Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/187

Rh larger size than the general appearance of the house would have promised. This room was full of gentlemen, who, in age, size, costume, and personal advantages, varied as much as it is possible for any one roomful of gentlemen to do. Some of them were playing billiards; some of them were looking on, betting on the players; or more often upbraiding them for such play as, in the Cheerful dialect, came under the sweeping denunciation of the Cherokee adjective "duffing." Some of them were eating a peculiar compound entitled "Welsh rarebit"—a pleasant preparation, if it had not painfully reminded the casual observer of mustard-poultices, or yellow soap in a state of solution—while lively friends knocked the ashes of their pipes into their plates, abstracted their porter just as they were about to imbibe that beverage, and in like fascinating manner beguiled the festive hour. One gentleman, a young Cherokee, had had a rarebit, and had gone to sleep with his head in his plate and his eyebrows in his mustard. Some were playing cards; some were playing dominoes; one gentleman was in tears, because the double six he wished to play had fallen into a neighbouring spittoon, and he lacked either the moral courage or the physical energy requisite for picking it up; but as, with the exception of the sleepy gentleman, everybody was talking very loud and on an entirely different subject, the effect was lively, not to say distracting.

"Gentlemen," said Gus, "I have the honour of bringing a friend, whom I wish to introduce to you."

"All right, Gus!" said the gentleman engaged at dominoes, "that's the cove I ought to play," and fixing one half-open eye on the spotted ivory, he lapsed into a series of imbecile imprecations on everybody in general, and the domino in particular.

Richard took a seat at a little distance from this gentleman, and at the bottom of the long table—a seat sacred on grand occasions to the vice-chairman. Some rather noisy lookers-on at the billiards were a little inclined to resent this, and muttered something about Dick's red wig and whiskers, in connection with the popular accompaniments to a boiled round of beef.

"I say, Darley," cried a gentleman, who held a billiard-cue in his hand, and had been for some time impotently endeavouring to smooth his hair with the same. "I say, old fellow, I hope your friend's committed a murder or two, because then Splitters can put him in a new piece."

Splitters, who had for four hours been in a state of abject misery, from the unmerciful allusions to his last chef d'œuvre, gave a growl from a distant corner of the table, where he was seeking consolation in everybody else's glass; and as everybody drank a different beverage, was not improving his state of mind thereby.