JACK BRAG.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
JACK BRAG.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“SAYINGS AND DOINGS,”--“MAXWELL,” &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1837.
JACK BRAG.
CHAPTER I.
“My dear Johnny,” said the respectable widow Brag to her son, “what
is the good of your going on in this way? Here, instead of minding
the business, you are day after day galloping and gallivanting,
steeple-chasing, fox-hunting, lord-hunting, a wasting your time and
your substance, the shop going to old Nick, and _you_ getting dipped
instead of your candles.”
“Mother,” said Jack, “don’t talk so foolishly! You are of the old
school,--excellent in your way, but a long way behindhand: the business
is safe enough. You cannot suppose, with the education I have had, I
can meddle with moulds, or look after sixes, tens, fours to the pound,
or farthing rushlights;--no, thanks to my enlightenment, I flatter
myself I soar a little higher than that.”
“No nonsense, Johnny!” said Mrs. Brag. “All you have now, and all you
have spent since your poor father’s death, was gained by your father’s
enlightenment of his customers: and how do you suppose I can carry on
the trade if you will not now and then attend to it?”
“Take my advice, my dear mother,” said Jack, “and marry. I’m old enough
now not to care a fig for a father-in-law;--marriage is the plan, as I
say to my friend Lord Tom--straight up, right down, and no mistake. Get
a sensible, stir-about husband, who does not mind grubbing, and hasn’t
a nose----”
“Hasn’t a nose?” interrupted Mrs. Brag.
“I don’t mean literally,” said Jack, “but sportingly;--does not mind
the particular scent of tallow--you understand. Let him into the tricks
of the trade: you will still be queen-bee of the hive,--make _him_ look
after the drones while you watch the wax.”
“And while _you_, Johnny, lap up the honey,” said the queen-bee.
“Do what you like,” said her son, “only marry--‘marry come up,’ as
somebody says in a play.”
“But, John,” said Mrs. Brag, “I have no desire to change my condition.”
“Nor I that you should,” said Jack; “but I wish you would change your
name. As long as ‘Brag, wax and tallow-chandler,’ sticks up on the
front of the house, with three dozen and four dangling dips swinging
along the shop-front, like so many malefactors expiating their crimes,
I live in a perpetual fever lest my numerous friends should inquire
whether I am one of the firm or the family.”
“Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “you are a silly fellow. What is there to
be ashamed of in honest industry? If all the fine folks whom you go
a-hunting with, and all the rest of it, like you, and are really glad
to see you, it is for yourself alone: and if they, who must know by
your name and nature that you can never be one of themselves, care a
button for you, your trade, so as you do not carry it about with you,
will do you no harm. What difference is it to them how you get your
thorough-bred horses, your smart scarlet coat, neat tops, and white
cords, so as you have them?--they won’t give you any new ones when they
are gone.”
“It is all very well talking,” said Johnny, “but I never should show my
face amongst them if I once thought they guessed at my real trade. I
live in a regular worry as it is. If ever a fellow asks me if I was at
Melton last year, that moment I think of the shop--‘pretty mould of a
horse’ tingles in my ears--‘sweet dip of the country’ sets me doubting;
and, only last week, a proposal to go ’cross country and meet Lord
Hurricane’s harriers at Hampton Wick nearly extinguished me.”
“And what now, Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do you think these lords take
you for, if not for a tallow-chandler?”
“An independent gentleman,” said Jack.
“That is to say,” replied his mother, “a gentleman who has nothing to
depend upon.”
“They look upon me as an agreeable rattle,” said John.
“One that has often been in the watchman’s hands too,” said the old
lady.
“I talk big and ride small,” said Jack, “I am always up with the
hounds--never flinch at anything,--am the pride of the field wherever I
go,--and in steeple-chases of infinite value.”
“And very little weight, my dear Johnny,” interrupted his mother.
“One of my dearest friends,” continued Brag, “Lord Tom Towzle, a deuce
of a fellow amongst the females, is going to put me up as a candidate
at the Travellers.”
“What, riders for respectable houses?” said Mrs. Brag: “and a very
proper club too.”
“Respectable houses!” said Jack. “Poh! not a bit of it! What!
bagmen in buggies with boxes of buttons in the boots? No, no! the
Travellers--_par excellence_.”
“Par what?” said Mrs. Brag. “What, d’ye mean the fine Club-house in
Pall Mall which you showed me the out side of, last King’s birth night?”
“The same,” said Brag. “Now, if I had stuck to the naked, as Lord Tom
says--told the plain unvarnished--I never could have qualified. Lord
Tom asked me if I should like to belong to the Travellers;--in course
I said yes--straight up, right down, and no mistake. Well, then he asks
me if I could qualify;--so not quite understanding him, he says, ‘Have
you ever been in Greece?’--‘Yes,’ said I:--I _might_ have added ‘up to
the elbows often;’ didn’t though. Had him dead. Down he whips my name,
and calls in Sir Somebody Something out of the street to second me.”
“If you should get in there Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do get ’em to
give up gas and take to oil on illumination nights. But what I think
is, somebody is sure to find you out, Johnny.”
“Time enough,” said Jack. “I’m going it now smooth and soft across
the country, increasing my acquaintance; falling into the society of
elegant females--women of fashion, with beautiful faces and liberal
hearts;--introduced to three last week--proud as peacocks to everybody
else, delighted with _me_;--met them at Ascot--cold collation in the
carriage--champaign iced from London;--got on capital--never was so
happy in my life--hottest weather I ever felt; spirits mounted--I was
the delight of the party--told them half a dozen stories of myself, and
made them laugh like cockatoos, but I was bundled all of a heap by the
Marquis of Middlesdale, who had been at luncheon with the King, who, in
passing the barouche, gave me a smack on the back you might have heard
to Egham, and cried out, ‘Jack, this is a melting day, isn’t it?’”
“He meant it, Johnny, depend upon it,” said Mrs. Brag.
“I’ve no doubt he did,” said Brag, “for it was as hot as ever I felt
it----”
“--In the back shop,” interrupted his mother. “But pray, Johnny, where
do these people think you live?”
“At a great house in Grosvenor-street,” said Jack, “next door to
What-d’ye-call-’em’s Hotel: my name is on the door, and my address on
my card.”
“But you don’t live there,” said Mrs. Brag.
“Not I,” replied the son: “I only rent the door.”
“How d’ye mean?” said his mother.
“Why, I went to the man,” said Brag, “who keeps the house. ‘Now, sir,’
said I, ‘I want to rent four square inches of your panels’. He was
puzzled for the moment; but I was down upon him in no time, and no
mistake.--Out I pulls from my pocket a brass plate of those precise
dimensions, whereon is engraven ‘Mr. Brag.’--‘What will you take per
annum,’ said I, ‘to let this be screwed on to your door, and let
your servant take in my cards and letters?’ Startled him a little
at first: however, he entered himself for the plate, acceded to my
proposition,--and so for the trifling consideration of four guineas per
annum, and a tip to the slavey, I get the credit of five windows in
front, three stories high, in one of the best streets in London.”
“But do none of your friends ever expect to be let in?” said Mrs. Brag.
“Yes,” said Brag, “for a good thing now and then,--and so they are,
pretty often. Long head, mother--have it here”--tapping his forehead
with his fore finger--“look simple with my fresh colour and curly hair,
but as deep as Garrick--cannot write your X’s, Z’s with me,--else,
in course, they might expect admission. ‘Not at home,’ is always the
answer. ‘Out of town?’ is the next question;--‘Yes,’ is the next
answer.--‘Where?’ comes next.--‘Down at his little place in Surrey.’
That finishes it. They lodge their pasteboard and away they go.”
“Little place in Surrey!” said Mrs. Brag;--“why, what d’ye mean?--have
you a country-house too?”
“Country-house!” said Brag. “Lord bless your dear heart, not I! Nothing
but my old lodging, on the second floor, No. 37, at the carpenter’s,
corner of Caterpillar-row, Kennington.”
“And _that_ you call your little place in Surrey, do you?” said Mrs.
Brag.
“Yes, mother, and no fib neither,” said Brag. “It is almost the
littlest place I ever saw in my life; and as for Caterpillar-row, if
it isn’t in Surrey I know nothing of going ’cross a country.”
“Ah, Johnny, Johnny,” said his respected parent with a mingled look of
sorrow and admiration, “you never will mend till it is too late!”
“Mother,” said Jack, “now you say that, I think I shall be too late
for Lord Tom Towzle. We are going off for Wigglesford to mark out a
line. All ready for a run: we have got no mercy in us,--none of your
bowling-green, daisy-cutting work for us--no, we’ll try to pick out
rasping fences, bottomless brooks, and ditches as wide as rivers;--a
steeple-chase without killing a horse or two, cracking a collar-bone,
slipping a shoulder, or pitching an out-and-outer on the top of his
conk, is no fun in the world.”
“Ah! well, well,” said Mrs. Brag, “I wish you would give a little time
to the books and the business: some day you’ll repent this.”
“Not I, mother,” said Jack; “I can pull up any day and marry. I never
yet saw the woman I could not win--they are all ready to eat me up: in
course, as the book says, I am the more wary--hang back a bit. Don’t
you see, as I get on in the world, I get up; and if I can marry a Lady
Sally or a Lady Susan--eh! won’t that be nice!--’specially if there
happens to be an odd thirty or forty thousand pounds tacked to the
title.”
“Don’t flatter yourself Johnny,” replied Mrs. Brag, shaking her head:
“_that_ scheme will never answer.”
“You’ll see,” said Jack;--“I say nothing, but you’ll see. If I were
to sit down and write an account of my adventures with the females, I
should be run after like a sight. The females of fashion that I meet at
the races call me ‘dear Johnny’ as it is.”
“I wonder you are not afraid of seeing the ghost of your poor father,”
said the widow.
“What! the Governor?” cried Jack; “never mind ghosts nor Governors,
here is my Leporello. So I’m off. Good-b’ye, dear mother!--you’ll see
me soon again,--I shall be back by Saturday, and so keep snug Sunday.”
“Where? at your town-house in Grosvenor-street,” said the old lady,
“or your little place in Surrey?”
“Neither, I take it,” said Jack, looking as wise as a very
foolish person could. “I devote Sunday afternoon to a very select
society--eh!--females of fashion, delightful creatures, and all that.
So adieu!”
Kissing the matron’s cheek, away went our hero in order to revel in
all the luxuries of sport, and in the society which, he admitted,
kept him in a fever while he was in it: not that the true circle of
his aristocratic acquaintance was particularly large, however much he
nominally increased it by dubbing every man his friend with whom he had
happened to hunt in the same field or dine in a public company of three
hundred and fifty; and every well-dressed woman a lady of fashion whom
he happened to see with the tigers in whose set he mingled.
Mrs. Brag, who felt extremely anxious about her son and herself, saw
that the business was rapidly “burning down.” The introduction of oil
had superseded wax; and since that, the adoption of gas had superseded
oil. No efforts were made to improve the concern, and all she heard,
was of considerable drafts from the account at the banker’s, and very
small payments into it; and Mrs. Brag, a comely, hearty-looking body
of her time of life, began to ponder the words which her dutiful son
had with little apparent earnestness let drop, as to changing her
condition, with a view to increase the reputation of the house and
extend its sphere of action, while the name at sight of which her son
trembled, might be withdrawn. She did not clearly see her way in this
proceeding: nor had she either fixed her affections upon any particular
object, nor was she conscious that she had attracted the regards of any
suitable partner. However, the notion was entertained--the idea had
been started; and how the exemplary matron set her means to work, in
order to effect the grand object, we may, if we live long enough, yet
discover.
The reader perhaps, in the few pages which he has yet either been
doomed to, or condescended to read, has already discovered what sort of
man Mr. John Brag is, or was. It seemed best to give a short domestic
scene in the candle-manufactory by way of prelude to the genteel comedy
in which the gay deceiver is destined to perform; and it will be only
necessary to keep in mind the sage yet ineffective lesson of the dear
old body to whom her affectionate son recommended matrimony, in order
duly to appreciate the performance of her “pretty boy,” who, spite
of his colour and his curls, was verging upon what may be called the
“shady side” of thirty.
Old Mrs. Brag had, as Miss Scropps, married at seventeen; and although,
as far as my own experience goes, I admit I never saw such a thing,
she was said to be a lady of nearly fifty-five years of age, somewhere
about the period at which this glimpse at the history of her yet
unrecorded family begins.
It may be supposed that I should apologise for bringing the eyes, or
perhaps the noses, of my readers in contact with all the arcana of Mr.
John’s shop; but I have a reason for doing so. I propose not merely to
show by illustration how very ridiculous a pretender must always be,
but to exhibit a striking instance of the retributive justice which
seems somehow to keep the world in an equipoise, by exhibiting the
wonderful utility of which the meanest and stupidest animal extant
may prove; as _vide_ (to quote the words of James the First, about
Dæmonology) the fable of the Lion, the Mouse, and the Meshes.
Soar we then for a moment from the gloom of the tallow-chandler to a
more charming region, and to people of a different mould,--and yet who,
as the reader will see, may in the course of events become connected,
and intimately too, with our sprightly gentleman in the scarlet jacket
and white cords. Let us, therefore, betake ourselves to the _boudoir_
of one of the most charming young widows in England, where she is
sitting _tête-à-tête_ with her unmarried sister, talking over two
absent gentlemen, whose tempers and dispositions are the immediate
subject of their conversation.
Mrs. Dallington, the elder of the two ladies so engaged, had been
married at nineteen, merely to oblige her father, (who died six months
afterwards,) to a gentleman of the name which she still bore; who, to
all the other merits which distinguished his character, emulated in
a high degree the fox-hunting propensities of the tallow-man in the
white cords of whom we have just spoken. He was, however, rich, and
a gentleman, and had a right to make as great a fool of himself as
he pleased,--and so he did: and the foolery began in his leaving a
beautiful wife, with a pair of eyes as black as sloes and as bright as
diamonds, alone and moping, while he was amusing himself by following
his dogs, which dogs were following something certainly not sweeter
than themselves across the country.
Mr. Dallington, who rode about nine stone four, one fine morning, when
the scent lay “uncommon strong,” the dogs in full cry, the field in a
state of the highest excitement, the fox going away right on-end across
a heavy country, which would probably break the hearts of some of the
horses and the necks of some of the riders, met with a slight accident,
which in fox-hunting goes for very little, but which in its proverbial
or rather convivial parallel, matrimony, goes for something more. In
switching a rasper, the exemplary and high-spirited gentleman missed
his tip and pitched right upon his head in the middle of a ditch, where
he remained exactly long enough to make the lovely wife he had left at
home a very delightful widow.
Dallington, or at least what had been Dallington in the early part
of the day, was put upon a hurdle and taken to a farmhouse; whence
the melancholy intelligence was conveyed to his lady, who, with all
the respect she felt for her late father’s judgment in selecting him
for her partner for life, considered the event which had just taken
place as philosophically as any woman of strong feelings and a tender
disposition might be supposed to endure any sudden shock which results
from the death of a fellow-creature.
True, most true it is, she never had felt that sort of love for the
husband forced upon her, as a “fine match,” which a woman ought to feel
for the being who is destined (if he be fortunate enough) to share her
hopes, her wishes, and her happiness. Mrs. Dallington was a creature
all intellect, all vivacity, all fire; full of arch playfulness and
gaiety of heart, and as completely the reverse of her quiet, timid, and
sensitive sister, as light of darkness, fire of water, or any other two
unmeetable opposites.
There are many adages connected with love and matrimony which it
must be admitted are, however forcible in themselves, extremely
contradictory of each other. But, in the course of considerable
experience in such matters, I am apt to imagine that the real truth
is--supposing always exceptions to general rules--that women are most
apt to prefer men the least like themselves; and men, _vice versâ_.
It is the pride of a little man to have a large wife; it is the
taste of a tall man to possess a short one: a fair woman admires a
dark Lothario; while a bright-eyed brunette delights in blazing away
upon a fair Romeo. A learned man eschews a blue partner; he relaxes
into ease in the company of his ordinarily-educated better-half, and
reposes from his graver studies in the agreeable common-places of an
intelligent but not abstruse associate; while the learned lady prefers
the plodding spouse, and never desires that he should meddle with her
arts and sciences, but merely wishes him to exert his energies in the
comfortable arrangement of their establishment, and the acquirement of
the supplies necessary to set off her own attractions in their most
alluring form before the visitors whom she chooses to invite.
The assimilation of tempers and dispositions by which happiness
grows between married couples is, in fact, a habit most amiable and
advantageous: the handwritings of men and their wives become like each
other in the course of time. But whether the love of contraries in the
abstract, be or be not so general as some observers would have it to
be, certain it is that in the particular individual case before us it
did exist.
Sir Charles Lydiard had been, just about the period at which the
reader is introduced to him, some two years paying his addresses to
the vivacious widow Dallington. He was a man of high principle, rigid
honour, polished manners, and most amiable disposition; but he was
cold, reserved, and even suspicious of the object of his affections.
His suspicions, or perhaps they might be more justly called doubts,
arose not from the slightest want of confidence in the candour or
sincerity of the lady, but in a want of confidence in himself. He might
fairly have said to his heroine with Steele’s hero:--
----“Of you I am not jealous,--
’Tis my own indesert that gives me fears:
And tenderness forms dangers where they’re not.
I doubt and envy all things that approach thee.”
There he was, the constant, faithful lover, never away from the house,
sitting and sighing “like furnace,” listening to the gaieties of Mrs.
Dallington’s conversation, a very spectre of despair, not ill described
by the English Aristophanes in the person of one Harry Hectic, with
a bunch of jonquils in his button-hole, looking dead and dressed,
like the waxwork in Westminster Abbey. There was no animating him,
no rousing him into a proposal; his attachment had become habitual,
and day after day the affair went on without “progressing,” as the
Americans have it, one inch. And yet the widow was devoted to Sir
Charles. It must be admitted that she every morning expected _the_
question; but every evening that expectation was blighted, and the
worthy baronet returned from his placid state of negative happiness
to his solitary home, to lie awake for hours balancing the chances
of matrimony, and endeavouring to make up his mind to the deciding
inquiry which, if the real truth were told, he lingeringly delayed,
apprehensive that it might meet with a negative certain not only to
kill the hopes which sometimes outweighed his doubts, but to put an end
to his acquaintance with the charming widow altogether.
While Sir Charles Lydiard remained thus drooping in the bright sunshine
of Mrs. Dallington’s eyes, her timid sister Blanche was undergoing a
siege of a very different nature. Far from contenting himself, to use a
military phrase, with sitting down before the place, and establishing a
corps of observation merely to watch the enemy, Frank Rushton, who was
more madly in love than ever dandy had been found to be for many years,
had for the last three months,--the whole period, in fact, of his
acquaintance with her,--been assiduously and incessantly carrying on an
attack upon the heart of his adorable Dulcinea; and, as it appeared,
with as little chance of making an impression as her sister had of
exciting Sir Charles to an offer. In fact, the four players at this
love-game were equally divided into the fiery and frosty; but, which in
the sequel made all the sport, as Mr. Brag would have called it, the
partners were so curiously matched, and the icicles and sunbeams so
regularly and heraldically counter-changed, that the lovers and their
mistresses were the exact opposites of each other. It was extremely
amusing to hear the discussions in which Sir Charles and his friend
Rushton were in the habit of indulging.
“My dear Frank,” said Sir Charles, “your affection for Blanche is
madness,--the way in which you go on, sets me in a fever: and as for
the poor young creature herself, she is absolutely harassed out of her
wits.”
“So _you_ think, Sir Charles,” replied Frank; “but it strikes _me_ that
her sister would not be less pleased with your society if you were
to follow my example. Why there you sit, moping and melancholy, as if
you were on the edge of your own grave, instead of being on the verge
of all earthly happiness: you look and languish, sigh and say nothing,
and, like the Cardinal, ‘die, and make no sign.’”
“It may be so,” said the baronet,--“I suppose it _is_ so; but I
cannot,--struggle as I may with my feelings,--I cannot overcome the
doubts which seem to me to cloud the prospect of the felicity of which
you talk so easily.”
“Doubts! my dear friend,” said Rushton; “what doubts can you have? Your
doubts are, in fact, jealousies,--and how needless! Mrs. Dallington has
been a wife,--and never was a more exemplary wife in the world.”
“Her trial was short,” said Sir Charles; “nor should I call it a fair
one,--her marriage was not one of love.”
“Then so much the greater her credit for the conduct she observed,”
said Rushton.
“The struggle did not last long,” replied Sir Charles: “her husband was
killed within eight months of their marriage.”
“She bore her loss like a Christian,” said Rushton.
“Yes,” sighed the baronet; “it is wonderful to behold the pious
resignation of ladies in her position.”
“Well,” said Rushton, “if your apprehensions overcome your affection,
and your doubts transcend your hopes, break off the acquaintance at
once,--take your hat and go--”
“--And be neither missed nor inquired after, in all probability,” said
Lydiard.
“There you wrong your fair friend,” said Rushton. “She values you,
esteems you, and with a very little trouble on _your_ part would love
you. Your flame is so gentle, that it scarcely warms; and, like the
fire in the grate there, if she did not occasionally stir it with good
nature and kind looks, my belief is, it would go out entirely.”
“My dear Rushton,” said Sir Charles, “you entirely misunderstand my
character, and the character of my affection for our charming friend:
my doubts are the ‘fruits of love.’”
“A most disagreeable harvest, Lydiard,” replied Rushton.
“True,” said Sir Charles, “but I cannot conquer them. You blame my
caution and coldness; but when I see you devoting yourself, hand over
head, if I may so say, to the mild, quiet, timid, blushing creature,
Blanche, I cannot, since I had the honour of introducing you to the
family, but feel anxious on your account. I don’t believe one word of
all those professions of meekness, and mildness, and modesty of which
that young lady is so profusely liberal. I have seen her exchange
looks with her sister,--while you, blinded by your passion, have seen
nothing--which convince me that you would do well to scrutinise and
consider before you plunge into the stormy ocean of matrimony.”
“Why,” said Rushton, “Blanche is something like Moore’s beautiful Nora
Creena:
‘Few her looks, but every one
Like unexpected light surprizes.’”
“Egad!” said Lydiard, “the light I saw was both surprising and
unexpected. I have some little experience in family telegraphs, but the
signal she threw out was one not altogether complimentary to _you_,
for she seemed to me to be laughing at you.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, Charles,” said Rushton. “I too have seen
those telegraphic symptoms; and my opinion is, that if _you_ were to
adopt _my_ style of proceeding, you would find the widow much less
attentive to her sister’s evolutions. But no;--you have fallen into a
custom of going there day after day; you feel at your ease, you enjoy
the society and conversation of a delightful person; and because you
have nothing to excite you to action, so the affair goes on--not even a
dash of jealousy to create a fermentation in your cup of nectar.”
“There you mistake,” said Lydiard. “I--I--certainly never have touched
upon the subject--never opened my lips to a human being about it; but
I am not quite so sure that it is not jealousy which keeps me backward
and depresses me.”
“Indeed!” said Rushton; “jealous! What of somebody who visits at the
house?”
“Yes,” said Sir Charles.
“Do you mean Sir Baggs Waddilove?” said Rushton.
“Psha--no.”
“Perhaps that Colonel Scramshaw?”
“Not a bit of it.”
“The Count?”
“What, Swagandstraddle!--No.”
“Lord Tom Towzle?”
“You burn,” said Sir Charles, “as the children say to the blinded
one;--not of him, Frank--what think you of his friend.”
“What, that horrid, vulgar dog, Brag,” said Rushton, “his toady--his
spaniel?”
“Upon my honour, yes,” said Sir Charles.
“The deuce you are!” said Rushton; “that’s very odd.”
“It is,” said Lydiard. “I confess I am almost ashamed of being ruffled
by such a fellow; but, somehow, Mrs. Dallington seems so much at her
ease with him, notwithstanding his vulgarity, his glaring ignorance,
and his unbounded impertinence, that, upon my honour, I cannot help
thinking----you know women are very odd creatures, and I----”
“You surprise me, Lydiard,” said Rushton, “but not disagreeably. I have
thought,--only don’t mention it--that Blanche has a sort of,--eh--you
understand me--a partiality for him--I don’t know how it is; she
certainly looks at the monster, now and then.”
“What,” interrupted Lydiard, “some more of her few unexpected lights,
eh?”
“I cannot understand it,” said Rushton: “I suppose he entertains them
with his absurdities, and his nonsense, and even his vanity, and his
vulgarity. But I think we may both be pretty secure, that neither of
such women as your widow and my Blanche could entertain a serious
thought of a fellow of whom nobody knows anything except as Lord Tom
Towzle’s tiger, especially in a house into which Lord Tom himself finds
it particularly difficult to get the _entrée_.”
“No,” said Lydiard, “one would not think there was much danger; and
yet--yet you _will_ allow it is very odd indeed that we should both
have been struck with the same notion?”
“So it is,” replied Rushton. “However, as far as _I_ am concerned, I
am determined to fathom the affair to the bottom. I love Blanche better
than my life; but if I thought--”
“Stop, stop, Rushton,” interrupted the worthy baronet. “What has gone
with your stern reproof of my scepticism? Here are _you_ who have been
just rallying me upon my doubts with regard to the loveliest of her
sex, now coming to fathom an affair to the bottom which implicates in
your mind the sincerity and single-heartedness of one of the purest,
gentlest Nora Creenas that ever walked with her eyes cast down upon the
earth.”
“Hang the fellow!” said Rushton; “it is too ridiculous! Besides, he is
not often there. Yet, never mind--he may do good: the smallest wheel in
a great piece of machinery has its work to perform to keep all the rest
going. This stupid animal may serve to equalize our passions, and make
us see clearer; he will cool _me_ and warm _you_, and who knows but it
may turn out all for the best?”
“Why,” said Lydiard, “the fact is pretty clear:--As we have not, even
in this age of liberality, arrived at so great a reform of the church
as to establish the toleration of bigamy, he can marry but one of the
ladies; and, as far as I am concerned, if my adorable widow has a taste
which would lead her to admit the pretensions of that miserable little
animal, I am quite sure it never could be diverted into a passion for
me: and so, Mr. Rushton, if he conquer, he is perfectly welcome to the
fruits of his triumph.”
“Ah, that’s it!” said Rushton: “there are prudence, philosophy, wisdom,
and half a dozen other splendid qualities, combined! But as for _me_,
if he were to be smiled upon in earnest by Blanche, it would be the
last gleam of sunshine one of us should see: he never should live to
enjoy the happiness of which he had deprived me!”
“Now, Rushton,” said Sir Charles, “how unjust, how inconsiderate that
is! If Blanche smile on him and not on you, it is a clear proof that
she prefers him. Why make her miserable by killing the little man? You
might as well shoot her poodle or wring the neck of her canary-bird.”
How much farther this dialogue which was hereabouts interrupted,
might have been carried, it is not in my power to say; but sufficient
has been developed to the reader to show that the incomparable Jack
Brag, by dint of the equivocal introduction of his master Lord Tom
Towzle, had obtained footing at least in one respectable and agreeable
house. It is, as Sir Charles Lydiard says, a matter of impossibility
to ascertain the particular qualities or circumstances by which
women of station and talent, as well as their inferiors in rank and
intellect, are captivated. Certain it is, that after once Mr. Brag
had been admitted to Mrs. Dallington’s house, he was a visitor there
as frequently as he could contrive to manage it; and, as we have
seen, although his other avocations were numerous, he had contrived
to unsettle the minds of two most respectable gentlemen of totally
different characters and dispositions, both pursuing similar objects by
different roads.
We must now recur to Mr. Brag himself, and his career in other places,
into which the bright eyes of the gay widow and her lovely sister
cannot be expected to penetrate.