Tony Butler Part 21

CHAPTER XIV. DINNER AT RICHMOND

With the company that composed the dinner-party we have only a very pa.s.sing concern. They were--including Skeffington and Tony--eight in all. Three were young officials from Downing Street; two were guardsmen; and one an inferior member of the royal household,--a certain Mr. Arthur Mayfair, a young fellow much about town, and known by every one.

The dinner was ostensibly to celebrate the promotion of one of the guardsmen,--Mr. Lyner; in reality, it was one of those small orgies of eating and drinking which our modern civilization has imported from Paris.

A well-spread and even splendid table was no novelty to Tony; but such extravagance and luxury as this he had never witnessed before; it was, in fact, a banquet in which all that was rarest and most costly figured, and it actually seemed as if every land of Europe had contributed some delicacy or other to represent its claims to epicurism, at this congress. There were caviare from Russia, and oysters from Ostend, and red trout from the Highlands, and plover-eggs and pheasants from Bohemia, and partridges from Alsace, and scores of other delicacies, each attended by its appropriate wine; to discuss which, with all the high connoisseurship of the table, furnished the whole conversation.

Politics and literature apart, no subject could have been more removed from all Tony's experiences. He had never read Brillat-Savarin, nor so much as heard of M. Ude,--of the great controversy between the merits of white and brown truffles, he knew positively nothing; and he had actually eaten terrapin, and believed it to be very exquisite veal!

He listened, and listened very attentively. If it might have seemed to him that the company devoted a most extravagant portion of the time to the discussion, there was such a realism in the presence of the good things themselves, that the conversation never descended to frivolity; while there was an earnestness in the talkers that rejected such an imputation.

To hear them, one would have thought--at least, Tony thought--that all their lives had been pa.s.sed in dining, Could any memory retain the ma.s.s of small minute circ.u.mstances that they recorded, or did they keep prandial records as others keep game-books? Not one of them ever forgot where and when and how he had ever eaten anything remarkable for its excellence; and there was an elevation of language, an ecstasy imported into the reminiscences, that only ceased to be ludicrous when he grew used to it. Perhaps, as a mere listener, he partook more freely than he otherwise might of the good things before him. In the excellence and endless variety of the wines, there was, besides, temptation for cooler heads than his; not to add that on one or two occasions he found himself in a jury empanelled to p.r.o.nounce upon some nice question of flavor,--points upon which, as the evening wore on, he entered with a far greater reliance on his judgment than he would have felt half an hour before dinner.

He had not what is called, in the language of the table, a "made head,"--that is to say, at Lyle Abbey, his bottle of Sneyd's Claret after dinner was more than he liked well to drink; but now, when Sauterne succeeded Sherry, and Marcobrunner came after Champagne, and in succession followed Bordeaux, and Burgundy, and Madeira, and then Bordeaux again of a rarer and choicer vintage, Tony's head grew addled and confused. Though he spoke very little, there pa.s.sed through his mind all the varied changes that his nature was susceptible of. He was gay and depressed, daring and cautious, quarrelsome and forgiving, stern and affectionate, by turns. There were moments when he would have laid down his life for the company, and fleeting instants when his eye glanced around to see upon whom he could fix a deadly quarrel; now he felt rather vainglorious at being one of such a distinguished company, and now a sharp distrust shot through him that he was there to be the b.u.t.t of these town-bred wits, whose merriment was nothing but a covert impertinence.

All these changeful moods only served to make him drink more deeply. He filled b.u.mpers and drank them daringly. Skeffington told the story of the threat to kick Willis,--not much in itself, but full of interest to the young officials who knew Willis as an inst.i.tution, and could no more have imagined his personal chastis.e.m.e.nt than an insult to the royal arms. When Skeff, however, finished by saying that the Secretary of State himself rather approved of the measure, they began to feel that Tony Butler was that greatest of all created things, "a rising man." For as the power of the unknown number is incommensurable, so the height to which a man's success may carry him can never be estimated.

"It's deuced hard to get one of these messenger-ships," said one of the guardsmen; "they say it's far easier to be named Secretary of Legation."

"Of course it is. Fifty fellows are able to ride in a coach for one that can read and write," said May fair.

"What do you mean by that?" cried Tony, his eyes flashing fire.

"Just what I said," replied the other, mildly,--"that as there is no born mammal so helpless as a real gentleman, it's the rarest thing to find an empty sh.e.l.l to suit him."

"And they're, well paid, too," broke in the soldier. "Why, there's no fellow so well off. They have five pounds a day."

"No, they have not."

"They have."

"They have not."

"On duty--when they're on duty."

"No, nor off duty."

"Harris told me."

"Harris is a fool."

"He's my cousin," said a sickly young fellow, who looked deadly pale, "and I'll not hear him called a liar."

"n.o.body said liar. I said he was a fool."

"And so he is," broke in Mayfair, "for he went and got married the other day to a girl without sixpence."

"Beaumont's daughter?"

"Exactly. The 'Lively Kitty,' as we used to call her; a name she'll scarce go by in a year or two."

"I don't think," said Tony, with a slow, deliberate utterance,--"I don't think that he has made me a suit--suit--suitable apology for what he said,--eh, Skeff?"

"Be quiet, will you?" muttered the other.

"Kitty had ten thousand pounds of her own."

"Not sixpence."

"I tell you she had."

"Grant it. What is ten thousand pounds?" lisped out a little pink-cheeked fellow, who had a hundred and eighty per annum at the Board of Trade. "If you are economical, you may get two years out of it."

"If I thought," growled out Tony into Skeff's ear, "that he meant it for insolence, I'd punch his head, curls and all."

"Will you just be quiet?" said Skeff, again.

"I 'd have married Kitty myself," said pink cheeks, "if I thought she had ten thousand."

"And I 'd have gone on a visit to you," said Mayfair, "and we 'd have played billiards, the French game, every evening."

"I never thought Harris was so weak as to go and marry," said the youngest of the party, not fully one-and-twenty.

"Every one hasn't your experience, Upton," said May-fair.

"Why do the fellows bear all this?" whispered Tony, again.

"I say, be quiet,--do be quiet," mumbled Skeff.

"Who was it used to call Kitty Beaumont the La.s.s of Richmond Hill?" said Mayfair; and now another uproar ensued as to the authority in question, in which many contradictions were exchanged, and some wagers booked.

"Sing us that song Bailey made on her,--'Fair Lady on the River's Bank;'

you can sing it, Clinton?"

"Yes, let us have the song," cried several together.

"I 'll wager five pounds I 'll name a prettier girl on the same spot,"

said Tony to Skeff.

"Butler challenges the field," cried Skeff. "He knows, and will name, the prettiest girl in Richmond."

"I take him. What 's the figure?" said Mayfair.

"And I--and I!" shouted three or four in a breath.

"I think he offered a pony," lisped out the youngest.

"I said, I 'd bet five pounds," said Tony, fiercely; "don't misrepresent me, sir."

"I 'll take your money, then," cried Mayfair.