Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/303

 290 “Receive the gentleman’s orders!” shouted the chairman to a mute interrogation from Mark, who capitulated spontaneously:

“Cold veal, cold beef, cold duck, cold—”

“Stop!” cried Mr. Raikes. “It’s summer, I know; but cold, cold, cold!—really! And cold duck! Cold duck and old peas, I suppose! I don’t want to come the epicure exactly, in the country. One must take what one can get, I know that. But some nice little bit to captivate the appetite?”

Mark suggested a rarebit.

Mr. Raikes shook his head with melancholy.

“Can you let us have some Maintenon cutlets, waiter?—or Soubise?—I ask for some dressing, that’s all—something to make a man eat.” He repeated to Evan: “Maintenon? Soubise?” whispering: “Anything will do!”

“I think you had better order bread and cheese,” said Evan, meaningly, in the same tone.

“You think, on the whole, you prefer Soubise?” cried Jack. “Very well. But can we have it? These out-of-the-way places—we must be modest! Now, I’ll wager you don’t know how to make an omelette here, waiter? Plain English cookery, of course!”

“Our cook has made ’em, sir,” said Mark.

“Oh, that’s quite enough!” returned Jack. “Oh, dear me! Has made an omelette! That doesn’t by any means sound cheerful.”

Jack was successful in the effect he intended to produce on the company. The greater number of the sons of Britain present gazed at him with the respectful antagonism peculiar to them when they hear foreign words, the familiarity with which appears to imply wealth and distinction.

“Chippolata pudding, of course, is out of the question,” he resumed. “Fish one can’t ask for. Vain were the call! A composition of eggs, flour, and butter we dare not trust. What are we to do?”

Before Evan could again recommend bread and cheese, the chairman had asked Mr. Raikes whether he really liked cutlets for supper; and, upon Jack replying that they were a favourite dish, sung out to Mark: “Cutlets for two!” and in an instant Mark had left the room, and the friends found themselves staring at one another.

“There’s three shillings at a blow!” hissed Jack, now taking off his hat, as if to free his distressed mind.

Evan, red in the face, reproached him for his folly. Jack comforted him with the assurance that they were in for it, and might as well comport themselves with dignity till the time for payment.

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” said Evan, getting up to summon Mark afresh. “I shall sup on bread and cheese.”

“My lord! my lord!” cried Jack, laying hold of his arm, and appearing to forget some private necessity for an incognito.

“Well,” he added, as the bell rang, “perhaps at this late hour we ought to consider the house. We should bear in mind that a cook, however divine in bounties, is mortal, like the rest of us. We are not at Trianon. I’m not the Abbé Dubois, nor you the Duc d’Orleans. Since they won’t let us cook for ourselves, which I hold that all born gentlemen are bound to be able to do, we’ll e’en content ourselves with modest fare.”

“My good Jack,” said Evan, less discreetly than it pleased his friend to hear, “haven’t you done playing at ‘lords’ yet? It was fun when we were boys at school. But, let me tell you, you don’t look a bit like a lord.”

“I’m the son of a gentleman,” returned Jack, angrily.

“I’m sorry you find yourself compelled to tell everybody of it,” said Evan, touched by a nettle.

“But what’s the use of singing small before these fellows?” Jack inquired.

The chairman was doubled in his seat with laughter. Among a portion of the guests there had been a return to common talk, and one had observed that he could not get that “Good Evening,” and “Good Night,” out of his head: which had caused a friend to explain the meaning of these terms of salutation to him: while another, of a philosophic turn, pursued the theme: “Ye see, when we meets, we makes a night of it. So, when we parts, it’s Good Night—natural! ain’t it?” A proposition assented to, and considerably dilated on; but whether he was laughing at that, or what had aroused the fit, the chairman did not say. Evan countermanded the cutlets, and substituted an order for bread and cheese, Jack adding, with the nod of a patron to the waiter:

“We think—since it’s late—we won’t give you the trouble to-night. We’ll try the effect of bread and cheese for once in a way. Nothing like new sensations!”

At this the chairman fell right forward, grasping the arms of his chair, and shouting.

Jack unconsciously put on his hat, for when you have not the key to current laughter—and especially when you are acting a part, and acting it, as you think, with admirable truth to nature—it has a hostile sound, and suggests devilries.

The lighter music of mirth had succeeded the chairman’s big bursts, by the time the bread and cheese appeared.

In the rear of the provision came three young gentlemen, of whom the foremost lumped in, singing to one behind him,—“And you shall have little Rosey!”

They were clad in cricketing costume, and exhibited the health and manners of youthful Englishmen of station. Frolicsome young bulls bursting on an assemblage of sheep, they might be compared to. The chairman welcomed them a trifle snubbingly. The colour mounted to the cheeks of Mr. Raikes as he made incision in the cheese, under their eyes, knitting his brows fearfully, as if at hard work.

“What a place!” he muttered. “Nothing but bread and cheese! Well! We must make the best of it. Content ourselves with beer, too! A drink corrupted into a likeness of wine! Due to our Teutonic ancestry, no doubt. Let fancy beguile us!” And Mr. Raikes, with a grand air of good-nature, and the lofty mind that makes the best of difficulties, offered Evan a morsel of cheese, saying: “We dispense with soup. We commence with the entrées. May I press a patty upon you.”