The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

make some punch in the way we make it in Ireland?”

The Doctor, puffing, and purple in the face, was wiping the dingy shirt with a still more dubious pocket-handkerchief, which he then applied to his forehead. After this exercise, he blew a hyperborean whistle, as if to blow his wrath away. “It is de me, sir—though, as a young man, perhaps you need not have told me so.”

“I drop my point, sir! If you have been wrong, I am sure I am bound to ask your pardon for setting you so!” says Mr. Hagan, with a fine bow.

“Doesn't he look like a god?” says Maria, clutching my wife's hand: and indeed Mr. Hagan did look like a handsome young gentleman. His colour had risen; he had put his hand to his breast with a noble air: Chamont or Castalio could not present himself better.

“Let me make you some lemonade, sir; my papa has sent us a box of fresh limes. May we send you some to the Temple?”

“Madam, if they stay in your house, they will lose their quality and turn sweet,” says the Doctor. “Mr. Hagan, you are a young sauce-box, that's what you are! Ho! ho! It is I have been wrong.”

“Oh, my lord, my Polidore!” bleats Lady Maria, when she was alone in my wife's drawing-room:

“'Oh, I could hear thee talk for ever thus, Eternally admiring,—fix and gaze On those dear eyes, for every glance they send Darts through my soul, and fills my heart with rapture!'

“Thou knowest not, my Theo, what a pearl and paragon of a man my Castalio is; my Chamont, my—oh, dear me, child, what a pity it is that in your husband's tragedy he should have to take the horrid name of Captain Smith!”

Upon this tragedy not only my literary hopes, but much of my financial prospects were founded. My brother's debts discharged, my mother's drafts from home duly honoured, my own expenses paid, which, though moderate, were not inconsiderable,—pretty nearly the whole of my patrimony had been spent, and this auspicious moment I must choose for my marriage! I could raise money on my inheritance: that was not impossible, though certainly costly. My mother could not leave her eldest son without a maintenance, whatever our quarrels might be. I had health, strength, good wits, some friends, and reputation—above all, my famous tragedy, which the manager had promised to perform, and upon the proceeds of this I counted for my present support. What becomes of the arithmetic of youth? How do we then calculate that a hundred pounds is a maintenance, and a thousand a fortune? How did I dare play against Fortune with such odds? I succeeded, I remember, in convincing my dear General, and he left home convinced that his son-in-law had for the present necessity at least a score of hundred pounds at his command. He and his dear Molly had begun life with less, and the ravens had somehow always fed them. As for the women, the question of poverty was one of pleasure to those sentimental souls, and Aunt Lambert, for her part, declared it would be wicked and irreligious to doubt of a provision being made for her children. Was the righteous ever forsaken? Did the just man ever have to beg his bread? She knew better than that! “No, no, my dears! I am not going to be afraid on that account, I warrant you! Look at me and my General!”

Theo believed all I said and wished to believe myself. So we actually began life upon a capital of Five Acts, and about three hundred pounds of ready money in hand!

Well, the time of the appearance of the famous tragedy drew near, and my friends canvassed the town to get a body of supporters for the opening night. I am ill at asking favours from the great; but when my Lord Wrotham came to London, I went, with Theo in my hand, to wait on his lordship, who received us kindly, out of regard for his old friend, her father—though he good-naturedly shook a finger at me (at which my little wife hung down her head), for having stole a march on the good General. However, he would do his best for her father's daughter; hoped for a success; said he had heard great things of the piece; and engaged a number of places for himself and his friends. But this patron secured, I had no other. “Mon cher, at my age,” says the Baroness, “I should bore myself to death at a tragedy: but I will do my best; and I will certainly send my people to the boxes. Yes! Case in his best black looks like a nobleman; and Brett in one of my gowns has a faux air de moi which is quite distinguished. Put down my name for two in the front boxes. Good-bye, my dear. Bonne chance!” The Dowager Countess presented compliments (on the back of the nine of clubs), had a card-party that night, and was quite sorry she and Fanny could not go to my tragedy. As for my uncle and Lady Warrington, they were out of the question. After the affair of the sedan-chair I might as well have asked Queen Elizabeth to go to Drury Lane. These were all my friends—that host of aristocratic connexions about whom poor Sampson had bragged; and on the strength of whom, the manager, as he said, had given Mr. Hagan his engagement! “Where was my Lord Bute? Had I not promised his lordship should come?” he asks, snappishly, taking snuff (how different from the brisk, and engaging, and obsequious little manager of six months ago!)—“I promised Lord Bute should come?”

“Yes,” says Mr. Garrick, “and her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, and his Majesty too.”

Poor Sampson owned that he, buoyed up by vain hopes, had promised the appearance of these august personages.

The next day, at rehearsal, matters were worse still, and the manager in a fury.

“Great heavens, sir!” says he, “into what a pretty guet-a-pens have you led me! Look at that letter, sir!—read that letter!” And he hands me one:

“MY DEAR SIR” (said the letter)—“I have seen his lordship, and conveyed to him Mr. Warrington's request that he would honour the tragedy of Pocahontas by his presence. His lordship is a patron of the drama, and a magnificent friend of all the liberal arts; but he desires me to say that he cannot think of attending himself, much less of asking his Gracious Master to witness the performance of a play, a principal part in which is given to an actor who has made a clandestine marriage with a daughter of one of his Majesty's nobility.—Your well-wisher, SAUNDERS MCDUFF.”

“Mr. D. Garrick, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.”

My poor Theo had a nice dinner waiting for me after the rehearsal. I pleaded fatigue as the reason for looking so pale: I did not dare to convey to her this dreadful news.