That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose.Fred Bullock would never allow her to do that.But she was still young and incapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister to her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging her father to quit that odious vulgar place, she did more harm than all Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of her inheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was.
So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs.Maria, hay?"said the old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughter drove away one night from Mrs.
Frederick Bullock's, after dinner."So she invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if those sides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls and the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself.
Honourables? Damn Honourables.I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy the beggarly hounds over and over.Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her swarreys Isaw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.
And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay my life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it, and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking, stuck-up fools.Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh.With such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom of the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.
Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her sister's conduct; and when Mrs.Frederick's first-born, Frederick Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for the nurse."That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LL warrant," he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.
The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the house of Bullock.Maria thought that her father was very much pleased with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.
One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurred every now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs.F.Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady Frederica Bullock.Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such grandeur.It was an awful existence.
She had to get up of black winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been ready at half-past eight.She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the great glum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room.The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of drawing-rooms.When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand piano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a mournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house.George's picture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever made of the brave and once darling son.
At five o'clock Mr.Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and age.Old Dr.
Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.
Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End"; old Colonel Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs.Livermore, from Upper Bedford Place; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs.Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square.Sir Thomas was celebrated as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he dined with Mr.Osborne.
These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant pompous dinners back again.They had solemn rubbers of whist, when they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at half past ten.
Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described.Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr.Smirk, the celebrated ladies' doctor.
