第 10 页

'A reminder, Fred, for to-night--a small party of twenty, making two

hundred light fantastic toes in all, supposing every lady and gentleman

to have the proper complement. I must go, if it's only to begin

breaking off the affair--I'll do it, don't you be afraid. I should like

to know whether she left this herself. If she did, unconscious of any

bar to her happiness, it's affecting, Fred.'

To solve this question, Mr Swiveller summoned the handmaid and

ascertained that Miss Sophy Wackles had indeed left the letter with her

own hands; and that she had come accompanied, for decorum's sake no

doubt, by a younger Miss Wackles; and that on learning that Mr

Swiveller was at home and being requested to walk upstairs, she was

extremely shocked and professed that she would rather die. Mr Swiveller

heard this account with a degree of admiration not altogether

consistent with the project in which he had just concurred, but his

friend attached very little importance to his behavior in this respect,

probably because he knew that he had influence sufficient to control

Richard Swiveller's proceedings in this or any other matter, whenever

he deemed it necessary, for the advancement of his own purposes, to

exert it.

CHAPTER 8

Business disposed of, Mr Swiveller was inwardly reminded of its being

nigh dinner-time, and to the intent that his health might not be

endangered by longer abstinence, dispatched a message to the nearest

eating-house requiring an immediate supply of boiled beef and greens

for two. With this demand, however, the eating-house (having experience

of its customer) declined to comply, churlishly sending back for answer

that if Mr Swiveller stood in need of beef perhaps he would be so

obliging as to come there and eat it, bringing with him, as grace

before meat, the amount of a certain small account which had long been

outstanding. Not at all intimidated by this rebuff, but rather

sharpened in wits and appetite, Mr Swiveller forwarded the same message

to another and more distant eating-house, adding to it by way of rider

that the gentleman was induced to send so far, not only by the great

fame and popularity its beef had acquired, but in consequence of the

extreme toughness of the beef retailed at the obdurant cook's shop,

which rendered it quite unfit not merely for gentlemanly food, but for

any human consumption. The good effect of this politic course was

demonstrated by the speedy arrival of a small pewter pyramid, curiously

constructed of platters and covers, whereof the boiled-beef-plates

formed the base, and a foaming quart-pot the apex; the structure being

resolved into its component parts afforded all things requisite and

necessary for a hearty meal, to which Mr Swiveller and his friend

applied themselves with great keenness and enjoyment.

'May the present moment,' said Dick, sticking his fork into a large

carbuncular potato, 'be the worst of our lives! I like the plan of

sending 'em with the peel on; there's a charm in drawing a potato from

its native element (if I may so express it) to which the rich and

powerful are strangers. Ah! "Man wants but little here below, nor wants

that little long!" How true that is!--after dinner.'

'I hope the eating-house keeper will want but little and that he may

not want that little long,' returned his companion; but I suspect

you've no means of paying for this!'

'I shall be passing present, and I'll call,' said Dick, winking his eye

significantly. 'The waiter's quite helpless. The goods are gone, Fred,

and there's an end of it.'

In point of fact, it would seem that the waiter felt this wholesome

truth, for when he returned for the empty plates and dishes and was

informed by Mr Swiveller with dignified carelessness that he would call

and settle when he should be passing presently, he displayed some

perturbation of spirit and muttered a few remarks about 'payment on

delivery' and 'no trust,' and other unpleasant subjects, but was fain

to content himself with inquiring at what hour it was likely that the

gentleman would call, in order that being presently responsible for the

beef, greens, and sundries, he might take to be in the way at the time.

Mr Swiveller, after mentally calculating his engagements to a nicety,

replied that he should look in at from two minutes before six and seven

minutes past; and the man disappearing with this feeble consolation,

Richard Swiveller took a greasy memorandum-book from his pocket and

made an entry therein.

'Is that a reminder, in case you should forget to call?' said Trent

with a sneer.

'Not exactly, Fred,' replied the imperturbable Richard, continuing to

write with a businesslike air. 'I enter in this little book the names

of the streets that I can't go down while the shops are open. This

dinner today closes Long Acre. I bought a pair of boots in Great Queen

Street last week, and made that no throughfare too. There's only one

avenue to the Strand left often now, and I shall have to stop up that

to-night with a pair of gloves. The roads are closing so fast in every

direction, that in a month's time, unless my aunt sends me a

remittance, I shall have to go three or four miles out of town to get

over the way.'

'There's no fear of failing, in the end?' said Trent.

'Why, I hope not,' returned Mr Swiveller, 'but the average number of

letters it take to soften her is six, and this time we have got as far

as eight without any effect at all. I'll write another to-morrow

morning. I mean to blot it a good deal and shake some water over it out

of the pepper-castor to make it look penitent. "I'm in such a state of

mind that I hardly know what I write"--blot--"if you could see me at

this minute shedding tears for my past misconduct"--pepper-castor--"my

hand trembles when I think"--blot again--if that don't produce the

effect, it's all over.'

By this time, Mr Swiveller had finished his entry, and he now replaced

his pencil in its little sheath and closed the book, in a perfectly

grave and serious frame of mind. His friend discovered that it was time

for him to fulfil some other engagement, and Richard Swiveller was

accordingly left alone, in company with the rosy wine and his own

meditations touching Miss Sophy Wackles.

'It's rather sudden,' said Dick shaking his head with a look of

infinite wisdom, and running on (as he was accustomed to do) with

scraps of verse as if they were only prose in a hurry; 'when the heart

of a man is depressed with fears, the mist is dispelled when Miss

Wackles appears; she's a very nice girl. She's like the red red rose

that's newly sprung in June--there's no denying that--she's also like a

melody that's sweetly played in tune. It's really very sudden. Not that

there's any need, on account of Fred's little sister, to turn cool

directly, but its better not to go too far. If I begin to cool at all I

must begin at once, I see that. There's the chance of an action for

breach, that's another. There's the chance of--no, there's no chance of

that, but it's as well to be on the safe side.'

This undeveloped was the possibility, which Richard Swiveller sought to

conceal even from himself, of his not being proof against the charms of

Miss Wackles, and in some unguarded moment, by linking his fortunes to

hers forever, of putting it out of his own power to further their

notable scheme to which he had so readily become a party. For all these

reasons, he decided to pick a quarrel with Miss Wackles without delay,

and casting about for a pretext determined in favour of groundless

jealousy. Having made up his mind on this important point, he

circulated the glass (from his right hand to left, and back again)

pretty freely, to enable him to act his part with the greater

discretion, and then, after making some slight improvements in his

toilet, bent his steps towards the spot hallowed by the fair object of

his meditations.

The spot was at Chelsea, for there Miss Sophia Wackles resided with her

widowed mother and two sisters, in conjunction with whom she maintained

a very small day-school for young ladies of proportionate dimensions; a

circumstance which was made known to the neighbourhood by an oval board

over the front first-floor windows, whereupon appeared in circumambient

flourishes the words 'Ladies' Seminary'; and which was further

published and proclaimed at intervals between the hours of half-past

nine and ten in the morning, by a straggling and solitary young lady of

tender years standing on the scraper on the tips of her toes and making

futile attempts to reach the knocker with a spelling-book. The several

duties of instruction in this establishment were thus discharged.

English grammar, composition, geography, and the use of the dumb-bells,

by Miss Melissa Wackles; writing, arithmetic, dancing, music, and

general fascination, by Miss Sophia Wackles; the art of needle-work,

marking, and samplery, by Miss Jane Wackles; corporal punishment,

fasting, and other tortures and terrors, by Mrs Wackles. Miss Melissa

Wackles was the eldest daughter, Miss Sophy the next, and Miss Jane the

youngest. Miss Melissa might have seen five-and-thirty summers or

thereabouts, and verged on the autumnal; Miss Sophy was a fresh, good

humoured, buxom girl of twenty; and Miss Jane numbered scarcely sixteen

years. Mrs Wackles was an excellent but rather venomous old lady of

three-score.

To this Ladies' Seminary, then, Richard Swiveller hied, with designs

obnoxious to the peace of the fair Sophia, who, arrayed in virgin

white, embellished by no ornament but one blushing rose, received him

on his arrival, in the midst of very elegant not to say brilliant

preparations; such as the embellishment of the room with the little

flower-pots which always stood on the window-sill outside, save in

windy weather when they blew into the area; the choice attire of the

day-scholars who were allowed to grace the festival; the unwonted curls

of Miss Jane Wackles who had kept her head during the whole of the

preceding day screwed up tight in a yellow play-bill; and the solemn

gentility and stately bearing of the old lady and her eldest daughter,

which struck Mr Swiveller as being uncommon but made no further

impression upon him.

The truth is--and, as there is no accounting for tastes, even a taste

so strange as this may be recorded without being looked upon as a

wilful and malicious invention--the truth is that neither Mrs Wackles

nor her eldest daughter had at any time greatly favoured the

pretensions of Mr Swiveller, being accustomed to make slight mention of

him as 'a gay young man' and to sigh and shake their heads ominously

whenever his name was mentioned. Mr Swiveller's conduct in respect to

Miss Sophy having been of that vague and dilatory kind which is usually

looked upon as betokening no fixed matrimonial intentions, the young

lady herself began in course of time to deem it highly desirable, that

it should be brought to an issue one way or other. Hence she had at

last consented to play off against Richard Swiveller a stricken

market-gardner known to be ready with his offer on the smallest

encouragement, and hence--as this occasion had been specially assigned

for the purpose--that great anxiety on her part for Richard Swiveller's

presence which had occasioned her to leave the note he has been seen to

receive. 'If he has any expectations at all or any means of keeping a

wife well,' said Mrs Wackles to her eldest daughter, 'he'll state 'em

to us now or never.'--'If he really cares about me,' thought Miss

Sophy, 'he must tell me so, to-night.'

But all these sayings and doings and thinkings being unknown to Mr

Swiveller, affected him not in the least; he was debating in his mind

how he could best turn jealous, and wishing that Sophy were for that

occasion only far less pretty than she was, or that she were her own

sister, which would have served his turn as well, when the company

came, and among them the market-gardener, whose name was Cheggs. But Mr

Cheggs came not alone or unsupported, for he prudently brought along

with him his sister, Miss Cheggs, who making straight to Miss Sophy and

taking her by both hands, and kissing her on both cheeks, hoped in an

audible whisper that they had not come too early.

'Too early, no!' replied Miss Sophy.

'Oh, my dear,' rejoined Miss Cheggs in the same whisper as before,

'I've been so tormented, so worried, that it's a mercy we were not here

at four o'clock in the afternoon. Alick has been in such a state of

impatience to come! You'd hardly believe that he was dressed before

dinner-time and has been looking at the clock and teasing me ever

since. It's all your fault, you naughty thing.'

Hereupon Miss Sophy blushed, and Mr Cheggs (who was bashful before

ladies) blushed too, and Miss Sophy's mother and sisters, to prevent Mr

Cheggs from blushing more, lavished civilities and attentions upon him,

and left Richard Swiveller to take care of himself. Here was the very

thing he wanted, here was good cause reason and foundation for

pretending to be angry; but having this cause reason and foundation

which he had come expressly to seek, not expecting to find, Richard

Swiveller was angry in sound earnest, and wondered what the devil

Cheggs meant by his impudence.

However, Mr Swiveller had Miss Sophy's hand for the first quadrille

(country-dances being low, were utterly proscribed) and so gained an

advantage over his rival, who sat despondingly in a corner and

contemplated the glorious figure of the young lady as she moved through

the mazy dance. Nor was this the only start Mr Swiveller had of the

market-gardener, for determining to show the family what quality of man