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The Kickleburys On The Rhine
by
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.
[Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots? Why is the milk scarce and thin? And why do they have those bleeding legs of boiled mutton for dinner? I ask why? In the steamers of other nations you are well fed. Is it impossible that Britannia, who confessedly rules the waves, should attend to the victuals a little, and that meat should be well cooked under a Union Jack? I just put in this question, this most interesting question, in a momentous parenthesis, and resume the tale.]
When Lankin and I descend to the cabin, then, the tables are full of gobbling people; and, though there DO seem to be a couple of places near Lady Kicklebury, immediately she sees our eyes directed to the inviting gap, she slides out, and with her ample robe covers even more than that large space to which by art and nature she is entitled, and calling out, “Horace, Horace!” and nodding, and winking, and pointing, she causes her son-in-law to extend the wing on his side. We are cut of THAT chance of a breakfast. We shall have the tea at its third water, and those two damp black mutton-chops, which nobody else will take, will fall to our cold share.
At this minute a voice, clear and sweet, from a tall lady in a black veil, says, “Mr. Titmarsh,” and I start and murmur an ejaculation of respectful surprise, as I recognize no less a person than the Right Honorable the Countess of Knightsbridge, taking her tea, breaking up little bits of toast with her slim fingers, and sitting between a Belgian horse-dealer and a German violoncello-player who has a conge after the opera–like any other mortal.
I whisper her ladyship’s name to Lankin. The Serjeant looks towards her with curiosity and awe. Even he, in his Pump Court solitudes, has heard of that star of fashion–that admired amongst men, and even women–that Diana severe yet simple, the accomplished Aurelia of Knightsbridge. Her husband has but a small share of HER qualities. How should he? The turf and the fox-chase are his delights–the smoking-room at the “Travellers'”–nay, shall we say it?–the illuminated arcades of “Vauxhall,” and the gambols of the dishevelled Terpsichore. Knightsbridge has his faults–ah! even the peerage of England is not exempt from them. With Diana for his wife, he flies the halls where she sits severe and serene, and is to be found (shrouded in smoke, ’tis true,) in those caves where the contrite chimney-sweep sings his terrible death chant, or the Bacchanalian judge administers a satiric law. Lord Knightsbridge has his faults, then; but he has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg, near the Rhine, and thither his wife is hastening to minister to him.
“I have done,” says Lady Knightsbridge, with a gentle bow, as she rises; “you may have this place, Mr. Titmarsh; and I am sorry my breakfast is over: I should have prolonged it had I thought that YOU were coming to sit by me. Thank you–my glove.” (Such an absurd little glove, by the way). “We shall meet on the deck when you have done.”
And she moves away with an august curtsy. I can’t tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, “How do you do?” as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, being very thin, and rather sad-looking. She is not very witty, being only up to the conversation, whatever it may be; and yet, if she were in black serge, I think one could not help seeing that she was a Princess, and Serene Highness; and if she were a hundred years old, she could not be but beautiful. I saw her performing her devotions in Antwerp Cathedral, and forgot to look at anything else there;–so calm and pure, such a sainted figure hers seemed.