my lawyer in Gray's Inn; and it was then I thought of coming on to see you, as I
was telling Mrs. Firmin; and a very nice quiet place you live in!"
This was very well. But for the first and only time of his life, Philip was
jealous.
"Don't drub so with your feet! Don't like to ride when you jog so on the floor,"
said Philip's eldest darling, who had clambered on papa's knee. "Why do you look
so? Don't squeeze my arm, papa!"
Mamma was utterly unaware that Philip had any cause for agitation. "You have
walked all the way from Westminster, and the club, and you are quite hot and
tired!" she said. "Some tea, my dear?"
Philip nearly choked with the tea. From under his hair, which fell over his
forehead, he looked into his wife's face. It wore such a sweet look of innocence
and wonder, that, as he regarded her, the spasm of jealousy passed off. No:
there was no look of guilt in those tender eyes. Philip could only read in them
the wife's tender love and anxiety for himself.
But what of Mr. Ringwood's face? When the first little blush and hesitation had
passed away, Mr. Ringwood's pale countenance reassumed that calm selfsatisfied
smile, which it customarily wore. "The coolness of the man maddened me," said
Philip, talking about the little occurrence afterwards, and to his usual
confidant.
"Gracious powers," cried the other. "If I went to see Charlotte and the
children, would you be jealous of me, you bearded Turk? Are you prepared with
sack and bowstring for every man who visits Mrs. Firmin? If you are to come out
in this character, you will lead yourself and your wife pretty lives. Of course
you quarrelled with Lovelace then and there, and threatened to throw him out of
window then and there? Your custom is to strike when you are hot; witness��"
"Oh, dear, no!" cried Philip, interrupting me. "I have not quarrelled with him
yet." And he ground his teeth, and gave a very fierce glare with his eyes. "I
sate him out quite civilly. I went with him to the door; and I have left
directions that he is never to pass it again��that's all. But I have not
quarrelled with him in the least. Two men never behaved more politely than we
did. We bowed and grinned at each other quite amiably. But I own, when he held
out his hand, I was obliged to keep mine behind my back, for they felt very
mischievous, and inclined to��Well, never mind. Perhaps it is, as you say; and
he means no sort of harm."
Where, I say again, do women learn all the mischief they know? Why should my
wife have such a mistrust and horror of this gentleman? She took Philip's side
entirely. She said she thought he was quite right in keeping that person out of
his house. What did she know about that person? Did I not know myself? He was a
libertine, and led a bad life. He had led young men astray, and taught them to
gamble, and helped them to ruin themselves. We have all heard stories about the
late Sir Philip Ringwood; that last scandal in which he was engaged, three years
ago, and which brought his career to an end at Naples, I need not, of course,
allude to. But fourteen or fifteen years ago, about which time this present
portion of our little story is enacted, what did she know about Ringwood's
misdoings?
No: Philip Firmin did not quarrel with Philip Ringwood on this occasion. But he
shut his door on Mr. Ringwood. He refused all invitations to Sir John's house,
which, of course, came less frequently, and which then ceased to come at all.
Rich folks do not like to be so treated by the poor. Had Lady Ringwood a notion
of the reason why Philip kept away from her house? I think it is more than
possible. Some of Philip's friends knew her; and she seemed only pained, not
surprised or angry, at a quarrel which somehow did take place between the two
gentlemen not very long after that visit of Mr. Ringwood to his kinsman in
Milman Street.
"Your friend seems very hot-headed and violent-tempered," Lady Ringwood said,
speaking of that very quarrel. "I am sorry he keeps that kind of company. I am
sure it must be too expensive for him."
As luck would have it, Philip's old school friend, Lord Ascot, met us a very few
days after the meeting and parting of Philip and his cousin in Milman Street,
and invited us to a bachelor's dinner on the river. Our wives (without whose
sanction no good man would surely ever look a whitebait in the face) gave us
permission to attend this entertainment, and remained at home, and partook of a
tea-dinner (blessings on them!) with the dear children. Men grow young again
recite old school and college jokes. I hope that some of us may carry on these
pleasant entertainments until we are fourscore, and that our toothless old gums
will mumble the old stories, and will laugh over the old jokes with ever-renewed
gusto. Does the kind reader remember the account of such a dinner at the
commencement of this history? On this afternoon, Ascot, Maynard, Burroughs
(several of the men formerly mentioned), re-assembled. I think we actually like
each other well enough to be pleased to hear of each other's successes. I know
that one or two good fellows, upon whom fortune has frowned, have found other
good fellows in that company to help and aid them; and that all are better for
that kindly freemasonry.
Before the dinner was served, the guests met on the green of the hotel, and
examined that fair landscape, which surely does not lose its charm in our eyes
because it is commonly seen before a good dinner. The crested elms, the shining
river, the emerald meadows, the painted parterres of flowers around, all wafting
an agreeable smell of friture, of flowers and flounders exquisitely commingled.
Who has not enjoyed these delights? May some of us, I say, live to drink the '58
claret in the year 1900! I have no doubt that the survivors of our society will
still laugh at the jokes which we used to relish when the present century was
still only middle-aged. Ascot was going to be married. Would he be allowed to
dine next year? Frank Berry's wife would not let him come. Do you remember his
tremendous fight with Biggs? Remember? who didn't? Marston was Berry's
bottle-holder; poor Marston, who was killed in India. And Biggs and Berry were
the closest friends in life ever after. Who would ever have thought of Brackley
becoming serious, and being made an archdeacon? Do you remember his fight with
Ringwood? What an infernal bully he was, and how glad we all were when Brackley
thrashed him. What different fates await men! Who would ever have imagined Nosey
Brackley a curate in the mining districts, and ending by wearing a rosette in
his hat? Who would ever have thought of Ringwood becoming such a prodigious
swell and leader of fashion? He was a very shy fellow; not at all a good-looking
fellow: and what a wild fellow he had become, and what a lady-killer. Isn't he
some connection of yours, Firmin? Philip said yes, but that he had scarcely met
Ringwood at all. And one man after another told anecdotes of Ringwood; how he
had y
oung men to play in his house; how he had played in that very "Star and
Garter;" and how he always won. You must please to remember that our story dates
back some sixteen years, when the dice-box still rattled occasionally, and the
king was turned.
As this old school gossip is going on, Lord Ascot arrives, and with him this
very Ringwood about whom the old schoolfellows had just been talking. He came
down in Ascot's phaeton. Of course, the greatest man of the party always waits
for Ringwood. "If we had had a duke at Grey Friars," says some grumbler,
"Ringwood would have made the duke bring him down."
Philip's friend, when he beheld the arrival of Mr. Ringwood, seized Firmin's big
arm, and whispered��
"Hold your tongue. No fighting. No quarrels. Let bygones be bygones. Remember,
there can be no earthly use in a scandal."
"Leave me alone," says Philip, "and don't be afraid."
I thought Ringwood seemed to start back for a moment, and perhaps fancied that
he looked a little pale, but he advanced with a gracious smile towards Philip,
and remarked, "It is a long time since we have seen you at my father's."
Philip grinned and smiled too. "It was a long time since he had been in Hill
Street." But Philip's smile was not at all pleasing to behold. Indeed, a worse
performer of comedy than our friend does not walk the stage of this life.
On this the other gaily remarked he was glad Philip had leave to join the
bachelor's party. Meeting of old schoolfellows very pleasant. Hadn't been to one
of them for a long time: though the "Friars" was an abominable hole; that was
the truth. Who was that in the shovel-hat? a bishop? what bishop?"
It was Brackley, the Archdeacon, who turned very red on seeing Ringwood. For the
fact is, Brackley was talking to Pennystone, the little boy about whom the
quarrel and fight had taken place at school, when Ringwood had proposed forcibly
to take Pennystone's money from him. "I think, Mr. Ringwood, that Pennystone is
big enough to hold his own now, don't you?" said the Archdeacon; and with this
the Venerable man turned on his heel, leaving Ringwood to face the little
in his voice, and a pair of great arms and fists that would have demolished six
Ringwoods in the field.
The sight of these quondam enemies rather disturbed Mr. Ringwood's tranquillity.
"I was dreadfully bullied at that school," he said, in an appealing manner, to
Mr. Pennystone. "I did as others did. It was a horrible place, and I hate the
name of it. I say, Ascot, don't you think that Barnaby's motion last night was
very ill-timed, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer answered him very
neatly?"
This became a cant phrase amongst some of us wags afterwards. Whenever we wished
to change a conversation, it was, "I say, Ascot, don't you think Barnaby's
motion was very ill-timed; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer answered him very
neatly?" You know Mr. Ringwood would scarcely have thought of coming amongst
such common people as his old schoolfellows, but seeing Lord Ascot's phaeton at
Black's, he condescended to drive down to Richmond with his lordship, and I hope
a great number of his friends in St. James's Street saw him in that noble
company.
Windham was the chairman of the evening��elected to that post because he is very
fond of making speeches to which he does not in the least expect you to listen.
All men of sense are glad to hand over this office to him: and I hope, for my
part, a day will soon arrive (but I own, mind you, that I do not carve well)
when we shall have the speeches done by a skilled waiter at the side table, as
we now have the carving. Don't you find that you splash the gravy, that you
mangle the meat, that you can't nick the joint in helping the company to a
dinner-speech? I, for my part, own that I am in a state of tremor and absence of
mind before the operation; in a condition of imbecility during the business; and
that I am sure of a headache and indigestion the next morning. What then? Have I
not seen one of the bravest men in the world, at a city-dinner last year, in a
state of equal panic?��I feel that I am wandering from Philip's adventures to
his biographer's, and confess I am thinking of the dismal fiasco I myself made
on this occasion at the Richmond dinner.
You see, the order of the day at these meetings is to joke at everything��to
joke at the chairman, at all the speakers, at the army and navy, at the
venerable the legislature, at the bar and bench, and so forth. If we toast a
barrister we show how admirably he would have figured in the dock: if a sailor,
how lamentably sea-sick he was: if a soldier, how nimbly he ran away. For
example, we drank the Venerable Archdeacon Brackley and the army. We deplored
the perverseness which had led him to adopt a black coat instead of a red. War
had evidently been his vocation, as he had shown by the frequent battles in
which he had been engaged at school. For what was the other great warrior of the
age famous? for that Roman feature in his face, which distinguished, which gave
a name to, our Brackley��a name by which we fondly clung (cries of "Nosey,
Nosey!") Might that feature ornament ere long the face of��of one of the chiefs
of that army of which he was a distinguished field-officer! Might�� Here I
confess I fairly broke down, lost the thread of my joke��at which Brackley
seemed to look rather severe��and finished the speech with a gobble about
regard, esteem, everybody respect you, and good health, old boy��which answered
quite as well as a finished oration, however the author might be discontented
with it.
The Archdeacon's little sermon was very brief, as the discourses of sensible
divines sometimes will be. He was glad to meet old friends��to make friends with
old foes (loud cries of "Bravo, Nosey!") In the battle of life, every man must
meet with a blow or two; and every brave one would take his facer with good
humour. Had he quarrelled with any old schoolfellow in old times? He wore peace
not only on his coat, but in his heart. Peace and good-will were the words of
the day in the army to which he belonged; and he hoped that all officers in it
were animated by one esprit de corps.
A silence ensued, during which men looked towards Mr. Ringwood, as the "old foe"
towards whom the Archdeacon had held out the hand of amity: but Ringwood, who
had listened to the Archdeacon's speech with an expression of great disgust, did
not rise from his chair��only remarking to his neighbour Ascot, "Why should I
get up? Hang him, I have nothing to say. I say, Ascot, why did you induce me to
come into this kind of thing?"
Fearing that a collision might take place between Philip and his kinsman, I had
drawn Philip away from the place in the room to which Lord Ascot beckoned him,
saying, "Never mind, Philip, about sitting by the lord," by whose side I knew
perfectly well that Mr. Ringwood would find a place. But it was our lot to be
separated from his lordship by merely the table's breadth, and some intervening
vases of flowers and fruits through which we could see and hear our opposite
neighbours. When Ringwood spoke "of this kind of thing," Philip glared across
the table, and started as if he was going to speak; but his neighbour pinched
him on the knee, and whispered to him, "Silence��no scandal. Remember!" The
other fell back, swallowed a glass of wine, and made me far from comfortable by
performing a tattoo on my chair.
The speeches went on. If they were not more eloquent they were more noisy and
lively than before. Then the aid of song was called in to enliven the banquet.
The Archdeacon, who had looked a little uneasy for the last half hour, rose up
at the call for a song, and quitted the room. "Let us go too, Philip," said
Philip's neighbour. "You don't want to hear those dreadful old college songs
over again?" But Philip sulkily said, "You go, I should like to stay."
Lord Ascot was seeing the last of his bachelor life. He liked those last
evenings to be merry; he lingered over them, and did not wish them to end too
quickly. His neighbour was long since tired of the entertainment, and sick of
our company. Mr. Ringwood had lived of late in a world of such fashion that
ordinary mortals were despicable to him. He had no affectionate remembrance of
his early days, or of anybody belonging to them. Whilst Philip was singing his
song of Doctor Luther, I was glad that he could not see the face of surprise and
disgust which his kinsman bore. Other vocal performances followed, including a
song by Lord Ascot, which, I am bound to say, was hideously out of tune; but was
received by his near neighbour complacently enough.
The noise now began to increase, the choruses were fuller, the speeches were
louder and more incoherent. I don't think the company heard a speech by little
Mr. Vanjohn, whose health was drunk as representative of the British Turf, and
who said that he had never known anything about the turf or about play, until
their old schoolfellow, his dear friend��his swell friend, if he might be
permitted the expression��Mr. Ringwood, taught him the use of cards; and once,
in his own house, in May Fair, and once in this very house, the "Star and
Garter," showed him how to play the noble game of Blind Hookey.
"The men are drunk. Let us go away, Ascot. I didn't come for this kind of
thing!" cried Ringwood, furious, by Lord Ascot's side.
This was the expression which Mr. Ringwood had used a short time before, when
Philip was about to interrupt him. He had lifted his gun to fire then, but his
hand had been held back. The bird passed him once more, and he could not help
taking aim.
"This kind of thing is very dull, isn't it, Ringwood?" he called across the
table, pulling away a flower, and glaring at the other through the little open
space.
"Dull, old boy? I call it doosed good fun," cries Lord Ascot, in the height of
good humour.
"Dull? What do you mean?" asked my lord's neighbour.
"I mean, you would prefer having a couple of packs of cards, and a little room,
where you could win three or four hundred from a young fellow? It's more
profitable and more quiet than 'this kind of thing."'
"I say, I don't know what you mean!" cries the other.
"What! You have forgotten already? Has not Vanjohn just told you, how you and
Mr. Deuceace brought him down here, and won his money from him; and then how you
gave him his revenge at your own house in��"
"Did I come here to be insulted by that fellow?" cries Mr. Ringwood, appealing
to his neighbour.
"If that is an insult, you may put it in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Ringwood!"
cries Philip.
"Come away, come away, Ascot! Don't keep me here listening to this bla��"
"If you say another word," says Philip, "I'll send this decanter at your head!"
"Come, come��nonsense! No quarrelling! Make it up! Everybody has had too much!