第98章

'Musselboro,' he said, 'I'll come up between you and Crosbie. Mr Eames, though I run away from you, the claret shall remain; or, rather, it shall flow backwards and forwards as rapidly as you will.'

'I'll keep it moving,' said Johnny.

'Do; there's a good fellow. It's a nice glass of wine isn't it? Old Ramsby, who keeps as good a stock of stuff as any wine-merchant in London, gave me a hint, three or four years ago, that he'd a lot of tidy Bordeaux. It's '41, you know. He had ninety dozen, and I took it all.'

'What was the figure, Broughton?' said Crosbie, asking the question which he knew was expected.

'Well, I only gave one hundred and four for it then; it's worth a hundred and twenty now. I wouldn't sell a bottle of it for any money.

Come, Dalrymple, pass it round; but fill your glass first.'

'Thank you, no; I don't like it. I'll drink sherry.'

'Don't like it!' said Dobbs Broughton.

'It's strange, isn't it? But I don't.'

'I thought you particularly told me to drink his claret?' said Johnny to his friend afterwards.

'So I did,' said Conway; 'and wonderfully good wine it is. But I make it a rule never to eat or drink anything in a man's house when he praises himself and tells me the price of it.'

'And I make it a rule never to cut the nose off my own face,' said Johnny.

Before he went, Johnny Eames had been specially invited to call on Lady Demolines, and had said that he would do so. 'We live in Porchester Gardens,' said Miss Demolines. 'Upon my word, I believe that the farther London stretches in that direction, the farther mamma will go. She thinks the air so much better. I know it's a long way.'

'Distance is nothing to me,' said Johnny; 'I can always set off over night.

Conway Dalrymple did not get invited to call on Mrs Van Siever, but before he left the house he did say a word or two more to his friend Mrs Broughton as to Clara Van Siever. 'She is a fine young woman,' he said;'she is indeed.'

'You have found it out, have you?'

'Yes; I have found it out. I do not doubt that some day she'll murder her husband or her mother, or startle the world by some newly-invented crime; but that only makes her the more interesting.'

'And when you add to that all the old woman's money,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, 'you think that she might do?'

'For a picture, certainly. I'm speaking of her simply as a model. Could we not manage it? Get her once here, without her mother knowing it, or Broughton, or anyone. I've got the subject --Jael and Sisera, you know.

I should like to put Musselboro in as Sisera, with the nail half driven in.' Mrs Dobbs Broughton declared that the scheme was a great deal too wicked for her participation, but at last she promised to think of it.

'You might as well come up and have a cigar,' Dalrymple said, as he and his friend left Mrs Broughton's house. Johnny said that he would go up and have a cigar or two. 'And now tell me what you think if Mrs Dobbs Broughton and her set,' said Conway.

'Well; I'll tell you what I think of them. I think they stink of money, as people say; but I'm not sure that they've got any all the same.'

'I should suppose he makes a large income.'

'Very likely, and perhaps spends more than he makes. A good deal of it looked to me like make-believe. There's not doubt about the claret, but the champagne was execrable. A man is a criminal to have such stuff handed round to his guests. And there isn't the ring of real gold about the house.'

'I hate the ring of gold, as you call it,' said the artist.

'So do I--I hate it like poison; but if it is there, I like it to be true. There is a sort of persons going now--and one meets them out here and there every day in one's life--who are downright Brummagem as such at the very first moment. My honoured lord and master, Sir Raffle, is one such. There is no mistaking him. Clap him down upon the counter, and he rings dull and untrue at once. Pardon me, my dear Conway, if I say the same of your excellent friend Mr Dobbs Broughton.'

'I think you go a little too far, but I don't deny it. What you mean is, that he's not a gentleman.'

'I mean a great deal more than that. Bless you, when you come to talk of a gentleman, who is to define the word? How do I know whether or no I'm a gentleman myself? When I used to be in Burton Crescent, I was hardly a gentlemen then--sitting at the same table with Mrs Roper and the Lupexes;--do you remember them, and the lovely Amelia?'

'I suppose you were a gentleman, then, as well as now?'

'You, if you had been painting duchesses then, with a studio in Kensington Gardens, would have said so, if you had happened to come across me. I can't define a gentleman, even in my own mind; --but I can define a man with whom I think I can live pleasantly.'

'And poor Dobbs doesn't come within the line?'

'N-o, not quite; a very nice fellow, I'm quite sure, and I'm very much obliged to you for taking me there.'

'I never will take you to any house again. And what did you think of the wife?'

'That's a horse of another colour altogether. A pretty woman with such a fine figure as hers has got a right to be anything she pleases. I see you are a great favourite.'

'No, I'm not;--not especially. I do like her. She wants to make up a match between me and that Miss Van Siever. Miss Van is to have gold by the ingot, and jewels by the bushel, and a hatful of back shares, and a whole mine in Cornwall, for her fortune.'

'And is very handsome into the bargain.'

'Yes; she's handsome.'

'So is her mother,' said Johnny. 'If you take the daughter, I'll take the mother, and see if I can't do you out of a mine or two. Good-night, old fellow. I'm only joking about old Dobbs. I'll go and dine there again tomorrow, if you like it.'