“He’ll wake up savage if I disturb him. He’s off for his first sleep now, and he’ll go to bed as soon as the place is clear.”
“Never mind, Sophia; wake him up when I ring, and send him upstairs; he’ll find something there to put him in a good temper. Come, Dick, tumble up. You know the way.”
The Cheerful Cherokees made their proximity known by such a stifling atmosphere of tobacco about the staircase as would have certainly suffocated anyone not initiated in their mysteries. Gus opened the door of a back room on the first floor, of a much larger size than the general appearance of the house would have promised. This room was full of gentlemen, who, in age, size, costume, and personal advantages, varied as much as it is possible for any one roomful of gentlemen to do. Some of them were playing billiards; some of them were looking on, betting on the players; or more often upbraiding them for such play as, in the Cheerful dialect, came under the sweeping denunciation of the Cherokee adjective “duffing.” Some of them were eating a peculiar compound entitled “Welsh rarebit”—a pleasant preparation, if it had not painfully reminded the casual observer of mustard-poultices, or yellow soap in a state of solution—while lively friends knocked the ashes of their pipes into their plates, abstracted their porter just as they were about to imbibe that beverage, and in like fascinating manner beguiled the festive hour. One gentleman, a young Cherokee, had had a rarebit, and had gone to sleep with his head in his plate and his eyebrows in his mustard. Some were playing cards; some were playing dominoes; one gentleman was in tears, because the double six he wished to play had fallen into a neighbouring spittoon, and he lacked either the moral courage or the physical energy requisite for picking it up; but as, with the exception of the sleepy gentleman, everybody was talking very loud and on an entirely different subject, the effect was lively, not to say distracting.
“Gentlemen,” said Gus, “I have the honour of bringing a friend, whom I wish to introduce to you.”
“All right, Gus!” said the gentleman engaged at dominoes, “that’s the cove I ought to play,” and fixing one half-open eye on the spotted ivory, he lapsed into a series of imbecile imprecations on everybody in general, and the domino in particular.
Richard took a seat at a little distance from this gentleman, and at the bottom of the long table—a seat sacred on grand occasions to the vice-chairman. Some rather noisy lookers-on at the billiards were a little inclined to resent this, and muttered something about Dick’s red wig and whiskers, in connection with the popular accompaniments to a boiled round of beef.
“I say, Darley,” cried a gentleman, who held a billiard-cue in his hand, and had been for some time impotently endeavouring to smooth his hair with the same. “I say, old fellow, I hope your friend’s committed a murder or two, because then Splitters can put him in a new piece.”
Splitters, who had for four hours been in a state of abject misery, from the unmerciful allusions to his last chef d’œuvre, gave a growl from a distant corner of the table, where he was seeking consolation in everybody else’s glass; and as everybody drank a different beverage, was not improving his state of mind thereby.
“My friend never committed a murder in his life, Splitters, so he won’t dramatize on that score; but he’s been accused of one; and he’s as innocent as you are, who never murdered anything in your life but Lindley Murray and the language of your country.”
“Who’s been murdering somebody?” said the domino-player, passing his left hand through his hair, till his chevelure resembled a turk’s-head broom. “Who’s murdered? I wish everybody was; and that I could dance my favourite dance upon their graves. Blow that double-six; he’s the fellow I ought to play.”
“Perhaps you’ll give us your auburn-haired friend’s name, Darley,” said a gentleman with his mouth full of Welsh rarebit; “he doesn’t seem too brilliant to live; he’d better have gone to the ‘Deadly Livelies,’ in the other street.” The “Deadly Livelies” was the sobriquet of a rival club, which plumed itself on being a cut above the Cherokees. “Who’s dead?” muttered the domino-player. “I wish everybody was, and that I was contracted with to bury ’em cheap. I should have won the game,” he added plaintively, “if I could have picked up that double-six.”
“I suppose your friend wants to be Vice at our next meeting,” said the gentleman with the billiard-cue; who, in default of a row, always complained that the assembly was too quiet for him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time if he were Vice, and it wouldn’t be the first time if you made him Chair,” said Gus. “Come, old fellow, tell them you’re come back, and ask them if they’re glad to see you?”
The red-haired gentleman at this sprang to his feet, threw off the rosy locks and the ferocious whiskers, and looked round at the Cherokees with his hands in his pockets.
“Daredevil Dick!” A shout arose—one brief wild huzza, such as had not been heard in that room—which, as we know, was none of the quietest—within the memory of the oldest Cherokee. Daredevil Dick—escaped—come back—as handsome as ever—as jolly as ever—as glorious a fellow—as thoroughgoing a brick—as noble-hearted a trump as eight years ago, when he had been the life and soul of all of them! such shaking of hands; everybody shaking hands with him again and again, and then everybody shaking hands with everybody else; and the billiard-player wiping his eyes with his cue; and the sleepy gentleman waking up and rubbing the mustard into his drowsy optics; and the domino-player, who, though he execrates all mankind, wouldn’t hurt the tiniest wing of the tiniest fly, even he makes a miraculous effort, picks up the double-six, and magnanimously presents it to
