"Perhaps the fair Courteen has slighted him," said Chalkley. "Serve him right. He had no business to take himself so seriously. 'Tis very fashionable to be a poet, but egad! 'tis devilish low to behave like one."
"Is that Miss Phyllida Courteen?" said Vernon, trying to speak as though he had read her name in the list of visitors published every week by the proprietors of the _Curtain Wells Chronicle and Pump Room Intelligencer_.
"Aye! d'ye know her? Blooming seventeen with a short upper lip, blue eyes and hair the colour of that chestnut gelding, What's His Name sold 'tother day."
"Very poor animal," said Golightly.
"Not at all. I disagree with you."
"Very poor animal indeed," said Golightly.
"It fetched a very pretty price."
"Oh," said Mr. Golightly and the argument was over.
"Does she carry a white swansdown muff?" asked Vernon.
"Who?"
"Miss Courteen."
"Eh? Oh! I don't know," and since Mr. Chalkley's tone of voice implied a lack of further interest on the subject, the subject was dropped.
"My belief is," said Lieutenant Blewforth loudly, and moving as he spoke in the direction of the fireplace. "Egad, Vernon would you take it unkind if I rang for a tankard of ale? I'm as dry as a gunner in action. My belief is," he went on spreading his coat-tails to the genial warmth, "my belief is----"
"Gadslife! B-B-lewforth," interrupted Peter Wingfield, "pray get on with the recitation of your c-creed."
"Don't get excited, little man," said Blewforth. "My belief is Charles wrote that book."
"What book?" said Chalkley, whose acquaintance with the literature of the day was remarkably small.
"Curtain Polls."
"Never heard of it," said Mr. Chalkley.
"Rubbish!" said Clare, entering suddenly into the conversation. "Rubbish!" and yet Mr. Anthony Clare was one of the two people in the room who knew for certain that Charles was, indeed, the author of that satirical trifle.
"It has caused a terrible amount of talk," Blewforth went on. "My old aunt Seaworthy to whom I paid my annual visit yesterday tells me that all the world is very much hurt at being treated with such freedom."
"I d-don't see why Charles should take to drink because he's wrote a book." This was from Peter Wingfield.
"Ripple may have been annoyed. He's confoundedly touchy about a little matter like that and Charles thinks Ripple is a demigod."
The Earl of Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe came into the room at that moment, and Mr. Vernon, who had been feeling a little outside the intimacy of the company, made haste to propose that, everybody save Charles being present, the wine should be brought in.
Everybody agreed that nothing fitted in more exactly with their wishes than Mr. Vernon's timely suggestion and everybody selected his chair with that preciseness which stamps the beginning of an entertainment. Everybody sat down and the nuts were circulated.
Presently John entered with twelve quart-bottles of Burgundy on a huge tray. All of them had been gently warmed before a slow fire, and all of them were wiped clean of the cobwebs and dust of the several years spent in the ample cellars of the _Blue Boar_.
Vernon had prepared a short oration for the entrance of the liquor and while John reverently stationed a bottle at everybody's right hand, he made haste to deliver it. Perhaps his utterance was a shade too reminiscent of one of the many prologues spoken by his mother at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but that did not matter since nobody in the room was old enough to remember that lady's inimitable delivery of Mr. Dryden's rhymed Alexandrines.
"The life of Burgundy," said Mr. Vernon, "is very like the life of a butterfly. At first the grape or caterpillar-grub, feeding upon the richness of the soil, then the cocoon or bottle stage when it languishes for many years in darkness below the earth until--until it emerges glowing with a thousand varied tints of crimson--and, like a butterfly, wings its airy way into the brain of mankind."
The company, with the exception of my Lord Squall who was sometimes taken in the old family coach of the Winds to hear his father speak in the House of Lords, were not accustomed to lengthy speeches and looked at each other bashfully.
Lieutenant Blewforth with nautical tact saved the situation by drinking Mr. Vernon's health in a very large and brimming pint bumper which he emptied in two sonorous gulps.
As everybody else proceeded to follow this good example, everybody was soon very cheerful, and the advent of the second dozen of bottles was mightily applauded.
However, the master mind was still absent and the drinking, though steady, had not yet enlivened the company to uproarious spirits.
"Where's Charles?" bellowed Blewforth munching a devilled biscuit. "Where's that fellow Charles. Demme! He'll never catch us up at this rate and we shall have him sober as a post-captain when we are beginning to amuse ourselves."
"What, you rogue," cried our hero entering just as the Lieutenant bellowed his inquiry. "I wager five guineas, I am two bottles ahead of any gentleman present." In order to clinch the bet he flung his purse in the direction of the table. The gauntlet snuffed in its course two of the candles and fell with a plump into a piping bowl of punch splashing Tom Chalkley as high as his stock and imparting to His Majesty's uniform an odour of hot squeezed lemons that lasted for quite a couple of weeks.
"Charles! Charles!" bellowed the burly Lieutenant, "Huzza for Charles!"
The latter lurched into the vacant chair next to his friend Tony without a word to the host. However, nobody observed this breach of good manners, because everybody was anxiously leaning over to fill every glass in reach of the newcomer as a preliminary to drinking his very good health a score of times, without a heeltap to any one of them.
"Z--ds! Charles. Where have you been?" said Chalkley.
"Drinking old Burgundy with a rogue of a bagman who looked like Ranelagh Garden en Fete, for his face was illuminated with every hue of crimson lamp and I stake my wig his nose was as large and round as the Rotunda."
With the arrival of Charles, everybody woke up and there were calls for a song. The gallant Lieutenant was the first to respond with my Lord Dorset's _To you fair ladies now at Land_.
Let me remind you of that fine old ballad:
_To you fair ladies now at Land We men at Sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write_.
"Not at all," cried Charles.
_The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you;_
"and chorus, gentlemen, please,"
_With a Fa, la, la, la, la, la The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you_.
and so on to the last
_With a Fa, la, la, la, la Let us hear of no Inconstancy We have too much of that at Sea_.
And a proper noise everybody made with the _Fa la-la-la-la_ accentuating every _Fa_ with a bottle and every _La_ with one of Mr. Jeremy Daish's handsome silver spoons.
The song being a very lengthy one allowed everybody plenty of time to drink another quart of Burgundy before its rousing conclusion, and if the company cheered loudly at the beginning, by heavens, they cheered so loudly at the end that the noise was heard above the fiddlers in the new ballroom of Daish's famous Rooms and put everybody out of step in the last Cotillon notwithstanding the heroick efforts of the disreputable, but nimble-footed Captain Mann.
Then Charles gave a new ballad (new that is in the reign of Queen Anne) sung first at Messieurs Brook and Hellier's Club at the Temple Tavern in Fleet Street, but slightly altered by him to suit present company,
_Since I'm in the Chair and every one here Appears in gay humour and easy; Say, why should not I, a new Ballad try, Bright Brethren o' the Bottle to please ye. This wine is my theme, this is all on's Esteem, For Jeremy Daish cannot wrong us; Let them get Wealth who keeps us in health. By bringing neat liquor among us_.
(with chorus of last two lines repeated).
_Each Vintner of late, has got an Estate By brewing and Sophistication With cyder and sloes, they've made a d----d dose, Has poisoned one half of the nation_.
and so on until
_Now God Bless the King, Peers, Parliament Men, And keep 'em like us in true concord; And grant that all those, who dare be his foes, At Tyburn may swing in a strong cord; We'll Loyalists be, and bravely agree With lives and estates to defend her--him So then we'll not care come Peace or come War For Lewis, the Pope, or Pretender._
"Ah!" said Mr. Antony Clare whose father had been a Jacobite, "you've spoilt more than the rhyme by the last word."
This treasonable remark was the signal for more noise than ever because all the young gentlemen of the _Blue Boar_ who held His Majesty King George's commission felt bound to uphold the honour of the Royal Navy and the British Army by flinging a large number of Spanish nuts at the head of the disloyal Clare who retorted by emptying a whole ram's horn of snuff over Mr. Golightly so that for a while nothing was to be heard but vollies of gigantick sneezes. Exhaustion reigned for a moment, but presently the sound of hustling and bustling in the street outside roused everybody to fresh vigour of mischief.