ONSLOW'S first thought, on awaking the next morning, was of last night's
acquaintance, but all the information he could obtain concerning him was
that he was an Englishman who had passed the summer in Baden, and during
the season knew and was known by every one. The waiter called him, in
the usual formulary, “a very nice gentleman;” and seemed by his manner
to infer that any further account might be had by paying for it. Onslow,
if he even understood the hint, was not the man to avail himself of it;
so he simply ordered him to bring the hotel book, in which the names of
all travellers are inscribed, and at once discovered that the proprietor
of the humble entresol, No. 6, was a Mr. Albert Jekyl, with the ordinary
qualification attached to him of “Rentier Anglais.” Searching back in
the same instructive volume, he found that, on his arrival in June, Mr.
Jekyl had occupied a small apartment on the first floor, from which he
had subsequently removed to the second; thence to a single room in the
third story, and finally settled down in the quiet seclusion of the
small chamber where George had first seen him. These were very small
materials from which to compile a history, but at least they conveyed
one inference, and that a very common one, that the height of Mr.
Jekyl's fortune and that of his dwelling observed to each other an
inverse proportion, and that, as his means went down, he went up. If,
then, no very valuable contribution to the gentleman's history was
contained here, at least the page recorded his name; and George,
reopening Norwood's letter, satisfied himself that this was the same
confiding individual who had intrusted the noble viscount with a loan
of twenty pounds. George now remembered to have seen his card on Lady
Hester's table, with inquiry after Sir Stafford. “Poor fellow!” thought
he; “another victim of 'trente-et-un.' They have cleared him out at
the tables, and he is either ashamed to write home, or his friends have
refused to assist him. And Norwood, too the heartlessness of putting
to contribution a poor young fellow like this!” Onslow thought worse of
this than of fifty other sharp things of the noble Lord's doing, and of
some of which he had been himself the victim.
“I'll call upon him this very morning!” said George, half aloud, and
with the tone and air of a man who feels he has said a very generous
thing, and expressed a sentiment that he is well aware will expose him
to a certain amount of reprobation. “Jekyl, after all, is a right good
name. Lady Hester said something about Jekyls that she knew, or was
related to. Good style of fellow he looked a little tigerish, but that
comes of the Continent. If he be really presentable, too, my Lady will
be glad to receive him in her present state of destitution. Norwood's
ungracious message was a bore, to be sure, but then he need not deliver
it there was no necessity of taking trouble to be disagreeable or,
better again far better,” thought he, and he burst out laughing at the
happy notion, “I 'll misunderstand his meaning, and pay the money.
An excellent thought; for as I am about to book up a heavy sum to his
Lordship, it 's only deducting twenty pounds and handing it to Jekyl,
and I 'll be sworn he wants it most of us all.”
The more Onslow reflected on it, the more delighted was he with this
admirable device; and it is but fair to add, that however gratified at
the opportunity of doing a kindness, he was even better pleased at the
thought of how their acquaintance at the “Grosvenor” and the “Ultras”
would laugh at the “sharp viscount's being sold.” There was only one man
of all Onslow's set on whom he would have liked to practise this jest,
and that man was Norwood. Having decided upon this plan, he next thought
of the execution of it, and this he determined should be by letter. A
short note, conveying Norwood's message and the twenty pounds, would
save all explanation, and spare Jekyl any unpleasant feeling the
discussion of a private circumstance might occasion.
Onslow's note concluded with his “thanks for Mr. Jekyl's kindness on the
preceding evening,” and expressing a wish to know “at what hour Mr. J.
would receive a visit from him.”
Within a very few minutes after the billet was despatched, a servant
announced Mr. Albert Jekyl; and that young gentleman, in the glory of a
very magnificent brocade dressing-gown, and a Greek cap, with slippers
of black velvet embroidered in gold, entered the room.
Onslow, himself a distinguished member of that modern school of dandyism
whose pride lies in studs and shirt-pins, in watch-chains, rings, and
jewelled canes, was struck by the costly elegance of his visitor's
toilette. The opal buttons at his wrists; the single diamond, of great
size and brilliancy, on his finger; even the massive amber mouthpiece
of the splendid meerschaum he carried in his hand, were all evidences of
the most expensive tastes. “Could this by possibility be the man he had
seen at supper?” was the question he at once asked himself; but there
was no time to discuss the point, as Jekyl, in a voice almost girlish in
its softness, said,
“I could not help coming at once to thank you, Mr. Onslow, for your
polite note, and say how gratified I feel at making your acquaintance.
Maynard often spoke of you to me; and I confess I was twenty times a day
tempted to introduce myself.”
“Maynard Sir Horace Maynard!” cried Onslow, with a slight flush, half
pleasure, half surprise, for the baronet was the leader of the set
George belonged to, a man of great fortune, ancient family, the most
successful on the English Turf, and the envy of every young fellow about
town. “Do you know Maynard?”
“Oh, very well indeed,” lisped Jekyl; “and like him much.”
Onslow could not help a stare at the man who, with perfect coolness
and such an air of patronage, professed his opinion of the most
distinguished fashionable of the day.
“He has a very pretty taste in equipage,” continued Jekyl, “but never
could attain to the slightest knowledge of a dinner.”
Onslow was thunderstruck. Maynard, whose entertainments were the triumph
of the Clarendon, thus criticised by the man he had seen supping like a
mouse on a morsel of mouldy cheese!
“Talking of dinners, by the way,” said Jekyl, “what became of
Merewater?”
“Lord Merewater? he was in waiting when we left England.”
“A very tidy cook he used to have, a Spaniard called Jose, a perfect
hand at all the Provencal dishes. Good creature, Merewater. Don't you
think so?”
Ouslow muttered a kind of half-assent; and added, “I don't know him.”
Indeed, the lord in question was reputed as insufferably proud, and as
rarely admitting a commoner to the honor of his acquaintance.
“Poor Merewater! I remember playing him such a trick: to this hour he
does not know who did it. I stole the menu of one of his grand dinners,
and gave it to old Lord Bristock's cook, a creature that might have made
the messes for an emigrant ship, and such a travesty of an entertainment
never was seen. Merewater affected illness, and went away from the table
firmly persuaded that the whole was got up to affront him.”
“I thought the Earl of Bristock lived well and handsomely,” said George.
“Down at Brentwood it was very well one was in the country and grouse
and woodcocks, and salmon and pheasants, came all naturally and
seasonably; besides, he really had some very remarkable Burgundy; and,
though few people will drink it nowadays, Chambertin is a Christmas
wine.”
The cheese and the decanter of water were uppermost in George's mind,
but he said nothing, suffering his companion to run on, which he did,
over a wide expanse of titled and distinguished families, with all
of whom he appeared to have lived on the closest terms of intimacy.
Certainly of those Onslow himself knew, Jekyl related twenty little
traits and tokens that showed he was speaking with true knowledge of the
parties. Unlike Haggerstone, he rarely, if ever, alluded to any of those
darker topics which form the staple of scandal. A very gentle ridicule
of some slight eccentricity, a passing quiz of some peculiarity in
dress, voice, or manner, was about the extent of Jekyl's criticism,
which on no occasion betrayed any malice. Even the oddities that he
portrayed were usually done by some passing bit of mimicry of the
individual in question. These he threw into the dialogue of his story
without halt or impediment, and which, being done with great tact, great
command of face, and a most thorough appreciation of humor, were very
amusing little talents, and contributed largely to his social success.
Onslow laughed heartily at many of the imitations, and thus recognized
characters that were introduced into a narrative without the trouble of
announcing them.
“You've heard, perhaps, the series of mishaps which compelled us to take
refuge here,” said George, leading the way to what he supposed would
induce an equal degree of communicativeness on the other side.
“Oh! yes, the landlord told me of your disasters.”
“After all, I believe the very worst of them was coming to this place in
such a season.”
“It is certainly seeing it en papillate” said Jekyl, smiling; “and you,
perhaps, are not an admirer of beauty unadorned.”
“Say, rather, of Nature at her ugliest; for whatever it may be in
summer, with foliage, and clear streams, flowers, smart folk airing and
driving about, equipage, music, movement, and merry voices, now it is
really too dismal. Pray, how do you get through the day?”
Jekyl smiled one of his quiet, equivocal smiles, and slightly raised his
shoulders without speaking.
“Do you shoot?”
“No,” said he.
“But why do I ask? there's nothing to shoot. You ride, then?”
“No.”
“Cigars will do a great deal; but, confound it, there must be a large
share of the day very heavy on your hands, even with a reasonable
allowance for reading and writing.”
“Seldom do either!” said Jekyl, with his usual imperturbed manner.
“You have n't surely got up a flirtation with some 'Frdulein with
yellow hair '?”
“I cannot lay claim to such good fortune. I really do nothing. I have
not even the usual English resource of a terrier to jump over my stick,
nor was I early enough initiated into the mystery of brandy-and-water
in fact, a less occupied individual cannot well be imagined; but somehow
you'll smile if I say I am not bored.”
“It would be very ungenerous, then, to conceal your secret,” cried
Onslow; “for assuredly the art of killing time here, without killing
one's self, is worth knowing.”
“The misfortune is, I cannot communicate it; that is, even giving me
credit for possessing one, my skill is like that of some great medical
practitioner, who has learnt to look on disease with such practised eyes
that the appropriate remedy rises as it were instinctively to his mind,
he knows not how or why, and who dies, without being able to transmit
the knowledge to a successor. I have, somewhat in the same way, become
an accomplished idler; and with such success that the dreariest day of
rain that ever darkened the dirty windows of a village inn, the most
scorching dog-day that ever emptied the streets of an Italian city, and
sent all the inhabitants to their siesta, never hipped me. I have spent
a month with perfect satisfaction in quarantine, and bobbed for three
weeks in a calm at sea, with no other inconvenience than the moans of
my fellow-passengers. There 's no secret in it, Mr. Onslow; or, if there
be, it lies in this pretty discovery, that we are always bored by our
habit of throwing ourselves on the resources of somebody else, who, in
his turn, looks out for another, and so on. Now, a man in a fever never
dreams of cooling his hand by laying it on another patient's cheek; yet
this is what we do. To be thoroughly bored, you must associate yourself
with some half-dozen tired, weary, dyspeptic twaddles, and make up a
joint-stock bank of your several incapacities, learn to growl in chorus,
and you'll be able to go home and practise it as a solo.”
“And have you been completely alone here of late?” said George, who
began to fear that the sermon on ennui was not unaccompanied by a taste
of the evil.
“Occasionally I 've chatted for half an hour with two gentlemen who
reside here, a Colonel Haggerstone--”
“By the way, who is he?” broke in Onslow, eagerly.
“He has been traced back to Madras, but the most searching inquiries
have failed to elicit anything further.”
“Is he the man they called Arlington's Colonel Haggerstone?”
Jekyl nodded; but with an air that seemed to say, he would not enter
more deeply into the subject.
“And your other companion who is he?”
“Peter Dalton, of I am ashamed to say I forget where,” said Jekyl; who,
at once assuming Dalton's bloated look, in a well-feigned Irish accent,
went on: “a descendant of as ancient and as honorable a familee as any
in the three kingdoms, and if a little down in the world bad luck to
them that done it! just as ready as ever he was to enjoy agreeable
society and the ganial flow of soul.”
“He 's the better of the two, I take it,” said Onslow.
“More interesting, certainly, just as a ruined chateau is a
more picturesque object than a new police-station or a cut-stone
penitentiary. There 's another feature also which ought to give him the
preference. I have seen two very pretty faces from time to time as
I have passed the windows, and which I conjecture to belong to his
daughters.”
“Have you not made their acquaintance?” asked Onslow, in some surprise.
“I grieve to say I have not,” sighed Jekyl, softly.
“Why, the matter should not be very difficult, one might opine, in such
a place, at such a time, and with--”
He hesitated, and Jekyl added,
“With such a papa, you were about to say. Well, that is precisely the
difficulty. Had my excellent friend, Peter, been a native of any other
country, I flatter myself I should have known how to make my advances;
but with these dear Irish their very accessibility is a difficulty of no
common order. Assume an air of deference and respect, and they 'll
set you down for a cold formalist, with whom they can have nothing in
common. Try the opposite line, and affect the free and easy, and the
chances are that you have a duel to fight before you know you have
offended. I confess that I have made several small advances, and thrown
out repeated little hints about loneliness, and long evenings, and so
forth; and although he has concurred with me in every word, yet his
practice has never followed his precept. But I don't despair. What say
you, if we attack the fortress as allies? I have a notion we should
succeed?” “With all my heart. What's your plan?” “At this moment I
have formed none, nor is there need of any. Let us go out, like the
knight-errants of old, in search of adventures, and see if they will not
befall us. The first step will be to make Dalton's acquaintance. Now, he
always takes his walk in bad weather in the great Saal below; should he
not make his appearance there to-day, as he has already absented himself
for some days, I 'll call to inquire after him at his own house. You 'll
accompany me. The rest we 'll leave to fortune.”
Although On slow could not see that this step could lead to anything
beyond a civil reply to a civil demand, he assented readily, and
promised to meet his companion at four o'clock the same evening. As for
Jekyl, he took a very different view of the whole transaction, for
he knew that while to him there might be considerable difficulty in
establishing any footing with the Daltons, the son of the wealthy
baronet would be, in all likelihood, very differently looked on. In
presenting him, thought he, I shall have become the friend of the family
at once. It had often before been his fortune in life to have made
valuable acquaintances in this manner; and although the poor Daltons
were very unlikely to figure in the category of profitable friends,
they would at least afford an agreeable resource against the dulness of
wintry evenings, and prevent what he himself called the “demoralization”
of absence from female society. Lastly, the scheme promised to establish
a close intimacy between Onslow and himself; and here was a benefit
worth all the others.