Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/306

 31, 1860.] “Dang it!” murmured another, “we ain’t such gentlemen as that comes to.”

Mr. Raikes was politely requested to “tune his pipe.”

With a gloomy curiosity as to the results of Jack’s adventurous undertaking, and a touch of anger at the three, whose bearing throughout had displeased him, Evan regarded his friend. He, too, had drunk, and upon emptiness. Bright ale had mounted to his brain. A hero should be held as sacred as the Grand Llama: so let no more be said than that he drank still, nor marked the replenishing of his glass.

Jack cleared his throat for a final assault: he had got an image, and was dashing off; but, unhappily, as if to make the start seem fair, he was guilty of the reiteration of “Gentlemen.”

Everybody knew that it was a real start this time, and indeed he had made an advance, and had run straight through half a sentence. It was therefore manifestly unfair, inimical, contemptuous, overbearing, and base, for one of the three young cricketers, at this period to fling back weariedly and exclaim: “By jingo! too many gentlemen here!”

Evan heard him across the table. Lacking the key of the speaker’s previous conduct, the words might have passed. As it was, they, to the ale-invaded head of a young hero, feeling himself the world’s equal, and condemned nevertheless to bear through life the insignia of Tailordom, not unnaturally struck with peculiar offence. There was arrogance, too, in the young man who had interposed. He was long in the body, and, when he was not refreshing his sight by a careless contemplation of his finger-nails, looked down on his company at table, as one may do who comes from loftier studies. He had what is popularly known as the nose of our aristocracy: a nose that much culture of the external graces, and affectation of suavity, are required to soften. Thereto were joined thin lips and hot brows. Birth it was possible he could boast: hardly brains. He sat to the right of the fair-haired youth, who, with his remaining comrade, a quiet smiling fellow, appeared to be better liked by the guests, and had been hailed once or twice, under correction of the chairman, as Mr. Harry. The three had distinguished one there by a few friendly passages; and this was he who had offered his bed to Evan for the service of the girl. The recognition they extended to him did not affect him deeply. He was called Drummond, and had his place near the chairman, whose humours he seemed to relish.

Now the ears of Mr. Raikes were less keen at the moment than Evan’s, but his openness to ridicule was that of a man on his legs solus, amid a company sitting, and his sense of the same—when he saw himself the victim of it—acute. His face was rather comic, and, under the shadow of embarrassment, twitching and working for ideas—might excuse a want of steadiness and absolute gravity in the countenances of others.

“Gentlemen!” this inveterate harper resumed.

It was too much. Numerous shoulders fell against the backs of chairs, and the terrible rattle of low laughter commenced. Before it could burst overwhelmingly, Jack, with a dramatic visage, leaned over his glass, and looking, as he spoke, from man to man, asked emphatically: “Is there any person present whose conscience revolts against being involved in that denomination?”

The impertinence was at least a saving sign of wits awake. So the chairman led off, in reply to Jack, with an encouraging “Bravo!” and immediately there ensued an agricultural chorus of “Brayvos!”

Jack’s readiness had thus rescued him in extremity.

He nodded, and went ahead cheerily.

“I should be sorry to think so. When I said ‘Gentlemen,’ I included all. If the conscience of one should impeach him, or me—” Jack eyed the lordly contemplator of his nails, on a pause, adding, “It is not so. I rejoice. I was about to observe, then, that, a stranger, I entered this hospitable establishment—I and my friend—”

“The gentleman!” their now recognised antagonist interposed, and turned his head to one of his comrades, and kept it turned—a proceeding similar in tactics to striking and running away.

“I thank my honourable—a—um! I thank the—a—whatever he may be!” continued Jack. “I accept his suggestion. My friend, the gentleman!—the real gentleman!—the true gentleman!—the undoubted gentleman!”

Further iterations, if not amplifications, of the merits of the gentleman would have followed, had not Evan, strong in his modesty, pulled Jack into his seat, and admonished him to be content with the present measure of his folly.

But Jack had more in him. He rose, and flourished off: “A stranger, I think I said. What I have done to deserve to feel like an alderman I can’t say; but—” (Jack, falling into perfect good-humour and sincerity, was about to confess the cordial delight his supper had given him, when his eyes met those of his antagonist superciliously set): “but,” he resumed, rather to the perplexity of his hearers, “this sort of heavy fare of course accounts for it, if one is not accustomed to it, and gives one, as it were, the civic crown, which I apprehend to imply a surcharged stomach—in the earlier stages of the entertainment. I have been at feasts, I have even given them—yes, gentlemen—” (Jack slid suddenly down the slopes of anti-climax), “you must not judge by the hat, as I see one or two here do me the favour to do. By the bye,” he added, glancing hurriedly about, “where did I clap it down when I came in?”

His antagonist gave a kick under the table, saying, with a sneer, “What’s this?”

Mr. Raikes dived below, and held up the battered decoration of his head. He returned thanks with studious politeness, the more so as he had forgotten the context of his speech, and the exact state of mind he was in when he broke from it. “Gentlemen!” again afflicted the ears of the company.

“Oh, by Jove! more gentlemen!” cried Jack’s enemy.

“No anxiety, I beg!” Jack rejoined, always brought to his senses when pricked: “I did not include you, sir.”