, the humble unpretending Anne, was still the gentle, modest
creature he had found her. Her mind was, perhaps, not so very highly
cultivated as others in the world, nor were her accomplishments so
numerous, but she was a woman; and kindness, duty, devotion, and
disinterestedness were blended in the composition of her character.
Mr. John Brag would probably have described her in different terms,
had he ever permitted himself to speak of her, and perhaps would have
affected to pity the “poor creature,” while he laughed at her fondness
and credulity. Mr. John Brag was a great talker, and everybody knows
what that is. The nature and extent of his feelings and regard for the
once loved of his earlier days may easily be ascertained, by the way in
which he treated her appeal. He stood and looked at the flames as they
scorched and finally consumed the paper, and quitted the room perfectly
satisfied with his firmness and philosophy, thinking, as it appeared,
with Lord Monteagle’s anonymous friend, that “the danger was past as
soon as he had burned the letter.”

The writing this letter to one whom she yet believed in heart devoted
to her, although withheld from making her his wife by considerations
first instilled into his mind by his late father, and, for all she
knew, kept alive by his surviving parent, cost poor Anne a severe
struggle. When it was despatched, it became the sole object of her
consideration from morning till night. The doubt whether she had done
wrong,--whether John would think ill of her, or fancy her mercenary or
presuming,--whether he would receive it as she hoped, and come perhaps
himself, bearing the relief she sought for her poor mother,--whether
he would make a point of taking it to her on the day upon which the
application reached him, the day upon one anniversary of which he had
given her the very seal with which she had sealed it,--whether it might
awaken feelings which she was sure he possessed, but which, for the
reasons we have just stated, had been suffered to lie dormant,--and
whether----!

But vain were all her hopes--groundless all her fears,--by one rude
blow the bond between them had been eternally severed; and while the
poor anxious Anne was pondering these things in her mind, Mr. John Brag
was dining at the Ship Tavern at Greenwich, with a party of uncommonly
fine fellows, who, in spite of those leviathans of the deep, the
steam-ships, which agitate the surface of the once silver Thames into
a sort of metropolitan sea, had pulled down from Whitehall in their
accustomed blue shirts, to partake of the fare for which, as well as
its hospital, Greenwich is so famous.

Day passed after day, and, as the reader may easily anticipate, Anne
and her application remained unnoticed. In _her_ mind this silence was
associated with some calamity which must have befallen John, and this
apprehension added to her other griefs and anxiety; meanwhile, her
mother’s illness increased, and, almost without the common necessaries
of life, Anne was at all hazards forced to call in medical assistance.

She had here again a difficult, a delicate task to perform, but it was
a duty, a filial duty; and who can doubt that the well-regulated mind
of this now humble girl was soon made up as to the course she was to
pursue? The reader may have noticed the expression, “_now_ humble,” it
is meant that he should notice it, because, humble as was and had been
the position of the mother and her two children, they had been born to
better things. Anne’s father was the son of a Bristol merchant who had
amassed considerable property, to which his son succeeded. He married
early, and, contrary to the advice of his friends, left his native city
to enter upon a new field of speculation in London.

Those who remember the wonderful prospects held out in the year 1825,
and who perhaps are even yet suffering from the effects of their
vast and sudden destruction, may anticipate the termination of Mr.
Brown’s career at an earlier period. Those who at the present moment
are assailed on every side by the most plausible professions and the
most tempting offers of fortunes incalculable, by an embarkation in
the variously diverging abominations called rail-roads, and who fancy
a dividend is at hand before a spade has been struck in the ground,
which it is proposed to disfigure and destroy for the lucre of gain,
had better take warning by it.--For some two or three years Mr.
Brown occupied a handsome house, his table was open to his numerous
mercantile friends, and, in those days, everything that Mr. Brown
possessed was of the best, everything he did was of the wisest. The
war which the triumph of Waterloo so gloriously closed, was, at
the time of Mr. Brown’s prosperity, raging fiercely; every foreign
port was closed by an embargo; the market was safely shut against
the importation of an article in general demand, of which he held
a considerable quantity. The fine and liberal notion struck him of
buying up at all hazards and all prices this desirable commodity:--he
did so,--and, although as a young beginner in London not much known,
he had agents all over the Empire, who were employed by him to keep
incessantly purchasing, until warehouse after warehouse was stored with
it, and he became nearly the only holder in the kingdom. Thus, having
long before expended all his capital in the pursuit, he proposed to
regulate the market with the turn of his finger. The price advanced, he
still held; it advanced yet more; and he began to doubt whether he had
screwed it up to a pitch sufficiently high to answer his purpose, and
make him a _millionaire_; when, one fine morning, an order in council
suddenly and unexpectedly opened the long-closed ports, and the next
week beheld, Mr. Brown an irretrievably ruined bankrupt.

In the pursuit of his infatuating speculation his engagements had
become incalculably enormous, and the consequent securities unbounded.
The shock of such a reverse was too much for such a mind, and in the
midst of recklessness, remorse, and despair, he consummated all his
other madnesses by suicide.

In the hour of distress, it was shown that no provision had been made
for his widow and two children. His connexions at Bristol were few,
and those, greatly offended at his quitting his native city, did not
feel at all disposed to relieve his relict, whom, however unjustly,
they thought proper, conveniently enough in order to save their own
pence, to denounce as the first cause of his increased rate of living,
to support which he had had recourse to extraordinary means of gain;
and when all was done that _could_ be done, an annuity of forty pounds
a year was secured for her, by a subscription amongst a few of her
husband’s friends in London.

The fall was sudden, dreadful; at that period her son George was about
eighteen, Anne about twelve. George had received a fair education at
a school at Clapton or Hackney, I now forget which, and was a fine
handsome grown young man. Anne was almost too young to appreciate the
full extent of her misfortune, and her affectionate disposition led her
thus early to devote all her care to her surviving parent, to whom the
change in their circumstances and station, to her almost unaccountable,
only endeared her the more.

George was old enough to know the whole truth, and to feel the
bitterness of repulse when his mother tried to procure him a mercantile
situation in the city, and being of a bold and resolute character,
he left his home without any communication with either his mother or
sister, and enlisted in an infantry regiment, then in Ireland. It was
not until his scheme had been irrevocably completed, that he imparted
the truth to his parent, and then returning to receive her blessing,
departed for the Emerald Isle with a sort of negative concurrence on
her part, obtained by the expression of his determination upon the
point, and an avowal that, if he even could obtain footing in any
merchant’s counting-house, he felt assured that his disposition and
feelings would not permit him to continue in it.

George’s removal from her care and charge, however much she lamented
the separation, of course relieved the widow from considerable expense;
and the little Anne was not yet of an age to require much outlay; for
her mother, who had been cruelly misrepresented by her late husband’s
connexions as being the cause and origin of his follies, was of a most
domestic turn of mind, and sufficiently accomplished to instruct her
daughter in as much of ornamental education as it was probable she ever
would require.

Still it was evident that the annuity which was secured to her would
not be sufficient to support them without additions derivable from
some other source; and thus it was that she formed the resolution
of retiring to one of the villages near town, and turning the minor
accomplishments which she possessed, to account, in order to increase
her income. This she did, and, under the blessing of Providence,
successfully. Undisturbed by the inquiries of any of the friends
of her prosperity, but encouraged by the respectable inhabitants
of the neighbourhood in which she had fixed her humble abode, she
obtained by the sale of numerous fancy articles of her own making,
and by even humbler employments, a sufficient income to render _her_
happy, inasmuch as it secured the society of her beloved daughter.
In Bristol and its neighbourhood the name of Brown, common as it is,
might from circumstances have attracted the unpleasant curiosity of
some, and entailed upon her the equally disagreeable commiseration
or condemnation--coming hand in hand, perhaps--of others; but in the
neighbourhood of London few people, out of his own immediate circle,
knew the victim of ill-fated ambition, and all that was said of Mrs.
Brown in the village in which she located herself was, that she was a
remarkably nice civil lady-like person, and had evidently been born
much above the station she then filled.

It was about two years after George’s departure from the home he had
scarcely inhabited, that the acquaintance between Katharine Brag and
Nancy Brown commenced. It originated in the fact that Mrs. Brown,
anxious that her child should improve herself upon certain points
of education beyond those to which she might herself be competent
to lead her, or rather, if the truth were told, finding that more
regularity and restraint were necessary to settle the habits and
fix the attention of her child, than were likely to be observed or
enforced at home, resolved on sending her as a day scholar to Lavender
Lodge, the “Seminary for young Ladies,” at which Miss Brag was--in all
probability as a set-off for soap and candles--being polished up to
perfection--this special favour being granted to the widow on account
of her exemplary conduct, and the universal respect in which she was
held.

With the girls at Lavender Lodge, little Anne soon became an amazing
favourite and a general pet. The very circumstance of her returning
home to dinner, and quitting her companions after school hours, gave
her a sort of distinction, and made her, as it were, the medium
of intelligence, and even of communication, by which contraband
luxuries were sometimes smuggled in, and what are technically called
“slip-letters,” from the bigger girls to their friends, were smuggled
out of the seminary. By these acts of kindness, the impropriety of
which Nancy was then not old enough perfectly to comprehend, she was
quite the fashion, and the boarders were unanimous in treating her with
kindness and affection.

Amongst her greatest friends was Katharine Brag, who was more than
ordinarily good-natured to her, and during the three years Miss Brag
remained at school before she was pronounced everything that heart
could wish, Anne had grown up to be more than sixteen years of age--and
had so far gained the confidence of the head of the establishment, that
it seemed more than probable she might eventually become a permanent
assistant in its duties. Circumstances, however, occurred to put an end
to this probability; for a lady who had taken considerable interest
in Mrs. Brown’s success, made a proposal to her to establish herself
in the village of Walworth, near London, where she was certain she
could ensure her support and patronage in the sale of her various
works, as well as in the art and mystery of dress-making, which the
industrious mother had studied, and now practised, to maintain herself
and her child. This offer, superadded to the desire of Anne herself
to contribute her share of labour to their joint maintenance, decided
their removal.

This change of habitation tended rather to confirm the friendship of
Miss Brag for her friend; for it was effected just about the period at
which that young lady finally quitted school. The amiable manners of
Anne again became her passport into the society of the elder Brags; and
although she was received as the humble companion of the young lady,
she was so genteel and so clever that they thought (much strengthened
in their opinions by that of their daughter) that it was greatly to her
advantage to have such a companion.

In the midst of this happy communion, and just as John Brag had begun
to look at Anne with eyes not quite indifferent, her brother George
arrived at home on leave of absence from his regiment, previous to its
departure for India. He was then a fine handsome young man, of two or
three and twenty. The military drillings he had undergone had set him
up, and his figure was just what a figure ought to be. The career he
had run since he entered the army had been honourable and satisfactory.
The notice of his officers had very early after his enlistment been
attracted to the attention, regularity, and assiduity with which he
performed all his military duties; and a rumour having soon got about
that he was something better than he seemed to be, he was taken notice
of by the captain of his company, who, after inquiries, not further
pushed than he felt consistent with delicacy, and the evident desire of
the young man himself for a certain degree of concealment, suggested
him as a fit occupant of the office of paymaster’s clerk, for which
it was evident he was fully qualified:--he was speedily raised to be
a corporal, and before his first four years of service were expired,
had become serjeant-major of his regiment, a circumstance perhaps
unparalleled in the British service.

In one of those moments which decide the fate of empires and of ladies,
Katharine Brag met George Brown; it took but one glance of his bright
eyes to scorch her susceptible heart, and unfortunately or fortunately,
as the case may be, George Brown reciprocated the feeling. It was no
difficult matter to get Anne to agree to Katharine’s avowal, that
she had never seen so charming a person,--an officer too,--the thing
of all others; for the immediate rank of the young hero “in mufti”
was never explicitly defined; and while she was contriving all sorts
of devices to enjoy his society in the participation of the various
amusements of middling life, her brother John, who had become great
friends with George for the sake of his sister, fell into all their
arrangements with the greatest readiness; so that every day in which
they could manage it, little parties were made for Exhibitions,
Panoramas, and all the Vauxhalls, Lyceums, Playhouses, and places of
public resort, where either during the performance or after it was
over, they might so satisfactorily pair off, as to leave themselves
counterchanged in couples, to the unqualified delights of that sort of
honeyed conversation, to which it is as impossible to do justice in the
repetition, as it is barbarous to interrupt in its progress.

After the play, as George was with her, Anne would stop to supper with
the old Brags; and then, as John Brag was fond of exercise, he would
see George and his sister home to Walworth after supper was over; and
so they went on, until John was desperately in love with Anne, and
Katharine resolved upon marrying George.

Katharine believed that she had great influence over her father, and,
from what Anne had told her of her origin, never imagined but that she
should procure his consent to her marriage with George,--an affair
which “pressed,” inasmuch as his leave would be out in about three
weeks, and away he must march with his regiment. So Katharine, one fine
afternoon, just gently touched upon the subject of Mr. Brown’s good
qualities, in a _tête-à-tête_ with her papa, and led the conversation
into a channel which she thought very likely to extort an opinion from
the old gentleman. She was right;--she succeeded in her speculation,
and heard, to her infinite horror and amazement, that he would see a
daughter of his dead at his feet before she should marry what he called
a “Soger.”

And then forthwith “flared up” the anger of the venerable Brag, who,
though a really plain straightforward man, and as free from pride
or affectation as any wax and tallow chandler within the bills of
mortality, became absolutely furious at the notion of this dress-maker
and her brother,--people admitted only just to please his daughter’s
fancy,--presuming and daring, and all _that_: which fury ended in a
positive prohibition of any further intercourse between the parties;
a mandate for which was accordingly issued, sanctioned of course by
Mrs. Brag, who however, in yielding her accordance to the decree, could
not help thinking that Anne and her brother were as nice a couple of
people as ever she had seen in all her born days.

It was at this juncture that the friendship of Anne for Katharine Brag
and her affection for George were called into action. It was then she
contrived meetings for them, to which Kate came escorted by John, and
George accompanied by herself. Up to this period these had been matters
of course; but when old Brag shut his doors against the Browns, and
handed his daughter over to the care and surveillance of her brother
John, it became another sort of affair, and as John was too happy to
bask in Nancy’s smiles, he gladly squired his love-sick sister to their
appointments; and thus matters went on for a fortnight or so, when
Kitty Brag ran away with the young Sergeant, who, having as well as his
bride attained the years of discretion, procured a licence and became
man and wife,--a fact which came to the knowledge of the respectable
parents of the bride by her non-appearance at breakfast, and a return
of “_non est inventa_” made to a sort of warrant sent after her into
her bed-room, whence she had decamped very early indeed in the morning.

From that morning neither Brag the elder nor Mrs. Brag had ever seen
their child up to the period of the commencement of my narrative; Mr.
Brag, as we know, had been gathered to his fathers; and George and his
wife were still in India.

After the wedding and flight the proscribed Anne used to see John, who
contrived, unknown to the old people, to visit her and her mother as
usual. This acquaintance was for some time continued as the reader may
have already discovered; its happy termination being only delayed, as
Brag had himself said, until the death of his father should leave him
free to act for himself. Meanwhile the said father having then but one
object left upon which to lavish all his paternal affection, gave his
son counsel and promises which led him to aspire, and, as he said,
“look up,” and so Johnny by degrees became less ardent and infinitely
more civil towards Miss Brown, until by those gentle gradations of
coolness which fond and anxious hearts can only justly estimate,
she saw him seldom, and heard from him rarely. His father’s death
occurred,--Brag immediately took a higher flight, and having furbished
himself up by dint of private lessons and evening tuition, was ready,
when he came into possession of the business, to abandon the course
which his blinded parent had pursued, to enable him to cut a figure,
and became the thing which the reader has already seen him to be.

The intelligence which Mrs. Brown had from time to time received of
George was extremely satisfactory; he had been specially noticed by
Major Mopes, (the military secretary of Sir Cadwallader Adamthwaite,
the commander-in-chief at the presidency,) who had, upon the
recommendation of the paymaster of the regiment, whose clerk he had
been, appointed him to a similar situation in his office; a step which
George, who was full of ambition, wrote home to say he hoped might lead
to better things.

What they might be, Mrs. Brown of Walworth did not exactly understand;
however, he appeared happy, spoke affectionately of his wife, and
looked forward to the next ten or fifteen years as likely to bring him
home again. To Anne, a prospective view of ten or fifteen years was but
a sad one; the loss of Katharine had been to her severe and trying,
and every month, and every year grew sadder, until at last the only
consolation left which she derived from George’s letters, was lost,
and at the time she wrote the appeal to John, with which the chapter
begins, she had not, as she says, heard from him for more than two
years.

Then it was that real sorrow and bitterness of heart came over
her,--her mother’s illness, her brother’s silence, her lover’s
falsehood, her own destitution,--it was a dreadful combination of
evils, against which she had to bear up. One other blow was only
wanting to overwhelm her,--and it fell.

There _are_ moments when the most serious calamities affect us less
than matters which to the million may appear of no moment or importance
whatever; a look, a frown, a smile, nothing in themselves, have, when
the mind is wrought up to a certain pitch of excitement, a power more
dreadful than the gravest evils of another day.

I have already said that, after waiting for an answer to the letter
she wrote to “John,”--on her birth-day,--sealed with his seal,--and
moistened with her tears--(the letter he destroyed unread),--she felt
the absolute necessity of overcoming all scruples, and conquering all
repugnance to what might be considered the solicitation of charity in
favour of her mother; and accordingly she set forth from their humble
dwelling, leaving her sinking parent in the care of a temporary nurse,
to call upon a well-known professional man in the neighbourhood of
Burlington Gardens, of whom she had often heard the lady who first
induced them to take up their abode in Walworth (but who now was
herself dead)--speak in the highest terms. Anne had indeed seen him at
that lady’s house, and felt that that circumstance gave her something
like confidence to make an appeal to him on behalf of her sick mother,
which she would not have felt with regard to a perfect stranger.

Behold then this fair, fond, and affectionate daughter on her
way--trembling and doubting, as she hurried along the crowded
streets,--her eyes cast down or heedlessly wandering, while her
thoughts are all concentered on the pillow on which her dying mother’s
aching head was laid; a prayer to Heaven resting on her lips, and
hope, strengthened and sanctified by the silent appeal, glowing in her
heart. Just as she reaches the neighbourhood of the worthy man who is
to minister worldly relief to her parent’s afflictions, her way is
intercepted,--there is a crowd--a stoppage,--she is rudely pressed
upon,--stared at, by an unmeaning insolent countenance belonging to a
tall, tiger-looking, smoke-dried dandy, upon whose arm is leaning a
short, smart, vulgar-genteel companion. The tall fellow continues his
gaze for a moment; the short fellow, emulating this impertinence, and
anxious to behold the beauty who has attracted his friend’s attention,
proceeds to the manual experiment of pinching her arm. The suffering
wanderer turns indignantly to repel the insult, and sees before her,
grinning and grimacing, like a baboon, that paragon of pretension, Mr.
John Brag.

At such a moment such a sight was, indeed, a trial;--but if it struck
daggers into her heart thus to be treated by _him_, who once, and in
other days, had vowed his vow of love and faith to her, what must she
have felt, when, upon beholding her pallid agitated countenance, she
saw the fellow wink at his companion, and heard him exclaim with the
peculiar elegance of the school to which he aspired to belong, “Ho,
ho,--come along, my lord--no go--this _is_ a mistake,”--and clutching
his tall friend’s arm, hurry on, shrugging up his shoulders in a sort
of mock despair, and no doubt giving his own version of the nature of
the previous acquaintance which had evidently subsisted between himself
and the supposed stranger!

Anne stood still for a moment--had she tried to move forward, she
would have fallen;--her breath faltered--the blood seemed to ebb and
flow in her heart--her eyes swam with tears;--she was better,--she
continued her way, and reached the physician’s door,--it was opened
to her, and she was shown into a parlour where those who came under
similar circumstances were accustomed to wait:--there it was that her
feelings had way,--she scarcely had entered, before floods of tears
poured down her pale cheeks, and they who had come for advice and
assistance themselves, were eager and active in her service. As soon
as intelligence of the circumstance had been conveyed to the master
of the house, he made his appearance in the apartment, and seeing the
extent of poor Anne’s agitation, caused her to be removed into another
room, where every attention was paid her which the exigency of her case
required.

Her agitation, however, appeared to increase, and the moment she was
sufficiently recovered to attempt to explain herself, she relapsed into
a state so painful and alarming, that the excellent man, satisfied
by the circumstances that she was laboring under some excitement, any
attempt to soothe which, upon the instant would be perfectly vain
and useless, placed her in the care of his housekeeper, (for whom he
dispatched a servant,) with directions to keep the young lady perfectly
quiet, and endeavour to soothe and calm her mind until he should
return, after having seen those patients who were in the habit, at
stated hours, of calling upon _him_ at his own house.

And while all this was going on, Mr. John Brag and his friend Lord Tom
Towzle, who, as the reader perhaps has anticipated, was his companion
upon the occasion, and whom although he “Tommied” him and “Towzled”
him in his absence, he “my lorded” in his presence to an immeasurable
extent of vulgarity, not merely to toady the stripling but to be
overheard by the passing crowd--were, as I suspected, engaged in an
elaborate detail of Jack’s foregone adventures with Anne, which, as
Lord Tom did not care whether Brag were hanged or not, so as he rode
his horse “Slap-bang” to win on the following Thursday, he might just
as well have saved himself the trouble of repeating.

Upon what small things great things turn, say ten thousand writers,--so
is it proved by this adventure of Mr. Brag’s. Worlds would not have
convinced Anne Brown of his falsehood and heartlessness, had this event
not occurred; they were now proclaimed--established,--practically
established. His first assault might have been mere rudeness,--not
likely to endear him to one who fancied him devoted to her; but when
the discovery _had been_ made, and he saw whom he had outraged, to
conduct himself as he had done, was enough to decide the question.
Thus it is that we learn more in an hour from a lecture illustrated
by experiments, than we can collect from written treatises or printed
instructions in a year. The art, or science, whatever it may be, is
embodied,--you have it before you,--and the very facility with which
the professor performs his operations, makes the spectator himself a
proficient.

So was it with Anne:--she had seen what no book could have taught her,
she had witnessed _that_ which no other evidence would have induced her
to believe. The blow was severe, but perhaps it was providential.




CHAPTER V.


Having safely housed our unhappy girl in the house of the worthy
physician, we may perhaps be permitted to cast our eyes towards the gay
widow and her sensitive sister, who, truth to be told, were suffering
as much in _their_ way as our more humble friend from Walworth.

Mrs. Dallington, whose perception was remarkably clear, and whose
judgment was particularly sound, had for some time been fully aware of
the state of Sir Charles Lydiard’s heart and mind--for his mind and
his heart were waging a perpetual war with each other; nor, however
solicitous she might be (I admit that supposition merely for argument’s
sake) to bring their acquaintance to a happy termination, did she
entirely regret the caution and consideration with which, it was so
evident, the fastidious baronet bent his steps towards the hymeneal
altar. She felt assured that, if he judged her rightly and fairly, she
should eventually possess his entire affection; and she also felt, that
to obtain it after such a scrutiny, would be to secure it for the rest
of her life.

It must be allowed that she sometimes thought he had considered and
examined and scrutinized quite long enough, and believed that the time
had arrived when she should have an opportunity of saying yea or nay,
as the case might be; but, whenever the crisis seemed at hand, some
new doubt, some new apprehension, appeared to be conjured up, the
bright vision was dissipated, and she remained still the expecting,
disappointed Mrs. Dallington.

Blanche, on the other hand, received a proposal from Rushton almost
every day in the week--if at least the most violent protestations of
love and devotion might be so construed; but the _brusquerie_ of his
character evinced itself so perpetually, that the chances were, that
the evening of the brightest day ended in a storm. Blanche was quite
aware of the disposition she had to deal with; and although flurried
and fluttered by her lover’s extraordinary animation and vivacity,
she resolved not to surrender her hand, whatever might be the fate
of her heart, until she was convinced that her hero was calmed into
a fit state for domestication. In point of fact, Rushton was quite
as jealous of Blanche as Lydiard was of her sister; but his jealousy
was of a different caste: he smiled, frowned, laughed, scolded, and
did ten thousand unaccountable things, just as he was acted upon by
passing events, while Lydiard never suffered himself to be betrayed
into any external evidence of what occupied his mind: and thus the pair
of lovers continued to make themselves as uncomfortable as they made
those, whom upon all essential points were devotedly their own.

Affairs were in this delicate position when Brag, who was encouraged in
all his absurdities by his noble friend Lord Tom, partly to gratify
his vanity, and so secure his aid, if required, upon emergencies, and
partly to afford sport to his lordship’s friends, opened his heart
in a kind of hypothetical way to the young lord with regard to the
widow and her sister, to which train of thought he had been led by the
conversation he had previously had with Rushton in the street.

“I don’t see,” said Jack, “why--I--shouldn’t do as well as my
neighbours, in the matrimonial line. I look on, at others who play at
courting with wonder; they seem to me to make no move. Now there’s Sir
Charles Lydiard and the widow--they don’t care a fig for each other,
and yet they are to be married, as the world says. As for Blanche, she
seems to me to care as little for Rushton. Why, hang it! if I wanted
to marry either of them, it would not be a week’s work. No, no!--faint
heart--eh! you know. I’d just make either of them buckle to, in half
the time, and no mistake.”

“Have you ever thought of such a thing, Jack?” said Lord Tom, who,
piqued by the coldness with which the widow had always received him,
felt by no means ill-disposed to encourage his tiger in any scheme
likely to make a commotion in the family.

“Why,” said Jack, “I can’t say that I have; but I--of course, I dare
say it means no more than what I always meet with--but I _have_ thought
that there was something uncommon odd about the widow’s eyes.”

“Indeed!” said Lord Tom,--“and very handsome eyes they are too:
besides, Jack, she is rich, and what they call in the city ‘well to
do.’”

“Mum!” said Jack--“know her fortune to a fraction: didn’t overlook that
in the calculation.”

“Oh!” said his lordship--“then you _have_ been thinking rather
seriously upon the subject.”

“Not seriously,” replied the tiger, “only I was considering that Sir
Charles is what I call losing time--waiting upon her too long, as we
should say at Epsom. It would be a good match,--not that I care for
money--no more than my father did. Did I ever tell you of my governor
and his hundred-pound note?”

“Not that I recollect,” said his lordship, although he did.

“Why, _my_ father,” said Jack, “was one day walking along the Strand,
when, just as he came by the end of Buckingham Street, a fellow picked
his pocket of his pocket-book, full of memorandums, letters, and other
papers, “of no use but to the owner,” and a hundred pound note besides.
What d’ye think he did, as soon as he found out his loss?”

“Went to Bow Street, perhaps,” said Lord Tom.

“No.”

“Stepped to the Bank and stopped it.”

“Couldn’t--didn’t know the number.”

“Caught the thief, then.”

“No,” said Jack, “not a bit of it. The minute he found he had lost it,
he went home and got another.”

“In order to have it stolen like the former,” said Lord Tom.

“Not a bit of it,” replied Jack; “just to show how little he cared
about money. So with _me_; I don’t care for money, except as it buys
money’s worth. What’s a guinea in a box?--not better than a brass
button in a bag. But still one cannot marry without the stumpy.”

“Then try the widow,” said Lord Tom; “you have my full permission--only
don’t quote me as authority. You will drive Sir Charles either into a
proposal or the Serpentine river; so at all events something will come
of it.”

“But, my lord,” said Jack, “since we _have_ touched upon this matter,
I will be candid. I have just said I don’t value money; but, if it
weren’t for the fortune, I would rather marry the sister.”

“And has _she_ been kind too,” said Lord Tom.

“Why,” said Jack, simpering, and affecting to look modest, “I can’t say
kind--uncommon goodnatured--and--laughs--and all that: and I have heard
a long-headed old fellow, who knows the sex, say, that if you can once
make a grave female laugh, the day is your own.”

“Provided always,” said his lordship, “that she laughs _with_ and not
_at_ you; the difference is surprisingly great.”

“Oh! Blanche is no ways whatsoever satirical,” said the tallow
chandler:--“and, hang me! if I was asked, I should say there wasn’t a
pin to choose between them.”

“Take my advice, Jack,” said the mischievous lordling--“try them both.
Manage your matters well--lead them both on--there is no chance of
their confiding in each other, because as they are both supposed to be
engaged, neither would choose to trust the other with any proof of her
infidelity.”

“Shall I write to the widow,” said Jack, “and talk to the sister”--

“Write, man! are you mad?” said Lord Tom. “Never write--that _would_ be
a pretty affair. Who knows how notes may miscarry--how writing-desks
may be left open, or if not, be broken open? Besides, they might, upon
so strange a proceeding as that, compare notes, and what a pretty mess
you would be in then! No; sound them--try them--get them apart, and
ascertain the extent of their interest in you.”

Brag listened to all this advice of his noble friend, believing it to
be given _de bonne foi_; and although there appeared difficulties in
the delicate process which his lordship suggested, and which, by a mind
like Brag’s, were not perfectly easy to be surmounted, he thought he
comprehended the general tenor of his instructions, which had for its
object his making himself uncommonly agreeable to both parties.

“Lead Blanche on,” said Lord Tom, “by a course of negative
officiousness; be always near her, devoted and unaffected. Let her fall
into friendship; sympathize with her in all her feelings, agree in all
her opinions--but never seem to do so with any defined object: thus in
a fortnight or three weeks you will obtain her confidence. She will be
convinced you esteem her and value her, and are anxious for her comfort
and happiness; then she’ll grow kind and familiar, and, thrown off her
guard by your respectful behaviour, will begin to evince an undisguised
wish for your society. She will at last feel that you are somehow, she
can scarcely tell how, essential to her happiness, and when you have
got her into this blessed state of amiability, off with your disguise
of friendship, like the hero of a tragedy, and profess yourself her
lover. Then”--

“Ay, ay,” interrupted Jack, “that’s all very well, my dear lord, and
a very pretty month’s amusement it would be, to do all you prescribe:
but, then, what will Frank Rushton be about to let me? He’s as fiery as
a dragon, and as jealous as old Nick. No, no, whatever is done, must be
done clean, off-hand, smack smooth, and no mistake.”

“Then,” said Lord Tom, “if that’s your principle, you had better take
a shot at the widow; she’s not so likely to be flurried by a hurry;
and, besides, your activity will form such a striking contrast to
the respectable icicle now hanging about her, that you will in all
probability carry the day by a _coup de main_.”

“Just after my own heart,” said Jack; “by Job! I’ll have a shy at her.”

“Do,” said his lordship, “and when you are installed in the town-house
and family mansion in the west or north, or wherever it is, make
yourself agreeable; fill your house with your friends, and let us be
jolly.”

“We’ll live like fighting cocks,” said Jack, “you only just see. I’ll
do it regular; there sha’nt be a fellow in the king’s dominions who
shall beat me.”

“Success attend you, Jack!” said his lordship, “but don’t forget
Thursday.”

“I’ll be punctual to the minute,” said Jack; “my watch is a
regular-built chronometer. You shall find me at the starting-post, all
right, and no mistake.”

And so the friends parted, Brag having not the slightest intention of
ever risking a second visit to Wrigglesford, or a second attempt to
trespass on the surly farmer’s grounds, who had threatened him for his
former proceeding; and moreover being resolved to devote the next few
days to the achievement of one of the beauties, of both of whom he was
convinced, in his small mind, he was a regularly established favourite.

Meanwhile we must not forget poor Anne Brown, whom we left under the
care of the physician’s housekeeper, and who, when she recovered from
the agitation which kept her senseless for some hours, found herself
with her head reclining upon the arm of that highly respectable
functionary.

It would require a much greater space than I am permitted in this hasty
narrative, to describe the excellent qualities of Dr. Mead, the eminent
and able practitioner to whom the anxious daughter had prevailed upon
herself to apply for advice and assistance; but it is absolutely
necessary that the reader should be made acquainted to a certain extent
with the attributes of his character, even beyond the pale of his
profession, the exercise of which seemed rather the fruit of a desire
to do good to others, than of any venal feeling of self-aggrandizement.

Although there exists no documentary evidence to prove his descent
from the eminent physician of the same name, it seems not entirely
improbable that the fortuitous circumstance of a similarity of
patronymic and profession might have conduced almost unconsciously
to a similarity of feeling and disposition between them. Matthew
Mead, the father of the famous doctor, was a nonconforming divine:
our Dr. Mead’s father was an orthodox clergyman. If the famous Mead
married early, our Mead was yet single; and whatever turn he might
have had for the fine arts, or whatever veneration he entertained
for their professors, his means, although fully adequate to the
maintenance of a highly respectable establishment and equipage, were
not yet sufficiently extensive to emulate his namesake as a patron or
protector. Still, his income might have been much larger, had he not
upon every occasion where, by a benevolent curiosity, he discovered the
slenderness of a patient’s means, forborne to accept the fees which
from the rich and great he did not hesitate to accept, and which his
spreading fame and rising reputation produced in very considerable
numbers.

In his manners mild and soothing, in his conversation unaffected
and intelligent, his study appeared to be to “minister to the mind
diseased,” as well as to the body; and his approach to the sick chamber
was hailed by the watchful invalid rather as a relief from pain and
suffering in itself, than as the mere business visit of a professional
man, coming in the ordinary routine of duty to enquire and prescribe.

With feelings and a disposition like this, the benevolence of his
heart beaming in his countenance, and the sympathy which he felt for
sorrow and sadness expressed in language the most gentle and in a tone
the most harmonious, it is not surprising that Dr. Mead should have
speedily reassured poor Anne, to whom, as soon as she was sufficiently
recovered to be conscious of her situation, he was summoned by the
housekeeper, and whom he was greatly surprised, upon inquiry, to find
not a patient, but merely the emissary from one who sought his advice.

It was in a moment evident to his searching eye, that the agitation
under which she had been suffering, and from which she was not yet
quite recovered, must have had its origin in some more sudden event,
and one of more recent occurrence than the illness of her mother: he
resolved to question her upon the point; but a recurrence of all the
worst symptoms induced him to forego any further search into a matter,
in fact, disconnected with the object of her visit to his house.

That object was immediately attained. The excellent man ordered his
carriage to be got ready instantly, and directed the housekeeper,
who had been in attendance on Anne, to accompany her to her mother’s
house, and to return home with the carriage, telling her that he would
himself, having called upon one or two patients in his immediate
neighbourhood on foot, proceed to visit his new patient at a later
hour; giving as a reason for this proceeding the absolute necessity of
his seeing those persons before his departure for Walworth, and the
probable anxiety of Mrs. Brown for the safety of her daughter, if she
should delay her return until he should be able to accompany her.

To some practitioners, this delicacy on the part of our doctor might
appear somewhat too refined, the obvious mode of proceeding being, to
have handed the young lady into the carriage, and driven with her to
her mother’s residence; but Mead felt otherwise. He had odd notions
upon many points; and beyond what he considered the main object of
this arrangement, the fact, that an entirely unexpected visit from a
stranger might not altogether suit the convenience of an establishment
so confined as that of Mrs. Brown’s, did not slip his regard or
consideration.

When Anne reached home, she had a hard part to play. The anxiety she
felt for her mother; the pang she received when she saw the sunken
eye of her beloved parent fixed--not tearless--on her returned child,
filled with a half-sanguine, half-hopeless expression, and heard her
breathing heavily, made her heart ache to its very centre. Filled with
gratitude to their expected benefactor, she endeavoured to explain to
her suffering mother the extent of his kindness and consideration,
while the recollection of the callous barbarity of the man she had once
loved, and whom she believed to have loved _her_, wrung her to the very
soul.

That she was indignant at the treatment she had experienced, who shall
doubt?--but who, that knows woman, will doubt either that in the heart
where Love has once dwelt, the very memory of his presence there, will
extenuate the fault which should make the object hateful.

This generous, gentle feeling turned all the force of the indignation
which ought to have been directed against the paltry pretender
himself, towards his associates, to whose baleful influence Anne
entirely attributed the astounding change which had taken place in his
manners. Even the neglect of her letter was laid to the same account;
but yet what made the wound he had inflicted rankle the more, was
the impossibility at the present juncture of risking her mother’s
tranquillity--perhaps existence, by telling her what had occurred, or
of accounting for her lengthened absence by explaining the cause of the
indisposition to which it was attributable.

In less than two hours after Anne’s return the doctor, true to his
promise, arrived. It is scarcely possible to describe her feelings as
he entered the room where her mother lay; it seemed as if Hope had
revived in her breast--that there was somebody who felt an interest for
them. She drew back from the bed-side, and hid her face in her hands
to conceal her emotion: she cried like a child, and tears again were a
relief to her aching heart.

The kind doctor’s questions to Mrs. Brown were few: the case needed
little enquiry--it was a sinking of nature, caused, as it seemed to
him, less by bodily ills than mental affliction, and considerably
accelerated by the want of proper air, and, he almost feared,
nourishment. He wrote a prescription, rather however as a matter of
form, satisfactory to the patient, than with any view of the success of
medicine, and then, having taken leave of his patient, beckoned Anne to
follow him from the apartment.

“Your mother must be removed as soon as she can bear the fatigue,” said
the doctor. “Change of air and diet are absolutely necessary.”

Anne heard the fiat in silence, and again tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I should think,” continued Dr. Mead, “that with care and a proper
regimen the removal might be effected in four or five days.”

Still Anne remained silent and trembling, her eyes cast down upon the
ground.

“You should contrive to amuse her mind,” said the doctor; “she should
not refuse to see her friends.”

“God help us!” sobbed Anne, unable longer to conceal her
agitation,--“we have no friends! What is to be done, Heaven knows! She
must be moved; your kind directions shall be obeyed, sir;--I”--

“My dear young lady,” said Mead, “you wrong yourself, and _me_, when
you say you have no friends. In _me_ you have a friend. Rely on
Providence, and never despair:--friends will always be raised up for
confiding piety, for suffering virtue, and for filial duty in distress.
I will not indelicately press my enquiries, but you must permit me to
act upon my own advice. _I_ am the friend your mother must admit. I
will call here to-morrow; and I think, without putting either of you
to much inconvenience, I can secure you a comfortable residence in a
worthy and respectable family, in a desirable climate. _I_ must manage
all this; and perhaps I may be able, at no distant period, to give
you and your mother a good reason why she need not feel herself under
any serious obligation to me:--upon this point I will not trouble you
to-day,--you have had worry and agitation enough. Keep yourself calm
and quiet; cheer your mother’s hopes--there is no fear of a dangerous
result; upon that point I will stake my reputation. Let her have the
medicine I have written for, and to-morrow, by one, I shall see you
again.”

Saying which, he shook hands with the grateful Anne, and proceeded to
his carriage.

At no period of our lives does kindness so powerfully affect us as
when it comes immediately after we have received some cruel blow. The
affectionate tone and spirit of the doctor’s consolatory address struck
to Anne’s heart, and she returned to her mother, blessing God who had
raised up such a help to them in the hour of gloom and adversity.

The doctor’s benevolence did not stop here, even for the day. In the
evening, whilst Anne was preparing the best refreshment she could
contrive to procure with but slender means of purchase and small skill
in cookery, the housekeeper of the excellent doctor arrived, bringing
with her, sundry little delicacies, and some wine which her master
“had taken the liberty of sending, because by experience he knew its
soundness and excellence of quality, and was therefore sure it would
be serviceable to his patient in her particular case;” in short, every
comfort was secured to her that sympathy could suggest or art provide;
and, as Anne herself said, the very feelings which such attentions
inspired, contributed of themselves materially to exhilarate and revive
her poor mother, whose bodily ailments, as Mead had surmised, were
painfully aggravated by mental depression.

And yet, grateful to Providence as Anne was, with a heart overflowing
with thankfulness to the generous, noble-minded man who in a few hours
had converted a house of mourning into a house of hope, if not of
happiness,--when she laid her head upon the pillow near her mother, who
slept tranquilly, her first thoughts were of that unworthy being by
whom she had been first insulted and then repudiated even as a common
acquaintance, in the street that morning.

It seemed like a dream to her even then. Prepared as she must have
been, and indeed had told him she was, eternally to resign any claim of
a tender nature upon his heart, she could not bear the thought of being
spurned by the man for whom she had permitted herself not only to feel,
but admit that she felt, an affection. That she had not deserved such
usage was self-evident, and that she should receive it particularly
after her last appeal, was galling and distracting beyond endurance.
Little did she think how perfectly disconnected with that appeal his
conduct was, or suspect how he had treated her last letter.

These thoughts, and those of early days, were naturally blended in her
mind with the memory of her brother George, whose long silence was
another source of anxiety and agitation; nor could she forget, besides
the tenderer ties to John, the closeness of their connexion by George’s
marriage. If George had been at home, thought Anne, he would not have
behaved so--but George too has forgotten us. All those who once were
dear to us, and we to them, are gone! and we are helped and comforted
by the stranger upon whom we have no claim, and who has no tie to us
but his own benevolence.

In the morning, Mrs. Brown awoke after a refreshing sleep, very much
better than even her watchful daughter could have hoped. It was but
too evident that the physician had rightly decided on the character
of her complaint, and the absolute necessity of a change of regimen
in the first instance, to be followed up by a removal from the close
atmosphere of a small room in a gas-lighted suburban village to a
purer air. Indeed, so very much better did her mother appear, that
Anne repeated to her the verbal prescription of the doctor, adding the
proposal he had made of providing them with a comfortable residence in
a family known to himself.

For three days did Dr. Mead continue his visits punctually, bringing
with him upon each occasion some little luxury prepared for use,
under the plea that he was most anxious his patient’s food should be
dressed according to rule, and that he could not be satisfied unless
his own servants were the operators, under his own immediate direction.
At the expiration of a week he pronounced her capable of bearing the
fatigue of removal; and on the following Saturday evening Mrs. Brown
and her daughter found themselves established in a delightful cottage
surrounded by gardens and fields, within four miles of town, the master
and mistress of which appeared the devoted servants of the worthy
doctor, and vied with each other in showing attention and courtesy to
their new inmates.

With returning health, there arose in Mrs. Brown’s mind an irresistible
feeling of embarrassment connected with her present situation. She
found herself and her daughter placed in a position of ease and
comfort, with the consciousness hanging over her that she was incapable
of affording the luxuries which she was enjoying, and a sensitive
unwillingness either to trespass upon the kindness of their benefactor,
or if that kindness were merely limited to the recommendation of their
new residence, equally anxious not to involve herself in expenses which
she was aware that she could not defray.

The doctor’s hours of visiting his patient were different from those
which he had fixed before their removal. He came in the evenings,
partook of their tea, and sat longer and stayed later each evening
that he came--and so a week wore away--and yet Mrs. Brown had not the
courage to put those questions which she had resolved somehow to ask,
and to which her medical friend’s conduct certainly did not appear
likely to afford any practical solution; for when he congratulated her
upon the improvement of her health, he alluded to a trial of some new
medicine, about the effects of which upon her constitution he was very
sanguine, and which he should begin with, in “a week or two.”

The words had scarce passed his lips, when the eyes of mother and
daughter met, not unseen by the doctor, who immediately added to what
he had already said:--“Perhaps you may be of opinion that in that time
you will have no need of any medicine at all.”

This seemed to be an occasion which Mrs. Brown might seize, of coming
to an explanation of her feelings, and she availed herself of it
accordingly; and, difficult as was the task to perform, she contrived
to make the doctor understand the delicacy of her position, and the
apprehensions under which she laboured.

“My dear madam,” said Mead, “I am delighted that you have given me
an opportunity of speaking upon this matter. As the worthy people of
this house can tell you, or may perhaps have told you, you are not the
first patient I have recommended to their care; and that when such an
event happens, I consider them my guests during their residence here.
In _your_ case, however, there are circumstances very different from
those which occur in many others, as far as I am concerned:--you have,
naturally enough, forgotten _me_; but we have met before the occasion
upon which I recently visited you.”

“Indeed!” said the lady, somewhat incredulously.

“Indeed,” replied the physician, “I have dined in your house, madam,
more than once. I was not aware of this fact when first I called on
you, but circumstances and coincidences led me to institute an enquiry,
and I found in _you_, madam, the widow of the man to whom I may,
without exaggeration, attribute my success in life, and the place I now
hold in society and my profession.”

“You surprise me exceedingly,” said Mrs. Brown.

“It is now more than four-and-twenty years since,” said Dr. Mead,
“that I was recommended to the notice of Mr. Brown by a friend of his
and a connexion of mine, then living at Bristol; and upon my arrival
in London I was, in consequence of that introduction, invited to your
house, where, as I have already said, I dined more than once. But it
was not by mere commonplace hospitality that Mr. Brown proved the
warmth and sincerity of his feelings towards me. Upon one occasion,
when an opportunity presented itself--in all human probability the
deciding opportunity of my life for furthering my professional views--a
sum of money was necessary to the accomplishment of my wishes, of
which I was not possessed. Had not Mr. Brown at that time generously
assisted me, I must have relinquished the object I had in view, the
realization of which, proved, as I have already said, the foundation of
my fortunes. I have now, I think, said sufficient to overcome all your
scruples with regard to my present conduct; and I only rejoice that the
opportunity is afforded me of proving to you and this dear young lady,
that there is still in the world such a sentiment as Gratitude.”

“This is most extraordinary!” said Anne.

“For several years,” continued Dr. Mead, “after my return from the
Continent, I endeavoured to find out the widow of my benefactor, but
without success, and I look upon that as one of the most fortunate
hours of my life in which the suffering daughter of my first friend
came to require my assistance, attracted to me by a reputation which
her father had so materially contributed to establish. Now,” added
he, “you may look on me with feelings far different from those which
have hitherto occupied your hearts and minds:--in me you see only the
_protegé_ endeavouring as much as in his power lies, to evince his
thankfulness where it is so justly due.”

“What are we to say to you?” said the agitated parent.

“Nothing, nothing,” interrupted Mead. “Permit me to continue my visits,
now, luckily not rendered professionally necessary. Let me entreat
you to remain where you are, and allow me, whenever I can, to come
hither and enjoy in your society, and that of your exemplary daughter,
a repose after the hurries and worries of a London life, which I have
long but vainly sought.”

Nobody can doubt what, under the circumstances, was the course Mrs.
Brown pursued, although, it must be confessed, that she even then,
had her doubts as to the truth of the doctor’s narrative; regarding
the statement of his obligations to her husband, and his consequent
success in life, rather as the fruits of an inventive faculty, exerted
in order to overcome her scruples and satisfy her delicacy, than as a
matter-of-fact bit of history.

Of herself, she had not the slightest recollection of the name of her
new old friend in the catalogue of visiters at her house; nor could
she recall to her mind the personal appearance of any guest at her
husband’s hospitable board which bore a resemblance to the doctor.
A quarter of a century had elapsed, and the tallow-faced pupil of
the hospitals had grown into the mellow-tinted arbiter of the mortal
destinies of men; and if the doctor had been sufficiently ungallant
(which doctors never are) to have made an ample confession on _his_
part, it is quite certain he must have said, that he found not in the
sinking widow whom he had restored, any remains of the charms and
attractions which had in his early days characterized the gay and
dashing wife.

Poor Brown however had, in the zenith of his career, been as hospitable
as a Madeira merchant, and was wont to welcome to his table men of
all trades and nations, all callings and professions. He held it to be
part of his business to cement connexions by social intercourse, and
therefore while he kept in fact, open house, it was morally impossible
for his lady, who was not much interested in the casual guests “below
the salt,” to recollect all their names or persons. Still she could
hardly divest herself of the idea that the doctor’s history was a
soothing fiction; although her daughter, whose opinion of the said
doctor was somehow more favourable than that of her parent, declared
her conviction that he was much too honourable, too candid, and too
sincere, to endeavour to carry even a favourite point by deception or
misrepresentation.

How this paragon of physicians turned out in the wearing, we may
perhaps live to see.




CHAPTER VI.


It was a short time after this, that Mr. Brag was called upon to
perform a feat for the amusement of his aristocratic friends, which,
however powerful the effect it actually did produce, terminated in a
manner less agreeable to the actor than the audience.

Upon our hero’s arrival one day at the lodgings of Lord Tom Towzle,
he found his lordship and two other worthies concocting an answer
to a matrimonial advertisement which had appeared in the columns
of that most fashionable of all journals, The Morning Post; and
Jack’s appearance to take his seat in such a council was hailed with
enthusiasm;--in fact, he was the very man to undertake the conduct of
the whole affair.

The advertisement ran thus:--

  “MATRIMONY.--A widow lady, in good circumstances and of high
  respectability, being, from causes which she will be most happy
  to explain, left much alone, is desirous of again entering the
  married state, provided she could find a gentleman of honour and
  character who might feel a similar wish. The advertiser is aware
  that an address of this nature is unusual, and may therefore create
  a prejudice against her in the minds of some; she is, however,
  confident, that upon investigation her conduct will be shown to be
  perfectly justifiable. Letters, post-paid, directed to A. Z., to be
  left at the Twopenny Post-office the corner of Little Queen Street,
  Holborn, will be attended to: but as it is not the intention of the
  advertiser to gratify idle curiosity, no farther particulars will be
  entered into, until after an interview between the parties.”

“This is capital!” said Lord Tom. “We have seen hundreds of men
advertising for wives, but the lady being the applicant is something
new. However, she is evidently no fool; she is determined to see
her man before she explains herself. You, my dear Brag, must be
the recipient of her wishes and sorrows. We have just concluded a
reply, fixing a meeting upon Waterloo Bridge, a locality chosen in
preference to any of the Parks, squares, or gardens, on account of its
solitude,--a quality which has reduced it as a speculation to worse
than _nil_, which, considering it is one of the most splendid ornaments
of the metropolis, is most deeply to be regretted.”

Jack was delighted at being fixed upon to talk over the fair
advertiser; his self-acknowledged invincibility was admitted. It was
his particular _forte_--and it was speedily arranged that his three
companions should remain at a convenient distance until the parley
should have proceeded to a certain extent, when they were _manfully_ to
avow themselves confederates in the scheme, and eventually drive the
rash damsel “fainting from the ground.”

It must be confessed that the system of mate-hunting through the
medium of the newspapers, is one which not unnaturally subjects its
practitioners to the assaults of the mischievous and merciless. Whether
any of the negociations, of which such notices are the precursors,
terminate satisfactorily,--that is to say, in the union of the
parties--it is impossible to say; but it does seem, for people who have
eyes and ears and hands and tongues, the strangest possible course of
proceeding.

Jack, who in all his antics kept his eye upon the main chance, was
by no means the less inclined to the performance of this hoax upon
the defenceless innocence of the yet unknown fair-one, by a notion
which flashed into his mind, that it might turn out that she really
was handsome and rich: a notion which, to be sure, was rather
romantic, inasmuch as it would appear that a lady possessing those
qualifications--or even one, provided it were the latter--need not
have had recourse to a public proclamation of her wish for a husband.
Something, however might come of it: it was the opening of a new
field for the exertion of his talents, and the display would, he felt
certain, place him a step or two higher in the estimation of his noble
sporting friends.

The letter, addressed as desired, was despatched, the postage paid, the
day and hour were fixed, and the party separated to meet a few minutes
previous to the rencontre, and arrange their forces, as has already
been described; three forming a corps of observation, while Brag was
performing his light-infantry evolutions in advance.

It must be quite clear to the reader, that upon such an occasion Jack
took the greatest possible pains to make himself what he called “the
thing;” every fold of his coloured neck-handkerchief was laid with the
most anxious nicety of form and tint, every curl was crisped into its
own peculiar place, and the whole of his costume made to look like that
of “a genteel comedy” playhouse beau, which, as he believed, must be
irresistible in a widow’s eyes.

At length the wished-for day and hour arrived. Lord Tom Towzle and
his two friends were joined by Brag at the corner of Pall Mall, and
proceeded to the scene of action, where they took up their stations
a few minutes before two--two being the appointed time for the
meeting--and having separated according to the programme, Mr. John
Brag commenced his amatory promenade on one side of the bridge, while
his expectant companions occupied the other, but at a considerable
distance from him.

It was a pleasing thing to see our hero settling himself and pulling
up his shirt collar, then drawing on his glove, then twirling a little
switch-like stick which he carried, and then using it in whipping
his own boots, shining with a lustre which Day and Martin might have
envied. He had scarcely finished one turn when the London clocks began
striking two, which at different periods they continued to do, for
nearly five minutes, that of St. Paul’s booming through the air about
midway between the subordinates.--Another turn had been taken, and
no fair one was in sight:--a small girl in trousers, with her hair
platted into two long tails with bows at their ends, and a bustle,
approached--she was evidently no widow; she passed on; Jack tried the
eloquence of his eyes upon _her_;--then came a tall, gaunt woman, with
a poodle dog. Jack looked at _her_, but she made no sign. At last
there appeared a fine portly-looking dame, dressed in a coquelicot
bonnet, topped up with white and green feathers, a lavender-coloured
pelisse, and buff-coloured boots. The friends in the distance were
convinced that this was _the_ person. She looked behind her and before
her, and first on one side, and then on the other, and proceeded at a
steady pace. She drew a full-sized, white-faced watch from her bosom,
and gazed upon its dial, and then tossed her well-plumed head with an
air of impatience and surprise at the non-appearance of her summoner.

John Brag, Esq. beheld the vision, and if he had seen all the dæmons of
the Hartz Forest pemmican’d into one plump lady, he could not have felt
more horror and dismay. By what fatal accident, what evil coincidence,
it should so have occurred, he could not imagine;--the extensive being
before him, and now fast approaching, was neither more nor less than
his respectable mother.

What the deuce could have brought her so far from home, and so
wonderfully fine in her dress, Jack could not imagine; the question
was, what was to be done? If he advanced, another minute would
bring him in contact, and into conversation, with his parent; if he
retreated, he must fall back upon his friends, and she would inevitably
follow and accost _him_. The brightness of his genius came to his aid
in this unexpected dilemma--he resolved instantly to join her, turn
round with her, and fall into the dialogue which he saw must take
place, and make his companions believe that his companion was the real
object of their expedition, the advertising lady.

This scheme possessed many advantages, for the very circumstance of
his relationship to his companion would afford him an opportunity of
exhibiting the ease and familiarity of his manner while talking to
the supposed advertiser, which would convince his companions that he
was proceeding most successfully in his career; during which period
he hoped to set his beloved mother on her way on the other side of
the water before they could come up to enact _their_ part of laughing
at the victim, which it was settled they were not to do, until Brag
should give a signal that the moment for explosion had arrived.

The ingenious performer, however, had reckoned without his host. When
he and his mother met, the expression of her countenance was anything
but agreeable: she seemed, in fact, as much mortified and annoyed by
_his_ appearance as he had been by _hers_: and with all his desire to
keep good friends with her, and wheedle her away as soon as possible,
he could not disguise the anxiety with which he watched the approach
of the fair husband-hunter, upon whom, so long as his parent remained
where she was, he could not of course play his tricks.

“Well, John,” said the lady, “who would have thought that we should
have met here to-day? I’m sure I don’t know how long it is since I’ve
set eyes upon you.”

“I have been a good deal out of town,” said Brag, acting (for effect
with his friends) in the most civil and obsequious manner.

“What,” said Mrs. Brag, “at your little place in Surrey. I suppose you
are coming from it now--eh, Johnny?”

“No, not exactly,” said Jack. “May I ask where you are going?”

“Nowhere particular,” replied the lady. “Don’t let me keep _you_. I am
only out to make a call. I can go without _you_.”

“I will just see you to the gate,” said Jack, carefully abstaining from
any gesture or movement which could in the slightest degree resemble
the appointed signal for the co-operation of his friends.

“Don’t mind _me_, John,” said his mother; “it is so nice and airy up
here, that I think I shall take a turn or two on the bridge before I
go.”

“My dear mother,” said Brag, “you’ll catch your death of cold. Let me
persuade you to get off as soon as you possibly can.”

“I like air,” said Mrs. Brag; “so you go your way. Who are those men
standing out there? Do you know them?”

“Those men!” said Brag--“what, those three men there?--no--I know
nothing about them.”

“Well then, good b’ye, John,” said the lady. “Now don’t let me keep
you; it is more than a quarter after two, and I needn’t be at my
friend’s till three; so now go--there’s a dear!”

This was a puzzler:--the fancy his mother had taken to walk upon
Waterloo Bridge seemed to Jack not only the most extraordinary, but the
most inconvenient imaginable. He could not leave her without accounting
to his friends for not having made the signal, or for the conversation
in which it was but too evident to them he was engaged; nor could
he, in fact, go near them, without practically contradicting the
declaration he had just made to his mother, that he knew nothing about
them. He decided.

“Well then, mother,” said he, “if you really _do_ like to walk up and
down a little, I don’t see why I should not walk up and down with you.”

“Well, I’m sure!” said Mrs. Brag, “wonders will never cease, I think!
Walk up and down with _me_!--why you have not done such a thing these
three years. Why, we have never been out together since the day you
took me down to dinner at Blackwall, and kept me shut up in an attic
at the ‘Artichoke,’ because, you said, I wasn’t fit to be seen by the
company. No, no--go about _your_ business, and leave _me_ to mine.”

“I am waiting for somebody,” said Jack.

“Oh! that’s it,” cried Mrs. Brag. “I thought there must be something in
the wind.”

“I know you don’t like spoiling sport, mother,” said Brag. “I’m here
on a bit of fun:--I’ll let you into the joke. I expect every moment to
see an uncommon smart body, who has been fool enough to advertise for a
husband--eh!--don’t you see? We’ve tipped her a twopenny, fixing this,
as the place of meeting: it’s past the time, and I dare say she won’t
be much longer. Now, perhaps, if _you_ stop, she won’t come to the
scratch.”

“Advertise for a husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Brag--“why, what _have_ you
been at? Did _you_ answer the advertisement?”

“Clean as a whistle,” said Jack, flourishing his stick, and shaking his
head with an air of uncommon self-satisfaction, “smack smooth, and no
mistake--eh!”

“What! appointing her here”--said the lady.

“Here at two,” said Brag--“the adorable A. Z. at the oil-shop the
corner of Little Queen Street, Holborn.”

“You did, did you?” ejaculated his mother.

“I did,” said Brag.

“Well then, all I say, John,” cried Mrs. Brag, “is, that you ought to
be ashamed of yourself. If you was a lone widow woman, how would _you_
like to sit moping and mumping all alone, after having been used to
sociability and comfort.”

“I see nothing to be ashamed of,” said Brag. “If people will make
themselves such Tom-noddies as to put such trumpery stuff into the
newspapers, they deserve all they get.”

“How you ferreted it out, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Brag.

“Ferret what out?” said Jack.

“--But _this_ I do know,” continued the lady “the letter was not in
your hand-writing.”

“How the deuce do you know _that_?” interrupted Jack.

“Why, do you think I don’t know your little scribbling pot-hooks and
hangers when I see them?” retorted the mother.

“I dare say you do,” said the son; “but how came you to see the letter
we sent to A. Z. at the pickle-shop?”

“As if you didn’t know,” said Mrs. Brag. “Do you suppose I am so blind
as not to see through _your_ antics? No, no: as I said before, how you
ferreted it out I don’t yet understand; and when you had, I think you
might have been better set to work than to hoax a parent.”

“I’m all at sea,” said Jack. “What have you or your affairs to do with
our fun?”

“Do!” screamed the angry lady, “do--why what else should they have to
do with? So now you are ashamed of your spy tricks, and want to sham
that you did not know who A. Z. at the pickle-shop, as you call her,
is.”

“I’ll be hanged if I do,” said Jack.

“Then hanged it is my belief you will be,” replied the mother, “_you_
know as well as _I_ do, that _I_ am that individual.”

“You!” cried Jack--“you A. Z. at the pickle-shop!”

At this moment Brag’s miseries were, as he thought, at their
_acmé_--but he was mistaken. The instant he received the unexpected
and most unwelcome intelligence, that the object of his diversion and
ridicule, to enjoy which three of his first-rate friends had been
brought to the scene of action, was really and truly his mother, his
course was clear; apology and conciliation were the weapons with which
he was to assail her, and having soothed her anger, he would walk her
off the ground as speedily as possible; a course which he considered
quite practicable, now that she must be convinced, however angry, that
there was no use in her remaining on it.

“My dear mother,” said Brag, “I am truly and seriously sorry for this
affair. If I had fancied it possible--but I--really--dear me!--this is
all very uncomfortable.”

“If I thought you didn’t do it on purpose,” said Mrs. Brag, “I
shouldn’t mind it half so much.”

“My dear mother,” said Brag, “I do most positively assure you”--

To which point of assurance his speech had arrived, when, tired of
procrastination, and satisfied that Brag had admirably performed his
part of the farce, his three friends bounced across the road, and
joined the unhappy creature, forming, as it were, a semicircle in his
rear.

“Come, Jack,” said Lord Tom Towzle, “you have had enough of this fun.
Is he vastly agreeable, ma’am? Isn’t he a nice little man?”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Brag, “you _do_ know these gentlemen! Why, you
little story-teller, you said they were no acquaintances of yours.”

“If I did”--said John--

“--_If_ you did!” said Mrs. Brag--“why, you know you did:--and so these
are the companions of your trick--the witnesses of your impudence!”

“Pray, ma’am,” said one of the dandies, “do not flurry yourself--we
are not going to eat you!--we were only anxious to have the pleasure
of seeing you, because, as we all want wives more or less, we thought,
like yourself, we might as well take the opportunity of viewing, before
purchase.”

“Oh, Johnny, Johnny!” said Mrs. Brag, holding up her pink and
white-striped parasol in a posture of threat--“you would do much
better if you would but stick to the shop, and do your duty by _me_:
if that was the case, you would not drive your poor mother to do what
you yourself are most active to turn into ridicule. I’ll find this
out--I’ll sift it to the very bottom: my belief is, that you have been
pumping Jim Salmon, or one of the shopboys, to make this precious
discovery, in order to amuse your fine friends at the expense of your
parent.”

“Parent!” exclaimed Lord Tom Towzle--“what! ma’am, is--?--eh!”

“How!” cried one of his friends.--“What!” said another.

“Why, you see,” said Brag, “I--I”--

“I’ll tell it you shorter,” said Mrs. Brag, around whom and
her auditors a crowd of four or five of the diurnal two dozen
foot-passengers were now congregated:--“he is _my_ son--and not content
with letting an excellent business go to rack and ruin while he is
cutting his capers, and leaving an anxious mother to a solentary life
and melancholy prospects--here he is”--

“Pray, ma’am,” said Lord Tom Towzle, “in what line may you be?”

“Wax and tallow chandler,” said Mrs. Brag, “including sperm and other
oils, flambeaux, tapers, bougies, and sealing-wax of all colours and
qualities.”

“She’s mad, poor thing!” said Jack--“fancies herself my mother! Did
you ever hear?--go home, ma’am--go--and don’t expose yourself again by
writing such stuff in the newspapers.”

“What! Jack,” said Lord Tom Towzle, “is A. Z. at the pickle-shop,
corner of Little Queen Street, Holborn, your mamma?”

“So she says,” said Brag.

“Says!” exclaimed the indignant matron,--“it isn’t that you are much to
be proud of: but here, gentlemen, here’s the card of the shop--I never
travel without half a pack in my pocket--here, see--judge who is right
now. Oh! if his poor dear father could but get out of his grave in
Cripplegate churchyard to see the use his darling son has put all his
indulgence to”--

“He would probably go back again into it, ma’am, as fast as he possibly
could,” said Lord Tom.

“For _my_ part,” said the widow, looking at the slice of nobility which
had last addressed her, “I begin to think you are no better than he is;
however”--

Here, an admonitory--“Come--move on, move on,” from two policemen on
duty, put a check to the conversation, which promised to become more
and more animated.

“Move on!” said Mrs. Brag, who at this period was in a burning
rage, the flame of which glowed on her cheeks and sparkled in her
eyes:--“yes, Mr. Policeman, I’ll move on, and move off too; but it
would serve that little whipper-snapper cockney son of mine right to
send him to the Station House for what he has done.”

“Go home, poor soul!” said Brag, trying what “dejected pity” might
do:--“go home, and get cool: I’ll come and see you soon.” Then, turning
to his companions, he added:--“I’ve heard that gentle remedies are
best, eh!--the soothing system, as Dr. Dulcimer calls it, eh! Go home.”

“Don’t be a fool, Jack,” exclaimed Mrs. Brag, “you’ll repent of this
some day. All these fine-weather friends who set you on to play tricks
for them to laugh at, will leave you the minute your troubles begin,
just as rats run out of a falling house; and perhaps they would not be
so fond of you _now_, if they knew that your town mansion was nothing
but a brass plate, and your little place in Surrey, a second floor over
a carpenter’s shop. Get you gone--get you gone! If you have no feeling
for yourself, Jacky, I cannot help feeling for you.”

Away flounced the indignant mother; and having squeezed herself with
some difficulty through one of the anti-cheating turnstiles at the end
of the bridge, bounced along Wellington Street towards the Strand,
Lord Tom Towzle signalizing himself, and delighting the spectators, by
imitating, at the top of his voice, the crowing of a cock, triumphantly
victorious in the overthrow of an enemy--an exhibition which has
been more than once received with unbounded applause in a theatre in
Westminster, which yet remains beyond the reach of the Licenser.

“Well, now,” said one of Jack’s three friends, “who is this old
catamaran? Why does she insist upon being your mother?--is it because
her name is the same?--or”--

Here again was Jack puzzled most wonderfully. To renounce her as a
parent, and denounce her as a cheat, was something too strong even for
_his_ assurance.

“--Why,” said our hero, “I believe, if truth were to be told, she is my
mother.”

“Truth to be told!” said Lord Tom, “why, Jack, although there may, in
these wicked days, be something like reason in the proverb that says,
‘it is a wise child who knows his own father,’--the adage cannot hold
good as regards the female parent;--there can be no great doubt about
_that_.”

“Why,” said Jack again, who generally began his speeches with
why,--why, he knew not,--“why, you see, my mother”--And then again
nature interposed:--it was not feeling, it was not tenderness, nor even
affection, which held him back, or checked the tongue on which some
flippant falsehood was gathering--it was instinct,--not better in its
character perhaps (if so good) than that of a chimpanzee, but it was
enough to paralyze his efforts to shuffle off the relationship between
himself and the maltreated A. Z. at the pickle-shop at the corner of
Little Queen Street, Holborn--“Why,” again said Jack, “I am sorry
we made so bad a shot,--because I believe it is a good deal my own
fault--I have driven her to it, eh! Can’t keep at work and”--

Brag had now fallen into his own trap; his impudence for once failed
him, and he stood confessed the son of the determined husband-hunting
widow of the deceased tallow chandler.

“But, Jack,” said Lord Tom, “what did your amiable parent mean by the
brass plate, and the carpenter’s shop--the mansion and the villa?”

“Oh, that,” said Jack, “was all passion. When a woman’s back’s up,
she’ll say anything, no matter what. I am sorry it has happened,
because it has exposed her, and certainly has not come off the bat,
clean, smack smooth, and no mistake.”

“No, that you cannot say,” said Lord Tom; “however, never mind it; the
old lady will forgive you. You must go and see her, and make it up.
Suppose we all go in a body and apologise, and I’ll explain to her the
circumstances of the affair, and convince her that you really were
totally ignorant that _she_ was the advertiser, eh! Shall we do _that_?”

This proposition produced a violent accession to Jack’s already raging
fever. The thought of Lord Tom Towzle and the two “nobs,” as he called
them, proceeding _en masse_ through the shop to the back-parlour
beforementioned, under the row of wooden candles fluttering in the
breeze, was perfect misery to him.

“No, no,” said Brag, “by no means! I have always noticed that a woman
cools soonest when left alone.--My mother,” said Brag, assuming a new
tone, and which he thought to be the wisest, “is a woman of what you
call strong feeling--mighty high--old family--and proud as Lucifer.
She’s in a passion; and when she is out of it I’ll go to her--mollify
her, eh!--smooth her down, and make all snug and comfortable.”

“--‘And no mistake,’ Jack,” said Lord Tom. “Well, all I hope is, your
nerves won’t be shaken for the race to-morrow. ‘Slap-bang’ is the
favourite; and riding a winning horse is no very hard task”--

“Nervous!” said Jack, who began as usual to rally--“what is to shake
my nerves?--an angry woman? No, no: I know the female sex too well to
mind a few passing clouds; and as for the _exposé_, as the French call
it, it’s nothing to me. My mother, as I have just said, is a woman of
excellent family; how can I help her having been so silly as to marry a
tallow chandler.”

This mode of putting the case set Jack’s friends laughing with him
rather than at him. Like a cat, Jack generally contrived to fall upon
his legs, however “high” the tumble; and they all agreed that he was
perfectly right, and that he had behaved in the most moderate and
judicious manner: and when they parted, renewed the appointment for the
morrow with the usual cordiality.

As for Johnny, far different indeed were his feelings: the scene on
the bridge was one which never could be effaced from his memory. The
coquelicot bonnet; the striped parasol; the white and green feathers;
the buff boots; the object of the visit; the conversation; the
disclosure; the mystery of the plate, and the history of the villa;
and, above all, the exhibition of the shop-card, and the conviction
that he was the son of A. Z. at the pickle-shop--it was all vastly well
for his tiger friends to laugh it off--but what would form the subject
of their conversation after dinner that very day at Crockford’s,
where the conclave would be secured from his intrusion? What would be
the nickname which was ever after destined to distinguish him in the
contemporaneous history of society?

It was clear that his end, as far as that sort of “life” was concerned,
was drawing to a close. Two practicable measures now presented
themselves to his imagination, both of which are said to go by
destiny--hanging or marriage--the halter or the altar, and, according
to Jack’s counterchanged aspiration of the _h_, it was difficult to
discover his preference by his own pronunciation of the word. His mind
was soon made up; and being assured that his secrets--as he considered
the shop, the door-plate, and the villa--would, in the hands in which
they had now been authoritatively deposited, be secrets not many hours
longer, he resolved within himself that he had no time to lose in
bringing the widow to action; and, as the reader already is aware, that
let what might have happened, he never intended to ride “Slap-bang”
over the forbidden lands of Wrigglesworth--that evening and the next
day were to be devoted to the grand experiment of his life.

In putting this affair into execution, the natural infirmity of his
disposition was remarkably exemplified. Convinced that Frank Rushton
was satisfied of the prepossession of both Mrs. Dallington and Miss
Englefield in his favour, and equally assured of the wisdom of Lord
Tom’s advice as to the course to be pursued, he determined in the
outset to act upon the principle of the one, and adopt the practice
recommended by the other:--that is to say, to play off both the ladies
one against the other, but not to commit himself to either, by writing;
it being evident to the meanest capacity (except that of Johnny’s)
that neither of two sisters, nor of two women, indeed, who were _not_
sisters, living in the same house, and in circumstances such as those
in which Mrs. Dallington and Blanche were placed, could possibly
receive anything like a proposal, or even a probable approach to it,
without communicating the circumstance to the other. The mingled vanity
and stupidity of Johnny, in the midst of his gaiety and amiability,
prevented this single circumstance striking him; and, secure in his
own influence over both the fair creatures, and his intimate knowledge
of “females,” he resolved upon Lord Tom’s assumed doctrine, that both
ladies being actually engaged to other men, neither would commit
herself to the other by the acknowledgment of a passion for him: this
decided him to fire both his barrels in rapid succession, giving the
unmarried lady the preference by a few hours.

Having, however, revolved the affair in his mind, he again changed his
original intention as to the mode of attack, and resolved to address
the widow personally--and the sister by letter;--for, in spite of Lord
Tom’s _friendly_ caution about writing, Jack did not feel himself quite
a match for the tender delicacy of Blanche in the way of dialogue;
having moreover, with all his avowed notions of practical advances,
a most sensitive apprehension of a scream or a fainting-fit, which
he feared might alarm the family, arouse the widow to a sense of his
libertine insincerity, and explode the whole of his great undertaking.

Accordingly, in the course of the afternoon of the day upon
which the unlucky affair of A. Z.--the alpha and omega of his
destruction--occurred, he proceeded to one of his favourite haunts,
and in pursuance of the scheme which he had now arranged, addressed a
letter to Miss Englefield, avowing, not, it must be owned, in the most
direct and explicit terms, but in a tone and language which it was
impossible for any lady to mistake or misapprehend,--a devotion the
most perfect and entire to her mind and person; alluding, in as good
English as he could contrive to write, to the encouragement he felt he
had received, trusting to her kindness and consideration, if he were
mistaken, to forgive him; and hinting that Mr. Rushton himself was not
altogether unconscious of the preference of which he felt so proud.

This he despatched before he slept, which he did at his “little place
in Surrey;” and when he woke from a sort of fitful slumber in which he
had passed the night, he began bitterly to repent of a step which he
had taken while under the influence of a kind of desperation. However,
as it _was_ done, he determined to “go the whole hog,” and follow up
this feint at the unmarried lady, which might after all be turned into
a real attack in case of a failure with the widow.

Accordingly, at the earliest decent period for calling upon anybody,
Brag proceeded to make his visit to Mrs. Dallington; but here again his
courage failed him. His mind was made up to the deciding step of trying
his fortune, and as he went along, he rehearsed--or, as they say of
birds, recorded all the sweet notes in which he should address her, if
he found her alone. As he proceeded, his spirits mounted, until he had
worked himself into a serviceable state of amativeness: he reached the
door,--knocked--the noise seemed like thunder:

  “He trembled at the sound himself had made”--

his courage began, like that of Acres in the play, to “ooze out at his
fingers’ ends;” and the terror he experienced when the servant told him
his mistress _was_ at home, can scarcely be imagined.

The crisis had arrived; and as it _was_ to come, perhaps it was better
it should have occurred before any of his mother’s intemperate
disclosures on the bridge had reached what Jack was in the habit of
calling “the West end.” He mounted the stairs with his throat a little
parched, and his hands a little cold; but when the door of the boudoir
was opened, and he found his charming hostess alone, the sight was
fatal.

“Why, my dear Mr. Brag,” said Mrs. Dallington, holding out her hand
towards him, “where _have_ you been--hiding yourself in the country? I
believe you have some attraction at your place in Surrey, of which we
here in town are not aware.”

The allusion was not pleasant. Brag--the undaunted, unabashed
lady-killer--sat himself down in a chair opposite the sofa on which he
found the widow seated writing at a table before it, and felt assured
that, by some telegraphic or other communication, the fair object of
his hopes and ambition had received the intelligence of the affair on
the bridge:--so ’tis that

  “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

“No,” said Brag, endeavouring to collect himself, “I have been staying
in Hertfordshire for the last few days.”

“I assure you we have missed you very much,” said the lady, who,
fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, for Brag--was, for
reasons of her own, in the best possible humour for encouraging his
civilities,--“you can’t think how dull we have been without you. My
belief is, that your friend Lord Tom is the cause of your abdication
from town: he is so fond of his shooting matches and his steeple
chases, and you, we hear, are his prime minister: in short, he cannot
exist without you.”

“Oh!” said Brag, looking very much obliged, and very silly, “you
flatter me. I assure you I just do these sort of things by way of a
start now and then; but--I--it isn’t my taste--it obliges Tom--and that
sort of thing; but--I--I--feel”--

“What!” said the widow, “do you mean to disown your affection for a
sporting life, who are, as Sir Charles Lydiard says, the very life of
sporting?”

“Sir Charles is very civil,” said Brag, who began to feel conscious
of an approach to his subject: “I don’t think _he_ is very fond of
sport--of any sort,” was added in a whisper scarcely audible.

“He is a strange creature, isn’t he?” said Mrs. Dallington. “A most
excellent man--kind, and all _that_--but _so_ cold in his manner--I am
sure he makes enemies by it.”

“Why,” said Brag, looking down, and rubbing his hat, “I don’t know what
he may be to females--he _is_ certainly--rather--eh!--rather”--

“Oh!” said Mrs. Dallington, “don’t be afraid, I shall not repeat a
word you say about him. I quite agree with you. Women, Mr. Brag,”
and the widow suited her looks to the word--“are fond of spirit and
vivacity. The days of sad, sickly, sighing swains, are gone by: society
is enlightened, and diffidence seems to be considered in these times
merely a mark of stupidity. I suppose everything is destined to travel
at an increased pace, and I, for one, admit a partiality for fast
travelling, as far as _that_ goes.”

This was pretty strong encouragement to an aspirant who was in a hurry,
and engaged to ride “Slap-bang” across a county the next day--but Brag
was Brag, every inch of him.

“Yes,” said Brag, “it’s uncommon pleasant: I don’t think, however, I
shall ever be caught giving up horses for steam.”

This sudden digression from the figurative to the matter-of-fact,
evidently disappointed the widow, who, truth to be told, had never
appeared, either alone or in society, so cordial in her manner to our
hero as upon this special occasion, upon which, of all others, it was
most important to his views that she should be so. The first opening
she had given him for a little self-recommendation in accordance with
her avowed taste, he had botched,--missed his tip,--and become prosy.

“I have got a good many shares in the rail-roads,” said Jack.

This settled him, and, it must be confessed, fully justified his own
preference for literary correspondence over verbal communication, upon
tender subjects.

Mrs. Dallington gave a look; Brag, luckily, did not see it. A pause
ensued, but, as our volatile widow was playing a game, it did not last
long.

“I wonder,” said the widow, looking at Brag with an expression of
interest--“I wonder _you_ have never married, Mr. Brag.”

This bit of wonderment nearly took away his breath: his tongue seemed
too big for his mouth;--he began to twiddle his fingers, felt his ears
get red, and his nose cold.

“Ha, ha!” said he, and rubbed his hat again.

“So gay, so gallant, and so devoted to the fair,” continued Mrs.
Dallington, “I should think you had only to ask and command. I do not
at all understand why you haven’t yet thrown your handkerchief.”

Brag, who did not in the least understand why he should perform any
such operation, merely inclined his body.

“I have been married myself,” said Mrs. Dallington, “and although I
soon became a widow, I am quite sure that where there are reciprocity
of affection, congeniality of taste, and sympathy of feeling, no state
of society can be so truly satisfactory and so entirely good,--I have
no word so short or so emphatic for it as that--as marriage.”

“It must be uncommon agreeable, I should think,” said Brag, looking
“uncommon” foolish.

“Now there’s Frank Rushton,” said Mrs. Dallington, “a most delightful
companion--a most accomplished scholar,--and, as I believe, extremely
attached to my poor dear sister--and yet, you see, they don’t get
married. I believe that all you agreeable, gay men of the world, try
everything in your power to turn the heads of poor girls, without any
serious intention of eventually making them happy.”

This voluntary confession of facts and opinions, delivered in Mrs.
Dallington’s most agreeable, off-hand manner, although it corroborated
in Brag’s mind all his former belief of the interest he had created in
the family, so astounded him, that with the opportunity at hand, for
which he had so earnestly sought, he remained a mere listener at the
mercy of his idol.

“As for Blanche,” said the widow, “as I have great faith in the
philosophy which inculcates the belief of a love of opposites, I am
sure she, tender, shy, and retiring as she is, ought to be over head
and ears in love with Frank; but I don’t believe she cares the least
bit in the world about him. To be sure she has a right to please
herself. She has a large fortune, and nobody to control her, and, _I_
think, would make a most admirable wife for any man who knew how to
appreciate her. However, I know nothing about her views or proceedings;
we have no confidences; we each go our own way. I never trouble _her_
with my advice, and, of course, _she_ never presumes to give me any.”

“I am sure,” said Brag, “you would make anybody in love with
wedlock--I’m--sure--You wonder that Miss Englefield does not marry Mr.
Rushton;--I--often--think--I do indeed--that--you--I beg your pardon--I
mean Sir Charles--eh!--and no mistake”--

“Oh!” said the widow, “I quite understand you. Sir Charles is a good
creature--but as for love, I don’t believe he ever thinks of such a
thing. Certainly he is not of _our_ opinion as to gaiety and vivacity.”

“I was thinking,” said Brag, looking as white as a sheet, and crumpling
his remarkably nice hat in a paroxysm of something between hope and
fear, “--that--you--really ought not to permit--eh!--this--he is such
an odd man--eh!”

“My dear Mr. Brag,” said Mrs. Dallington, “there are secrets in all
families.”

Brag perfectly agreed in the proposition, and directly did there flit
before his eyes coquelicot bonnets, striped parasols, buff boots, brass
plates, green and white feathers, and a tribe of visions more horrible
than Fuseli’s fiercest efforts after a supper of half-boiled pork.

“There _are_ people with whom we become habitually familiarized,” said
Mrs. Dallington, “but who never touch the heart.”

“Is Mr. Rushton,” stammered Jack, “one of those?”

“Why really,” replied Mrs. Dallington,--“Blanche not being here to
answer for herself--for although you never inquired after her, I ought
perhaps to have told you she has been out of town for two days, and
does not return till to-morrow,--_I_ was not so particularly referring
to _her_ case.”

This must have opened the eyes of a mole. Brag, in a moment, became
aware that Mrs. Dallington could know nothing of his rash note to
Blanche, and felt more convinced than ever that the widow was his own.

“The case,” stammered John--“you don’t--that is--really”--

“You are a most amiable creature!” said Mrs. Dallington. “I see how
diffident you are of your own merits--how unconscious you are of your
own power!”

“Yes,” faltered Brag, quite overcome--“yes--am I--that is--may I--do I
make myself understood?--is--that is--don’t I--eh!--if--but”--

--“Sir Charles Lydiard,” said a servant, throwing open the door, and
announcing the worthy baronet, who entered the room with his usual mild
placidity of manner, and after shaking hands with the lady, turned
round, and beheld--his aversion. The look he gave Mrs. Dallington
expressed all his feelings upon _that_ point: nor was it lost upon
Brag himself, who collected his hat, gloves, and switch-stick, and
having gathered them up, made his bow, and left his adorable widow
_tête-à-tête_ with the baronet, perfectly assured of his triumphant
success with her, and bitterly repenting having exposed so much of his
heart to her less well-provided-for sister.

Never, to be sure, was there a more perfect illustration of the
character of the swaggering pretender to _bonnes fortunes_ than the
melancholy proceedings of our wretched little hero. The ball was at his
foot--the game was in his hands--and yet he, the slayer of hearts, and
the assassin of reputations, cowered before the fostering kindness of
his liberal hostess, and sneaked out of the presence of the man whom
he believed to be his defeated rival, in ridiculing whom he had first
joined with his mistress to take a step of which we shall hear more
hereafter.




CHAPTER VII.


There are some people upon whom advice is thrown away, and who, holding
themselves to be wiser than their councillors, rush “_in medias res_”
where

  ----“Angels fear to tread.”

Mr. Brag, who did not want for that sort of intellectual quality called
cunning, was nevertheless, as has been already made tolerably evident,
favoured by nature with an overbalancing share of conceit, and when
he had ascertained the tone of the widow’s feelings towards him, and
satisfied himself that his case was reduced to something very like “ask
and have,” he resolved upon taking the step against which his friend
Lord Tom had so strenuously advised him, and which, as a matter of
assurance, was rendered “trebly hazardous” by his having previously
adopted it with regard to her sister.

The Irish gentleman’s definition of a bottle of soda water we will
not stop to repeat, but it would have applied with tolerable accuracy
to the character of our hero. Although he had extracted from Mrs.
Dallington what he believed to be quite sufficient to justify his
best hopes, he felt in the solitude of his “little place in Surrey” a
consciousness of inability to conduct the storm personally, or carry
her heart by a _coup de main_--unless, indeed, a letter might be so
considered--and therefore, spite of the advice of his experienced
Mentor, he proceeded to address the fair widow in an epistle, a
repetition of which it is not necessary to inflict upon the reader, but
which contained a distinct declaration and a formal proposal.

Mr. Brag had now shot his bolt, and nothing remained but to see its
effect. It must be admitted that even _he_ was in some sort nervous
and fidgety; but that happy self-satisfaction, which when he was not
required to make an effort never forsook him, kept his spirits on the
“credit side of the account.” The letter, however, was gone--past
recal--and therefore the next wisest thing to not sending it in the
first instance, was to live upon the hopes of its success.

Upon the popular “wheel within wheel” system, the widow had acted so
as to induce the declaration which it contained, satisfied that by
“playing” her baronet upon the occasion, she might “land” him,--but
certainly not prepared to find that Blanche was placed in a similar
position. As things turned out, the effect it produced was striking.

Blanche had just returned from her two days’ visit to the country. The
moment she entered the house, she hastened to her sister’s boudoir,
where she found her in the very act of reading, with evident marks of
amazement and exultation, the avowal of Mr. Brag’s affections.

“My dear Blanche,” exclaimed Mrs. Dallington, “you are arrived at
the very moment to congratulate me on a conquest. I have received a
proposal”--

“What!” said Blanche, “from Sir Charles?”

“No,” replied her sister, in a tone which certainly conveyed the
idea that she wished she had:--“I think you will guess without much
difficulty, knowing the man.”

“The Fates are propitious,” said Blanche; “I too have been so fortunate
as to merit the decided approbation of a lover, who declares the
happiness of his life, and the value of his existence, depend upon my
answer.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Dallington:--“why, _my_ worshipper uses the
very same expression. Yes--here it is:--‘The happiness of my life, and
the value of my existence, depend upon your answer.’”

“That _is_ curious,” said Blanche; “may I ask who the tender swain is?”

“Guess,” said Mrs. Dallington.

“I cannot,” replied her sister.

“What! not our exquisite little friend Brag!” said Mrs. Dallington. “I
was always sure how our acquaintance would end: I wonder it did not
strike _you_.”

“Why,” said Blanche, “the reason my suspicions did not lead that way is
rather a good one--he has made me a proposal.”

“When did you receive it?” said the widow.

“Yesterday,” replied Blanche, “it was forwarded to me from town.”

“I suppose it is a circular,” said the widow.

“No, no,” said Blanche, “mine is the original, yours is the copy.”

“What _can_ the man mean?” said Mrs. Dallington. “Does he really
suppose himself so fascinating, that, like the rattlesnake, he has
nothing to do but look at us to induce us to drop into his mouth? Now
if he had confined his attentions to _me_”--

“Ah!” interrupted Miss Englefield, “that is exactly the case; if he had
confined his attentions to _me_, the affair would have been different:
as it is”--

“No, no,” said the widow, “don’t misunderstand me, my dear Blanche. I
do assure you I am neither envious nor jealous. You should be welcome
to all his attentions and all his affections--only please to observe
that _I_ intended him to take the step he has taken, and availed
myself of your absence to lead him on to a declaration.”

“For what earthly purpose?” said Blanche.

“Man,” said the widow, “is an imitative animal, and everybody knows the
force of example.”

“But do you want anybody for whom you have a regard to imitate Mr.
Brag?” asked Blanche.

“In the one particular of which we are now speaking,” replied the
widow, “I do. It seems to me, Blanche, that the lives we are both
leading are full of worry and vexation: yours, because you will not
encourage your avowed lover; mine, because the man whose claim upon
my affections I admit, will not avow himself. It strikes me that this
most marvellous display of assurance on the part of our little friend
may serve us both incalculably, by bringing both our gentlemen to a
proper sense of their duty;--to excite poor dear Sir Charles into a
determination, and to soothe Rushton into a reasonable state of mind.”

“I confess,” said Blanche, “I do not exactly understand the course of
proceeding by which this desirable end is to be attained.”

“Let us both accept the little man,” said the widow. “The natural
awkwardness of his position must produce a disclosure of his schemes;
and what appears to me infinitely better fun, his vanity and conceit.
That, which must happen, is, however, only a secondary object with
me;--the discovery of the affair will show our capricious lovers that
there _are_ men who, instead of hesitating to propose to one woman, are
prepared to make offers to two; and moreover, my dear Blanche, the very
notion that we are exposed to such temptations will urge our strange
friends to some decided step. You must accept Mr. Brag.”

“Me!” exclaimed Blanche: “I accept him--an antidote to everything like
affection of any kind!”

“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Dallington, “I am sure he is very genteel; he
curls his hair, wears rings and chains, smokes cigars, rides races, and
lives with Lord Tom Towzle. What would you have?--accept him you must.”

“Never!” cried Blanche.

“You must, my dear girl,” replied Mrs. Dallington, “and so will
I:--yes, both of us--he is too charming to be monopolized by one. You
must write to him.”

“A billet-doux?” enquired Blanche.

“Exactly so,” said Mrs. Dallington. “Let us both be desperately in love
with Lord Tom’s tiger: you will see how odiously jealous Rushton will
be in a day, and Sir Charles.--Oh! never mind; write--write--write, and
I will dictate.”

“Write what, my dear sister?” asked Miss Englefield.

“A civil acceptance of his offer,” said Mrs. Dallington, “couched in
terms becoming the gratitude of a young lady of small pretensions.”

“I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear sister,” said Blanche, “but
really”--

“Really,” interrupted Mrs. Dallington, “you must allow _me_ to be the
best judge of what is best suited to my juniors; so sit you down and
write, and I will dictate.”

“But what will the world say?” asked Blanche.

“What world, my dear?” said Mrs. Dallington--“Mr. Brag’s world--or the
world at large? What the one chooses to say will signify nothing to us;
and what we may choose to do will signify as little to the other. Trust
in _me_; be assured that I will not mislead you, whatever may be my
intentions with respect to your scarecrow of a lover.”

“_My_ lover!” cried Blanche, colouring crimson at the imputation--“your
lover too!”

“Both,” said the widow. “Now sit down; rely upon it, it is a kindness
sometimes to be cruel:--so write.”

Blanche, almost unresistingly, seated herself at the very identical
table at which Jack had found Mrs. Dallington established the day
before; and mechanically arranging the writing materials, looked at her
sister with an expression of unconsciousness of what she was to say,
and of enquiry as to the words she was to set down.

“Are you ready to begin?” said the widow.

“Yes,” said Blanche--“to obey your instructions most dutifully.”

“Now, then,” said Mrs. Dallington, “write:--‘I scarcely know how to
reply to your flattering letter.’”

“I am sure I shall do it all wrong,” said Blanche writing.--

“‘I have struggled for some time--’”

“Some time,” repeated Blanche--“struggled with what?”

“Go on,” said Mrs. Dallington:--“‘for some time with my feelings,--but
the manner in which Mr. Rushton, whom you have often seen here,
conducts himself towards me is’”--

“What would you have me say, sister?” said Blanche, hesitating. “_You_
know, if nobody else does, that I love him, and”--

“Never mind that,” said the widow, “go on:--‘conducts himself towards
me is such, that I can endure his treatment no longer.’”

“My dear sister,” said Blanche, “you are laughing at me:--you wish me
to expose myself.”

“Why do you think so, my dear?” said Mrs. Dallington. “You have told
me a hundred times that he torments you to death.”

“Yes,” said Blanche, “but what I say to _you_, and what I write to this
man”--

“Well,” said the widow, “then put--‘vexes me,’ instead of ‘tormenting
me.’”

“That is better,” said Blanche, continuing to write.

“‘That any man upon earth would be preferable in my eyes,’” said Mrs.
Dallington.

“No,” said Blanche, tossing up her head with unusual animation, and
throwing down the pen, “_that_ I never _will_ write!”

“What innocence!” said Mrs. Dallington. “My dear sister, we are only
setting a simpleton-trap, and”--

“It does not signify,” said Blanche, “I”--

“No, it does _not_ signify, so write,” said the widow. “There now--go
on--it will be _my_ turn next. Tell him you shall expect him to
call--this evening. I will write him an equally tender answer, and make
a similar appointment. What can it signify what one says to such a man
under such circumstances?”

“But, my dear creature,” said Blanche, “what an opinion he must form of
us if he thinks we are both in love with him!”

“It is quite clear that he _does_ think so now,” said Mrs. Dallington;
“so this will not make it one bit the worse. Here--make room--let
me write mine: all you have to do is to watch the results of our
invitation, and be as cold as ice to Rushton when you next see him.
Rely upon it, my dear innocent, we shall have fun, and, if I mistake
not, husbands, out of this scheme, which, moderate as my pretensions
are, I must say I think admirable, inasmuch as it mystifies three men
at once,--and all--all for their own eventual good.”

“I believe you take a pleasure in tormenting,” said Blanche, who was
busy sealing her note, while her sister was rapidly writing her’s in
that elegant and unintelligible hand which is the universal medium of
lady-like correspondence, when, to their surprise and confusion, the
door of the boudoir was thrown open, and Sir Charles Lydiard and Mr.
Rushton were announced.

“Hide your letter!” said Blanche.

“Me!” said Mrs. Dallington, loud enough to be heard by Sir Charles;
“trust to my fidelity.”

“By Jove!” whispered Rushton to Lydiard, “they are writing--writing
notes and hiding them!”

“So I perceive,” said Sir Charles, coldly.

“Well, ladies,” said Rushton, advancing towards Blanche, “we have found
you busy.”

Blanche bowed diffidently, and finished sealing her note.

“What is the matter with you, Sir Charles?” said Mrs. Dallington; “you
look out of sorts and out of spirits.”

“No, madam,” said Lydiard, “I am neither; only I did not know whether I
might venture to break in upon your literary avocations.”

“Quite right, Sir Charles,” said Mrs. Dallington. “People who make up
their minds not to pry into the business of their neighbours, are most
likely not to be disturbed in their serenity.”

“Miss Englefield,” said Rushton, “appears to be of a similar opinion.
I confess I am not of a temper to bear with such things. I hate
three-cornered notes, if they are not addressed to myself.”

“You are equally right with Sir Charles,” said the widow. “I _am_
writing a billet-doux, but I have just finished.”

“Upon my word,” said Lydiard, “it must be a most interesting affair.
I think I never saw you more animated than you seem to be while
despatching this note: all I am afraid of is, that I have been the
cause of its abrupt termination.”

During this dialogue, Rushton endeavoured to draw Blanche into a
conversation with regard to the note _she_ was writing, but she avoided
answering his questions; and supported in the course she had adopted
by her sister’s conduct towards Sir Charles, so completely damped the
ardent spirits of her mercurial lover, that he crossed to the other
side of the room, and threw himself upon the sofa.

Mrs. Dallington having sealed her note, rang the bell, and directed
the servant to send it immediately.

“Now,” said Sir Charles, “I have found it out--you are merely trying
me: the note, after all, is destined for me.”

“As you doubt me, Sir Charles,” said Mrs. Dallington, “I shall leave
you to discover the truth.”

“I am certain,” said the baronet, with much more animation than he
usually exhibited, “it can be to no one else. I shall return to my
hotel to receive it.”

“Do,” said the widow, “and justify me from your suspicions.” Saying
which, the lady, with an air of being particularly piqued, left the
room by one door, while Sir Charles, convinced that she had taken some
deciding step with regard to himself, retired by the other, leaving the
other pair of lovers _tête-à-tête_.

The moment her sister left the room, Blanche rose to follow her.

“Stay, Blanche,” said Rushton, “one moment.”

“No, Mr. Rushton,” said Miss Englefield, “I am too angry with you to
stay.”

“Surely,” said Rushton, “you cannot be angry with my jealousy--a
jealousy that springs only from excess of affection.”

“No man,” said Blanche, “can possess real affection for any one of
whose sincerity he has a constant doubt. I have forgiven these mad fits
twenty times, always hoping and expecting that time would show you your
error; but no,--our very last quarrel occurred ten minutes after our
last reconciliation.”

“Recollect, Blanche,” said Rushton, “the events of that day--the day
before you left town:--there you were--the sought and admired of the
party--speaking kindly and looking kindly to everybody except me, of
whom, as I felt, you took no notice.”

“Well, sir,” said Blanche, “and if I were cold, and even cross, you
need not have been so greatly surprised, if you had recollected how you
called me to account for sitting next Mr. Brag the last time he was
here, and entering into a common conversation with him about some of
his feats and enterprizes.”

“By Heavens!” exclaimed Rushton, “how I hate that fellow--his easy
assurance, his self-conceit: but the fault is all your’s and your
sister’s. That very night there he was whispering his infernal nonsense
in your ear, to your evident amusement and satisfaction, while I,
distressed and disturbed by your conduct, was losing my money at écarté
with Lady Begbrook, and you sat laughing at my folly and agitation.”

“I _did_ laugh,” said Blanche, “but I did not laugh alone.”

“No, no, that’s true,” said Rushton. “I dare say there are minds
and tempers that can bear these irritations--I confess mine cannot.
Possibly I expect too much; probably I am romantic; but, I _do_ say,
and _will_ say, that however charming I may wish my wife to be, I
do not exactly desire that she should be anxious to make herself
universally agreeable, nor equally delightful, to everybody.”

“Really, Mr. Rushton,” said Blanche, “these fancies of yours are
unjustifiable and unbearable. I confess that it would cost me serious
pain to terminate our acquaintance, in which I have, when you are
rational, great happiness; but such conduct surely deserves to lose
my esteem. I can neither smile nor sigh, walk nor sit down, talk
nor be silent, go out nor come in, but you attribute some motive to
my actions. They bring me a letter--of course it is from a rival; I
dance with somebody--you are either angry or in despair. I am civil to
Mr. Brag, my sister’s visiter, and the next moment I see you wholly
unconscious of what you are doing, crushing my fan to atoms in revenge.
Oh! Mr. Rushton, Mr. Rushton, such conduct in a lover is but the
anticipation of tyranny in a husband.”

“Tyranny, Blanche!” said Rushton, suddenly softened into subjection;
“what an idea!”

“I am afraid,” said Blanche, “that our hearts are not formed to be
united: we had better agree upon one point--to part.”

“There it is!” exclaimed Rushton; “the truth is out. You have now
declared yourself; you hate me--you cast me off. I knew there was some
new attachment formed. Yes, yes--we _will_ part, Miss Englefield. There
is a woman in the world, thank Heaven! who has a better opinion of
me than you have: from _her_ gentle heart my wounded spirit may find
relief.”

“Oh!” said Blanche, “I am quite aware of that lady’s name. Go,
sir--leave me: let this be our last interview.”

Blanche spoke these words with so much firmness, that she began to be
afraid Rushton would take her at her word; nor did Rushton’s answer
much relieve her apprehensions.

“So be it!” said he. “I will conquer this feeling--I _will_ love where
my love can be returned. But, madam, I insist upon one thing--tell me,
who is the man who has supplanted me in your affections.”

“Why,” said Blanche smiling--“should I do that?”

“Why?” exclaimed Rushton--“because he shall at least set his life upon
the hazard. Name him to me, I desire: tell me where he is to be found,
and if----”

“Mr. Rushton,” said Blanche, “I wish you a good morning. Whenever you
are reasonable, and can conduct yourself temperately, I will explain my
conduct to you. In your present state of excitement, I must leave you.”

Saying which, the fair creature quitted the room, leaving the
infuriated victim of love and jealousy in an agony of despair.

The moment she was gone, he stared wildly round. In the crowd of
conflicting passions which now assailed him, anger was in the
ascendant; and, snatching his hat from the table, he rushed down stairs
and quitted the house, swearing, almost audibly, that he never would
enter it again.

It was clear that the project of the ladies had been so far successful
as to set the whole mass of affections and feelings of the two
gentlemen into a state of fermentation; because, while this scene was
acting at the widow’s, Sir Charles Lydiard had been to his hotel,
where he found no note from the lady, and whence, after waiting a
much longer time than would have been occupied in its transmission by
her servant, he proceeded to take his ride, with a distracted brain,
having come to a determination that the next day should conclude his
acquaintance with the avowed and self-convicted coquette, who had now
proved what he had long suspected, that she was merely playing a game
with him for her own diversion. In this critical juncture we must for
the present leave them, in order to introduce the reader to some new
arrivals, as well as to give him some information of the convalescent
mother, her dutiful daughter, and the philanthropic physician.

The amiable person last named continued his attentions to the widow
Brown and her daughter: his visits became diurnally regular; and the
satisfaction he derived from the recovering health of the one, and
the improving spirits of the other, assumed a character which became
evident to both. The anxiety he expressed for their comfort, the
assiduous attention with which he contrived little surprises in the way
of excursions in the neighbourhood of their present residence, which
he represented as conducive to the re-establishment of his patient,
were marks of a feeling not to be concealed or disguised; nor, to say
truth, did Mead appear at all desirous of practising any delusion upon
either of his new friends. It was perfectly clear that he had formed
an attachment, which from its nature and principle promised to be
permanent.

Mead had watched the conduct of Anne during the illness of her mother,
had attentively regarded the workings of her mind, and had satisfied
himself that she possessed every attribute desirable in a wife. Their
acquaintance had commenced, and his acquaintance with her mother had
been renewed, under circumstances which gave a deep interest in his
mind to her fate and fortunes. Mead was one of those modest, unassuming
men, who once in an age attain to eminence without having forced their
way by impudent assurance, or having been pushed forward by favouritism
or connexion. Success had not spoiled him; and while rising to the
first rank in his profession, he was the same gentle, unassuming,
affectionate being that he was, while toiling up the “steep ascent to
fame.”

It was not that Dr. Mead entertained the unfavourable opinions of the
higher classes, which it is the continual effort of the lower orders
to inculcate; but he felt the absolute necessity of something like
parity of rank between the contracting parties to secure happiness in
marriage. The daughter of a merchant, even though unfortunate, was
neither so much inferior nor superior to the son of a country clergyman
as to make the inequality of station seriously objectionable; and in
Anne, Dr. Mead persuaded himself he perceived qualities and feelings
calculated to sweeten the draught of life, and which would worthily
adorn the partner of his future days. In his conduct in this affair
there was nothing of romance or violence of passion. Indeed his love
was what a romantic girl would consider extremely unsatisfactory--it
was rational esteem founded upon conviction; and their intercourse was
so unmixed with any of those flights in which such persons as Miss
Englefield and Mr. Rushton were perpetually engaged, that, when the
doctor made his declaration, it seemed as if it were the inevitable
consequence of their constant association; and Anne’s acceptance of
his offer, under the sanction of her delighted mother, was as calm and
collected as if it were not the great deciding event of her life, and
one which could only be looked upon as the happiest that had ever yet
occurred in it.

It may be that this calmness, and her apparent unconsciousness of the
wonderful importance of the match in a worldly point of view, might
have arisen in some degree from the recollection which never fades from
woman’s mind, of her first love. Unworthy as he had proved himself, and
changed so much from his former self, he still perhaps retained some
hold on the heart he had betrayed, and would with callous indifference
have broken:--these recollections might have had their share in
producing the effects which, although Mead appeared perfectly satisfied
with the gentleness of Anne’s conduct, were by no means agreeable to
her mother, whose gratitude to Providence for what had occurred was
unbounded.

There was another point which was necessarily to be brought under
discussion, to which Anne felt a diffidence and difficulty in
alluding--the position of her brother George in society, and his close
connexion with the doctor’s heartless rival. These matters, interwoven
as they were with the probable renewal of her acquaintance with Brag
when his sister should return to England, and the consciousness that
she had committed herself by an acknowledgment of her attachment
to him, preyed upon her spirits, and the brightness of her present
prospects was marred by clouds, which, like the few existing professors
of Nauscopy, she could behold in the far distance before they were
visible to ordinary eyes. To the suspense in which the heart and
mind are constantly kept by a protracted anticipation of coming
evils, which, however remote, are sure to come, poor Anne, it must be
owned, was a victim, and her efforts to rally from it were altogether
unavailing.

We have all felt that the most serious ills, or the most painful
discussions, which have occurred to us, or in which we have been
engaged, have, when they actually arrived, turned out not half so
serious or so painful as we have expected; and upon this principle
Anne devoutly prayed that the _denouement_, which she regarded with so
much anxiety and dread, should arrive speedily. Her mother, to whom
she imparted so much of her uneasiness as related to the announcement
to her future husband of her brother’s rank in the army, assured her
that nothing was to be apprehended on that score; that a man who had
selected as a wife, the daughter of a distressed and needy woman,
would not shrink from the fulfilment of his pledge to her, because her
brother had been compelled to enter an honourable service even in its
lowest grade.

Mrs. Brown was a woman of good sense, but whatever Mead’s character and
disposition might be, there is, in point of fact, as far as worldly
matters go, a wide difference in the feelings of a man towards the
female and male connexions of a family: a pretty milliner, or a smart
actress, is a most agreeable _pro tempore_ companion; and there is
not a man who would object to take either, to any of the _guinguettes_
round town, in the bright blaze of sunshine to participate in the
enjoyments of a Richmond stroll, or a Greenwich fish-dinner; but it
would be rather a difficult matter to induce the same person to drive
Jack Twigg, the brother of the one--or row Bill Bott, the father
of the other--to either of those cockney Elysiums. The doctor was
everything that could be amiable and generous, but the fact that the
real nature of George’s service had never been imparted to him, but,
on the contrary, the discussion had been carefully avoided, might of
itself add to the objections which he might feel to having, by way of
brother-in-law, a hard-fisted sergeant of a marching regiment.

How he eventually was made acquainted with the facts, and what was
the result of his knowledge of them as affecting his subsequent
proceedings, the reader is soon destined to know: but as they are
rather prominent features of our little history, it is right they
should have a chapter to themselves.




CHAPTER VIII.


A few days had only elapsed since the final arrangement of Anne’s
marriage, when the anxiety and worry by which she was annoyed in not
having explicitly told her future husband her brother’s history were
terminated in a manner certainly neither expected nor anticipated by
her.

It was evening when the doctor made his appearance at the Tusculum,
evidently excited--that is to say, rather more animated than
usual--full of something which he was anxious to impart, and still
more desirous of imparting without flurrying his companions:--to use a
homely phrase, he had a good deal to say, but did not know exactly how
to begin.

The difficulty he felt, arose from two sources:--the first cause of his
embarrassment was, the consciousness that what he had to communicate
could not fail, with all his caution, to awaken a combination of
feelings in the minds of his hearers, the physical effect of which
upon the constitution of the elder one he anticipated with some
apprehension; and the other originated in the feeling that he was about
to avow himself fully acquainted with every particular concerning a
member of the family to which he was about to ally himself, whose name
had scarcely ever been mentioned, and whose history had never been
touched on.

“I have news for you, ladies,” said Mead, after having talked upon
some indifferent subjects, “which will surprise you; but I shall not
tell you one word until you have promised me to behave calmly and
temperately when I have told my story.”

“News for _us_!” said Mrs. Brown.

“News from afar,” said the doctor.

The blood rushed into Anne’s cheeks. She was assured whence, and whence
only, news from afar could come to _them_--Mead had heard of her
brother--of the brother of whose position in society she had avoided
the mention--he knew it all--and not from her! She felt humiliated and
abashed, and almost shuddered at the reflection that from mistaken
pride,--unaccountable in a character like hers,--she had left the
developement of the whole family history to chance, by which, Mead had
become possessed of every particular, and was of course convinced that
Anne, with all her good qualities, was not entirely ingenuous. As it
happened, the circumstances of the case were such as not to give that
colouring to her conduct; but, on the contrary, to lead the doctor to
admire the diffidence and modesty of both mother and daughter in not
having spoken much more of such a son and brother.

“Your son”--said Mead.

“I knew it must be poor George!” exclaimed Anne.

“Your son is expected home almost immediately,” said the doctor.

“Thank God!” said Mrs. Brown: “he is alive then and safe. Three years
have passed since the date of his last letter.”

“Dear, dear George!” said Anne--her joy still clouded by her
self-condemnation.

“When, my dear doctor,” said Mrs. Brown, “may we expect him?--and how
have you heard this news?”

“Promise me, both of you,” said Mead, “to hear what I have to say
calmly, and I will tell you all. You have no reason for agitation; the
news I bring is good--excellent! Now, recollect--no agitation----he is
in England!”

A flood of tears from the two listeners followed this announcement. I
am not sure that the eyes of the narrator were quite dry.

“Heaven be praised!” sobbed Mrs. Brown; “I shall see my dear, dear boy
once more!”

Anne remained mute, and motionless, and weeping.

“Nay, ladies,” continued Mead, “I have seen him--have conversed with
him,--and only succeeded by pointing out the absolute necessity of
forbearance, in hindering his coming with me:--to-morrow you will clasp
him to your hearts.”

Had not the one reproach rankled in Anne’s mind, her happiness
would have been as perfect as her mother’s: as it was, she felt she
would give the world to enquire more about him--about his wife--his
family--his circumstances; but she was tongue-tied.

“Is he well?” said his mother--“and is his wife with him?”

“She is,” said Mead--“I have seen _her_ too.”

Another pang thrilled through Anne’s heart:--that wife was the
sister of the man to whom she had herself been betrothed! The
mother and daughter exchanged a look;--it was full of meaning, but
incomprehensible to Mead.

“I suppose she must be much altered,” said Mrs. Brown; “of that,
however, _you_ can be no judge, not having known her before she went
abroad.”

“She is a very lovely creature,” said Mead; and observing a sudden
change in the expression of Anne’s countenance, he added--“not that I
mean to make anybody jealous.”

Anne coloured: she felt that they were travelling over mined
ground:--that the most natural thing in the world for George to
have done when he found out the doctor, was to make some allusion to
the brother of his wife with reference to his sister; and she began
to worry herself into the belief that the whole history of the Brag
affair had been detailed to her affianced lover, and that he was merely
serpentining his way to the part of the details at which he might
terminate his connexion with them altogether.

“I never saw a sweeter expression of countenance!” continued Mead.
“Her manners are perfect: in fact, nothing but a constant intercourse
with the best society can give that sort of unconscious ease and
gracefulness which seem inherent, and whose greatest charm is the total
absence of effort or affectation.”

Anne heard, and silently repeated to herself the words, “constant
intercourse with the best society,” and her thoughts flew like
lightning to the back parlour behind the shop, the dangling candles
in front, the respectable Brag defunct, and his widow still extant;
and the result of these hasty reminiscences was a confirmation of
her belief that Mead was proceeding in an ironical strain, utterly at
variance as it was with the general simplicity and amiability of his
character, in order eventually to explode the whole affair, indignant
at the treatment he had experienced, and disgusted with the connexion
he had so nearly made.

“Why,” said Mrs. Brown--and Anne would have given worlds that she had
said nothing,--“she was always a smart, clever girl, and, I suppose,
time has improved her into what she is.”

“Her natural genius,” said Mead, “which, from some drawings I saw of
hers, views of different parts of India, is evidently first-rate, has
been--at least so your son told me--wonderfully improved by a residence
in Italy, where art is so generally cultivated and understood; and her
father, who, he says, was devoted to her, indulged her in a wish to
reside upon the Continent for three years before his appointment.”

The mother and daughter again exchanged looks. It became a doubt in
both their minds whether Dr. Mead was suddenly seized with madness,
or whether their dear George had caught the infection from the Brag
family, and had been imposing on him in the most outrageous manner.

“I never heard of my daughter-in-law’s having been abroad,” said Mrs.
Brown.

“She never could have been,” said Anne.

“All I know is this,” said Mead:--“a gentleman called upon me about
one o’clock to-day. He sent in his card, and, upon seeing his name,
it struck me that it must be your George, whom I had heard you
occasionally mention. I had remarked that you did not speak much of
him, and, as there are secrets in all families, I apprehended, although
you never hinted it, that there might exist some disagreement amongst
you with which I could have no concern whatever; still the similarity
of name excited the opinion that it might be _him_. I immediately
received him in preference to my waiting patients. He told me that as
soon as he and his wife arrived in town, he proceeded to Walworth,
where the people of the house directed him to me, as knowing all about
you. Our conversation grew more and more interesting; and having,
evidently to his surprise, and, I flatter myself, not a disagreeable
one, told him the nature of my engagement to dear Anne, he insisted on
accompanying me hither to clasp you in his arms. I positively refused
that, and, by way of an intermediate bargain, he begged me the moment
I had despatched my professional business to call upon him and his
wife at Mivart’s Hotel, where they have taken rooms. I did so, was
introduced, and, as I have told you, am quite delighted with both of
them.”

“Mivart’s Hotel!--taken rooms!”--another look was exchanged.

“Did he tell you,” said Mrs. Brown, “whether he had any family?”

“I think he said one boy,” replied Mead: “however, he will be here in
the morning. I am not sure whether your daughter-in-law will come with
him. She is in rather delicate health; and the journey from Falmouth,
where they landed, coming immediately on a fortnight’s bad weather in
the chops of the Channel, after a long voyage, is something formidable
to a person who, like her, has been used to all the luxuries of life.”

Another look,--and an extra one from Anne, who looked at Mead to see
whether there were any visible alteration in his countenance; for all
he said was perfectly incomprehensible to her--if _he_ were sane and
rational.

“Did she,” said Anne, particularly anxious to discover the extent
of her communication as to her brother’s engagement, as it might be
called, with herself--“did she say anything about her brother?”

“Brother!” said Mead; “no, my dear Anne; George, your brother, and my
future brother-in-law, I hope,” (Anne blushed again,) “told me she was
an only child.”

“Did he?” said Mrs. Brown.

“An only child!” said Anne--and they were both more mystified than
ever. Anne, however, who was more feelingly alive to the actual
position of her brother, ventured a little farther: “Has George,” said
she, “obtained any promotion since we heard from him?”

“That,” said Mead, “is a question I cannot very satisfactorily answer.
His card was a written one, and the name ‘Mr. Brown.’ As I before told
you, my dear Anne, the name itself was enough for me.”

This little speech tended very considerably to calm poor Anne’s doubts
and fears. Whatever had occurred, it was clear that neither George nor
Kate had touched upon the subject of her former engagement, and she
began to take courage and feel more at ease than she had been during
the earlier part of the conversation.

Mrs. Brown’s delight at the prospect of again seeing her son was not
a little qualified by the mystification which Mead’s account of him
and his wife involved, and she longed for bed-time, in order to talk
over the circumstances with her daughter. Her confidence in George’s
veracity rendered her suspicious of the doctor’s accuracy; and out
of both she established an idea that the Mr. Brown of whom they had
been talking must be neither more nor less than some dashing swindler,
who proposed to cheat the doctor, or somebody else, by pretending a
relationship to the family with which he was about to connect himself.

Of course, so long as the conversation lasted, George and his wife
were the leading subjects of it; not that the doubts and surmises of
the ladies were at all calmed or diminished by hearing Mead detail the
particulars of a visit paid to Mr. Brown, during the time he was at the
hotel, by one of the most fashionable coachmakers in town, to receive
Mrs. Brown’s orders with regard to a carriage which was to be put in
hand immediately, and finished as soon as possible.

At last the trio separated for the night, the doctor well pleased to
have found in his brother-in-law a gentleman so agreeable and highly
respectable, but wondering more than ever that he should have suffered
his mother and sister to exist in the manner they were living at
Walworth, and where, had it not been for the accidental circumstance
of Anne’s application to him, they would in all probability have been
living still; and coupling these matters with the looks which he could
not at length fail to see Mrs. Brown and her daughter interchange, he
unsettled his mind into a belief that there must be some mystery in the
affair, of which he should like to be master.

“My dear Anne,” said Mrs. Brown, as she threw herself into the armed
chair in her bedchamber, “what on earth can all this mean? Delighted
as I am at the prospect of so soon seeing my boy, I am astounded and
astonished at what Mead tells us. What can have happened to George,
to induce him to talk and act as he represents him to have done this
morning?”

“I,” said Miss Brown, “cannot comprehend it. But I am even more
surprised at what he has _not_ said to Robert, than at what he _has_.
He may have made money; he may be able to live at an expensive
hotel; and he may be able to let Kate have a carriage: but one would
have thought one of his first enquiries would have been after his
brother-in-law. Now, of Jack, it is clear he never spoke; for if he
had, and before Robert had told him all, the chances are”--(here her
voice faltered a little)--“_my_ name would have been mentioned too.”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Brown, “how should George afford any of
the luxuries of which Mead speaks?--besides, knowing, as I do, the
tenderness of his affection, and the generosity of his heart, do you
think, if he had acquired anything like the property which this person
seems to possess, that we should have been forgotten? No, no!--rely
upon it, there is some great mistake in the business somewhere. George
would never have left his mother and sister to work for their bread, if
he had had the means of putting them at their ease.”

“Besides,” said Anne, “when the whole of the conversation of _this_ Mr.
Brown with Robert is put together, it does not appear to contain one
word in allusion to our family concerns. It is true, Mr. Brown went
to Walworth, and was referred to Robert by Mrs. Hutchins; but, except
a simple enquiry after our health, he seems to have made no allusion
whatever to anything that happened either before his departure or
during his absence. My belief is, like yours, that it is somebody who
for some purpose has thought fit to personate George, although, to be
sure, it would be difficult to conjecture for what.”

“I would rather it were anything,” said Mrs. Brown, “than that my once
honourable, high-minded boy should have endeavoured to impose upon Mead
with such extraordinary falsehoods as those which it appears he must
have told, if it be him.”

“Besides,” said Anne, who grew energetic and eloquent as she proceeded,
“Kate never _could_ draw; the things she took home from school were all
done by the drawing-master: and as for the Continent, she never was
even as far as Calais.”

“It seems to me, Anne,” said the matron, “to be one tissue of falsehood
and pretension from beginning to end.”

In this sort of condemnatory strain did Mrs. Brown and her daughter
converse, till, twelve o’clock striking, they considered it proper to
part for the night, in order to indulge themselves with a separate
reconsideration of the whole affair.

The morning came--breakfast was eaten:--the doctor departed as usual
for town, and the ladies began to count the minutes until George, or
the person who had assumed his name, should make his appearance. At
length the happy moment came; the old lady clasped her son to her
heart, and the young one clung round the neck of her brother. George
IT WAS--that was clear; and although his features had become somewhat
sharpened by time, and his complexion was mellowed into a durable brown
by the effects of the climate, he was not so much altered as might have
been expected.

“Well, my dear mother,” said George, as soon as he could collect
himself sufficiently to speak, “what gratitude do we not owe to
Providence! As far as Anne is concerned, I am delighted with her
choice: I wanted nothing but her comfortable establishment in life to
make me perfectly happy.”

“And how is your wife, George?” said his mother; “our doctor says she
is in delicate health.”

“She is, I am sorry to say, a sad invalid,” said George. “I hope,
however, her native climate, unfavourable as it is to foreigners, may
restore her. She was very anxious to come with me to-day, but she
really is not strong enough to bear even so short an excursion.”

“We have seen scarcely anything of Brag since you went,” said Mrs.
Brown, anxious as much as possible to soften down his infamous conduct,
out of respect to the feelings of his blameless sister.

“I rejoice to hear it,” said George. “I trust I never may have the
misfortune of seeing him again.”

“But I suppose,” said Anne, who was always for peace-making, “you
_will_ see him for the sake of my sister-in-law?”

“I don’t imagine,” said Mr. Brown, “that your sister-in-law is very
likely to see much of _him_. In fact,” continued he, “I think, when she
gets strong enough, we shall in all probability go to the Continent,
unless perhaps I should stop a month or two in England for a little
shooting.”

Here the ladies exchanged looks of a similar character to those of the
night before.

“To be sure,” continued he, “whatever miseries and unhappinesses I may
have undergone since we parted, my career has been one of the most
extraordinary, and most prosperous, that man ever ran. How I have
deserved such blessings, I know not.”

“What rank have you now in the army, George?” said his mother.

“Army!” said her son; “you know I have left the army.”

“Left it!” exclaimed the old lady, more confirmed than ever in the
suspicion that something was wrong somewhere and somehow:--“why then,
how do you live?”

“How!--as a man of fortune should live,” said George,--“upon my
property.”

“My dear George,” said Anne, “what _are_ you talking of?”

“Nothing but what you know of,” replied he.

“We know of nothing, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Brown, “but of your having
been made clerk to Sir Cadwallader Adamthwaite’s secretary.”

“Why, my dear mother,” said George, “I never made a remittance to you
without writing fully upon all my affairs.”

“Remittance!” said Mrs. Brown.

“Letters!” said Anne--“my dear brother, we have not received a line
from you for upwards of three years; and, during all our distresses,
your silence caused perhaps the keenest pang of all.”

“Distresses!” exclaimed George--“why this--what--three years!--there
have been roguery and robbery here! From the moment my fortunes
changed, I regularly remitted you as much as my means would afford; and
although wondering never to have heard from you through the agent whom
I directed to forward my letters to you, and to receive any you chose
to trust to his care, I felt assured by his answers that your silence
was a matter of choice; and, ascertaining through him that you were
both well, contented myself with fulfilling my duty and gratifying my
inclinations, without waiting for reply or acknowledgment. The truth
will be easily discovered. This very agent, I find on my arrival here,
has failed, and is recently dead; I have, of course, had no time to
investigate his affairs, but I very much fear I shall be an eventual
loser of four or five thousand pounds by him.”

Here the ladies looked at each other again. Anne had read in some book
something about shaking the pagoda tree in India, but it seemed as if
her brother must have picked it clean.

“Three years!” said George--“why then you know nothing of the leading
events of my life--of the entire change in my circumstances.”

“I see you are in mourning, George,” said Anne, who did not know how to
ask for whom?

“Yes,” said George, “I am sorry to say I am--for my father-in-law; a
more generous-hearted, noble-minded man, never lived.”

“In mourning for poor Mr. Brag, now!” said his mother.

“Brag!” said George--“I sicken at the very name.”

“Oh, George,” said Anne, “consider Kate!”

“Kate!” exclaimed Brown, turning deadly pale--“Kate!--Oh! Anne, it
must be more than three years since you got any of my letters.--Lost,
wretched woman!”

“Lost!” said Anne--“why, is not she at the hotel?”

“In her grave!” said George, “a grave which closed upon a life of
wantonness and disgrace.”

“Then you are married again?” said Anne.

In answer to this question, it seems better to adopt the narrative
style, inasmuch as many circumstances had occurred during the period of
George’s involuntary cessation of correspondence with his mother, which
it would be difficult for him personally to describe or explain.

The reader has traced the career of Mr. George Brown up to the point
of his becoming clerk to the military secretary of Sir Cadwallader
Adamthwaite. His readiness, activity, and assiduity, were so
remarkable, that the general, who was one of the kindest-hearted
men upon the face of the earth, took the trouble to ascertain the
particulars of his history; and finding him to be in every essential
point a gentleman, resolved on procuring him a commission in the
army, which he did; and when it was obtained, and George appointed,
the clerk was dignified into assistant military secretary, and the
assistant military secretary became one of the general’s family.

It was during a year or fourteen months of probation before the arrival
of his commission, that Mrs. George Brown (_née_ Brag) began to evince
very strong symptoms of a propensity, which even the thirst produced by
a hot climate cannot justify in one of the “fair sex,” as her brother
would call them; and upon more occasions than one, George, on his
return from head-quarters, found her in a state which, as authors say
who are not able to depict what they wish, “may be better imagined than
described.” It rarely happens that when this vice exists in woman, it
is the only one to which she sooner or later addicts herself. Grown
reckless by habitual intemperance, her temper became violent; and
impatient of rebuke, she taxed her husband with cruelty and inhumanity
for merely remonstrating upon conduct so disgraceful to herself, and
which must be so injurious to him. The most depraved women, however,
find admirers, and Mrs. Brown, degraded as she was, found hers. The
justification she attempted to plead for the irregularity of her life
was, the delusion which had been practised upon her by George as to
the place she was to occupy in the world; that her husband’s rank,
of course, excluded her from good society, such as, she said, “she
had always been used to:” and, in short, having awakened from a dream
of girlish love, she bitterly repented of the step she had taken,
and became careless of everything but the gratification of her worst
propensities.

This career did not last long. It would be neither pleasant nor
profitable to enter into the particulars of her unfortunate case; a few
months’ intemperance brought her life to its close, and left George a
widower, commiserated by his comrades rather for the sufferings he had
undergone, than for the loss he had sustained. All these circumstances
he had detailed in his missing letters to his mother, in one of which
he had also communicated the intelligence of his wife’s death to her
surviving parent; but, with great goodness of heart and tenderness of
feeling, avoiding all mention of the unhappy circumstances in which she
died.

If George and Kate had given themselves time to consider the step which
they unfortunately took, and had not been blinded by youthful love,
they could have anticipated nothing but evil from such a marriage. Kate
was evidently labouring under the belief that George was an officer;
and the question whether his rank would enable her to live with people
such as she had been accustomed to visit and receive, never entered
her mind. She first began to feel her difficulties when she embarked
on board the ship which was to take them to India; but even _there_
the superiority of her manners induced a special attention to her, and
infinitely better accommodation was contrived for her than she had
any _right_ to: in short, from the moment they were fairly launched
in the world, and she saw the path she had chosen, she became fretful
and irritable, her pride wounded by finding herself unable to speak
to, or associate with the wives of the officers with whom she was
domesticated, and her vanity hurt by being permitted to stand in the
verandah of the mess-room, _to look in and see_ the company dancing
when the officers gave a ball.

That it _was_ humiliating and provoking nobody can deny, but she
ought to have calculated upon such evils before she married; that is,
if she knew enough of “the service” to enable her to appreciate the
relative value of its different ranks: however, it is not my province
to reason upon the wisdom or propriety of her early proceedings. Her
ruin and fall may be fairly traced to her first great act of filial
disobedience; and her fate adds another to the numerous instances
already upon record, of the ill-success of runaway matches.

The day on which Ensign Brown made his first appearance in Sir
Cadwallader Adamthwaite’s drawing-room, was a most important era of
his life; and when he found himself warmly received by the general,
and presented _pro formâ_ to his daughter, who, of course, knew him
perfectly well by sight, he could not restrain a feeling of regret that
his unfortunate wife had not so conducted herself through what he
admitted to have been a trial, that she might have overcome all the
hardships she had previously endured, and have enjoyed the satisfaction
of finding herself placed by her husband’s promotion, in society from
which her girlish thoughtlessness had excluded her.

Sir Cadwallader’s kind act of justice to the merits of Ensign Brown
gave general satisfaction, and met with universal approbation; and he
was welcomed to the mess of his regiment with the most unequivocal
marks of friendship and esteem. His official avocations prevented
his doing regimental duty, and his evenings were occupied in a
participation in the pleasures of Sir Cadwallader’s hospitable mansion.

It might displease the reader if I were to doubt that he anticipates
the result of this introduction of the ensign into the house of
the general. He most probably guesses rightly; but as there _are_
circumstances which render the case somewhat dissimilar from most
others, he must be told the particulars.

Ellen Adamthwaite, Sir Cadwallader’s daughter, was the beloved of his
heart. Her mother had died young--a mother from whom Sir Cadwallader
had received, besides the most endearing proofs of constancy and
affection, the vast fortune which he possessed, and which enabled
him to support _en prince_ the highest offices, to which his noble
profession and his gallant conduct had led him. Upon Ellen--the dear,
the gentle Ellen--the love, the devotion, which once was her mother’s
due, devolved at her mother’s death: and although Ellen, who was
everything father could desire, could not but feel conscious of her
power over him, she was the least presuming of daughters, the most
gentle, and most amiable of girls.

When Sir Cadwallader was offered the commandership-in-chief and
second seat in council at the presidency to which he was attached, he
accepted it, upon the chivalrous feeling of the greatest soldier, not
only of the day, but of the land we live in--that he was the King’s
servant, and equally bound to obey his commands in the highest and
lowest of offices; and although possessed of wealth which rendered
the appointment pecuniarily unimportant, he readily relinquished his
domestic ease and comfort for the more _negatively_ active domination
over an Oriental army.

While holding this appointment, his constant endeavour appeared to be,
to make everybody happy around him. There was nothing in the state of
the country which seemed to require any of the austerity of military
discipline; and the routine duty, although comprehending an extensive
range, was not that which required the vigilance and activity of war.
He “took the thing easy” himself, and his greatest pleasure was to see
everybody subordinate to himself do exactly the same. He never grumbled
if he saw men in “mufti” or “white jackets;” desired every man to “make
himself comfortable” when he came to dinner; and, in short, was about
the best-natured being that ever melted under an Indian sun.

That he had taken a great fancy to Brown was clear. Major Mopes,
whose death-like countenance never relaxed into a smile, but of whom
Sir Cadwallader had the highest opinion, inasmuch as he saved His
Excellency all the trouble, not only of writing but of thinking,
had spoken very highly of George, and enlarged upon the meritorious
course he had pursued in entering the army, as he had done, in order
to relieve his mother, who _had been_ in such a different position in
society, from all charge for his support. This recommendation led Sir
Cadwallader to talk to him: he found him well-informed, well-read,
intelligent, and, in fact, a gentleman. The prepossession thus created,
and which went to the extent of procuring him the commission, extended
further, and the only phrase--it is a simple one, and best suits the
general’s feeling, is,--“he liked him.”

How often such prepossessions take hold of people, and how seldom are
they erroneous!--how unaccountable are the sympathies by which such
prepossessions are created! The moment Sir Cadwallader heard George’s
story, and received the testimonials of his merit and ability, he
resolved to serve him,--and, in fact, to restore him to his place in
society as a gentleman, which he pronounced him to be to his daughter,
while he was yet his secretary’s clerk, as he was sitting with her in
the windward varhandah smoking his chilum.

Ellen Adamthwaite, who, of course, saw George almost every day,
accidentally, or perhaps incidentally, could not help participating
in the interest which her father took in his fate, especially as the
history of his wife’s misconduct and death were matters of notoriety in
the family, from Major Mopes’s frequent recurrence to the circumstance
of their elopement from England,--and the commiserating “What a pity
it is that nothing can be done to reclaim a person originally so
respectable!” which was so often on his lips.

When George became by royal authority a gentleman, and Ellen found she
might look at him, and even speak to him, without any indecorum, she
certainly felt more than ever the hardship of his case while doing the
duty which his filial affection had imposed upon him, even regretting,
as he did himself, the cause which, no doubt, was truly assigned for
his wife’s distressing dereliction from every religious, moral, and
social duty.

Nothing more readily excites an interest in a woman’s heart than a
bit of the romance of real life. George, selected by her kind-hearted
father for favour and promotion, was brought into her society the son
of a ruined merchant, who had received the education of a gentleman,
and had been educated in the expectation of succeeding to his father’s
wealth. He enters the army as a private soldier, to relieve his mother
from the burthen of maintaining him, and he elopes with a girl who
is desperately in love with him. In his past life, therefore, there
appeared a combination of events, sufficiently romantic to awaken a
particular feeling towards him; and it was not many days after his
domestication at the general’s, before Ellen found her eyes resting
upon his intelligent countenance much oftener than upon any other
object in the room.

There was a manly modesty in George’s manner--a sort of consciousness
of what he might have been, of what he had been, and yet, of what he
_was_, which was peculiarly conciliating. Sir Cadwallader lost no
opportunity of bringing him forward. It seemed, indeed, to be his
study to make him appear to the best possible advantage in company, in
order, as it might be thought, to justify the partiality he had evinced
for him, and the good opinion he entertained of him.

In London the circle is so extensive, that although some hundred or
two people whisper, and look wise, and nod and wink at each other when
a flirtation becomes a little too evident, there are seven or eight
hundred others to whom it is a matter of no interest; and, moreover,
whatever people think, they keep their thoughts as far distant as
possible from the flirters themselves. Within the confined ring-fence
of an Indian presidency, the slightest movement of that nature at
head-quarters creates a universal sensation; all the worst passions of
mankind are concentered and pemmican’d in a little community of that
sort; envy and jealousy assume the garb of friendship and esteem; and
some miserable wretch, whose hatred towards one of the parties has been
engendered or fostered by the remembrance of a slight or neglect,
thinks it a duty he owes to so excellent a man as his Excellency
the commander-in-chief, to mention to him what people say about his
daughter and Mr. Somebody, whose society and conversation she happens
to prefer to that of the considerate friend of her father.

Two months had not flown over George’s head in his new capacity
before the whole tribe were in motion. “To be sure,” says one, “Sir
Cadwallader is an extraordinary man:--he can’t but see it.” “Perhaps he
does not object to it,” says another. “La!” cries a third: “what! let
his daughter marry a man from the ranks!” “Hush!” says a fourth--“the
less we say about _that_ the better: rose from the ranks himself.”
“Flogged at Chatham for stealing a cock turkey,” says a fifth. “Hush!”
says a sixth, “here comes his Excellency.” Out turns the guard--ruffle
goes the drum--rattledum slap go the muskets--and his Excellency is
immediately surrounded by the little group in the full exercise of
Koo-too-ism, who, the moment before, were exercising their historical
and biographical faculties in commenting upon the folly of his
Excellency’s conduct, and in descanting upon the obscurity of his
Excellency’s birth.

That Ellen and George were somehow more paired off together, than any
other two of the party, is most certain. In her conversation with him
she did not disguise her esteem and regard for his good qualities,
which made themselves evident upon every possible occasion; while _he_,
regarding her as a superior being, felt that sort of admiration which
wise men say is not compatible with tenderness. The whole economy of
love, however, is so intricate, so perplexing, so mysterious, and so
perilous, that there exists no rule throughout the whole system without
an exception.

George once or twice thought that Miss Adamthwaite looked more than she
said; and though he had not sufficiently considered the matter even to
assure himself that of all girls in the world she was the very last for
whom he ought to encourage an affection, a word dropped by one of his
friends on the staff, suddenly brought to his mind the real position
in which he was placed. Then it was he taxed himself with selfishness
in seeking her society; then it was he resolved to alienate himself
from the delight which her conversation and accomplishments afforded
him:--he would mix more generally in society; he would dine abroad
whenever he could, and would go out immediately after his official
business was over; he would not go to tiffin, nor walk for an hour or
two with Ellen in the varhandah: in short, he would not endanger her
peace or comfort by giving occasion for remarks, which although wholly
without foundation, might wound her feelings or injure her reputation.

It was not till the moment he made these resolutions that the real
state of his heart became known to himself. It was only _then_ he
discovered that he could not act upon his own determination. When
tiffin was announced the next day, Sir Cadwallader forced him to
stay and partake of it--desired his daughter to lay _her_ commands
upon him:--then, by his Excellency’s orders, they played chess
together,--and then came in some visiters--George, of course, could
not leave _them_:--and then--and then--in fact, the very first day
after _that_ in which he had decided upon a total alteration in his
proceedings, was passed precisely as the thirty or forty preceding days
had been passed.

It is a generally admitted axiom, that “abstinence is less difficult
than moderation;” and so it seems thought George: for failing in his
project of philosophically decreasing his happiness gradually, he came
to the resolution of abandoning it altogether.

The project George meditated to carry this “stern resolve” into
execution, was one which did honour to his heart; but it required a
confederate, and that very circumstance enhanced its difficulty. The
moment he had ascertained the real state of his feelings, he more
attentively--perhaps tenderly would be a better word--watched the
dear girl to whom he was devoted. It was too true:--looks and actions
which he had attributed to friendship, or even to a compliance with
her father’s wishes, now that he had ventured to think of love, bore
a totally different character. Whatever dress he had accidentally
praised, Ellen more constantly wore; the flower he preferred was always
in her bosom; the songs he loved to hear, she sang; and opinions which
he had once expressed, she adopted for her own.

Oh! those who have never felt the tender, galling anxiety of a state
like this, cannot appreciate George’s feelings during the week after he
had made the discovery of his real position. What had he done?--gained
the affections of his benefactor’s daughter! It was not vanity that
suggested the truth: the word once spoken that gave _that_ turn to his
thoughts, decided it. The fascination was over him--he was conscious
that he was beloved. How he acted under this impression remains to be
seen.




CHAPTER IX.


Amongst his friends--for of a few associates he had many--the friend
George fixed upon as the one to aid him in his rescue from the
commission of what he considered the damning crime of ingratitude, was
the surgeon of his own regiment--a man of sense and shrewdness, and one
who was professionally taciturn upon subjects not intended for general
conversation:--to him, after mature deliberation, George proceeded, and
having begged his private ear, told him he wanted his immediate aid.

“What!--a duel?” said Dr. Short.

“No, my dear doctor,” said George, “I am ill--seriously ill. I have
a constant pain in my side. I ought not to stay here. I must resign
my assistant-secretaryship and go home for my health. I want a sick
certificate.”

“Umph!” said Short--“I see--yes--on which side is the
pain--left--right?”

“Intensely severe on the right side,” said George. “I cannot lift my
arm perpendicularly without feeling the most excruciating torture.”

“Umph!” said the doctor. “You know what Abernethy said upon that point
to the old woman who said the same thing to _him_--eh!--What a fool you
must be to try!--eh!”

“I assure you, doctor, mine is no laughing matter,” said George.

“Let’s see your tongue. Umph!--clean as a whistle, and red as
beet-root. Won’t do--eh! No tricks upon travellers--no case of liver.
Can’t do what you want--or what you don’t want. Did Sir Cadwallader
send you to me?”

“No, indeed,” said George, “no human being is aware of my visit to you.”

“Why did you make a secret of it, eh?” said Short. “Every man has a
liver; every liver is subject to disease. What’s the use of mystery?”

“I know of no mystery,” said George.

“Won’t do, Mr. Assistant-secretary,” said Short. “A surgeon ought to
have an eagle’s eye, a lion’s heart, and a lady’s hand. Cannot say I
have all those qualities; but as far as the eye goes, I think, I can
see as far as my neighbours--eh!”

“I don’t know what you should make a merit of seeing,” said George. “I
have no disguises--I wish to be candid with you.”

“Ah!” said Short, “now I see. You want to tell me you have nothing
the matter with you: and yet you want me to give you a sick
certificate--eh!--that’s it--umph!”

“My dear doctor,” said George, “I believe you _do_ know something of my
feelings, for you certainly have guessed my wishes. I am _not_ ill,--at
least in body; but I may be saved from being ill in body, in mind, in
reputation, and in conscience, if you will but grant your fiat for
shipping me to England.”

“_I_ know,” said Short, “you are as safe in _my_ care as a baby on her
mother’s bosom:--but I say--those grey eyes and black eyelashes are
the devil!--aren’t they?--umph!--sweet creature! Come, no nonsense, or
you get no certificate. You know it is all mighty fine your coming to
me, looking as mysterious as a playhouse conspirator: everybody here,
except your two selves, and perhaps Sir Cad. knows the whole story.”

“What story?” said George:--“no word has ever passed my lips--”

“No: but a great many have passed the lips of other people,” said
Short. “As for your own words, they are what we call superfluous--the
eyes have it--eh!--umph!”

“What you say, doctor,” said George, “makes me miserable.”

“Very!” said Short. “I know--it makes every man miserable to have
gained the affections of a charming, amiable girl, with a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds:--it is quite a calamity! Poor Mr.
Assistant-secretary!--you can’t think how I pity you!”

“Doctor, this is no joking matter,” said George. “It is useless, I
perceive, to attempt disguise with _you_: you have seen or heard
what I never suspected could have been even remarkable. If I wished
your assistance upon this point when I came into this room, it is ten
thousand times more desirable to me now.”

“Umph!” said Short. “Why?”

“Why!” exclaimed George:--“we have so suddenly and deeply plunged into
this discussion; you assume so much, and I have such perfect faith and
confidence in you, that--”

“You are good enough to propose telling me what I know already,”
interrupted Short.

“No, not what you know already,” said George, “but what my resolution
is. The general, in the outset of my career here, befriended me,
espoused my cause, restored me to society, and made me what I am. I am
admitted into his family, and I evince my gratitude to him for all his
kindnesses by--”

“--By permitting his daughter to fall in love with you!” said
Short:--“how can _you_ help that?”

“If such should be the case,” said George, “it is my duty instantly to
quit this place.”

“To be sure!” said Short--“and add to all the other marks of your
sense of the General’s obligations by leaving his only darling child to
break her heart.”

“Do not talk in this way, doctor,” said the assistant secretary, “it is
I”--

“Pshaw!” said Short. “No nonsense: stay where you are--I’ll give you no
certificate.”

“Then I must go without one,” said George. “Private business in
England”--

“Very private, indeed!” said Short. “I say, stay where you are.”

“My dear friend,” said George, “it is impossible! What you have told me
now, in addition to a remark which I accidentally overheard, renders it
imperatively necessary that I should go. It is the only favour I have
ventured to ask of you, or of any man since I have been here: grant me
the certificate, let me show it to Sir Cadwallader, and tear myself
away from the only place in the world where I care to live.”

“Oh!” said Short, putting his finger to his nose--“mutual, I see. Umph!”

“I did not say--”

“Yes, you did,” said Short. “How do you know Sir Cad. will let you go?”

“If he could,” said George, “which for worlds I would not he should,
even fancy what is passing in this room, he would--”

“What!” said Short--“do you think he does not know what is passing in
your mind and that of Miss Ellen’s?”

“What _is_ passing in our minds?” asked George.

“_Our_ minds!” said Short--“umph!--that’s it--_our_ minds! The glorious
_we_ of literature is not more commanding than the ‘our’ of you two.
Why, you are over head and ears in love with each other, and you
cannot help showing it wherever you are. I know the symptoms, Mr.
Assistant-secretary--have had the complaint myself: so has Sir Cad.--a
great practitioner in _that_ way:--d’ye think he is blind?”

“I know he is everything that is kind and good,” said George.

“Well, then, perhaps his goodness and kindness may go the length of
wishing you to be his son-in-law,” said Short.

“Impossible!” said George--“a creature he has made--”

“Umph!” said Short,--“don’t see how that interferes--eh! You had better
talk to _her_ of your heart than to _me_ of your liver. See what _he_
says--or, if you don’t like that, _I_ will.”

“Doctor!” said George, looking extremely fierce.

“I will,” said Short;--“that is to say, I shall tell his Excellency
officially that you have applied for a sick certificate; and, if you’ll
trust to me, I’ll work it to the best advantage. If Sir Cad. is crusty,
you shall have it. A pain in the side makes no show:--I can’t tell
whether you have a pain in your side or not. If he demur to your going,
you shall be in excellent health; if he frown, and expresses a wish
that way, you shall be shipped for Cheltenham in a fortnight.”

“I knew,” said George, “you would be my friend.”

“I _am_ your friend,” said the doctor, “therefore I want you to stop.
You have enemies here as well as your betters. Your going would be
a triumph to some half-dozen of the fellows who have been dangling
after Miss Ellen for the last two years, and who have never got
so much as a smile from her for their pains. No, no: mark me, Mr.
Assistant-secretary;--put the affair into my hands, and you shall have
the sick certificate when _I_ think you want it, and not before.”

George, it must be confessed, was incalculably surprised at the evident
notoriety of an attachment of which he even fancied himself unconscious
only a few days before. That the lookers-on see more than the players,
is generally said, and here was a proof of the correctness of the
saying: the very circumstance, however, of its having become a topic of
general conversation strengthened, as we have seen, his determination
to put an end to the scandal through the aid of his friend Short.

Had he not been bound to his military duty by military law, his retreat
could have been easily managed; but it was absolutely necessary that
the very man from whom he wished to keep his motives for going, secret,
should be the person, and the only person, who could dispense with
his services, and grant him leave to put his plan into execution.
As it was, he had only to trust to the doctor, whose proceedings he
endeavoured to accelerate by pointing out to him the dangers of delay.

That he was not slow to act, George soon discovered. At dinner the
next day Sir Cadwallader began to throw out hints that he was aware
of George’s intention of applying for the certificate, and in general
terms censured the conduct of commanding officers who, by permitting
themselves to be parties to a deception practised under the connivance
of medical officers, committed themselves as accomplices to what, after
all, however strong the phrase might sound, was little better than a
deliberate fraud.

“There’s jobbing all over the world,” said his Excellency. “One is
never safe. Any fellow that wants to shirk duty, makes friends with the
doctor, and out comes a sick certificate.--What’s the matter?--liver,
to be sure! As Short says, ‘Who can see a pain in the side?’”

Nobody spoke, because nobody exactly comprehended what his Excellency
meant by this gratuitous observation, except George, who felt himself
get extremely red in the face,--a very natural consequence of being
talked _at_ by a commander-in-chief. Ellen did not know to whom the
observation referred, and looked round the table to see if any of the
half-dozen guests were affected. Her look rested on George: their
eyes met: they both became suddenly embarrassed, and Sir Cadwallader,
who was good at a long shot, saw the glance and the response, which
confirmed his suspicions, and decided his course of conduct.

The evening of this day was passed as agreeably as the evening before,
but Ellen felt a difference in George’s manner towards her: she could
scarcely define what it was, or how to account for it, and yet it
somehow connected itself in her mind with her father’s hypothetical
observation at dinner. The guests departed, unregretted by either of
the lovers, for so, unconsciously they were; and the party was reduced
to a trio, composed of Sir Cadwallader, Ellen, and the assistant
military secretary, who always lingered last of the throng, were it
never so late.

“So,” said Sir Cadwallader, after a short pause, “I suppose, Mr.
Brown, you felt the force of my little remark at dinner about sick
certificates--eh! I hope you did--it was meant expressly for _you_.”

“Sir!” faltered George, anticipating the burst of displeasure which he
was assured would follow this announcement.

“Yes, sir,” said his Excellency, “I understand you have been applying
to Short for one of those melancholy testimonials of ill health, with a
liver as sound as a roach, and the constitution of a ploughman.”

“I assure your Excellency,” said George, “that--I am not capable of
deception upon any point:--I”--

“I don’t know what you call deception, Mr. Brown,” said Sir
Cadwallader; “you are in good health, and you want the doctor to say
you are sick, in order to quit your duty, and leave those who wish you
well.”

Ellen, who began to feel extremely uneasy, and think her presence at
such a scene was scarcely necessary, rose to depart.

“Stay, Miss,” said the General--“wait to hear what the gentleman has to
say for himself.”

“Really, papa,” said Ellen--

“Really, Miss,” said the General--“recollect I am commanding officer
here: obey orders--sit you down, Miss. If you wished for leave of
absence, Mr. Brown, why not have applied to me upon any fair ground? I
hate shamming--eh!”

“It is impossible,” said George, “for me either to extenuate or explain
my fault. It is now known to you, sir:--there can be no difficulty in
my going _now_.”

“Why so, sir?” said his Excellency.

“You have exhibited my thoughtless--my ungrateful conduct, in its
proper light,” said George: “I cannot--indeed, I cannot remain longer
with you.”

“Suppose, sir, I cannot spare you,” said the General.

“_My_ services, sir,” said, or rather sobbed, George, “are of no
importance. I--”

“That’s matter of opinion,” said the General. “But suppose _I_ could
manage without you--look at that young lady there--d’ye think _she_
could spare you?”

“Oh, father!” said Ellen, who had sat trembling, and cold, and pale,
during the conversation--“I--don’t wish to interfere.”

“You don’t!” said Sir Cadwallader--“not interfere!--you _do_ wish to
interfere, Miss. Lord bless your heart! Elly,--haven’t I been young
myself--eh? No, no, you can’t cheat _me_, cunning as you are:--you
love this fellow, and he loves _you_.”

“Father!” said Ellen.

Brown said nothing, but looked as if the world was on the point of
annihilation.

“Don’t contradict me, Elly,” said the General: “where’s the
harm?--where’s the wrong? When I heard George’s story, I was resolved
to restore him to his proper place in society. I brought him into
my house--into my family--and you have fallen in love with each
other:--that’s _my_ affair. What then? When I first knew your poor dear
mother--the best of women and of wives!--what was I?--a subaltern--the
second son of a grocer at Gloucester. That was it, George--her mother
was an heiress.--It sounds vain now--she fell in love with me, as
I did with _her_. Well, I became possessed of her fortune; _that_
enabled me to purchase up in my profession: and if it had not been
for that, I might have been now a hoary-headed lieutenant, or at best
a captain of sixty-two, going through my daily ‘Halt--left wheel,’
till my legs ached, instead of being here a titled and decorated
commander-in-chief. What has that dear woman to whom, under Providence,
I owe everything, left me?--this girl--this child of my heart--the
dearest--the only object of my affections! Half a glance tells me the
state of the case.”

Ellen sat with her eyes fixed upon her father--George’s filled with
tears--and what gem is brighter than a soldier’s tear so shed?

“Your conduct, sir,” said the General, “has done you the greatest
honour. I appreciate it in the highest degree. But it won’t do--go
you do not. If my Elly here is foolish enough to sympathize with her
father in his predilections, and chooses to give her heart to an
ensign without a shilling, what am I to do?--why, I’ll tell you, Mr.
Brown,--religiously to realize whatever wishes she may entertain, for
the sake of her beloved mother, and to take care that she does not make
a foolish match with somebody not half so worthy of her.”

“My dear father,” said Ellen--

“_Tace, tace!_ daughter of mine,” said Sir Cadwallader:--“don’t
coquet,--don’t try to deceive me. George, come here:--I am
serious--take her hand, my good, excellent fellow! You, who have been
so admirable a son, cannot fail to make a good husband. This is my firm
conviction.”

“But, sir,” said Miss Adamthwaite, rising, “I”--

“Oh!” said the general, “you don’t like him! Oh! that, indeed, is a
different affair:--then I am out in my reckoning, and there’s an end of
the business.”

“I didn’t say,” said Ellen,--and bursting into tears, she caught her
father round the neck, and her head dropped upon his shoulder.

“Come here, George,” said Sir Cadwallader--“come here!--take her from
me! I know what she means:--she is your’s!”--“I have neither chick nor
child but this beloved one!” continued the General, who seemed to have
caught the infection of weeping--“I have nobody to please but her and
myself. I think I have taken the surest method of doing both. I hate
fine speeches--I don’t want thanks--so, my dear souls, God bless you
both! I’m off--a syllable more from me would spoil it all. Talk over
your own matters. Let these be the last tears I ever see you shed;
and to-morrow the babblers, and tattlers, and scandal-mongers, shall
have the pleasure of hearing how the old general has been fool enough
to give his only daughter to a penniless subaltern! Good night! my
children--good night!”

Saying which, away went Sir Cadwallader, leaving the affianced lovers
in a state of doubt whether they were awake or in a dream. George gazed
on the blushing girl, even yet doubting whether she would fulfil her
father’s intentions. Their eyes met:--those doubts vanished. Words were
inadequate to the expression of their feelings:--he caught her in his
arms and pressed her to his panting heart:--at which particular moment,
Major Mopes, military secretary to his Excellency Sir Cadwallader
Adamthwaite, and Captain Narcissus Fripps, his Excellency’s senior
aide-du-camp, passed along the varhandah, into which all the doors and
windows of his Excellency’s drawing-room opened.

This exhibition of mutual tenderness was, it must be admitted,
something likely to make a commotion in a small circle. It, however,
produced effects upon the military secretary and the aide-du-camp
of a totally different character. Major Mopes, who had the highest
opinion of George, and whose praises of his conduct had mainly
conduced to create the interest which the general took in him, was
horror-stricken. The idea that _he_ had been chiefly instrumental in
bringing him into Sir Cadwallader’s family, the happiness of which he
was now so evidently attempting to destroy, filled him with regret and
indignation: all he hoped was, that his companion, Captain Fripps,
might not have seen all that _he_ had witnessed. He felt that if the
secret were confined to himself, George might yet be saved; that an
appeal to his sense of honour and right feeling would induce him
immediately to withdraw himself from a sphere so dangerous as that in
which he now was moving,--little thinking that George had decided upon
doing so a week before.

The aide-du-camp, however, _had_ seen the sight--which so startled him,
that he, like the major, but from very different motives, did not speak
a word. At the end of the varhandah they parted for the night, during
which, while Major Mopes lay considering how he might best save George
and Ellen, and smother the whole affair, the captain was arranging the
manner in which it would be best to communicate the circumstance to the
general so as to obtain the greatest possible credit for himself, and
secure the immediate dismissal of his apparently favoured rival in the
general’s consideration. For which purpose, the ingenuous and ingenious
gentleman, instead of going to bed, as was his original intention,
returned to the barracks and to the quarters of his bosom friend,
Ensign Honeyman, whom he had just left, in order to avail himself of
his advice: thus, in the very first instance, himself doing all the
mischief to Ellen’s character and reputation, the preservation of which
from injury was to be made the ostensible ground of his communication
of the fact to her father.

Honeyman, who was the inseparable companion of Fripps, agreed entirely
with his friend on the course to be pursued in order to overthrow
Brown; and it was accordingly settled that the captain should, the
very first thing in the morning, make a confidential report to his
Excellency of what had occurred.

Meanwhile the unconscious lovers, whose parting kiss formed the subject
of contemplation for both the gallant heroes, were thinking of each
other and of the happiness which had taken them so completely by
surprise, that they could scarcely think what had passed during the
evening anything but a bright, yet baseless vision. The old general was
the only one of the inmates of the house who slept soundly. He went to
bed to rest upon the consciousness of having made two people happy--of
having realised his intentions of providing for George--and gratified
his wish of giving Ellen the man to whom, insensibly and unconsciously,
she had become devotedly attached:--and, above all this, he revelled
in the pleasure of having found out their secret, and anticipated any
communication on the subject from either of themselves:--add to this,
his just appreciation of George’s anxiety to quit the only place in the
world which was dear to him--to surrender all the worldly advantages it
afforded, to preserve the being he loved from the anger of her parent,
the malice of her _friends_--or, putting it as an extreme case, the
ills of a marriage with a man who would have nothing but an ensign’s
half-pay, even if, under the circumstances, he could secure that--and
the amount of Sir Cadwallader’s self-gratulation may be in some degree
ascertained.

The gun had scarcely announced the dawn of day when Captain Narcissus
Fripps was up and stirring; there was no time to be lost. It was his
turn to ride with the general before breakfast; the opportunity would
be favourable; the success of the disclosure was unquestionable. The
getting rid of George was his great object; for the captain’s jealousy
of the interloper, as he considered him, was not so much excited by his
evident success with the young lady, as by the favourable estimation
in which the young lady’s father held him and his character: and when
jealousy takes possession of the mind, it leaves room for no other
passions but such as may be made subservient to its own ends, and which
may be called into action for its own revengeful gratification.

Lavater says, that “he, who being master of the fittest moment to crush
his enemy, magnanimously neglects it, is born to be a conqueror.”
Captain Narcissus Fripps, whatever heroic deeds he might have been
destined to do in other days, did by no means display this evidence
of future success; and although George was neither his, nor any other
man’s enemy, he resolved that two hours should not elapse before he was
irrecoverably ruined in Sir Cadwallader’s estimation.

The captain was a fair, sickly-looking man, always extremely well
dressed, his hair assiduously ringleted on his cheeks and over his
forehead. He wore divers rings upon his fingers, and sundry chains
around his neck; his clothes fitted him as if they were his skin. His
voice was drawling, and he lisped a little. When he talked, he pawed
the air with his hands flappingly, something after the fashion of a
kangaroo; and when he wished to be particularly lively, playfully
patted the arm of the person with whom he was conversing, affecting
himself always to be excessively shocked at everything that everybody
said to him: in short, nobody could exactly make him out. He was
considered excessively fine--evidently fancied himself a beauty, and
was not quite free from a suspicion of aiding nature in the getting up
of his complexion, by borrowing a tinge from art.

To have been treated neglectfully by a young lady of Ellen’s
qualifications, and that she should so readily have permitted such
marked advances on the part of one so unquestionably his inferior in
rank and station, (for the Fripps’ blood had been ennobled in a remote
degree from Narcissus,) was galling beyond measure; although his
attentions to Miss Adamthwaite had never gone much farther than singing
to her by moonlight, accompanying himself on the guitar, or making her
a pair of card-racks, or painting a couple of rose-buds on the top
of a cotton box. If she sometimes worked at those often-mentioned,
indescribable strips of muslin which engage the attention of modern
fine ladies, he would thread her needle for her; and in winding off
silk on his thumbs he was most assiduous and skilful. It was therefore
the indignity which he considered the circumstance to involve, rather
than the jealousy of a lover, which urged him on to ruin George. _His_
fate, however, was sealed, and when the horses were at the door,
Captain Narcissus felt his heart beat with anxiety for the discovery.
“Lie still, little flutterer,” said he, as he pressed his hand to his
bosom; and mounting his steed, rode slowly off with his Excellency the
Commander of the forces, to make their accustomed matutinal excursion.

Horseback, it must be confessed, whether the pace be a walk, trot,
amble, canter, or gallop, is not altogether suitable or convenient for
confidential communication; and when the captain found the general
resolved upon adopting the penultimate pace of those enumerated, he
felt the difficulty of breaking the business to him insuperable.
Indeed, Sir Cadwallader was not particularly partial to his
aide-du-camp’s society, and preferred, when circumstances permitted,
the company of Major Mopes, who, upon the morning in question,
stayed at home to counteract, if possible, the ill effects of the
representation which the captain went abroad expressly to make.

After a start of a mile or so, Sir Cadwallader pulled up, and suggested
to the captain that they should dismount, and walk up to a rising
ground on the other side of a fordable nullah, in order to get a view
of the town at a point from which Miss Adamthwaite had made a drawing,
but which the general had himself never happened to visit. This was
more fortunate for Narcissus than even _he_ could have hoped; the
place--the subject--all naturally tended to the point he had in view.
The “little flutterer” would lie still no longer: the aptness of the
opportunity delighted him, and he was decided to avail himself of it
forthwith.

“Were you here with Ellen when she made the sketch?” said Sir
Cadwallader.

“Oh! dear, no, general,” said Fripps, “I never come out upon sketching
parties with ladies: I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing.”

“I don’t see the harm of it,” said his Excellency. “In Italy, Ellen
used to pass the greatest part of the day in drawing from Nature: it
would have been dull work if she had thought it necessary to have
remained always alone.”

“Oh, dear Italy!” said Narcissus, sighing and turning up his eyes--“the
climate is so charming there.”

“Climate makes no great difference in conduct,” said Sir Cadwallader.

“No, to be sure,” said the captain, “but--I am so very particular, I
never presume on the good-nature of the dear ladies. Indeed what I see
going on with other people sometimes shocks me--not only on account of
my own feelings as they regard delicacy, but as far as the honour and
happiness of those I esteem and respect are concerned.”

“Honour and happiness!” said the General,--“what the deuce have honour
and happiness to do with a water-colour drawing?”

“Oh! dear no, general,” said the captain, pawing the air, “I did not
say they had; but--perhaps to the artist they may be something.”

“I hope, if you mean Ellen,” said Sir Cadwallader, “they have a great
deal to do with her.”

“Really, general,” said Fripps, “I don’t know what to say; but I have
something to tell you which you ought to know.”

“Why, then, out with it, Fripps,” said Sir Cadwallader.

“Oh! I can’t tell you all at once,” said the captain. “I know you will
be very angry--but I’m sure I ought to tell you: and yet I don’t know
how I shall ever be able to do such a thing!”

“What! is there a plot brewing, or a mutiny hatching?” said the General.

“Oh! no sir,” said Fripps, “it is nothing public; it is----oh, I can’t
tell you!”

“Why,” said the General, “I am not very particular as to time; only as
you have begun, you may as well go on.”

“Oh, it’s so very fie-fie! Sir Cadwallader,” said Narcissus.

“Very what?” said his Excellency.

“Very naughty, sir,” replied the aide-du-camp.

“Who is it about?” asked his Excellency.

“That is what I’m almost afraid to say,” continued Fripps. “I never
was so shocked in my life!--I declare I did not recover myself for two
hours after.”

“After what?” said the General:--“do speak out.”

“I don’t know how to explain,” said Fripps, wringing his hands like

  “Some sad widow o’er her babe deploring”--

“but I’ll endeavour.”

“Is it anything about my daughter?” said Sir Cadwallader, who,
although unaware that any scene had taken place, had long remarked the
aide-du-camp’s growing dislike of George.

“La, General!--you are such a man,” said Fripps, “I declare, you seem
to know everything by intuition.”

“Well,” said his Excellency, “what has she been doing?”

“I know I shall never be able to explain it quite,” said Fripps;
“but--I--think I may mention that--people think--I--that is, Mr.
Brown--is--rather too free--and particular--and--”

“Umph!” said Sir Cadwallader. “If _I_ don’t find fault, and _she_
does not find fault with his attentions,--that is, if he does pay
her particular attention,--there is no great harm in _that_, Captain
Fripps.”

“No, sir,” said the captain; “but I’m sure you cannot guess. It is no
fault of Miss Ellen’s--that I am certain of:--but--you have no idea.
Oh! upon my word--that Mr. Brown--I speak, you know, in confidence to
you, sir--but--he is such a rude man.”

“Rude!” said Sir Cadwallader--“do you think so? As far--”

“Ah! that’s where it is,” said Fripps, pawing and ambling about--“I
can’t--it is something so very fie-fie--only you ought to know it:
but, I declare, I don’t know how to say it out.”

“When did all this occur?” said Sir Cadwallader.

“I haven’t lost a moment in telling your Excellency,” said Fripps:
“what I saw happened last night.”

“Oh!” said the General--(every doubt of George’s honourable conduct
having been released by learning the date of the affair, whatever it
was, which had shocked the delicacy of the exquisite Narcissus)--“was
it very bad?”

“I never did such a thing myself in all my life, Sir Cadwallader,” said
Fripps; “and, upon my honour! I am sorry to have seen it: it has quite
upset me.”

“You didn’t catch them in what the book-makers call ‘an interesting
situation,’ Captain Fripps, did you?” said Sir Cadwallader.

“La! General, you are such a man,” said Fripps. “I declare, how you
guessed it I cannot think--but you are right: so the moment I saw it,
I said to myself--well! if ever--Oh! gracious--to think of the man that
his Excellency has raised to his present station!--to think of--”

“That will do, captain,” said the General. “I am quite aware of the
excellence of your intentions, and I thank you for your excessive care
of Ellen’s interest and prospects:--now let us look at the prospect
before us.”

“Well!” said Fripps to himself, “if ever I saw such a man!”--“To think,
you know, of that nasty, great, coarse creature, Brown--well, if ever
I--”

“I think she has done it remarkably well,” said the general, putting
his hand varhandah-wise over his eyes, to look at the beautiful
panorama before them.

“What, sir?” said Fripps, ambling about and twiddling his curls.

“The view,” replied the General. “That bungalow in the foreground is a
beautiful object, and she has made the most of it. It is odd enough,
often as I have been on the Mulligopatemy road, I never was here
before.”

Fripps looked at his Excellency with amazement, and almost began to
repent not having himself been more lively with Miss Ellen, to whose
reputed fortune Narcissus would have had no earthly objection, even
encumbered with the lady herself.

“And so,” said Sir Cadwallader, returning to the subject, “you
surprised _my_ daughter and my assistant military secretary in an
interesting situation--eh?”

“Upon my word, General, it was not intentional on my part,” said
Fripps. “I had just been taking some of Hoffman’s capillaire and water,
and a sponge biscuit with Ensign Honeyman at his quarters, where we had
been singing some little Sicilian duets to the guitar by moonlight, and
time flew so quickly, that it was near eleven o’clock before we thought
of separating. When I came home I met Major Mopes at the gate, and we
went together through the varhandah, and there--I really--I assure you
it is the first time I ever saw such a thing--but there--there--Oh! how
shall I describe the scene?”

“You saw Mr. Brown kiss my daughter, perhaps:--I understand perfectly,”
said the General:--“that’s enough, Captain Fripps; we will settle
_that_ gentleman’s affair after breakfast. So, come, let us take to our
horses, and finish our ride.”

It must be admitted that Captain Fripps felt disagreeably disappointed
by the manner in which his Excellency received his account of the
glaring indecorum which he had overseen; but he knew that he was a
man of few words, with great promptitude and decision of action, and
he still encouraged the hope of seeing his antipathy--the assistant
military secretary, most unceremoniously expelled the house in the
course of the morning.

Differently, indeed, had the friendly Major Mopes been engaged during
the same period. He had seen and conversed with George, who, it must be
admitted, elated as he was by the wonderful piece of good-fortune which
had befallen him, indulged his playfulness of disposition by leading
the major by a very circuitous route to the real state of the case;
indeed he dexterously avoided coming to the point till he perceived,
by his worthy friend’s manner and countenance, that he must not carry
the joke much further. When he had explained all, and, to establish
the certainty of his statement, presented the military secretary to
Ellen Adamthwaite herself, in the character of her affianced lover, the
major’s gratification and joy were complete.

The breakfast, it must be owned, was a trial to the principal
performers. Ellen, of course, had been informed by George of the
discovery of their parting embrace by the two staff-officers--Mopes
still thinking that Narcissus, who was generally occupied by thoughts
of himself, had not seen equally clear with himself.

The moment arrived; the general entered the breakfast-room. Curries,
rice, Bombay ducks, Java red fish, eggs, European ham, hump and kabobs,
were thickly intermingled with grapes, strawberries, mangoes, and
plantains. The grateful fumes of coffee filled the atmosphere; and the
tea, unchilled by the waving Punkah, sparkled in its cups. Ellen took
her seat with downcast eyes, after having received a certain number
of paternal kisses from his Excellency; and Captain Narcissus Fripps,
after having shaken hands with George Brown, deposited himself at the
end of the table, directly opposite the gallant yet melancholy Mopes,
major and military secretary.

As the meal proceeded, Fripps could not help noticing certain looks
which were passing between his four companions, especially as even
the countenance of the major was every now and then illuminated by a
cursory expression more nearly approaching to a smile than he had ever
seen them before. The General looked at George; George looked at Ellen;
and Ellen, affecting to repress his intelligent glances by a half-comic
seriousness, was blushing crimson.

Captain Narcissus Fripps began to feel exceedingly awkward and
embarrassed. It was clear that his companions were in a confederacy,
and that he was, by general consent, “basketed.” Very few words were
spoken, and nobody seemed inclined to break the silence. Narcissus
felt assured that the General had availed himself of the first moment
after their return home to lecture his daughter upon the dreadful
impropriety which he had witnessed; but this he could hardly reconcile
with the fact that Brown was placed next her at table, and permitted
to look and talk to her, little or much, as suited his fancy; while
the eyes of Ellen plainly exhibited the existence of an intelligence
between them--which eyes _will_ exhibit in the just degree to which
such intelligence extends.

It all at once struck the captain, that upon a principle not
unfrequently acted upon,--of doing what in certain circles is called,
“wiping it up, and saying nothing about it,” the General meant to
take no public notice of the event which he had communicated, but
that, instead of kicking the assistant military secretary out of the
house, he would give him some detached appointment, which would have
the effect of removing him from his present sphere of action, and his
nomination to which, would be attributed to the General’s continued
and unchanged regard for him, rather than as a manœuvre to separate
him from his daughter. This idea the gentle Narcissus cherished; and
perfectly conscious that the embarrassment in which they all appeared
involved must have arisen from his solicitude for the peace and honour
of the family, and coupling these effects with the absence of all
remark from the General, touching the matter, he resolved to act upon
the same principle, assimilate his conduct to that of Sir Cadwallader,
and take the first occasion to make him sensible of the caution he
proposed to adopt, and the course he intended to pursue.

It ought to be mentioned that Captain Fripps was not a very great
favourite with anybody at head-quarters. The major indeed called him
“Molly Fripps,” and that too in a sad and solemn tone; and George was
quite aware that he affected to despise _him_. The stiffness of the
breakfast-party would not of itself, therefore, have startled him, but
the character of the stiffness of this particular morning puzzled him
exceedingly; for although little was said, so much more was looked than
usual, that never did captain more greatly rejoice than did this of
ours, when the repast was terminated by the departure of Ellen.

The young lady’s exit was shortly followed by those of the major and
George, and once again the aide-du-camp was alone with the General.

“Well, captain,” said Sir Cadwallader, “I suppose you think my conduct
very strange.”

“No, upon my honour! not, sir,” said Fripps: “I quite appreciate it--so
considerate--and so wise--and so like your Excellency.”

“I am glad you approve of it,” said the General:--“but who told you the
history of my proceedings since our return home?”

“Oh! nobody told me,” said the captain; “I would not talk about it to
anybody for the world.”

“Then how have you acquired the knowledge of what I have done, and what
I propose to do?” said his Excellency.

“I conclude,” said Fripps, “that your Excellency means to take no
notice of what I told you, to the parties themselves, but get rid of
Mr. Brown in some way or other, so as to prevent the _eclat_.”

“Prevent the _eclat_ of an affair known to two or three people!”
exclaimed the General--“no, no.”

“I protest, sir,” said Fripps, “it shall never pass my lips: I have too
much regard for Miss Adamthwaite. It would be very shocking, I know, to
let it spread; but my duty to _you_, as well as my esteem for _her_,
would keep me silent as the tomb upon the subject.”

“You need not restrain yourself, Captain Fripps,” said Sir Cadwallader,
“on _my_ account or hers.”

“I know, sir,” said Fripps, “that you have been so kind and good to Mr.
Brown; and what a shocking vice ingratitude is!--And to think of his
venturing to embrace any young lady, and especially your daughter!”

“Did you ever hear an old song that I used to sing when I was a sub.,”
said the general:--

    “‘My mother having heard that Colin he had kiss’d me,
      Proposed to the youth that to-morrow we should wed:
    To church then we went, paid the parson his fees,
      And so got holy licence to kiss when we please.’”

“Oh! dear, no,” said Fripps, shuddering, and pawing, and making
curtseying bows, “I never heard such a song as _that_ in all my life.”

“Well, it may serve to enlighten you then,” said the General. “What
if Ellen Adamthwaite and George Brown are about to do a similar
thing--what should you say _then_?”

“What!” exclaimed the captain--“you _don’t_ mean, sir,--that--”

“I do mean so,” said Sir Cadwallader.

“What! that delicate fair creature,” said Fripps, in a soliloquizing
tone, “to--”

“--Yes, is likely very soon to become _Brown_, Captain Fripps,” said
the General.

“Why, then, the discovery I made--”

“Was nothing very important after all,” said the General. “Your
kindness and consideration for her and me are nevertheless equally
admirable; only if you had not gone back to your friend Mr. Honeyman’s
quarters, and told _him_ what you had seen, before you mentioned it to
_me_, our obligations perhaps would have been somewhat greater.”

“Well, I declare, Sir Cadwallader,” said Fripps, “I only told him
because I--”

“Because you happened to be sure of finding _him_ up,” said the
General, “and you were not so sure of getting hold of anybody else at
that time to whom to give the interesting information.”

“Oh dear, dear!--I shall never be able to look at Miss Ellen again,”
said the captain. “I admit it was--how could you have known it,
sir?--dear me!--what a deceitful toad Honeyman must be to have betrayed
me.”

“We will not discuss the matter any further,” said the General. “I
agree with _you_ that it would be irksome for you to associate with my
daughter and her husband after what has occurred, and therefore you
have my full permission to resign your aide-du-campship, and join your
regiment. I am a plain, blunt man, as you know, and of few words.”

“Oh, dear Sir Cadwallader!” said Fripps, “do not force me to leave you:
everything may be arranged, and I--”

“I wish you good morning, Captain Fripps,” said the General. “My
daughter bids me decline on _her_ part a scene of leave-taking, and
will not in all probability return home until after your departure.
Brown’s name will be in orders as aide-du-camp this afternoon; and, as
I am now allowed only one, you will see the necessity of marching in
‘double quick.’ Good morning.” Saying which, his Excellency retired
from the apartment, muttering humourously to himself--

  “But never more be officer of mine.”

“Well, if ever!” said Narcissus--“dear me--this is most uncommonly
unpleasant! I declare I could scratch that nasty creature Honeyman’s
eyes out, for such a sly trick. I’ll go to him--tax him with his
conduct:--but I am sure we shall make it up before we part; because I
am quite certain he did not mean to injure me.”

And so Fripps went on murmuring to himself, until, to his utter
dismay, one of Sir Cadwallader’s servants made his appearance with his
Excellency’s compliments--wished to know when his “things would be
ready for moving.” This question was conclusive. The circumstance which
had occurred--the awkward position in which he had placed himself by
his tittle-tattle, and the intentions so evidently displayed in his
conduct, all conspired to induce him to exert himself in fulfilling
his Excellency’s wish for his speedy disappearance. His servant was
directed to make immediate preparations for the start; and the captain
himself proceeded to Honeyman, to reproach and bid him farewell. Their
quarrel was, as the captain had anticipated, soon reconciled; and from
the door of his dear friend’s quarters, Fripps, after eating a tiffin
of fowl-sandwiches, raspberry tarts, and barleysugar-drops, moistened
by some lemonade, took his departure to join his regiment at Bombay.

It is strange how much the loss of one, to a constant association with
whom we have become habituated, affects us. Ellen, who cared no more
for Narcissus than for any other officer in his Majesty’s service,
naval or military, and in all human probability much less, could not
look at his vacant place at tiffin without a feeling of regret. Perhaps
this feeling, considering the consequences his removal involved, as far
as regarded his worldly circumstances, might have been strengthened by
the recollection that, however innocently, unconsciously certainly,
and most unintentionally, she herself had been the cause of his
ejection. Certain it was, she was out of spirits, and George saw she
was. He could not help feeling uneasy at the symptoms he observed, but
his anxiety was considerably relieved when he had ascertained that
his _friend_ was actually gone, and saw that Ellen, when her George
filled his chair at dinner, was as much at her ease as she could be,
knowing that the events which had occurred during the day were most
undoubtedly forming the topic of conversation at every other table in
the presidency.

We must not bestow sufficient space upon the episode of our history, to
dwell at length upon the proceedings at head-quarters until the day of
George’s marriage to Ellen was fixed. When the matrimonial termination
to their acquaintance was announced as decided and inevitable, the
public opinion of the forty or fifty estimable ladies and gentlemen,
who formed the public of the place, turned wonderfully in favour of
George. He was a most agreeable person--so clever; and it was so
judicious of the General to advance merit, and consult the happiness
of his child. And at last the day came, and they were married, and
proceeded to pass the honeymoon in the picturesque bungalow which
formed the effective foreground of Ellen’s last East-Indian view.

The happiness of this most happy pair--for so they were--was not,
however, destined to continue long uninterrupted: a sudden attack,
and short illness, deprived them in the third month of their married
life of the kind-hearted, generous parent, the founder of their
fortunes and felicity. This event, of course, decided them upon
returning to England, and induced George to retire from the army.
Having entered it, as an officer, much too late to expect in peaceable
times promotion, even by purchase, to any valuable extent, he yielded
to the solicitations of his Ellen, who had seen enough of military
life as a soldier’s daughter, not to desire a continuance of it as a
soldier’s wife. Her tastes,--her pursuits,--were those of retirement
and quiet, and the blessing of being so much her own mistress as not
to be destined by a Horse-Guards’ order to pass ten or twelve years of
her life in an East-Indian cantonment or a West-Indian barrack, was too
great to be refused. So implicit was Sir Cadwallader’s reliance upon
George, that, at the old gentleman’s death, he found himself, with some
trifling limitations, in the possession of property, real and personal,
to the amount of upwards of seven thousand a-year.

In this position was George Brown when he returned to England; and
it may easily be imagined that the circumstances detailed in this
narrative, when related by himself to his mother and sister upon the
occasion of his first visit to them, produced in their hearts and minds
sentiments of gratitude to Providence, by which a course of events so
propitious to their beloved, deserving relative, had been ordained.


                        END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


                                LONDON:
                       PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
                      Dorset Street, Fleet Street.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


  p.38, l.15: Removed a redundant (double) that (that he was a choice
  spirit).
  p.52, l.11: Removed double quotation mark at the end of the sentence
  (Brag as Brag thought of himself).
  p.53, l.13: Added a hyphen (hand-in-glove).
  p.81, l.19: Corrected name (Ilfracombe).
  p.124, l.23: Typo corrected (to explain herself).
  p.160, l.13: Added a full stop (directed to A. Z.).
  p.175, l.1: Typo corrected (we were only anxious).
  p.256, l.2 and p.261, l.10: The author (T. Hook) uses the spelling in
  Gilbert Gurney: Varhandah.
  Throughout the text: keeping aide-du-camp even though it seems wrong.
  Except as noted above, original spelling and punctuation have been
  retained.


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