"Pray go on, mamma," Rosa said with tears in her eyes. "Should you like to break the chandelier?"
"Ungrateful, unnatural child!" bellowed the other. "Only that I know you couldn"t do without me, I"d leave the house this minute."
"As you wish," said Rosa; but Mrs. G. DIDN"T wish: and in this juncture Truncheon arrived.
That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with admirable precision and neatness; ranged the plate on the sideboard with graceful accuracy, but objected to that old thing in the centre, as he called Mrs. Gashleigh"s silver basket, as c.u.mbrous and useless for the table, where they would want all the room they could get.
Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent progress made, until this great man came: but where there was a revolt before, and a general disposition to strike work and to yell out defiance against Mrs. Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered and furious in the drawing-room--where there was before commotion, at the appearance of the master-spirit, all was peace and unanimity: the cook went back to her pans, the housemaid busied herself with the china and gla.s.s, cleaning some articles and breaking others, b.u.t.tons sprang up and down the stairs, obedient to the orders of his chief, and all things went well and in their season.
At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham"s. At a quarter past six, Timmins himself arrived.
At half past six he might have been heard shouting out for his varnished boots but we know where THOSE had been hidden--and for his dressing things; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them away.
As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting, "Nurse!
b.u.t.tons! Rosa my dear!" and the most fearful execrations up and down the stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out on him.
"Egscuse me, sir," says he, "but it"s impawsable. We can"t dine twenty at that table--not if you set "em out awinder, we can"t."
"What"s to be done?" asked Fitzroy, in an agony; "they"ve all said they"d come."
"Can"t do it," said the other; "with two top and bottom--and your table is as narrow as a bench--we can"t hold more than heighteen, and then each person"s helbows will be into his neighbor"s cheer."
"Rosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!" cried out Timmins, "come down and speak to this gentl--this--"
"Truncheon, sir," said the man.
The women descended from the drawing-room. "Look and see, ladies," he said, inducting them into the dining-room: "there"s the room, there"s the table laid for heighteen, and I defy you to squeege in more."
"One person in a party always fails," said Mrs. Gashleigh, getting alarmed.
"That"s nineteen," Mr. Truncheon remarked. "We must knock another hoff, Ma"m." And he looked her hard in the face.
Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather squeezed round the table (it was as much as she could do). The chairs could not be put any closer than they were. It was impossible, unless the convive sat as a centre-piece in the middle, to put another guest at that table.
"Look at that lady movin" round, sir. You see now the difficklty. If my men wasn"t thinner, they couldn"t hoperate at all," Mr. Truncheon observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. Gashleigh.
"What is to be done?" she said, with purple accents.
"My dearest mamma," Rosa cried out, "you must stop at home--how sorry I am!" And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, who shot another at the great Truncheon, who held down his eyes. "We could manage with heighteen," he said, mildly.
Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh.
She went away. At eight o"clock she was pacing at the corner of the street, and actually saw the company arrive. First came the Topham Sawyers, in their light-blue carriage with the white hammercloth and blue and white ribbons--their footmen drove the house down with the knocking.
Then followed the ponderous and snuff-colored vehicle, with faded gilt wheels and bra.s.s earl"s coronets all over it, the conveyance of the House of Bungay. The Countess of Bungay and daughter stepped out of the carriage. The fourteenth Earl of Bungay couldn"t come.
Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin"s fly made its appearance, from which issued the General with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow satin. The Rowdys"
brougham followed next; after which Mrs. b.u.t.t"s handsome equipage drove up.
The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the Temple, now arrived in cab No. 9996. We tossed up, in fact, which should pay the fare.
Mr. Ranville Ranville walked, and was dusting his boots as the Templars drove up. Lord Castlemouldy came out of a twopenny omnibus. Funnyman, the wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in a hansom, just as Mrs.
Gashleigh, with rage in her heart, was counting that two people had failed, and that there were only seventeen after all.
Mr. Truncheon pa.s.sed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled them out on the stairs. Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and looking as fresh as an angel, and received her company with that grace which has always characterized her.
The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled off on the arm of Fitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Rosa and Lord Castlemouldy, of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, co, Tipperary. Some fellows who had the luck took down ladies to dinner. I was not sorry to be out of the way of Mrs. Rowdy, with her dandified airs, or of that high and mighty county princess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer.
VII.
Of course it does not become the present writer, who has partaken of the best entertainment which his friends could supply, to make fun of their (somewhat ostentatious, as it must be confessed) hospitality. If they gave a dinner beyond their means, it is no business of mine. I hate a man who goes and eats a friend"s meat, and then blabs the secrets of the mahogany. Such a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again; and though at the close of a London season that seems no great loss, and you sicken of a whitebait as you would of a whale--yet we must always remember that there"s another season coming, and hold our tongues for the present.
As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins"s table, that would be absurd. Everybody--(I mean of the genteel world of course, of which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)--Everybody has the same everything in London. You see the same coats, the same dinners, the same boiled fowls and mutton, the same cutlets, fish, and cuc.u.mbers, the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice, &c. The waiters with white neck-cloths are as like each other everywhere as the peas which they hand round with the ducks of the second course. Can"t any one invent anything new?
The only difference between Timmins"s dinner and his neighbor"s was, that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of the plate, and that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no one else probably took heed.
But Rosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons--which had, in fact, been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy"s friends--(I know, for instance, that he had my six, among others, and only returned five, along with a battered old black-p.r.o.nged plated abomination, which I have no doubt belongs to Mrs. Gashleigh, whom I hereby request to send back mine in exchange)--their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies: whereas, it is probable that n.o.body present thought of their failings at all. People never do: they never see holes in their neighbors" coats--they are too indolent, simple, and charitable.
Some things, however, one could not help remarking: for instance, though Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and being amused by his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious? His eye wandered all round the little room with quick uneasy glances, very different from those frank and jovial looks with which he is accustomed to welcome you to a leg of mutton; and Rosa, from the other end of the table, and over the flowers, entree dishes, and wine-coolers, telegraphed him with signals of corresponding alarm. Poor devils! why did they ever go beyond that leg of mutton?
Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely opening his mouth, except for the purposes of feasting. The fact is, our friend Tom Dawson was at table, who knew all his stories, and in his presence the greatest wag is always silent and uneasy.
Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on circuit; but he is timid before great people. And indeed the presence of that awful Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough to damp him. She was in court mourning (for the late Prince of Schlippenschloppen). She had on a large black funereal turban and appurtenances, and a vast breastplate of twinkling, twiddling black bugles. No wonder a man could not be gay in talking to HER.
Mrs. Rowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women do who have the same receiving nights, and ask the same society; they were only separated by Ranville Ranville, who tries to be well with both and they talked at each other across him.
Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, Ireland, and the Navigation Laws, quite unfit for print. Sawyer never speaks three words without mentioning the House and the Speaker.
The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) but he ate and drank of everything which came in his way; and cut his usual absurd figure in dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.
General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest Sancho"s physician at Barataria.
Botherby"s stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since the barricades of 1848; and he could not get in a word or cut the slightest figure. And as for Tom Dawson, he was carrying on an undertoned small-talk with Lady Barbara St. Mary"s, so that there was not much conversation worth record going on WITHIN the dining-room.
Outside it was different. Those houses in Lilliput Street are so uncommonly compact, that you can hear everything which takes place all over the tenement; and so--
In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being furthermore open, we had the benefit of hearing:
The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging rapid phrases regarding the dinner;
The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen-maid and soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions. This accident created a laugh, and rather amused Fitzroy and the company, and caused Funnyman to say, bowing to Rosa, that she was mistress of herself, though China fall. But she did not heed him, for at that moment another noise commenced, namely, that of--
The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing yells, which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the nursery-door, were only more dreadful to the mother when suppressed. She would have given a guinea to go up stairs and have done with the whole entertainment.