The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman’s wraps, was evidently a maid-servant; the other, in black, was Pogson’s fair one, evidently. I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow face—of a dusky nightcap flapping over the curl-papers—but these were hidden by a lace veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise were evidently in a moulting state. She was encased in many shawls and wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the carriage—Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interesting creature to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my little Pogson was a lost man.

      After some brief parley between them—in which it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel would speak what he called French to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsey. ‘Adyou!’ said Samuel, and waved his lily hand. ‘Adyou-addimang.’

      A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the imperial, here passed us, and greeted me with a ‘How d’ye do?’ He had shouldered his own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of commissionaires, who would have fain spared him the trouble.

      ‘Do you know that chap?’ says Pogson; ‘surly fellow, ain’t he?’

      ‘The kindest man in existence,’ answered I; ‘all the world knows Major British.’

      ‘He’s a Major, is he?—why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he mightn’t have liked it, you know:’ and then Sam fell into a reverie;—what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.

      ‘Did you ever see such a foot and ankle?’ said Sam, after sitting for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene; his hands in his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.

      ‘Isn’t she a slap-up woman, eh, now?’ pursued he; and began enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favourite animal.

      ‘You seem to have gone a pretty length already,’ said I, ‘by promising to visit her to morrow.’

      ‘A good length?—I believe you. Leave me alone for that.’

      ‘But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked rogue.’

      ‘Two in the coupy? Oh! ah! yes, you know—why, that is, I didn’t know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling without one!), and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in.’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘Couldn’t, you know, as a man of honour; but I made up for all that,’ said Pogson, winking slily, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way.

      ‘You did, and how?’

      ‘Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and my back’s half broke, I can tell you:’ and thus having depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris.

      The next day, at five, we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as ‘slap-up.’ She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucrée, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer: and actually asked him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth’s brow, and I inquired still further.

      ‘Why,’ said he, with a sigh, ‘I thought she was a widow; and, hang it! who should come in but her husband the Baron; a big fellow, sir, with a blue coat, a red ribbing, and such a pair of mustachios!’

      ‘Well,’ said I, ‘he didn’t turn you out, I suppose?’

      ‘Oh no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in—said he had fought in Spain against us—and made me welcome.’

      ‘What could you want more?’

      Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of human nature had been there to read into this little bagman’s heart, it would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young scoundrel was concocting.

      I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see, should be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he did not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any lukewarmness of friendship on that score.

      He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once I had the good fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs Élysées. ‘That’s another tiptop chap,’ said he, when we met, at length. ‘What do you think of an Earl’s son, my boy? Honourable Tom Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?’

      I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. Ringwood at the Baron’s, and they’d been to the play together; and the honourable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well-to-do in a certain quarter; and he had had a game of billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, ‘a very distangy place, where you smoke,’ said Sam; ‘quite select, and frequented by the tiptop nobility;’ and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that day at Ringwood’s, and sup, the next night, with the Baroness.

      ‘I think the chaps down the road will stare,’ said Sam, ‘when they hear how I’ve been coming it.’ And stare, no doubt, they would; for it is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson’s advantages.

      The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together, and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to bestow on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and has plenty of money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt, he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I arrived punctually at my time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very pale and dismal.

      I saw how it had been.—‘A little too much of Mr. Ringwood’s claret, I suppose?’

      He only gave a sickly stare.

      ‘Where does the Honourable Tom live?’ says I.

      ‘Honourable!’ says Sam, with a hollow horrid laugh; ‘I tell you, Dick, he’s no more Honourable than you are.’

      ‘What, an impostor?’

      ‘No, no; not that. He is a real Honourable, only—’

      ‘Oh, ho! I smell a rat—a little jealous, eh?’

      ‘Jealousy СКАЧАТЬ