taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear of his
stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James
Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she
added, with great graciousness, "you will have the
goodness to pay Mr. James's bill."
She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused
that diplomatist almost to choke with envy. Much as he
had ingratiated himself with his aunt, she had never yet
invited him to stay under her roof, and here was a young
whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome
there.
"I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a
profound bow; "what otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the
luggage from?"
"O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some
alarm, "I'll go."
"What!" said Miss Crawley.
"The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply.
Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr.
Bowls gave one abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant
of the family, but choked the rest of the volley; the
diplomatist only smiled.
"I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down.
"I've never been here before; it was the coachman told
me." The young story-teller! The fact is, that on the
Southampton coach, the day previous, James Crawley had
met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to
make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted
by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in
company with that scientific man and his friends, at the inn
in question.
"I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued.
"Couldn't think of asking you, Ma'am," he added,
generously.
This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more.
"Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of
her hand, "and bring it to me."
Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There
--there's a little dawg," said James, looking frightfully
guilty. "I'd best go for him. He bites footmen's calves."
All the party cried out with laughing at this description;
even Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute
during the interview between Miss Crawley and her
nephew: and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room.
Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss
Crawley persisted in being gracious to the young Oxonian.
There were no limits to her kindness or her compliments
when they once began. She told Pitt he might come to
dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her
in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the
cliff, on the back seat of the barouche. During all this
excursion, she condescended to say civil things to him:
she quoted Italian and French poetry to the poor
bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar,
and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and
be a Senior Wrangler.
"Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these
compliments; "Senior Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other
shop."
"What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady.
"Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the
scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have
been more confidential, but that suddenly there
appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up
pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl
buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean
Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance,
who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he
sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits,
and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter
during the rest of the drive.
On his return he found his room prepared, and his
portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr.
Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to
his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and
compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter
his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament
in which he found himself, in a house full of old women,
jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him.
"Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest
boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not
even Briggs--when she began to talk to him; whereas,
put him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the
boldest bargeman.
At dinner, James appeared choking in a white
neckcloth, and had the honour of handing my Lady Jane
downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley followed
afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of
bundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's time
at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's
comfort, and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel. James
did not talk much, but he made a point of asking all
the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr. Crawley's
challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of
champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in
his honour. The ladies having withdrawn, and the two
cousins being left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, be
came very communicative and friendly. He asked after
James's career at college--what his prospects in life
were--hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a word,
was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with
the port, and he told his cousin his life, his prospects,
his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows with
the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him,
and flying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity.
"The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr.
Crawley, filling his glass, "is that people should do as they
like in her house. This is Liberty Hall, James, and you
can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness than to do
as you please, and ask for what you will. I know you
have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory.
Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy. She
is a Republican in principle, and despises everything like
rank or title."
"Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?"
said James.
"My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's
fault that she is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly
air. "She cannot help being a lady. Besides, I am a
Tory, you know."
"Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old
blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your
radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy.
See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the fellers in a
fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins?
the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old
boy, whilst I buzz this bottle-here. What was I asaying?"
"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt
remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to
"buzz.~
"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting
man? Do you want to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat?
If you do, come down with me to Tom Corduroy's, in
Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier
as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing
at his own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg
or rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know
the difference between a dog and a duck."
"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness,
"it was about blood you were talking, and the
personal advantages which people derive from patrician
birth. Here's the fresh bottle."
"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid
down. "Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND
men. Why, only last term, just before I was rusticated,
that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha--there
was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood,
Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at
Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either
of us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a
sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a brute of a
mare of mine had fell with me only two days before,
out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke.
Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat
off at once--he stood up to the Banbury man for three
minutes, and polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad,
how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all
blood."
"You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued.
"In my time at Oxford, the men passed round the bottle
a little quicker than you young fellows seem to do."
"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his
nose and winking at his cousin with a pair of vinous
eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it on on me. You
want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old
boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my
aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's
a precious good tap."
"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or
make the best of your time now. What says the bard?
'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' "
and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above with a House
of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine
with an immense flourish of his glass.
At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was
opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass
from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass
of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as
his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads
on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from
trying for more, and subsided either into the currant wine,
or to some private gin-and-water in the stables, which
he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his
pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited,
but the quality was inferior: but when quantity and
quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that
he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any
of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the
second bottle supplied by Mr. Bowls.
When the time for coffee came, however, and for a
return to the ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young
gentleman's agreeable frankness left him, and he relapsed
into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself by
saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by
upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening.
If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner,
and his presence threw a damp upon the modest
proceedings of the evening, for Miss Crawley and Lady Jane
at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that
his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy
under that maudlin look.
"He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said
Miss Crawley to Mr. Pitt.
"He is more communicative in men's society than with
ladies," Machiavel dryly replied: perhaps rather
disappointed that the port wine had not made Jim
speak more.
He had spent the early part of the next morning in
writing home to his mother a most flourishing account
of his reception by Miss Crawley. But ah! he little knew
what evils the day was bringing for him, and how short his
reign of favour was destined to be. A circumstance
which Jim had forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance
--had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night
before he had come to his aunt's house. It was no other
than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition,
and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the
course of the night treated the Tutbury champion and
the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice or thrice
to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that no less than
eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were
charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the
amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which
told fatally against poor James's character, when his
aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress's
request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord,
fearing lest the account should be refused altogether,
swore solemnly that the young gent had consumed
personally every farthing's worth of the liquor: and Bowls
paid the bill finally, and showed it on his return home
to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful
prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as
accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention
the circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley.
Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old
spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr.
Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen
glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble
pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be
pardoned readily. Everything went against the lad: he came
home perfumed from the stables, whither he had been
to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and whence he was
going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met
Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which
Towzer would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled
squealing to the protection of Miss Briggs, while the
atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at the
horrible persecution.
This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise
forsaken him. He was lively and facetious at dinner.
During the repast he levelled one or two jokes against Pitt
Crawley: he drank as much wine as upon the previous
day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room,
began to entertain the ladies there with some choice
Oxford stories. He described the different pugilistic qualities
of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give
Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet against the
Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose:
