The Man of Law murmured, “Circumstances – circumstances – I thought so!”
Sir Bingo whispered to his friend the Squire, “Run out – blown up – off the course – pity – d – d pretty fellow he has been!”
“A raff from the beginning!” whispered Mowbray. – “I never thought him any thing else.”
“I'll hold ye a poney of that, my dear, and I'll ask him.”
“Done, for a poney, provided you ask him in ten minutes,” said the Squire; “but you dare not, Bingie – he has a d – d cross game look, with all that civil chaff of his.”
“Done,” said Sir Bingo, but in a less confident tone than before, and with a determination to proceed with some caution in the matter. – “I have got a rouleau above, and Winterblossom shall hold stakes.”
“I have no rouleau,” said the Squire; “but I'll fly a cheque on Meiklewham.”
“See it be better than your last,” said Sir Bingo, “for I won't be skylarked again. Jack, my boy, you are had.”
“Not till the bet's won; and I shall see yon walking dandy break your head, Bingie, before that,” answered Mowbray. “Best speak to the Captain before hand – it is a hellish scrape you are running into – I'll let you off yet, Bingie, for a guinea forfeit. – See, I am just going to start the tattler.”
“Start, and be d – d!” said Sir Bingo. “You are gotten, I assure you o' that, Jack.” And with a bow and a shuffle, he went up and introduced himself to the stranger as Sir Bingo Binks.
“Had – honour – write – sir,” were the only sounds which his throat, or rather his cravat, seemed to send forth.
“Confound the booby!” thought Mowbray; “he will get out of leading strings, if he goes on at this rate; and doubly confounded be this cursed tramper, who, the Lord knows why, has come hither from the Lord knows where, to drive the pigs through my game.”
In the meantime, while his friend stood with his stop-watch in his hand, with a visage lengthened under the influence of these reflections, Sir Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world, premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports. With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like enthusiasm; so that Sir Bingo began to hold him in considerable respect, and to assure himself that he could not be, or at least could not originally have been bred, the itinerant artist which he now gave himself out – and this, with the fast lapse of the time, induced him thus to address Tyrrel. – “I say, Mr. Tyrrel – why, you have been one of us – I say” —
“If you mean a sportsman, Sir Bingo – I have been, and am a pretty keen one still,” replied Tyrrel.
“Why, then, you did not always do them sort of things?”
“What sort of things do you mean, Sir Bingo?” said Tyrrel. “I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”
“Why, I mean them sketches,” said Sir Bingo. “I'll give you a handsome order for them, if you will tell me. I will, on my honour.”
“Does it concern you particularly, Sir Bingo, to know any thing of my affairs?” said Tyrrel.
“No – certainly – not immediately,” answered Sir Bingo, with some hesitation, for he liked not the dry tone in which Tyrrel's answers were returned, half so well as a bumper of dry sherry; “only I said you were a d – d gnostic fellow, and I laid a bet you have not been always professional – that's all.”
Mr. Tyrrel replied, “A bet with Mr. Mowbray, I suppose?”
“Yes, with Jack,” replied the Baronet – “you have hit it – I hope I have done him?”
Tyrrel bent his brows, and looked first at Mr. Mowbray, then at the Baronet, and, after a moment's thought, addressed the latter. – “Sir Bingo Binks, you are a gentleman of elegant enquiry and acute judgment. – You are perfectly right – I was not bred to the profession of an artist, nor did I practise it formerly, whatever I may do now; and so that question is answered.”
“And Jack is diddled,” said the Baronet, smiting his thigh in triumph, and turning towards the Squire and the stake-holder, with a smile of exultation.
“Stop a single moment, Sir Bingo,” said Tyrrel; “take one word with you. I have a great respect for bets, – it is part of an Englishman's character to bet on what he thinks fit, and to prosecute his enquiries over hedge and ditch, as if he were steeple-hunting. But as I have satisfied you on the subject of two bets, that is sufficient compliance with the custom of the country; and therefore I request, Sir Bingo, you will not make me or my affairs the subject of any more wagers.”
“I'll be d – d if I do,” was the internal resolution of Sir Bingo. Aloud he muttered some apologies, and was heartily glad that the dinner-bell, sounding at the moment, afforded him an apology for shuffling off in a different direction.
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE-TALK
And, sir, if these accounts be true,
The Dutch have mighty things in view;
The Austrians – I admire French beans,
Dear ma'am, above all other greens.
And all as lively and as brisk
As – Ma'am, d'ye choose a game at whisk?
When they were about to leave the room, Lady Penelope assumed Tyrrel's arm with a sweet smile of condescension, meant to make the honoured party understand in its full extent the favour conferred. But the unreasonable artist, far from intimating the least confusion at an attention so little to be expected, seemed to consider the distinction as one which was naturally paid to the greatest stranger present; and when he placed Lady Penelope at the head of the table, by Mr. Winterblossom the president, and took a chair for himself betwixt her ladyship and Lady Binks, the provoking wretch appeared no more sensible of being exalted above his proper rank in society, than if he had been sitting at the bottom of the table by honest Mrs. Blower from the Bow-head, who had come to the Well to carry off the dregs of the Inflienzie, which she scorned to term a surfeit.
Now this indifference puzzled Lady Penelope's game extremely, and irritated her desire to get at the bottom of Tyrrel's mystery, if there was one, and secure him to her own party. If you were ever at a watering-place, reader, you know that while the guests do not always pay the most polite attention to unmarked individuals, the appearance of a stray lion makes an interest as strong as it is reasonable, and the Amazonian chiefs of each coterie, like the hunters of Buenos-Ayres, prepare their lasso, and manœuvre to the best advantage they can, each hoping to noose the unsuspicious monster, and lead him captive to her own menagerie. A few words concerning Lady Penelope Penfeather will explain why she practised this sport with even more than common zeal.
She was the daughter of an earl, possessed a showy person, and features which might be called handsome in youth, though now rather too much prononcés to render the term proper. The nose was become sharper; the cheeks had lost the roundness of youth; and as, during fifteen years that she had reigned a beauty and a ruling toast, the right man had not spoken, or, at least, had not spoken at the right time, her ladyship, now rendered sufficiently independent by the inheritance of an old relation, spoke in praise of friendship, began to dislike the town in summer, and to “babble of green fields.”
About the time Lady Penelope thus changed the tenor of her life, she was fortunate enough, with Dr. Quackleben's assistance, to find out the virtues of St Ronan's spring; and having contributed her share to establish the urbs in rure, which had risen around it, she sat herself down as leader of the fashions in the little province which she