Part 43 (1/2)
I read the letter once more.
”MY DEAR GUARDIAN,
”Very serious business makes me send to you. Come and see me. As your honoured wife is now engaged on a provincial tour, can't you come and dine with me to-day? We shall be all by ourselves.
”BESSY.”
Was there ever an odder reason?--”_As your honoured wife is now engaged on a provincial tour_”! No doubt she found that out in the _Fovarosi Lapok_.[106] But the conclusion: ”_therefore_ you can come and dine with me to-day”! And finally: ”We shall be all by ourselves”! If that wasn't a temptation, I don't know what is.
[Footnote 106: _News of the Capital_, a popular newspaper of the period.]
I began to walk up and down.
The maid waited to see if I was going to count how many paces it was from the window to the door. At last she grew importunate.
”Is there any answer, please? I have to go home and cook the dinner.”
”Ah, yes, of course! Greet your mistress from me, and tell her that I'll come and see her in the forenoon to-morrow.”
”But I want to know whether you are coming to dinner, that I may arrange my cooking accordingly.”
”True! Then say I'll come to dinner.”
In Bessy's house the custom seemed to prevail for the mistress to dine six days of the week with Duke Humphrey, and then on the seventh, her at-home day, to make a great parade before her guests.
I was now running into the very centre of danger.
I could not possibly back out of this engagement.
”A serious business, eh?” I know it was serious enough to me.
An ideal of my youth, and lovelier now than ever, with a husband of her own too, and that husband a fine manly fellow. So far from being jealous, he had openly entrusted me with the consolation of his sorrowing spouse. And I am the last person in the world to be enrolled in the Order of Anchorites.
I candidly admit that I am not a bit better than my neighbours.
So I tricked myself out finely. I put on my new coffee-coloured clothes with the antique b.u.t.tons; I neatly tied my embroidered cravat; I drew on my Kordofan-leather boots with the silver spurs; I fastened a crane's plume in my new spiral hat.
This was the audacious fas.h.i.+on of the year, and within a twelvemonth this costume was worn in the whole kingdom. And after that, I went to the barber's and he twisted my thick blonde hair into masterly ringlets.
Aggravating circ.u.mstances, the whole lot of them!
CHAPTER XVIII
A COLD DOUCHE
How my heart beat when I set forth on my expedition!
On the way from my dwelling to Bessy's lodgings my ill fate brought me face to face with all the veteran actresses of the National Theatre, and they all stopped me and asked where I was going. They all remarked that I was very stylishly got up, and they all shook their fingers at me, and said: ”Fie, fie! you straw-widower!”