Part 21

M. A. TITMARSH.

January 5, 1851.

THE KICKLEBURYS ON THE RHINE.

The cabman, when he brought us to the wharf, and made his usual charge of six times his legal fare, before the settlement of which he pretended to refuse the privilege of an exeat regno to our luggage, glared like a disappointed fiend when Lankin, calling up the faithful Hutchison, his clerk, who was in attendance, said to him, "Hutchison, you will pay this man. My name is Serjeant Lankin, my chambers are in Pump Court. My clerk will settle with you, sir." The cabman trembled; we stepped on board; our lightsome luggage was speedily whisked away by the crew; our berths had been secured by the previous agency of Hutchison; and a couple of tickets, on which were written, "Mr. Serjeant Lankin," "Mr. Titmarsh," (Lankin's, by the way, incomparably the best and comfortablest sleeping place,) were pinned on to two of the curtains of the beds in a side cabin when we descended.

Who was on board? There were Jews, with Sunday papers and fruit; there were couriers and servants straggling about; there were those bearded foreign visitors of England, who always seem to decline to shave or wash themselves on the day of a voyage, and, on the eve of quitting our country, appear inclined to carry away as much as possible of its soil on their hands and linen: there were parties already cozily established on deck under the awning; and steady-going travellers for'ard, smoking already the pleasant morning cigar, and watching the phenomena of departure.

The bell rings: they leave off bawling, "Anybody else for the shore?" The last grape and Bell's Life merchant has scuffled over the plank: the Johns of the departing nobility and gentry line the brink of the quay, and touch their hats: Hutchison touches his hat to me--to ME, heaven bless him! I turn round inexpressibly affected and delighted, and whom do I see but Captain Hicks!

"Hallo! YOU here?" says Hicks, in a tone which seems to mean, "Confound you, you are everywhere."

Hicks is one of those young men who seem to be everywhere a great deal too often.

How are they always getting leave from their regiments? If they are not wanted in this country, (as wanted they cannot be, for you see them sprawling over the railing in Rotten Row all day, and shaking their heels at every ball in town,)--if they are not wanted in this country, I say, why the deuce are they not sent off to India, or to Demerara, or to Sierra Leone, by Jove?--the farther the better; and I should wish a good unwholesome climate to try 'em, and make 'em hardy. Here is this Hicks, then--Captain Launcelot Hicks, if you please--whose life is nothing but breakfast, smoking, riding-school, billiards, mess, polking, billiards, and smoking again, and da capo--pulling down his moustaches, and going to take a tour after the immense labors of the season.

"How do you do, Captain Hicks?" I say. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, I am going to the Whine," says Hicks; "evewybody goes to the Whine." The WHINE indeed! I dare say he can no more spell properly than he can speak.

"Who is on board--anybody?" I ask, with the air of a man of fashion. "To whom does that immense pile of luggage belong--under charge of the lady's-maid, the courier, and the British footman? A large white K is painted on all the boxes."

"How the deuce should I know?" says Hicks, looking, as I fancy, both red and angry, and strutting off with his great cavalry lurch and swagger: whilst my friend the Serjeant looks at him lost in admiration, and surveys his shining little boots, his chains and breloques, his whiskers and ambrosial moustaches, his gloves and other dandifications, with a pleased wonder; as the ladies of the Sultan's harem surveyed the great Lady from Park Lane who paid them a visit; or the simple subjects of Montezuma looked at one of Cortes's heavy dragoons.

"That must be a marquis at least," whispers Lankin, who consults me on points of society, and is pleased to have a great opinion of my experience.

I burst out in a scornful laugh. "THAT!" I say; "he is a captain of dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It don't require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger, Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at M. Laurent's Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know,--only we're too grave, and too steady."

"And too fat," whispers Lankin, with a laugh.

"Speak for yourself, you maypole," says I. "If you can't dance yourself, people can dance round you--put a wreath of flowers upon your old poll, stick you up in a village green, and so make use of you."

"I should gladly be turned into anything so pleasant," Lankin answers; "and so, at least, get a chance of seeing a pretty girl now and then. They don't show in Pump Court, or at the University Club, where I dine. You are a lucky fellow, Titmarsh, and go about in the world. As for me, I never--"

"And the judges' wives, you rogue?" I say. "Well, no man is satisfied; and the only reason I have to be angry with the captain yonder is, that, the other night, at Mrs. Perkins's, being in conversation with a charming young creature--who knows all my favorite passages in Tennyson, and takes a most delightful little line of opposition in the Church controversy--just as we were in the very closest, dearest, pleasantest part of the talk, comes up young Hotspur yonder, and whisks her away in a polka. What have you and I to do with polkas, Lankin? He took her down to supper--what have you and I to do with suppers?"

"Our duty is to leave them alone," said the philosophical Serjeant. "And now about breakfast--shall we have some?" And as he spoke, a savory little procession of stewards and stewards' boys, with drab tin dish-covers, passed from the caboose, and descended the stairs to the cabin. The vessel had passed Greenwich by this time, and had worked its way out of the mast-forest which guards the approaches of our city.

The owners of those innumerable boxes, bags, oil-skins, guitar-cases, whereon the letter K was engraven, appeared to be three ladies, with a slim gentleman of two or three and thirty, who was probably the husband of one of them. He had numberless shawls under his arm and guardianship. He had a strap full of Murray's Handbooks and Continental Guides in his keeping; and a little collection of parasols and umbrellas, bound together, and to be carried in state before the chief of the party, like the lictor's fasces before the consul.

The chief of the party was evidently the stout lady. One parasol being left free, she waved it about, and commanded the luggage and the menials to and fro. "Horace, we will sit there," she exclaimed, pointing to a comfortable place on the deck. Horace went and placed the shawls and the Guidebooks. "Hirsch, avy vou conty les bagages? tront sett morso ong too?" The German courier said, "Oui, miladi," and bowed a rather sulky assent. "Bowman, you will see that Finch is comfortable, and send her to me." The gigantic Bowman, a gentleman in an undress uniform, with very large and splendid armorial buttons, and with traces of the powder of the season still lingering in his hair, bows, and speeds upon my lady's errand.

I recognize Hirsch, a well-known face upon the European high-road, where he has travelled with many acquaintances. With whom is he making the tour now?--Mr. Hirsch is acting as courier to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milliken. They have not been married many months, and they are travelling, Hirsch says, with a contraction of his bushy eyebrows, with miladi, Mrs. Milliken's mamma. "And who is her ladyship?" Hirsch's brow contracts into deeper furrows. "It is Miladi Gigglebury," he says, "Mr. Didmarsh. Berhabs you know her." He scowls round at her, as she calls out loudly, "Hirsch, Hirsch!" and obeys that summons.

It is the great Lady Kicklebury of Pocklington Square, about whom I remember Mrs. Perkins made so much ado at her last ball; and whom old Perkins conducted to supper. When Sir Thomas Kicklebury died (he was one of the first tenants of the Square), who does not remember the scutcheon with the coronet with two balls, that flamed over No. 36? Her son was at Eton then, and has subsequently taken an honorary degree at Oxford, and been an ornament of Platt's and the "Oswestry Club." He fled into St. James's from the great house in Pocklington Square, and from St. James's to Italy and the Mediterranean, where he has been for some time in a wholesome exile. Her eldest daughter's marriage with Lord Roughhead was talked about last year; but Lord Roughhead, it is known, married Miss Brent; and Horace Milliken, very much to his surprise, found himself the affianced husband of Miss Lavinia Kicklebury, after an agitating evening at Lady Polkimore's, when Miss Lavinia, feeling herself faint, went out on to the leads (the terrace, Lady Polkimore WILL call it), on the arm of Mr. Milliken. They were married in January: it's not a bad match for Miss K. Lady Kicklebury goes and stops for six months of the year at Pigeoncot with her daughter and son-in-law; and now that they are come abroad, she comes too. She must be with Lavinia, under the present circumstances.

When I am arm-in-arm, I tell this story glibly off to Lankin, who is astonished at my knowledge of the world, and says, "Why, Titmarsh, you know everything."

"I DO know a few things, Lankin my boy," is my answer. "A man don't live in society, and PRETTY GOOD society, let me tell you, for nothing."

The fact is, that all the above details are known to almost any man in our neighborhood. Lady Kicklebury does not meet with US much, and has greater folks than we can pretend to be at her parties. But we know about THEM. She'll condescend to come to Perkins's, WITH WHOSE FIRM SHE BANKS; and she MAY overdraw HER ACCOUNT: but of that, of course, I know nothing.

When Lankin and I go down stairs to breakfast, we find, if not the best, at least the most conspicuous places in occupation of Lady Kicklebury's party, and the hulking London footman making a darkness in the cabin, as he stoops through it bearing cups and plates to his employers.