Читать книгу The Daltons (Historical Novel) - Charles James Lever - Страница 22

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HAS the observant reader ever remarked a couple of persons parading the deck of a ship at sea, walking step for step through half a day, turning with the same short jerk, to resume the same short path, and yet never interchanging a word, the rhythm of the footfall the only tie of companionship between them? They halt occasionally, too, to look over the bulwarks at some white sail far away, or some cloud-bank rising from the horizon; mayhap they linger to watch the rolling porpoises as they pass, or the swift nautilus as he glides along; but yet never a sound nor token of mutual intelligence escapes them. It is enough that they live surrounded by the same influences, breathe the same air, and step in the same time; they have their separate thoughts, wide, perhaps, as the poles asunder, and yet by some strange magnetism they feel there is a kind of sociality in their speechless intercourse.

From some such cause, perhaps, it was that Colonel Haggerstone and Jekyl took their accustomed walk in the dreary dining-room of the “Hotel de Russie.” The evening was cold and cheerless, as on that when first we met them there, a drifting rain, mingled with sleet, beat against the windows, and the wind, in mournful cadences, sighed along the dreary and deserted corridors. It was a comfortless scene within doors and without. A chance glance through the window, an occasional halt to listen when the thunder rolled louder and nearer, showed that, to a certain extent, the same emotions were common to each; but nothing else betrayed any community of sentiment between them, as they paced the room from end to end.

“English people come abroad for climate!” said Haggerstone, as he buttoned his collar tightly around his neck, and pressed his hat more firmly on his head. “But who ever saw the like of this in England?”

“In England you have weather, but no climate!” said Jekyl, with one of his little smiles of self-approval; for he caressed himself when he uttered a mot, and seemed to feel no slight access of self-satisfaction.

“It's not the worst thing we have there, sir, I promise you,” rejoined Haggerstone, authoritatively.

“Our coughs and rheumatics are, indeed, sore drawbacks upon patriotism.”

“I do not speak of them, sir; I allude to our insolent, overbearing aristocracy, who, sprung from the people as they are, recruited from the ranks of trade or law, look down upon the really ancient blood of the land, the untitled nobility. Who are they, sir, that treat us thus? The fortunate speculator, who has amassed a million; the Attorney-General, who has risen to a Chief-Justiceship; men without ancestry, without landed influence; a lucky banker, perhaps, like our friend upstairs, may stand in the 'Gazette' to-morrow or next day as Baron or Viscount, without one single requirement of the station, save his money.”

“I confess, if I have a weakness, it is for lords,” said Jekyl, simperingly. “I suppose I must have caught it very early in life, for it clings to me like an instinct.”

“I feel happy to avow that I have none, sir. Six centuries of gentry blood suffice for all my ambitions; but I boil over when I see the overweening presumption of these new people.”

“After all, new people, like a new watch, a new coat, and a new carriage, have the best chance of lasting. Old and worn out are very nearly convertible terms.”

“These are sentiments, sir, which would, doubtless, do you excellent service with the family upstairs, but are quite thrown away upon such a mere country gentleman as myself.”

Jekyl smiled, and drew up his cravat, with his habitual simpering air, but said nothing.

“Do you purpose remaining much longer here?” asked Haggerstone, abruptly.

“A few days, at most.”

“Do you turn north or south?”

“I fancy I shall winter in Italy.”

“The Onslows, I believe, are bound for Rome?”

“Can't say,” was the short reply.

“Just the sort of people for Italy. The fashionables of what the Chinese call 'second chop' go down admirably at Rome or Naples.”

“Very pleasant places they are, too,” said Jekyl, with a smile. “The climate permits everything, even dubious intimacies.”

Haggerstone gave a short “Ha!” at the heresy of this speech, but made no other comment on it.

“They say that Miss Onslow will have about a hundred thousand pounds?” said Haggerstone, with an air of inquiry.

“What a deal of maccaroni and parmesan that sum would buy!”

“Would you have her marry an Italian, sir?”

“Perhaps not, if she were to consult me on the matter,” said Jekyl, blandly; “but as this is, to say the least, not very probable, I may own that I like the mixed marriages well enough.”

“They make miserable menages, sir,” broke in Haggerstone.

“But excessively agreeable houses to visit at.”

“The Onslows are scarcely the people to succeed in that way,” rejoined Haggerstone, whose thoughts seemed to revolve round this family without any power to wander from the theme. “Mere money, nothing but money to guide them.”

“Not a bad pilot, either, as times go.”

Haggerstone uttered another short, “Ha!” as though to enter a protest against the sentiment without the trouble of a refutation. He had utterly failed in all his efforts to draw Jekyl into a discussion of the banker's family, or even obtain from that excessively cautious young gentleman the slightest approach to an opinion about them; and yet it was exactly in search of this opinion that he had come down to take his walk that evening. It was in the hope that Jekyl might afford him some clew to these people's thoughts, or habits, or their intentions for the coming winter, that he had promenaded for the last hour and a half. “If he know anything of them,” thought Haggerstone, “he will be but too proud to show it, and display the intimacy to its fullest extent!”

It was, then, to his utter discomfiture, he learned that Jekyl had scarcely spoken to Lady Hester, and never even seen Sir Stafford or Miss Onslow. It was, then, pure invention of the waiter to say that they were acquainted. “Jekyl has done nothing,” muttered he to himself, “and I suppose I need not throw away a dinner upon him to tell it.”

Such were his reasonings; ana long did he balance in his own mind whether it were worth while to risk a bottle of Burgundy in such a cause; for often does it happen that the fluid thrown down the pump is utterly wasted, and that it is vain to moisten the sucker, if the well beneath be exhausted.

To be, or not to be? was then the eventful point he deliberated with himself. Haggerstone never threw away a dinner in his life. He was not one of those vulgarly minded folk who ask you, in a parenthesis, to come in to “manger la soupe,” as they say, without more preparation than the spreading of your napkin. No; he knew all the importance of a dinner, and, be it acknowledged, how to give it also, and could have distinguished perfectly between the fare to set before an “habitual diner out,” and that suitable to some newly arrived Englishman abroad: he could have measured his guest to a truffle! It was his boast that he never gave a pheasant when a poulet would have sufficed, nor wasted his “Chablis” on the man who would have been contented with “Barsac.”

The difficulty was not, then, how to have treated Jekyl, but whether to treat him at all. Indeed, the little dinner itself had been all planned and arranged that morning; and the “trout” from the “Murg,” and the grouse from Eberstein, had been “pricked off,” in the bill of fare, for “No. 24,” as he was unceremoniously designated, with a special order about the dish of whole truffles with butter, in the fair intention of inviting Mr. Albert Jekyl to partake of them.

If a lady reveals some latent desire of conquest in the coquetry of her costume and the more than ordinary care of her appearance, so your male friend may be suspected of a design upon your confidence or your liberality by the studious propriety of his petit diner. Never fall into the vulgar error that such things are mere accident. As well ascribe to chance the rotations of the seasons, or the motions of the heavenly bodies. Your printaniere in January, your epigramme d'agneau with asparagus at Christmas, show a solicitude to please to the full as ardent, and not a whit less sincere, than the soft glances that have just set your heart a-beating from the recesses of yonder opera-box.

“Will you eat your cutlet with me to-day, Mr. Jekyl?” said Haggerstone, after a pause, in which he had weighed long and well all the pros and cons of the invitation.

“Thanks, but I dine with the Onslows!” lisped out Jekyl, with a languid indifference, that however did not prevent his remarking the almost incredulous amazement in the colonel's face; “and I perceive,” added he, “that it 's time to dress.”

Haggerstone looked after him as he left the room; and then ringing the bell violently, gave orders to his servant to “pack up,” for he would leave Baden next morning.