people wouldn't come--and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has madea series of experiments on her digestive functions, so extremely complicated and daring, that if they could be published with their results it might benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from all parts of the world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole, when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the following words fall from her:
'I assure you, my dear Veneering--'
8
(Poor Twemlow's hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem now, that Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.)
'I assure you, my dear Veneering, that it is the oddest affair! Like the advertising people, I don't ask you to trust me, without offering
a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows all about it.'
Mortimer raises his drooping eyelids, and slightly opens his mouth. But a faint smile, expressive of 'What's the use!' passes over his
face, and he drops his eyelids and shuts his mouth.
'Now, Mortimer,' says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her closed green fan upon the knuckles of her left hand--which is particularly rich in knuckles, 'I insist upon your telling all that is to be told about the man from Jamaica.'
'Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except the man who was a brother,' replies Mortimer.
'Tobago, then.'
'Nor yet from Tobago.'
'Except,' Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young lady, who has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette out of his way: 'except our friend who long lived on rice-pudding and isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his physician said something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.'
A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out. An unfulfilled impression, for he goes in again.
'Now, my dear Mrs Veneering,' quoth Lady Tippins, I appeal to you whether this is not the basest conduct ever known in this world? I carry my lovers about, two or three at a time, on condition that they are very obedient and devoted; and here is my oldest lover-in- chief, the head of all my slaves, throwing off his allegiance before company! And here is another of my lovers, a rough Cymon at present certainly, but of whom I had most hopeful expectations as to his turning out well in course of time, pretending that he can't remember his nursery rhymes! On purpose to annoy me, for he knows how I doat upon them!'
A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady Tippins's point. She is always attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a little list
of her lovers, and she is always booking a new lover, or striking out an old lover, or putting a lover in her black list, or promoting
a lover to her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or otherwise posting her book. Mrs Veneering is charmed by the humour, and so is
Veneering. Perhaps it is enhanced by a certain yellow play in Lady Tippins's throat, like the legs of scratching poultry.
'I banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out of my Cupidon (my name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night. But I am resolved to have the account of the man from Somewhere, and I beg you to elicit it for me, my love,' to Mrs Veneering, 'as
I have lost my own influence. Oh, you perjured man!' This to Mortimer, with a rattle of her fan.
'We are all very much interested in the man from Somewhere,' Veneering observes.
Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:
'Deeply interested!'
'Quite excited!'
'Dramatic!'
'Man from Nowhere, perhaps!'
And then Mrs Veneering--for the Lady Tippins's winning wiles are contagious--folds her hands in the manner of a supplicating child, turns to her left neighbour, and says, 'Tease! Pay! Man from Tumwhere!' At which the four Buffers, again mysteriously moved all four at once, explain, 'You can't resist!'
'Upon my life,' says Mortimer languidly, 'I find it immensely embarrassing to have the eyes of Europe upon me to this extent, and my only consolation is that you will all of you execrate Lady Tippins in your secret hearts when you find, as you inevitably will, the man from Somewhere a bore. Sorry to destroy romance by fixing him with a local habitation, but he comes from the place, the name
9
of which escapes me, but will suggest itself to everybody else here, where they make the wine.' Eugene suggests 'Day and Martin's.'
'No, not that place,' returns the unmoved Mortimer, 'that's where they make the Port. My man comes from the country where they
make the Cape Wine. But look here, old fellow; its not at all statistical and it's rather odd.'
It is always noticeable at the table of the Veneerings, that no man troubles himself much about the Veneerings themselves, and that any one who has anything to tell, generally tells it to anybody else in preference.
'The man,' Mortimer goes on, addressing Eugene, 'whose name is Harmon, was only son of a tremendous old rascal who made his money by Dust.'
'Red velveteens and a bell?' the gloomy Eugene inquires.
'And a ladder and basket if you like. By which means, or by others, he grew rich as a Dust Contractor, and lived in a hollow in a
hilly country entirely composed of Dust. On his own small estate the growling old vagabond threw up his own mountain range, like an old volcano, and its geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust, crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust,--all manner of Dust.'
A passing remembrance of Mrs Veneering, here induces Mortimer to address his next half-dozen words to her; after which he wan-
ders away again, tries Twemlow and finds he doesn't answer, ultimately takes up with the Buffers who receive him enthusiastically.
'The moral being--I believe that's the right expression--of this exemplary person, derived its highest gratification from anathematizing his nearest relations and turning them out of doors. Having begun (as was natural) by rendering these attentions to the wife of his bosom, he next found himself at leisure to bestow a similar recognition on the claims of his daughter. He chose a husband
for her, entirely to his own satisfaction and not in the least to hers, and proceeded to settle upon her, as her marriage portion, I don't know how much Dust, but something immense. At this stage of the affair the poor girl respectfully intimated that she was secretly engaged to that popular character whom the novelists and versifiers call Another, and that such a marriage would make Dust of her heart and Dust of her life--in short, would set her up, on a very extensive scale, in her father's business. Immediately, the venerable parent--on a cold winter's night, it is said--anathematized and turned her out.'
Here, the Analytical Chemist (who has evidently formed a very low opinion of Mortimer's story) concedes a little claret to the Buffers; who, again mysteriously moved all four at once, screw it slowly into themselves with a peculiar twist of enjoyment, as they cry in chorus, 'Pray go on.'
'The pecuniary resources
