The Cockaynes in Paris | Page 7

to look after the Reverend Horace Mohun's tea and his round of toast if he called--and let him see the Times before it went up to the general sitting-room. On these days Lucy looked pale; and Jane called her "poor child" to me, and begged me to say a few words of comfort to her, for she would listen to me.
What a fool Jane was!
Visitors came and went. The serious, who inspected Paris as Mr. Redgrave inspects a factory, or as the late Mr. Braidwood inspected a fire on the morrow; who did the Louvre and called for bread-and-butter and tea on the Boulevards at five. The new-rich, who would not have breakfasted with the general company to save their vulgar little souls, threw their money to the fleecing shopkeepers (who knew their monde), and misbehaved themselves in all the most expensive ways possible. The jolly ignorant, who were loud and unabashed in the sincerity and heartiness of their enjoyment, and had more litres of brandy in their bedrooms than the rest of the house, as Jane had it, "put together." The frugal, who counted the lumps of sugar, found fault with the dinners, lived with the fixed and savage determination to eat well up to the rate at which they were paying for their board, and stole in, in the evening, with their brandy hidden about them. Somehow, although there never was a house in which more differences of opinion were held on nearly every question of human interest, there was a surprising harmony of ideas as to French brandy. A Boulogne excursion boat on its homeward journey hardly contains more uncorked bottles of cognac, than were thrust in all kinds of secret places in the bedrooms under Mrs. Rowe's roof.
The hypocrisy and scandal which brandy produced in the general room were occasionally very fierce, especially when whispers had travelled quietly as the flies all over the house that one of the ladies had certainly, on one occasion, revoked at cards--for one reason, and one only. Free speculations would be cheerfully indulged in at other times on the exact quantity the visitor who left yesterday had taken during his stay, and the number of months which the charitable might give him to live.
[Illustration: ON THE BOULEVARDS.]
After the general brandy, in degree of interest, stood dress. The shopping was prodigious. The carts of the Louvre, the Ville de Paris, the Coin de Rue, and other famous houses of nouveautés were for ever rattling to Mrs. Rowe's door. With a toss of the head a parcel from the Bon Marché was handed to its owner. Mrs. Jones must have come to Paris with just one change--and such a change! Mrs. Tottenham had nothing fit to wear. Mrs. Court must still be wearing out her trousseau--and her youngest was three! Mrs. Rhode had no more taste, my dear, than our cook. The men were not far behind--had looked out for Captain Tottenham in the Army List; went to Galignani's expressly: not in it, by Jove, sir! Court paid four shillings in the pound hardly two years ago, and met him swelling it with his wife (deuced pretty creature!) yesterday at Bignon's. Is quite up to Marennes oysters: wonder where he could have heard of 'em. Rhode is a bore; plenty of money, very good-natured; read a good deal--but can't the fellow come to table in something better than those eternal plaid trousers? Bad enough in Lord Brougham. Eccentricity with the genius, galling enough; but without, not to be borne, sir. Last night Jones was simply drunk, and got a wigging, no doubt, when he found his room. He looks it all.
We are an amiable people!
Happily, I have forgotten the Joneses and the Tottenhams, and the Courts and the Rhodes! The two "sets" who dwell in my memory--who are, I may say, somewhat linked with my own life, and of whom I have something to tell--were, as a visitor said of the fowls of Boulogne hotels--birds apart. They crossed and re-crossed under Mrs. Rowe's roof until they hooked together; and I was mixed up with them, until a tragedy and a happy event made us part company.
Now, so complicated are our treaties--offensive and defensive--that I have to refer to my note-book, where I am likely to meet any one of them, to see whether I am on speaking terms with the coming man or woman as the case may be.
I shall first introduce the Cockaynes as holding the greater "lengths" on my stage.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COCKAYNES IN PARIS.
The morning after a bevy of "the blonde daughters of Albion" have arrived in Paris, Pater--over the coffee (why is it impossible to get such coffee in England?), the delicious bread, and the exquisite butter--proceeds to expound his views of the manner in which the time of