XLII
Mr. Mainwaring’s Little Dinner
The company at the rector’s house consisted of the Senator, the two Mortons, Mr. Surtees the curate, and old Doctor Nupper. Mrs. Mainwaring was not well enough to appear, and the rector therefore was able to indulge himself in what he called a bachelor party. As a rule he disliked clergymen, but at the last had been driven to invite his curate because he thought six a better number than five for joviality. He began by asking questions as to the Trefoils which were not very fortunate. Of course he had heard that Morton was to marry Arabella Trefoil, and though he made no direct allusion to the fact, as Reginald had done, he spoke in that bland eulogistic tone which clearly showed his purpose. “They went with you to Lord Rufford’s, I was told.”
“Yes;—they did.”
“And now they have left the neighbourhood. A very clever young lady, Miss Trefoil;—and so is her mother, a very clever woman.” The Senator, to whom a sort of appeal was made, nodded his assent. “Lord Augustus, I believe, is a brother of the Duke of Mayfair?”
“Yes, he is,” said Morton. “I am afraid we are going to have frost again.” Then Reginald Morton was sure that the marriage would never take place.
“The Trefoils are a very distinguished family,” continued the rector. “I remember the present Duke’s father when he was in the cabinet, and knew this man almost intimately when we were at Christchurch together. I don’t think this Duke ever took a prominent part in politics.”
“I don’t know that he ever did,” said Morton.
“Dear, dear, how tipsy he was once driving back to Oxford with me in a gig. But he has the reputation of being one of the best landlords in the country now.”
“I wonder what it is that gives a man the reputation of being a good landlord. Is it foxes?” asked the Senator. The rector acknowledged with a smile that foxes helped. “Or does it mean that he lets his land below the value? If so, he certainly does more harm than good, though he may like the popularity which he is rich enough to buy.”
“It means that he does not exact more than his due,” said the rector indiscreetly.
“When I hear a man so highly praised for common honesty I am of course led to suppose that dishonesty in his particular trade is the common rule. The body of English landlords must be exorbitant tyrants when one among them is so highly eulogised for taking no more than his own.” Luckily at that moment dinner was announced, and the exceptional character of the Duke of Mayfair was allowed to drop.
Mr. Mainwaring’s dinner was very good and his wines were excellent—a fact of which Mr. Mainwaring himself was much better aware than any of his guests. There is a difficulty in the giving of dinners of which Mr. Mainwaring and some other hosts have become painfully aware. What service do you do to anyone in pouring your best claret down his throat, when he knows no difference between that and a much more humble vintage—your best claret which you feel so sure you cannot replace? Why import canvasback ducks for appetites which would be quite as well satisfied with those out of the next farmyard? Your soup, which has been a care since yesterday, your fish, got down with so great trouble from Bond Street on that very day, your saddle of mutton, in selecting which you have affronted every butcher in the neighbourhood, are all plainly thrown away! And yet the hospitable hero who would fain treat his friends as he would be treated himself can hardly arrange his dinners according to the palates of his different guests; nor will he like, when strangers sit at his board, to put nothing better on his table than that cheaper wine with which needful economy induces him to solace himself when alone. I—I who write this—have myself seen an honoured guest deluge with the pump my, ah! so hardly earned, most scarce and most peculiar vintage! There is a pang in such usage which some will not understand, but which cut Mr. Mainwaring to the very soul. There was not one among them there who appreciated the fact that the claret on his dinner table was almost the best that its year had produced. It was impossible not to say a word on such a subject at such a moment;—though our rector was not a man who usually lauded his own viands. “I think you will find that claret what you like, Mr. Gotobed,” he said. “It’s a ’57 Mouton, and judges say that it is good.”
“Very good indeed,” said the Senator. “In the States we haven’t got into the way yet of using dinner clarets.” It was as good as a play to see the rector wince under the ignominious word. “Your great statesman added much to your national comfort when he took the duty off the lighter kinds of French wines.”
The rector could not stand it. He hated light wines. He hated cheap things in general. And he hated Gladstone in particular. “Nothing,” said he, “that the statesman you speak of ever did could make such wine as that any cheaper. I am sorry, sir, that you don’t perceive the difference.”
“In the matter of wine,” said the Senator, “I don’t think that I have happened to come across anything so good in this country as our old Madeiras. But then, sir, we have been fortunate in our climate. The English atmosphere is not one in which
