A Double Knot Part 46

"How do you do, Bob?" began the old gentleman. "I--I--Richard, my boy, tell your uncle; I'm too weak and upset."

"We're in great trouble, uncle," began d.i.c.k sharply.

"Yes, I know," said the voice. "Renee has fled to me for protection from her husband. You did well amongst you. Poor child!"

"Hang it all, uncle, don't talk like that!" cried d.i.c.k impetuously.

"You ought to know that we had nothing to do with it. Help us; don't scold us."

"I am helping you," said the Captain. "Renee stays here with me till she can be sure of a happy home. And, look here," he continued, growing in firmness, "she has told me everything. If you are a man, you will call out anyone who dares say a word against her fame."

"It's all very well, uncle," said d.i.c.k; "but this is 18--, and not your young days. No one has a word to say against Renee. But look here, uncle, that isn't all. Gertrude has gone off."

"With John Huish, of course. Ah, Humphrey, how strangely Fate works her ways!"

"But, uncle, they say John Huish has turned out an utter swindler and scamp. Last thing I heard was that he had been expelled from his club."

"Let them talk," said Captain Millet quietly. "I say it cannot be true."

"But, Bob," faltered Sir Humphrey weakly, "they do make out a very bad case against him."

"Then you and your boy can take up the cudgels on his behalf. He is son and brother now. There, I am weary. Go."

"But Renee--we must see her."

"No; let the poor girl rest. When you can find her a decent home, if she wishes it, she can come."

The little wicket was closed with a sharp snap, and father and son gazed at each other in the gloomy room.

"Come back home, d.i.c.k," said Sir Humphrey feebly. "And take warning, my boy: be a bachelor. Ladies in every shape and form are a great mistake."

d.i.c.k Millet thought of the glowing charms of Clotilde and Marie Dymc.o.x, but he said nothing, only hinted to his father that he ought to give Vidler a sovereign; and this done, they went back into the cab.

Half an hour later they were back in the room where Frank Morrison lay talking wildly in a loud, husky voice.

"Oh, well, so much the better," said the doctor, when he heard all.

"Capital calming place for your sister at your uncle's. And as for Gertrude--bless her sweet face!--your uncle must be right. Bet a guinea he knew beforehand. I wish her and John Huish joy, he'll never make her leave her home, and drink himself into such a state as this."

"I hope not," thought d.i.c.k; but just then some of the ugly rumours he had heard crossed his mind, and he had his doubts.

"Precious hard on a fellow," he said to himself, "two sisters going off like that! I wonder what Glen and the other fellows will say. Suppose fate forced me to do something of the same kind!"

Volume 2, Chapter IX.

GOING TO COURT.

Marcus Glen was not a man given to deep thinking, but one of those straightforward, trusting fellows who, when once he placed faith in another, gave his whole blind confidence, and whom it was difficult afterwards to shake in his belief. He had had his flirtations here and there where his regiment had been stationed, and fancied himself deeply in love; been jilted in a fashionable way, smoked a cigar over it, and enjoyed his meals at the mess as usual. But he had found in Clotilde one so different to the insipid girls of former acquaintance: she was far more innocent in most things, thoroughly unworldly, and at the same time so full of loving pa.s.sion, giving herself, as it were, to his arms with a full trust and faith, that his pulses had been thoroughly stirred. She told him of her past, and he soon found out for himself that hers had been no life of seasons, with half a dozen admirers in each. He was her first lover, and he told himself--doubtingly--that she was the first woman, and would be the only one, he could ever love.

Their meetings became few and seldom, and were nearly all of a stolen nature, for there could be no disguising the fact that when the young officer called the Honourable Philippa Dymc.o.x was cold and stately; and though her sister seemed to nervously desire to further Glen's wishes, she stood too much in awe of her sister, and with a sigh forebore.

d.i.c.k Millet then had to put his plan in force, and Joseph began to grow comparatively wealthy with the weight of the Queen's heads that accompanied the notes he bore to the young ladies, and visions of the lodging-house he meant some day to take grew clearer and less hazy in the distance that they had formerly seemed to occupy.

Visits were paid to Lady Littletown's, and that dame was quite affectionate in her ways, but Clotilde and Marie were rarely encountered there; and when fortune did favour Glen to the extent of a meeting, there were no more inspections of her ladyship's exotics, no encounters alone, for Lady Littletown was always present; and at last Glen felt that, if he wished to win, it must be by extraordinary, and not by ordinary means.

The slightest hint of this seemed to set d.i.c.k on fire.

"To be sure," he cried; "the very thing! We must carry them off, Glen, dear boy. Like you know who."

"And do you think our friend Marie will consent to be carried off?"

"Well--er--yes; I dare say she would oppose it at first, but the moment she feels certain that her aunts mean to force her into a marriage with old Moorpark, I feel sure that she will yield."

"Ah, well," said Glen, "we shall see; but look here, most chivalrous of youths, and greatest among lovers of romance--"

"Oh, I say, how I do hate it when you take up that horrible chaffing tone!"

"Chaff, my dear boy? No, no, this is sound commonsense! I do not say that under certain circ.u.mstances I might not have a brougham in waiting, and say to a lady 'Here is the licence, let us be driven straight to the church and made one;' but believe me, my dear d.i.c.k, all those romantic, elopement-loving days are gone by. We have grown too matter-of-fact now."

"Hang matter-of-fact! I mean to let nothing stand in my way, so I tell you! But, I say, have you heard?"

"About your sisters? Yes."

"Hang it, no!" cried d.i.c.k angrily; "let that rest. It's bad enough meeting Black Malpas at the mess-table, and being kept back by etiquette from hurling knives. I mean about the dinner."

"What dinner?"

"Dymc.o.xes'. And we're not asked. Our dinner's cold shoulder."

"A dinner-party?"

"Yes; and those two old buffers are to be there."

d.i.c.k was right, for a dinner was given in the private apartments, where the ladies did their best; but it certainly was not a success, and Marie could not help bitterly contrasting the difference between the repast and its surroundings and that given by Lady Littletown. For the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x had been unfortunate in the purveyor to whom they had applied to furnish the dinner and all the necessaries. All the linen, the plate, the gla.s.s, and, above all, the ornamentation, had a cheap, evening-party supper aspect. There was the plated epergne which showed so much copper that it seemed to be trying to out-brazen the battered Roman cup-shaped wine-coolers, in each of which stood icing a bottle of champagne, quite unknown to fame--a wine with which a respectable bottle of Burton ale would have considered it beneath its dignity to a.s.sociate. There were flowers upon the table furnished by the pastrycook; and though a couple of shillings would have supplied a modest selection of the real, according to well-established custom these were artificial, many of them being fearfully and wonderfully made.

That artificiality pervaded the whole repast, which from beginning to end was suggestive of oil-made, puffed-up pastry, which would crush into nothing at a touch; while soups, gravies, and the preparations of animal flesh, purveyed and presented under names in John Bull French, with a good deal of _a la_ in the composition, one and all tasted strongly of essence of beef, that delicious combination of tin-pot, solder, resin, and molten glue, which flavours so many of our cheaper feasts.

To give the whole a _distingue_ air, the London pastrycook had sent down, beside his red-nosed _chef_ and dubiously bright stewpans, those two well-known, ghastly-white temples, composed of sugar and chalk, which do duty at scores of wedding-breakfasts, and then stand in the pastrycook's window afterwards covered with gla.s.s shades, to keep them from the unholy touch of flies, and their sides from desecration by rubbing shoulders with the penny buns.

It was a mistake, too, to engage Mortimer, the gentleman who waited table for the gentry of Hampton Court, and invariably took the lead in single-handed places and played the part of butler. Mr Mortimer had been in service--_the_ service, he called it--saved money, applied to a rising brewer, and taken a public-house "doing" a great number of barrels per week, so he was informed; but the remarkable fact about that house was that as soon as Mr Mortimer had paid over his hard-earned savings and taken his position as landlord, the whole district became wonderfully temperate, and, to use his own words, "If I hadn't taken to paying for gla.s.ses of ale myself, and so kept the engine going, there would have been next to nothing to do." The result was that in six months Mr Mortimer had to leave the house, a poorer and a wiser man, picking up odd jobs in waiting afterwards in the Palace and neighbourhood, but retaining his habit of buying himself gla.s.ses of ale to a rather alarming extent.

This habit was manifest upon the entrance of the first course, and had greatly exercised Joseph in spirit lest it should be detected. In fact, it became so bad by the time that the remove in the second course was due, that the footman made a strategic movement, inveigling Mr Mortimer into the big cupboard where knives and boots and shoes were cleaned, and then and there locking him up in company with a gla.s.s and jug.

Perhaps a viler dinner, worse managed, was never set before guests; but to Lord Henry Moorpark it was a banquet in dreamland, to Mr Elbraham it was a feast, for from the moment he took down Clotilde to that when the ladies rose to return to the drawing-room, he literally gloated over and devoured the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x's niece.

Good dinners, served in the most refined style, had lost their charm for the visitors, who seemed perfectly satisfied, Elbraham's face shining like a sun when he smiled blandly at his _vis-a-vis_, whose deeply-lined, aristocratic countenance wore an aspect of pleasant satisfaction as he gazed back at the millionaire.

"I say, Moorpark, they look well, don't they?" said Elbraham.

"They do, indeed," a.s.sented Lord Henry, smiling.