Читать книгу One Of Them - Lever Charles James - Страница 11

These are men who have specialities for giving admirable “little dinners,” and little dinners are unquestionably the ne plus ultra of social enjoyment. To accomplish these there are far more requirements necessary than the world usually wots of. They are not the triumphs of great houses, with regiments of yellow plush and gold candelabra; they affect no vast dining-rooms, nor a private band. They are, on the contrary, the prerogatives of moderate incomes, middle-aged or elderly hosts, usually bachelors, with small houses, furnished in the perfection of comfort, without any display, but where everything, from the careful disposal of a fire-screen to the noiseless gait of the footman, shows you that a certain supervision and discipline prevail, even though you never hear an order and rarely see a servant.

Where these people get their cooks, I never could make out! It is easy enough to understand that fish and soup, your sirloin and your woodcock, could be well and carefully dressed, but who devised that exquisite little entrée, what genius presided over that dish of macaroni, that omelette, or that soufflé? Whence, besides, came the infinite taste of the whole meal, with its few dishes, served in an order of artistic elegance? And that butler, too, – how quiet, how observant, how noiseless his ministration; how steady his decanter hand! Where did they find him? And that pale sherry, and that Chablis, and that exquisite cup of Mocha? Don’t tell me that you or I can have them all as good, – that you know his wine-merchant, and have the receipt for his coffee. You might as well tell me you could sing like Mario because you employ his hairdresser. No, no; they who accomplish these things are peculiar organizations. They have great gifts of order and system, the nicest perceptions of taste, considerable refinement, and no small share of sensuality. They possess a number of high qualities in miniature, and are, so to say, “great men seen through the wrong end of a telescope.”

Of this the Rev. Dr. Millar was a pleasing specimen. With that consciousness of having done everything possible for your comfort which makes a good host, he had a racy gratification in quietly watching your enjoyment. Easily and unobtrusively marking your taste for this or preference for that, he would contrive that your liking should be gratified, as though by mere accident, and never let you know yourself a debtor for the attentions bestowed upon you. It was his pride to have a perfect establishment: would that all vanity were as harmless and as pleasurable to others! And now to the dinner, which, in our digression, we are forgetting.

“Try these cutlets, doctor,” interposed the host. “It is a receipt I brought back with me from Provence; I think you ‘ll find them good.”

“An over-rich, greasy sort of cuisine is the Provençale,” remarked Ogden.

“And yet almost every good cook of France comes from that country,” said Layton.

Ogden raised his large double eye-glass to look at the man who thus dared to “cap” a remark of his.

“I wish we could get out of the bastard French cookery all the clubs give us nowadays,” said the Colonel. “You neither see a good English joint nor a well-dressed entrée.”

“An emblem of the alliance,” said Layton, “where each nation spoils something of its own in the effort to be more palatable to its neighbor.”

“Apparently, then, Sir, the great statesmen who promoted this policy are not fortunate enough to enjoy your sanction?” said Ogden, with an insolent air.

“My sanction is scarcely the word for it. They have not, certainly, my approval.”

“I hope you like French wines, though, doctor,” said the host, eager to draw the conversation into some easier channel. “Taste that Sauterne.”

“It only wants age to be perfect,” said the doctor, sipping. “All these French white wines require more time than the red.”

Ogden again looked through his glass at the dispensary doctor who thus dared to give judgment on a question of such connoisseurship; and then, with the air of one not easily imposed on, said, —

“You have travelled much abroad, perhaps?”

Layton bowed a silent assent.

“I think I saw a German diploma amongst the papers you forwarded to our committee?” said Karstairs.

“Yes, I am a doctor of medicine of Gottingen.”

“A university, I verily believe, only known to Englishmen through Canning’s doggerel,” said Ogden.

“I trust not, sir. I hope that Blumenbach’s name alone would rescue it from such oblivion.”

“I like the Germans, I confess,” broke in the Colonel. “I served with Arentschild’s Hanoverians, and never knew better or pleasanter fellows.”

“Oh, I by no means undervalue Germans!” said Ogden. “I think we, at this very moment, owe to them no small gratitude for suggesting to us the inestimable practice of examination for all public employment.”

“In my mind, the greatest humbug of an age of humbug!” said Layton, fiercely.

“Nay, doctor, you will, I ‘m certain, recall your words when I tell you that my friend here, Mr. Ogden, is one of the most distinguished promoters of that system.”

“The gentleman would confer a far deeper obligation upon me by sustaining than by withdrawing his thesis,” said Ogden, with a sarcastic smile.

“To undertake the task of sustaining the cause of ignorance against knowledge,” said Layton, quietly, “would be an ungrateful one always. In the present case, too, it would be like pitting myself against that gentleman opposite. I decline such an office.”

“So, then, you confess that such would be your cause, sir?” said Ogden, triumphantly.

“No, sir; but it would partake so much the appearance of such a struggle, that I cannot accept it. What I called a humbug was the attempt to test men’s fitness for the public service by an examination at which the most incapable might distinguish himself, and the ablest not pass. The system of examination begot the system of ‘grinding,’ – a vulgar term for a more vulgar practice, and a system the most fatal to all liberal education, limiting study to a question-and-answer formula, and making acquirements only desirable when within the rubric of a Government commission. Very different would have been the result if the diploma of certain recognized educational establishments had been required as qualification to serve the State; if the law ran, ‘You shall be a graduate of this university, or that college, or possess the licentiate degree of that school.’”

“Your observations seem, then, rather directed against certain commissioners than the system they practise?” said Odgen, sarcastically.

“Scarcely, sir. My experience is very limited. I never met but one of them!”

The Colonel laughed heartily at this speech, – he could n’t help it; and even the host, mortified as he was, gave a half-smile. As for Ogden, his pale face grew a shade sicklier, and his green eyes more fishy.

“To question the post-office clerk or the landing waiter,” continued Layton, with fresh warmth, – for when excited he could rarely control himself, – “to test some poor aspirant for eighty pounds per annum in his knowledge of mathematics or his skill in physical geography, while you make governors that cannot speak correctly, and vice-governors whose despatches are the scorn of Downing Street; to proclaim that you want your tide-waiter to be a moral philosopher, but that the highest offices in the State may be held by any political partisan active enough, troublesome enough, and noisy enough to make himself worth purchase; you demand logarithms and special geometry from a clerk in the Customs, while you make a mill-owner a cabinet minister on the simple showing of his persevering; and your commissioners, too, – ‘Quis custodiet, ipsos custodes!’”

“You probably, however, submitted to be examined, once on a time, for your medical degree?” asked Ogden.

“Yes, sir; and that ordeal once passed, I had ample leisure to unlearn the mass of useless rubbish required of me, and to address myself to the real cares of my profession. But do you suppose that if it were demanded of me to subject myself to another examination to hold the humble post I now fill, that I should have accepted it?”

“I really cannot answer that question,” said Ogden, superciliously.

“Then I will, sir. I would not have done so. Eighty pounds a year is a very attractive bribe, but it may require too costly a sacrifice to win it.”

“The neighborhood is a very poor one,” struck in Millar, “and, indeed, if it had not been for the strenuous exertions of my friend Colonel Karstairs here, we should never have raised the forty pounds which gives us the claim for as much more in the presentments.”

“And yet you got two hundred and thirty for a regatta in June last!” said Layton, with a quiet smile.

“The way of the world, doctor; the way of the world! Men are never stingy in what regards their own amusements!”

“That is the port, doctor; the other is Lafitte,” said the rector, as he saw Layton hesitate about a choice.

And now the talk took a capricious turn, as it will do occasionally, in those companies where people are old-fashioned enough to “sit” after dinner, and let the decanter circulate. Even here, however, conversation could not run smoothly. Ogden launched into the manufacture of wines, the chemistry of adulterations, and the grape disease, on every one of which Layton found something to correct him, – some slip or error to set right, – an annoyance all the more poignant that Karstairs seemed to enjoy it heartily. From fabricated wines to poisons the transition was easy, and they began to talk of certain curious trials wherein the medical testimony formed the turning-point of conviction. Here, again, Layton was his superior in information, and made the superiority felt. Of what the most subtle tests consisted, and wherein their fallacy lay, he was thoroughly master, while his retentive memory supplied a vast variety of curious and interesting illustration.

Has our reader ever “assisted” at a scene where the great talker of a company has unexpectedly found himself confronted by some unknown, undistinguished competitor, who, with the pertinacity of an actual persecution, will follow him through all the devious windings of an evening’s conversation, ever present to correct, contradict, amend, or refute? In vain the hunted martyr seeks out some new line of country, or starts new game; his tormentor is ever close behind him. Ogden wandered from law to literature. He tried art, scientific discovery, religious controversy, agriculture, foreign travel, the drama, and field sports; and Layton followed him through all, – always able to take up the theme and carry it beyond where the other had halted. If Millar underwent all the tortures of an unhappy host at this, Karstairs was in ecstasy. He had been spending a week at the Rectory in Ogden’s company, and it seemed a sort of just retribution now that this dictatorial personage should have met his persecutor. Layton, always drinking deeply as the wine came to him, and excited by a sort of conflict which for years back he had never known, grew more and more daring in his contradictions, less deferential, and less fearful of offending. Whatever little reserve he had felt at first, oozed away as the evening advanced. The law of physics is the rule of morals, and as the swing of the pendulum is greater in proportion to the retraction, so the bashful man, once emancipated from his reserve, becomes the most daringly aggressive to mortals. Not content with refuting, he now ridiculed; his vein of banter was his richest, and he indulged it in all the easy freedom of one who defied reprisals. Millar tried once or twice to interpose, and was at last fain to suggest that, as the decanters came round untouched, they should adjourn to coffee.

Ogden rose abruptly at the intimation, and, muttering something inaudible, led the way into the drawing-room.

“You have been too hard upon him, doctor,” whispered Karstairs, as he walked along at Layton’s side. “You should be more careful; he is a man of note on the other side of the Channel; he was a Treasury Lord for some six months once, and is always in office somewhere. I see you are rather sorry for this yourself.”

“Sorry! I ‘m sorry to leave that glorious Madeira, which I know I shall never taste again,” said Layton, sternly.

“Are you a smoker, Dr. Layton?” said the host. “If so, don’t forget this house gives all a bachelor’s privileges. Try these cheroots.”

“Liberty Hall!” chimed in the Colonel, with a vacant laugh.

“Not a bad name for your dining-room, Millar,” said Ogden, bitterly.

A slight shrug was the parson’s answer.

“Is this man a frequent guest here?” he asked again, in a low whisper.

“It is his first time. I need scarcely say, it shall be his last,” replied Millar, as cautiously.

“I felt for you, Millar. I felt what pain he must have been giving you, though, for myself, I pledge you my word it was most amusing; his violence, his presumption, the dictatorial tone in which he affirmed his opinions, were high comedy. I was half sorry when you proposed coffee.”

Under pretence of admiring some curiously carved chessmen, Karstairs had withdrawn the doctor into a small room adjoining; but, in reality, his object was the friendly one of suggesting greater caution and more reserve on his part.

“I don’t say,” whispered he, – “I don’t say that you were n’t right, and he wrong in everything. I know nothing about false quantities in Latin, or German metaphysics, or early Christian art. You may be an authority in all of them. All I say is, he is a great Government official, and you are a village doctor.”

“That was exactly why I couldn’t let slip the opportunity,” broke in Layton. “Let me tell you an incident I once witnessed in my old days of coach travelling. I was going up from Liverpool to London in the ‘Umpire,’ that wonderful fast coach that astonished the world by making the journey in thirty-six hours. I sat behind the coachman, and was struck by the appearance of the man on the box-seat, who, though it was the depth of winter, and the day one of cutting sleet and cold wind, wore no upper coat, or any protection against the weather. He was, as you may imagine, speedily wet through, and presented in his dripping and soaked habiliments as sorry a spectacle as need be. In fact, if any man’s external could proclaim want and privation, his did. The signs of poverty, however, could not screen him from the application of ‘Won’t you remember the coachman, sir?’ He, with no small difficulty, – for he was nearly benumbed with cold, – extricated a sixpence from his pocket and tendered it. The burly driver flung it contemptuously back to him with insult, and sneeringly asked him how he could dare to seat himself on the box when he was travelling like a pauper? The traveller never answered a word; a slight flush, once, indeed, showed how the insult stung him, but he never uttered a syllable.

“‘If I had you down here for five minutes, I ‘d teach you as how you ‘d set yourself on the box-seat again!’ cried coachee, whose passion seemed only aggravated by the other’s submission. Scarcely were the words spoken, when the dripping traveller began to descend from the coach. He was soon on the ground, and almost as he touched it the coachman rushed upon him. It was a hand-to-hand conflict, which, however, could not have lasted four minutes. The stranger not only ‘stopped’ every blow of the other, but followed each ‘stop’ by a well-sent-in one of his own, dealt with a force that, judging from his size, seemed miraculous. With closed eyes, a smashed jaw, and a disabled wrist, the coachman was carried away; while the other, as he drank off a glass of cold water, simply said, ‘If that man wishes to know where to find me again, tell him to ask for Tom Spring, Crane Alley, Borough Road!’”

Karstairs followed the anecdote with interest, but, somehow – for he was not a very brilliant man, though “an excellent officer” – missed the application. “Capital – excellent – by Jove!” cried he. “I ‘d have given a crown to have seen it.”

Layton turned away in half ill-humor.

“And so it was Tom Spring himself?” said the Colonel. “Who ‘d have guessed it?”

Layton made no reply, but began to set the chessmen upon the board at random.

“Is this another amongst your manifold accomplishments, sir?” asked Ogden, as he came up to the table.

“I play most games,” said Layton, carelessly; “but it’s only at billiards that I pretend to any skill.”

“I’m a very unworthy antagonist,” said Ogden; “but perhaps you will condescend to a game with me, – at chess, I mean?”

“With pleasure,” said Layton, setting the pieces at once. He won the first move, and just as he was about to begin he stopped, and said, “I wish I knew your strength.”

“The players give me a knight, and generally beat me,” said Ogden.

“Oh! I understand. Will you allow me to fetch a cheroot? I move king’s knight’s pawn one square.” He arose as he spoke, and walked into the adjoining room.

Ogden moved his queen’s pawn.

Layton, from the adjoining room, asked the move, and then said, “King’s bishop to knight’s first square;” meanwhile continuing to search for a cigar to his liking.

“Do you purpose to continue the game without seeing the board?” asked Ogden, as he bit his lip with impatience.

“Not if you prefer otherwise,” said Layton, who now came back to his place, with his cigar fully lighted.

“You see what an inexorable enemy I have, Millar,” said Ogden, with an affected laugh; “he will not be satisfied unless my defeat be ignominious.”

“Is it so certain to be a defeat, George?” said the rector. “Chess was always your great game. I remember how the Windsor Club entertained you on the occasion of your victory over that Swiss player, Eshwald.”

“And so you have beaten Eshwald,” broke in Layton, hastily. “We must give no quarter here.” And with this he threw away his cigar, and bent down over the board.

“We shall only disturb them, Karstairs; come along into the drawing-room, and let us talk parish business,” said the rector. “Our little dinner has scarcely gone off so well as I had expected,” said Millar, when they were alone. “I meant to do our doctor a service, by asking him to meet Odgen, who has patronage and influence in every quarter; but I suspect that this evening will be remembered grievously against him.”

“I confess I was highly amused at it all, and not sorry to see your friend Ogden so sorely baited. You know well what a life he has led us here for the last week.”

“A hard hitter sometimes, to be sure,” said the rector, smiling; “but a well-meaning man, and always ready for a kind action. I wish Layton had used more moderation, – more deference towards him.”

“Your Madeira did it all, Millar. Why did you give the fellow such insinuating tipple as that old ‘31 wine?”

“I can’t say that I was not forewarned,” continued Millar. “I was told, on his coming down to our neighborhood, to be careful of him. It was even intimated to me that his ungovernable and overbearing temper had wrecked his whole fortune in life; for, of course, one can easily see such a man ought not to be sentenced to the charge of a village dispensary.”

“No matter how clever you are, there must be discipline; that’s what I’ve always told the youngsters in my regiment.”

The rector sighed; it was one of those hopeless little sighs a man involuntarily heaves when he finds that his companion in a tête-à-tête is always “half an hour behind the coach.”

“I intended, besides,” resumed Millar, “that Ogden should have recommended to the Government the establishment of a small hospital down here; an additional fifty or sixty pounds a year would have been a great help to Layton.”

“And of course he ‘ll do it, when you ask him,” said the hearty Colonel. “Now that he has seen the man, and had the measure of his capacity, he ‘ll be all the readier to serve him.”

“The cleverest of all my school and college companions sacrificed his whole career in life by shooting the pheasant a great minister had just ‘marked.’ He was about to be invited to spend a week at Drayton; but the invitation never came.”

“I protest, Millar, I don’t understand that sort of thing.”

“Have you never felt, when walking very fast, and eagerly intent upon some object, that if an urchin crossed your path, or came rudely against you, it was hard to resist the temptation of giving him a box on the ear? I don’t mean to say that the cases are parallel, but great people do, somehow, acquire a habit of thinking that the road ought always to be cleared for them, and they will not endure whatever interferes with their wishes.”

“But don’t you think if you gave Layton a hint – ”

“Is n’t that like it? Hear that – ”

A loud burst of laughter from the adjoining room cut short the colloquy, and Layton’s voice was heard in a tone of triumph, saying, “I saw your plan – I even let you follow it up to the last, for I knew you were checkmated.”

“I ‘m off my play; I have not touched a chessman these three years,” said Ogden, pettishly.

“Nor I for three times three years; nor was it ever my favorite game.”

“I’m coming to crave a cup of tea from you, Millar,” said Ogden, entering the drawing-room, flushed in the cheek, and with a flurried manner.

“Who won the game?” asked the Colonel, eagerly.

“Dr. Layton was the conqueror; but I don’t regard myself as an ignoble foe, notwithstanding,” said Ogden, with a sort of look of appeal towards the doctor.

“I ‘ll give you a bishop and play you for – ” He stopped in some confusion, and then, with an effort at a laugh, added, “I was going to say fifty pounds, quite forgetting that it was possible you might beat me.”

“And yet, sir, I have the presumption to think that there are things which I could do fully as well as Dr. Layton.”

Layton turned hastily round from the table, where, having half filled a large glass with brandy, he was about to fill up with soda-water; he set down the unopened soda-water bottle, and, drinking off the raw spirit at a draught, said, —

“What are they? Let’s hear them, for I take the challenge; these gentlemen be my witnesses that I accepted the gage before I knew your weapon.” Here he replenished his glass, and this time still higher than before, and drank it off. “You have, doubtless, your speciality, your pet subject, art or science, what is it? Or have you more than one? You’re not like the fellow that Scott tells us could only talk of tanned leather, – eh, Millar, you remember that anecdote?”

The rector started with that sort of spasm that unobtrusive men feel when first accosted familiarly by those almost strangers to them.

“Better brandy than this I never tasted,” said Layton, now filling out a bumper, while his hand shook so much that he spilled the liquor over the table; “and, as Tom Warrendar used to say, as he who gives you unpleasant advice is bound in honor to lend you money, so he who gives you light claret, if he be a man of honor, will console you with old brandy afterwards; and you are a man of honor, Millar, and a man of conscience, and so is our colonel here, – albeit nothing remarkable in other respects; and as for that public servant, as he likes to call himself, – the public servant, if I must be candid, – the public servant is neither more nor less than – ” Here he stretched out his arm to its full length, to give by the gesture greater emphasis to what he was about to utter, and then staring half wildly, half insolently around him, he sank down heavily into a deep armchair, and as his arms dropped listlessly beside him, fell back insensible.

“I will say that I never felt deeper obligation to a brandy-bottle; it is the first enjoyable moment of the whole evening,” said Ogden, as he sat down to the tea-table.

In somewhat less than half an hour afterwards, Layton awoke with a sort of start, and looked wildly and confusedly around him. What or how much he remembered of the events of the evening, is not possible to say, as, with a sudden spring to his feet, he took his hat, and with a short “good-night,” left the house, and hurried down the avenue.