SOCIAL CONVERSE.
“You cannot, dearest, blame my folly, or wonder at my extravagance, more
than I do myself,” were the concluding words of Clemence, as, with the
timidity of a child acknowledging a fault, she laid on the desk before
her husband the heavy bill of Madame La Voye.
Mr. Effingham opened it in silence. If his young wife had ventured to
raise her downcast eyes to his face, she would have viewed there, not
anger, not sorrow, but a peculiar and unpleasing expression which
flitted across it for a moment, as a bat wheels suddenly between us and
the twilight sky, visible for a space so brief that we can hardly say
that we have seen it. As it was, Clemence only heard the words of her
husband, as he folded the paper, and placed it in his desk, “Fifty
pounds more or less—what matters it! you may leave this for me to
settle.”
Not one syllable of reproach, not even a hint of displeasure! What
intense gratitude glowed in the heart of Clemence, deepening, if
possible, the fervour of her love for the most noble, the most generous
of men! But when she attempted to express something of what she felt,
Mr. Effingham suddenly changed the subject; it appeared to be irksome,
almost irritating to him to receive the grateful thanks of his wife.
The evening closed far more joyously to Clemence than the morning had
begun. Her husband’s presence, as usual, sufficiently protected her from
insolence on the part of his family. A pert reply from Vincent to a
question asked by his step-mother, drew upon him such a stern reproof
from Mr. Effingham, that the boy was for the time effectually silenced.
Captain Thistlewood had walked off all his fierce indignation, and
finding that the domestic tempest had subsided into an apparent calm, he
made no attempt to stir up the sleeping elements of discord, but, on the
contrary, exerted himself to spread around him the atmosphere of
good-humour in which he himself habitually lived. His flow of
conversation was almost incessant. Having on that day ascended to the
ball of St. Paul’s, and explored the depths of the Thames Tunnel, he was
equally primed, as he termed it, for the highest or the deepest
subjects. He had been wandering over a great part of London, from the
stately squares of the West End to the crowded thoroughfares of the
East; he had seen skating on the Serpentine, horses sliding and
struggling up Holborn Hill, and described all with the same minuteness
and zest with which he might have portrayed peculiarities in the manners
and customs of some island of our antipodes.
“This merry old sailor must be as deceitful as Mrs. Effingham herself,”
thought Vincent. “If I had not heard that he was a bully and a savage, I
should have thought him an uncommonly jolly old chap!”
“I took an omnibus back,” said Captain Thistlewood; “for what with the
‘getting up stairs’ at St. Paul’s, and the walking about for hours in
the streets, I found myself tolerably well tired. That reminds me,” he
turned towards Vincent,—“that reminds me of the riddle, ‘What is always
tired, yet always goes on?’ Will you guess it? Bad hand at riddles—eh?
It is a _wheel_, to be sure; so that brings me back to my omnibus.
“We were a pretty full party in it, now one dropping in, then another
out,—men of business from the city, clerks from the bank; one I noticed
with a broad-brimmed hat, another with a smart new tile, cocked
roguishly on the side of the head. They talk” (here he addressed himself
to Louisa) “of telling the character of a man by the bumps on his head:
I think that one might tell something by the style of his hat; he has a
choice in one thing, and not in the other. Well, presently the man who
stands on the door-step puts his head into the conveyance. ‘Gentlemen
and ladies,’ says he, ‘have a care of your purses; there’s two of the
swell-mob in the ’bus.’ So, as you may imagine, we gen’lmen and ladies
(the ladies consisting of one good fat old dame opposite me, with a
well-stuffed bag on her arm, or rather on her knee) looked awkwardly
round on our companions, half smiling, as if to say, ‘Which of us are
the thieves?’ I thought that the fat dame opposite kept rather a
suspicious eye upon me, and held her hand tight over the opening of her
big bag, afraid that some one should feloniously make off with her
sandwiches or sausages. Presently the man with the new hat, dashing
neck-tie, sparkling pin, and diamond studs to match, puts his hand into
his pocket: ‘I’ve a large sum about me,’ he mutters half to himself,
half as if apologizing to us for depriving us of the pleasure of his
society, and out he pops with all convenient speed. Then he in the
broad-brim gives signs of following; he was at the very inner end of the
omnibus, and had to push past us all to get out. ‘I’ve a thousand pounds
on my person,’ says he, and so gets down, off, and away! I could not
help saying to my old lady, ‘There are more purses than two the safer
for the discretion of these good gentleman: depend on’t, we’ve now
nothing more to fear from the two dangerous members of the swell
society!’”
“’Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all,” observed Mr. Effingham
with a smile.
“It reminds me,” said Clemence, “of an Eastern tale of a merchant, who,
having been robbed of a large quantity of cotton, and entertaining
suspicions of the honesty of several of his acquaintance, invited all
whom he doubted to a social meal. In the midst of his entertainment he
suddenly exclaimed, with affected indignation, ‘Why, what audacious
rogues are these, to steal my cotton, and then every one come to my
house with a bit of it sticking to his beard!’ In a moment several hands
were raised, each thief laid hold of his own beard, and the merchant, by
this involuntary confession, was enabled to single out those who had
robbed him.”
“We leave all that sort of work to the detective police,” observed Lady
Selina.
“Yes, in old England,” replied Captain Thistlewood; “it is a different
matter in some other countries that I have heard of, where the
constables and the highwaymen form a kind of joint-stock company,—the
robbers the active managers, the police the _sleeping partners_—ha! ha!
ha! What was the book, Clemence, in which we read that good story of the
Englishman in Rome?” The eyes of Vincent brightened at the idea of a
story; he unconsciously edged his chair nearer to that of the captain.
“I do not recollect the story,” replied Clemence; “let us by all means
have it.”
“An Englishman was on a visit to the city of Rome, and he had been told
that bandits were plentiful there as blackberries, and that a man there
thought as little of cutting a throat as he would in France of cutting a
caper, or a joke in the Emerald Isle. John Bull had, therefore, been
advised by no means to take his constitutionals after the sun had set.
“Our friend, however, once received an invitation to an evening party,
which he had a mind to accept; and, thinks he, ‘A stout heart and a good
crab-tree cudgel will make me a match for any brigand that breathes!’ So
he went to his party, took a cheerful glass (maybe did not confine
himself to one), and then set out in the darkness to return to his
lodging in Rome. Now, our Englishman was a bold fellow, but that night
he could not help thinking a little of what he had heard of stilettoes,
and stabbing, and all that sort of thing. Suddenly a man coming in an
opposite direction knocked right up against him, and then hurried on
with rapid step. Our friend clapped his hand on his watch-pocket—never a
watch was there!”
“The man must have robbed him!” exclaimed Vincent.
“So thought our Englishman, and he was not one to part with his property
lightly. Turning round sharp, he rushed after the fellow, overtook him,
seized him by the throat, shouted, ‘Oriuolo!—watch!’ in the best Italian
that he could muster, and was well rewarded when a watch was thrust into
his hand by the half-throttled, gasping Roman!”
“The robber had caught a Tartar!” exclaimed Vincent.
“The Englishman went home in triumph. He could not help boasting a
little of his exploit when he and his family met round the
breakfast-table. ‘Well, it is odd enough,’ said his sister, ‘but I could
have been sure that I saw your watch hanging up in your room last
evening after you had gone to your party.’ The Englishman stared for a
moment, clapped his hand to his forehead to catch the thought which
suddenly darted across it, pulled out from his pocket the watch which he
had taken from the Italian—and lo! it was no more his than the clock at
the Horse-Guards! He recollected that he had left his own watch at home,
as a measure of precaution. So, instead of having been attacked, as he
had imagined, by a brigand, he had played the brigand himself, and had
actually robbed a poor fellow of his property, under the idea of
recovering his own!”
Vincent could not help laughing. “It is the first time,” he exclaimed,
“that an English gentleman ever acted as a thief!”
“I wish that I could say as much, my boy,” observed Captain Thistlewood,
slowly sipping his glass of port. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve met with
pickpockets, even in the higher ranks of life, quite as dangerous as the
gentlemen of the swell-mob in my omnibus. I’ve known a man, and one who
drove his cabriolet too, go to a shop and order goods to the amount of
hundreds of pounds, aware all the time that he had as little chance of
paying for them as of discharging the national debt. I’ve met with
another, looked upon as a man of honour, who built up a grand
establishment upon the fortunes and credulity of others, who ate his
turtle, and drank his claret,—ay, and asked his friends to share in the
feast,—knowing all the time that he was spending the money of those who
had confided their all to his care. Such men are, in my eyes,
pickpockets—heartless pickpockets—for they not only violate honesty, but
abuse a trust, and add hypocrisy to theft!”
“Let us adjourn to the drawing-room,” said Mr. Effingham abruptly,
pushing back his chair from the table.
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