“Well, we are all attention,” said Gerard with a smile.
“Hush!” said their host as a bell sounded, and he jumped up. “Now ladies, now gentlemen, if you please; silence if you please for a song from a Polish lady. The Signora sings English like a new-born babe;” and the curtain drew up amid the hushed voices of the company and the restrained clatter of their knives and forks and glasses.
The Polish lady sang “Cherry Ripe” to the infinite satisfaction of her audience. Young Mowbray indeed, in the shape of Dandy Mick and some of his followers and admirers, insisted on an encore. The lady as she retired curtseyed like a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his legs for some time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who expressed by their applause how much they approved his enterprise. At length he resumed his seat; “It’s almost too much.” he exclaimed; “the enthusiasm of these people. I believe they look upon me as a father.”
“And you think you have some clue to this Hatton?” resumed Stephen.
“They say he has no relations,” said their host.
“I have heard as much.”
“Another glass of the bar mixture, Master Gerard. What did we call it? Oh! the bricks and beans—the Mowbray bricks and beans; known by that name in the time of my grandfather. No more! No use asking Mr Morley I know. Water! well, I must say—and yet, in an official capacity, drinking water is not so unnatural.”
“And Hatton.” said Gerard; “they say he has no relations, eh?”
“They do, and they say wrong. He has a relation; he has a brother; and I can put you in the way of finding him.”
“Well, that looks like business,” said Gerard; “and where may he be?”
“Not here,” said their host; “he never put his foot in the Temple to my knowledge; and lives in a place where they have as much idea of popular institutions as any Turks or heathen you ever heard of.”
“And where might we find him?” said Stephen.
“What’s that?” said their host jumping up and looking around him. “Here boys, brush about. The American gentleman is a whittling his name on that new mahogany table. Take him the printed list of rules, stuck up in a public place, under a great coat, and fine him five shillings for damaging the furniture. If he resists (he has paid for his liquor), call in the police; X. Z. No. 5 is in the bar, taking tea with your mistress. Now brush.”
“And this place is—”
“In the land of mines and minerals,” said their host; “about ten miles from ——. He works in metals on his own account. You have heard of a place called Hell-house Yard; well, he lives there; and his name is Simon.”
“And does he keep up any communication with his brother, think you?” said Gerard.
“Nay, I know no more; at least at present,” said their host. “The secretary asked me about a person absent without leave for twenty years and who was said to have no relations, I found you one and a very near one. You are at the station and you have got your ticket. The American gentleman’s wiolent. Here’s the police. I must take a high tone.” And with these words Chaffing Jack quitted them.
In the meantime, we must not forget Dandy Mick and his two young friends whom he had so generously offered to treat to the Temple.
“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Caroline of Harriet in a whisper as they entered the splendid apartment.
“It’s just what I thought the Queen lived in,” said Harriet; “but indeed I’m all of a flutter.”
“Well, don’t look as if you were,” said her friend.
“Come along gals,” said Mick; “who’s afraid? Here, we’ll sit down at this table. Now, what shall we have? Here waiter; I say waiter!”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir.”
“Well, why don’t you come when I call,” said Mick with a consequential air. “I have been hallooing these ten minutes. Couple of glasses of bar mixture for these ladies and go of gin for myself. And I say waiter, stop, stop, don’t be in such a deuced hurry; do you think folks can drink without eating;—sausages for three; and damme, take care they are not burnt.”
“Yes, sir, directly, directly.”
“That’s the way to talk to these fellows,” said Mick with a self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by the admiring gaze of his companions.
“It’s pretty Miss Harriet,” said Mick looking up at the ceiling with a careless nil admirari glance.
“Oh! it is beautiful,” said Harriet.
“You never were here before; it’s the only place. That’s the Lady of the Lake,” he added, pointing to a picture; “I’ve seen her at the Circus, with real water.”
The hissing sausages crowning a pile of mashed potatoes were placed before them; the delicate rummers of the Mowbray slap-bang, for the girls; the more masculine pewter measure for their friend.
“Are the plates very hot?” said Mick;
“Very sir.”
“Hot plates half the battle,” said Mick.
“Now, Caroline; here, Miss Harriet; don’t take away your plate, wait for the mash; they mash their taters here very elegant.”
It was a very happy and very merry party. Mick delighted to help his guests, and to drink their healths.
“Well,” said he when the waiter had cleared away their plates, and left them to their less substantial luxuries. “Well,” said Mick, sipping a renewed glass of gin twist and leaning back in his chair, “say what they please, there’s nothing like life.”
“At the Traffords’,” said Caroline, “the greatest fun we ever had was a singing class.”
“I pity them poor devils in the country,” said Mick; “we got some of them at Collinson’s—come from Suffolk they say; what they call hagricultural labourers, a very queer lot, indeed.”
“Ah! them’s the himmigrants,” said Caroline; “they’re sold out of slavery, and sent down by Pickford’s van into the labour market to bring down our wages.”
“We’ll teach them a trick or two before they do that,” urged Mick. “Where are you, Miss Harriet?”
“I’m at Wiggins and Webster’s, sir.”
“Where they clean machinery during meal-time; that won’t do,” said Mick. “I see one of your partners coming in,” said Mick, making many signals to a person who very soon joined them. “Well, Devilsdust, how are you?”
This was the familiar appellation of a young gentleman, who really had no other, baptismal or patrimonial. About a fortnight after his mother had introduced him into the world, she returned to her factory and put her infant out to nurse, that is to say, paid threepence a week to an old woman who takes charge of these new-born babes for the day, and gives them back at night to their mothers as they hurriedly return from the scene of their labour to the dungeon or the den, which is still by courtesy called “home.” The expense is not great: laudanum and treacle, administered in the shape of some popular elixir, affords these innocents a brief taste of the sweets of existence, and keeping them quiet, prepares them for the silence of their impending grave. Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England, as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the vital principle is an impulse from an immortal artist, and sometimes