Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

illumined windows and the bursts of gay and fantastic music that floated from its walls attracted the admiration and curiosity of another party that was assembled in the same fashionable quarter, beneath a canopy not less bright and reclining on a couch scarcely less luxurious, for they were lit by the stars and reposed upon the grass.

“I say, Jim,” said a young genius of fourteen stretching himself upon the turf, “I pity them ere jarvies a sitting on their boxes all the night and waiting for the nobs what is dancing. They as no repose.”

“But they as porter,” replied his friend, a sedater spirit with the advantage of an additional year or two of experience. “They takes their pot of half-and-half by turns, and if their name is called, the link what they subscribe for to pay, sings out ‘here;’ and that’s the way their guvners is done.”

“I think I should like to be a link Jim,” said the young one.

“I wish you may get it,” was the response: “it’s the next best thing to a crossing: it’s what every one looks to when he enters public life, but he soon finds ‘taint to be done without a deal of interest. They keeps it to themselves, and never lets any one in unless he makes himself very troublesome and gets up a party agin ‘em.”

“I wonder what the nobs has for supper,” said the young one pensively. “Lots of kidneys I dare say.”

“Oh! no; sweets is the time of day in these here blowouts: syllabubs like blazes, and snapdragon as makes the flunkys quite pale.”

“I would thank you, sir, not to tread upon this child,” said a widow. She had three others with her, slumbering around, and this was the youngest wrapt in her only shawl.

“Madam,” replied the person whom she addressed, in tolerable English, but with a marked accent, “I have bivouacked in many lands, but never with so young a comrade: I beg you a thousand pardons.”

“Sir, you are very polite. These warm nights are a great blessing, but I am sure I know not what we shall do in the fall of the leaf.”

“Take no thought of the morrow,” said the foreigner, who was a Pole; had served as a boy beneath the suns of the Peninsula under Soult and fought against Diebitsch on the banks of the icy Vistula. “It brings many changes.” And arranging the cloak which he had taken that day out of pawn around him, he delivered himself up to sleep with that facility which is not uncommon among soldiers.

Here broke out a brawl: two girls began fighting and blaspheming; a man immediately came up, chastised and separated them. “I am the Lord Mayor of the night,” he said, “and I will have no row here. ‘Tis the like of you that makes the beaks threaten to expel us from our lodgings.” His authority seemed generally recognized, the girls were quiet, but they had disturbed a sleeping man, who roused himself, looked around him and said with a scared look, “Where am I? What’s all this?”

“Oh! it’s nothin’,” said the elder of the two lads we first noticed, “only a couple of unfortinate gals who’ve prigged a watch from a cove what was lushy and fell asleep under the trees between this and Kinsington.”

“I wish they had not waked me,” said the man, “I walked as far as from Stokenchurch, and that’s a matter of forty miles, this morning to see if I could get some work, and went to bed here without any supper. I’m blessed if I worn’t dreaming of a roast leg of pork.”

“It has not been a lucky day for me,” rejoined the lad, “I could not find a single gentleman’s horse to hold, so help me, except one what was at the House of Commons, and he kept me there two mortal hours and said when he came out, that he would remember me next time. I ain’t tasted no wittals to-day except some cat’s-meat and a cold potatoe what was given me by a cabman; but I have got a quid here, and if you are very low I’ll give you half.”

In the meantime Lord Valentine and the Princess Stephanie of Eurasberg with some companions worthy of such a pair, were dancing a new Mazurka before the admiring assembly at Deloraine House. The ball was in the statue gallery illumined on this night in the Russian fashion, which while it diffused a brilliant light throughout the beautiful chamber, was peculiarly adapted to develop the contour of the marble forms of grace and loveliness that were ranged around.

“Where is Arabella?” enquired Lord Marney of his mother, “I want to present young Huntingford to her. He can be of great use to me, but he bores me so, I cannot talk to him. I want to present him to Arabella.”

“Arabella is in the blue drawing-room. I saw her just now with Mr Jermyn and Charles. Count Soudriaffsky is teaching them some Russian tricks.”

“What are Russian tricks to me; she must talk to young Huntingford; everything depends on his working with me against the Cut-and-Come-again branch-line; they have refused me my compensation, and I am not going to have my estate cut up into ribbons without compensation.”

“My dear Lady Deloraine,” said Lady de Mowbray. “How beautiful your gallery looks to-night! Certainly there is nothing in London that lights up so well.”

“Its greatest ornaments are its guests. I am charmed to see Lady Joan looking so well.”

“You think so?”

“Indeed.”

“I wish—” and here Lady de Mowbray gave a smiling sigh. “What do you think of Mr Mountchesney?”

“He is universally admired.”

“So every one says, and yet—”

“Well what do you think of the Dashville, Fitz?” said Mr Berners to Lord Fitzheron, “I saw you dancing with her.”

“I can’t bear her: she sets up to be natural and is only rude; mistakes insolence for innocence; says everything which comes first to her lips and thinks she is gay when she is only giddy.”

“‘Tis brilliant,” said Lady Joan to Mr Mountchesney.

“When you are here,” he murmured.

“And yet a ball in a gallery of art is not in my opinion in good taste. The associations which are suggested by sculpture are not festive. Repose is the characteristic of sculpture. Do not you think so?”

“Decidedly,” said Mr Mountchesney. “We danced in the gallery at Matfield this Christmas, and I thought all the time that a gallery is not the place for a ball; it is too long and too narrow.”

Lady Joan looked at him, and her lip rather curled.

“I wonder if Valentine has sold that bay cob of his,” said Lord Milford to Lord Eugene de Vere.

“I wonder,” said Lord Eugene.

“I wish you would ask him, Eugene,” said Lord Milford, “you understand, I don’t want him to know I want it.”