The Bedford-Row Conspiracy | Page 8

Oh, the wretch!
"I'm sure he's very good-looking," said Lucy, simply.
Lady Gorgon darted at her an angry look, and was about to say
something very contemptuous, when, at that instant, John Perkins's
shout taking effect, Master George Augustus Frederick Grimsby
Gorgon, not knowing better, incontinently raised a small shout on his
side.
"Hear! good! bravo!" exclaimed he; "Scully for ever! Hurra-a-a-ay!"
and fell skipping about like the Whigs opposite.
"Silence, you brute you!" groaned Lady Gorgon; and seizing him by
the shirt-frill and coat-collar, carried him away to his nurse, who, with
many other maids of the Whig and Tory parties, stood giggling and
peeping at the landing-place.
Fancy how all these small incidents augmented the heap of Lady
Gorgon's anger and injuries! She was a dull phlegmatic woman for the
most part, and contented herself generally with merely despising her
neighbours; but oh! what a fine active hatred raged in her bosom for
victorious Scully! At this moment Mr. Perkins had finished shaking
hands with his Napoleon--Napoleon seemed bent upon some
tremendous enterprise. He was looking at Lady Gorgon very hard.
"She's a fine woman," said Scully, thoughtfully; he was still holding the
hand of Perkins. And then, after a pause, "Gad! I think I'll try."
"Try what, sir?"
"She's a DEUCED fine woman!" burst out again the tender solicitor. "I

WILL go. Springer, tell the fiddlers to strike up."
Springer scuttled across the room, and gave the leader of the band a
knowing nod. Suddenly, "God save the King" ceased, and "Sir Roger
de Coverley" began. The rival forces eyed each other; Mr. Scully,
accompanied by his friend, came forward, looking very red, and
fumbling two large kid gloves.
"HE'S GOING TO ASK ME TO DANCE," hissed out Lady Gorgon,
with a dreadful intuition, and she drew back behind her lord.
"D--- it, madam, THEN DANCE with him!" said the General. "Don't
you see that the scoundrel is carrying it all his own way! ----- him! and
----- him! and ----- him!" (All of which dashes the reader may fill up
with oaths of such strength as may be requisite).
"General!" cried Lady Gorgon, but could say no more. Scully was
before her.
"Madam!" exclaimed the Liberal Member for Oldborough, "in a
moment like this--I say--that is--that on the present occasion--your
Ladyship--unaccustomed as I am--pooh, psha--WILL your Ladyship
give me the distinguished honour and pleasure of going down the
country-dance with your Ladyship?"
An immense heave of her Ladyship's ample chest was perceptible.
Yards of blond lace, which might be compared to a foam of the sea,
were agitated at the same moment, and by the same mighty emotion.
The river of diamonds which flowed round her Ladyship's neck,
seemed to swell and to shine more than ever. The tall plumes on her
ambrosial head bowed down beneath the storm. In other words, Lady
Gorgon, in a furious rage, which she was compelled to restrain,
trembled, drew up, and bowing majestically, said,--
"Sir, I shall have much pleasure." With this, she extended her hand.
Scully, trembling, thrust forward one of his huge kid-gloves, and led
her to the head of the country-dance. John Perkins--who I presume had
been drinking pretty freely, so as to have forgotten his ordinary

bashfulness--looked at the three Gorgons in blue, then at the pretty
smiling one in white, and stepping up to her, without the smallest
hesitation, asked her if she would dance with him.
The young lady smilingly agreed. The great example of Scully and
Lady Gorgon was followed by all dancing men and women. Political
enmities were forgotten. Whig voters invited Tory voters' wives to the
dance. The daughters of Reform accepted the hands of the sons of
Conservatism. The reconciliation of the Romans and Sabines was not
more touching than this sweet fusion. Whack--whack! Springer clapped
his hands; and the fiddlers adroitly obeying the cheerful signal, began
playing "Sir Roger de Coverley" louder than ever.
I do not know by what extraordinary charm (nescio qua praeter solitum,
etc.), but young Perkins, who all his life had hated country-dances, was
delighted with this one, and skipped and laughed, poussetting, crossing,
down-the-middling, with his merry little partner, till every one of the
bettermost sort of the thirty-nine couples had dropped panting away,
and till the youngest Miss Gorgon, coming up to his partner, said in a
loud hissing scornful whisper, "Lucy, Mamma thinks you have danced
quite enough with this--this person." And Lucy, blushing, starting back,
and looking at Perkins in a very melancholy way, made him a little
curtsey, and went off to the Gorgonian party with her cousin. Perkins
was too frightened to lead her back to her place--too frightened at first,
and then too angry. "Person!" said he: his soul swelled with a desperate
republicanism: he went back to his