A Little Dinner at Timmins's Part 3

"Madame, they are to make the stock of the clear soup," Mr. Cavalcadour said.

"WHAT!" cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his former expression.

"Never, whilst I am in this house," cried out Mrs. Gashleigh, indignantly; "never in a Christian ENGLISH household; never shall such sinful waste be permitted by ME. If you wish me to dine, Rosa, you must get a dinner less EXPENSIVE. The Right Honorable Lord Fortyskewer could dine, sir, without these wicked luxuries, and I presume my daughter's guests can."

"Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide," said M. Cavalcadour. "I came to oblige Madame and my good friend Mirobolant, not myself."

"Thank you, sir, I think it WILL be too expensive," Rosa stammered in a great flutter; "but I am very much obliged to you."

"Il n'y a point d'obligation, Madame," said Monsieur Alcide Camille Cavalcadour in his most superb manner; and, making a splendid bow to the lady of the house, was respectfully conducted to the upper regions by little b.u.t.tons, leaving Rosa frightened, the cook amazed and silent, and Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with indignation against the dresser.

Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out of Devonshire with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned her daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her information of everything which took place there) up to that moment, I say, the cook had been quite contented with that subterraneous station which she occupied in life, and had a pride in keeping her kitchen neat, bright, and clean. It was, in her opinion, the comfortablest room in the house (we all thought so when we came down of a night to smoke there), and the handsomest kitchen in Lilliput Street.

But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite discontented and uneasy in her mind. She talked in a melancholy manner over the area-railings to the cooks at twenty-three and twenty-five. She stepped over the way, and conferred with the cook there. She made inquiries at the baker's and at other places about the kitchens in the great houses in Brobdingnag Gardens, and how many spits, bangmarry-pans, and stoo-pans they had. She thought she could not do with an occasional help, but must have a kitchen-maid. And she was often discovered by a gentleman of the police force, who was, I believe, her cousin, and occasionally visited her when Mrs. Gashleigh was not in the house or spying it:--she was discovered seated with MRS. RUNDELL in her lap, its leaves bespattered with her tears. "My pease be gone, Pelisse,"

she said, "zins I zaw that ther Franchman!" And it was all the faithful fellow could do to console her.

"---- the dinner!" said Timmins, in a rage at last. "Having it cooked in the house is out of the question. The bother of it, and the row your mother makes, are enough to drive one mad. It won't happen again, I can promise you, Rosa. Order it at Fubsby's, at once. You can have everything from Fubsby's--from footmen to saltspoons. Let's go and order it at Fubsby's."

"Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief to you, let us do as you wish," Rosa said; and she put on her bonnet, and they went off to the grand cook and confectioner of the Brobdingnag quarter.

V.

On the arm of her Fitzroy, Rosa went off to Fubsby's, that magnificent shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alicompayne Square,--a shop into which the rogue had often cast a glance of approbation as he pa.s.sed: for there are not only the most wonderful and delicious cakes and confections in the window, but at the counter there are almost sure to be three or four of the prettiest women in the whole of this world, with little darling caps of the last French make, with beautiful wavy hair, and the neatest possible waists and ap.r.o.ns.

Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a sheep's-eye through those enormous plate-gla.s.s windowpanes. I suppose it is the fact of perpetually living among such a quant.i.ty of good things that makes those young ladies so beautiful. They come into the place, let us say, like ordinary people, and gradually grow handsomer and handsomer, until they grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can't be otherwise: if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of that place, we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere of the most delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams, (some whipt, and some so good that of course they don't want whipping,) jellies, tipsy-cakes, cherry-brandy--one hundred thousand sweet and lovely things. Look at the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues of China oranges, ranged in the gleaming crystal cylinders. Mon Dieu! Look at the strawberries in the leaves. Each of them is as large nearly as a lady's reticule, and looks as if it had been brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those strawberries is a meal for those young ladies, behind the counter; they nibble off a little from the side, and if they are very hungry, which can scarcely ever happen, they are allowed to go to the crystal canisters and take out a rout-cake or macaroon. In the evening they sit and tell each other little riddles out of the bonbons; and when they wish to amuse themselves, they read the most delightful remarks, in the French language, about Love, and Cupid, and Beauty, before they place them inside the crackers. They always are writing down good things into Mr. Fubsby's ledgers. It must be a perfect feast to read them. Talk of the Garden of Eden! I believe it was nothing to Mr. Fubsby's house; and I have no doubt that after those young ladies have been there a certain time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at last, that they become complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their lovely shoulders, when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately kiss the other young ladies, and say, "Good-by, dears! We shall meet again la haut." And then with a whir of their deliciously scented wings, away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Square, and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.

It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and the wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, I am sure, could write them.

I never saw a man in such a state as Fitzroy Timmins in the presence of those ravishing houris. Mrs. Fitz having explained that they required a dinner for twenty persons, the chief young lady asked what Mr. and Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a frica.s.seed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, "O yes, certainly; put it down."

That Peri wrote down in her alb.u.m a list of things which it would make your mouth water to listen to. But she took it all quite calmly. Heaven bless you! THEY don't care about things that are no delicacies to them!

But whatever she chose to write down, Fitzroy let her.

After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they furnish everything: dinner and dessert, plate and china, servants in your own livery, and, if you please, guests of t.i.tle too), the married couple retreated from that shop of wonders; Rosa delighted that the trouble of the dinner was all off their hands but she was afraid it would be rather expensive.

"Nothing can be too expensive which pleases YOU, dear," Fitz said.

"By the way, one of those young women was rather good-looking," Rosa remarked: "the one in the cap with the blue ribbons." (And she cast about the shape of the cap in her mind, and determined to have exactly such another.)

"Think so? I didn't observe," said the miserable hypocrite by her side; and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an infamous fiend, to order something else which he had forgotten, he said, at Fubsby's. Get out of that Paradise, you cowardly, creeping, vile serpent you!

Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going to Fubsby's. HE WAS REMARKED THERE. He used to go before he went to chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the Temple: but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at the counter, a lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating a halfpenny bun for an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be called a shop)--a lady stepped forward, laid down the Morning Herald, and confronted him.

That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable Fitzroy was in her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a mere freak--(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and b.u.t.ter, when his absurd pa.s.sion instantly vanished)--I say, for a mere freak, the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders again--his mother-in-law.

On the day before the little dinner took place--and I promise you we shall come to it in the very next chapter--a tall and elegant middle-aged gentleman, who might have pa.s.sed for an earl but that there was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular, was introduced to Mrs. Timmins by the page, who announced him as Mr. Truncheon.

"I'm Truncheon, Ma'am," he said, with a low bow.

"Indeed!" said Rosa.

"About the dinner M'm, from Fubsby's, M'm. As you have no butler, M'm, I presume you will wish me to act as sich. I shall bring two persons as haids to-morrow; both answers to the name of John. I'd best, if you please, inspect the premisis, and will think you to allow your young man to show me the pantry and kitching."

Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest and most respectful melancholy. There is not much expression in his eyes, but from what there is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by a secret sorrow. Rosa trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's size, his splendid appearance, and gravity. "I am sure," she said, "I never shall dare to ask him to hand a gla.s.s of water." Even Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the morning of the actual dinner-party, to superintend matters, was cowed, and retreated from the kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon.

And yet that great man was, like all the truly great--affable.

He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and looking prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noonday), and did not disdain to rub the gla.s.ses and polish the decanters, and to show young b.u.t.tons the proper mode of preparing these articles for a dinner. And while he operated, the maids, and b.u.t.tons, and cook, when she could--and what had she but the vegetables to boil?--crowded round him, and listened with wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived with. That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy to Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of the chambers to the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. Oh, it was delightful to hear Mr. Truncheon!

VI.

On the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my beloved female reader may imagine that Fitzroy Timmins was sent about his business at an early hour in the morning, while the women began to make preparations to receive their guests. "There will be no need of your going to Fubsby's," Mrs. Gashleigh said to him, with a look that drove him out of doors. "Everything that we require has been ordered THERE! You will please to be back here at six o'clock, and not sooner: and I presume you will acquiesce in my arrangements about the WINE?"

"O yes, mamma," said the prostrate son-in-law.

"In so large a party--a party beyond some folks MEANS--expensive WINES are ABSURD. The light sherry at 26s., the champagne at 42s.; and you are not to go beyond 36s. for the claret and port after dinner. Mind, coffee will be served; and you come up stairs after two rounds of the claret."

"Of course, of course," acquiesced the wretch; and hurried out of the house to his chambers, and to discharge the commissions with which the womankind had intrusted him.

As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over the house the whole day long. That admirable woman was everywhere: in the kitchen until the arrival of Truncheon, before whom she would not retreat without a battle; on the stairs; in Fitzroy's dressing-room; and in Fitzroy minor's nursery, to whom she gave a dose of her own composition, while the nurse was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish for the dishes to be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the dishes! As if the folks at Fubsby's could not garnish dishes better than Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel-leaves, parsley, and cut turnips! Why, there was not a dish served that day that was not covered over with skewers, on which truffles, crayfish, mushrooms, and forced-meat were impaled. When old Gashleigh went down with her barbarian bunches of holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the cook saw their incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole shrubbery into the dust-house, where, while poking about the premises, you may be sure Mrs. G. saw it.

Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the tallow candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for Fitzroy) she stuck into the candlesticks with her own hands, giving her own high-shouldered plated candlesticks of the year 1798 the place of honor.

She upset all poor Rosa's floral arrangements, turning the nosegays from one vase into the other without any pity, and was never tired of beating, and pushing, and patting, and WHAPPING the curtain and sofa draperies into shape in the little drawing-room.

In Fitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure. It has been described how she had sacked his study and pushed away his papers, some of which, including three cigars, and the commencement of an article for the Law Magazine, "Lives of the Sheriffs' Officers," he has never been able to find to this day. Mamma now went into the little room in the back regions, which is Fitz's dressing-room, (and was destined to be a cloak-room,) and here she rummaged to her heart's delight.

In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time she examined all his outlying pockets, drawers, and letters; she inspected his socks and handkerchiefs in the top drawers; and on the dressing-table, his razors, shaving-strop, and hair-oil. She carried off his silver-topped scent-bottle out of his dressing-case, and a half-dozen of his favorite pills (which Fitz possesses in common with every well-regulated man), and probably administered them to her own family. His boots, glossy pumps, and slippers she pushed into the shower-bath, where the poor fellow stepped into them the next morning, in the midst of a pool in which they were lying. The baby was found sucking his boot-hooks the next day in the nursery; and as for the bottle of varnish for his shoes, (which he generally paints upon the trees himself, having a pretty taste in that way,) it could never be found to the present hour but it was remarked that the young Master Gashleighs, when they came home for the holidays, always wore lacquered highlows; and the reader may draw his conclusions from THAT fact.

In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins warning.

The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, 'aving Mrs. G. always about her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans. Mrs. G. had got her the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. didn't get for her.

The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew her duty; his grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always aggrawating her,--missus must shoot herself elsewhere.

The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in language more violent.

Little b.u.t.tons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler of the family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and dam if he'd stand it.

At every moment Rosa grew more and more bewildered. The baby howled a great deal during the day. His large china christening-bowl was cracked by Mrs. Gashleigh altering the flowers in it, and pretending to be very cool, whilst her hands shook with rage.