第55章

ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Be hanged to your aristocrats!' Ponto said, in some conversation we had regarding the family at Carabas, between whom and the Evergreens there was a feud.'When I first came into the county--it was the year before Sir John Buff contested in the Blue interest--the Marquis, then Lord St.Michaels, who, of course, was Orange to the core, paid me and Mrs.Ponto such attentions, that Ifairly confess I was taken in by the old humbug, and thought that I'd met with a rare neighbour.'Gad, Sir, we used to get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from Carabas, and it was--"Ponto, when will you come over and shoot?"--and--"Ponto, our pheasants want thinning,"--and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs.Ponto coming over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what expense for turbans and velvet gowns for my wife's toilette.Well, Sir, the election takes place, and though I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of course induces me to plump for St.Michaels, who comes in at the head of the poll.Next year, Mrs.P.insists upon going to town--with lodgings in Clarges Street at ten pounds a week, with a hired brougham, and new dresses for herself and the girls, and the deuce and all to pay.Our first cards were to Carabas House; my Lady's are returned by a great big flunkey; and I leave you to fancy my poor Betsy's discomfiture as the lodging-house maid took in the cards, and Lady St.Michaels drives away, though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window.Would you believe it, Sir, that though we called four times afterwards, those infernal aristocrats never returned our visit; that though Lady St.Michaels gave nine dinner-parties and four DEJEUNERS that season, she never asked us to one; and that she cut us dead at the Opera, though Betsy was nodding to her the whole night? We wrote to her for tickets for Almack's; she writes to say that all hers were promised; and said, in the presence of Wiggins, her lady's-maid, who told it to Diggs, my wife's woman, that she couldn't conceive how people in our station of life could so far forget themselves as to wish to appear in any such place! Go to Castle Carabas! I'd sooner die than set my foot in the house of that impertinent, insolvent, insolent jackanapes-- and I hold him in scorn!' After this, Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord Carabas's pecuniary affairs;how he owed money all over the county; how Jukes the carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn't get a shilling of his bill; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself for the same reason; how the six big footmen never received a guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the state coachman, actually took off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and flung it at Lady Carabas's feet on the terrace before the Castle; all which stories, as they are private, I do not think proper to divulge.But these details did not stifle my desire to see the famous mansion of Castle Carabas, nay, possibly excited my interest to know more about that lordly house and its owners.

At the entrance of the park, there are a pair of great gaunt mildewed lodges--mouldy Doric temples with black chimney-pots, in the finest classic taste, and the gates of course are surmounted by the CHATS BOTTES, the well-known supporters of the Carabas family.'Give the lodge-keeper a shilling,' says Ponto, (who drove me near to it in his four-wheeled cruelty-chaise).'I warrant it's the first piece of ready money he has received for some time.

I don't know whether there was any foundation for this sneer, but the gratuity was received with a curtsey, and the gate opened for me to enter.'Poor old porteress!'

says I, inwardly.'You little know that it is the Historian of Snobs whom you let in!' The gates were passed.A damp green stretch of park spread right and left immeasurably, confined by a chilly grey wall, and a damp long straight road between two huge rows of moist, dismal lime-trees, leads up to the Castle.In the midst of the park is a great black tank or lake, bristling over with rushes, and here and there covered over with patches of pea-soup.A shabby temple rises on an island in this delectable lake, which is approached by a rotten barge that lies at roost in a dilapidated boat house.Clumps of elms and oaks dot over the huge green flat.Every one of them would have been down long since, but that the Marquis is not allowed to cut the timber.

Up that long avenue the Snobographer walked in solitude.

At the seventy-ninth tree on the left-hand side, the insolvent butcher hanged himself.I scarcely wondered at the dismal deed, so woful and sad were the impressions connected with the place.So, for a mile and a half Iwalked--alone and thinking of death.