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A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 83
"Look you, Tufthunt," said he wildly; "hang you, I hate
you, but I must talk ! I've been, for two months now, in this
cursed hole ; in a rickety lodging, with a vulgar family ; as vulgar,
by Jove, as you are yourself !"
Mr. Tufthunt did not like this style of address half so much
as Lord Cinqbars, who was laughing immoderately, and to whom
Tufthunt whispered rather sheepishly, " Pooh, pooh, he's drunk !"
"Drunk! no, sir," yelled out Brandon; "I'm mad, though,
with the prudery of a little devil of fifteen, who has cost me more
trouble than it would take me to seduce every one of your sisters—
ha, ha ! every one of the Miss Tufthunts, by Jove ! Miss Suky
Tufthunt, Miss Dolly Tufthunt, Miss Anna-Maria Tufthunt, and
the whole bunch. Come, sir, don't sit scowling at me, or I'll brain
you with the decanter." (Tufthunt was down again on the sofa.)
" I've borne with the girl's mother, and her father, and her sisters,
and a cook in the house, and a scoundrel of a painter, that I'm
going to fight about her ; and for what ?—why, for a letter, which
says, ' George, I'll kill myself ! George, I'll kill myself !'—ha, ha !
a little devil like that killing herself ________ ha, ha ! and I—I who—
who adore her, who am mad for ________ "
"Mad, I believe he is," said Tufthunt ; and at this moment
Mr. Brandon was giving the most unequivocal signs of madness ; he
plunged his head into the corner of the sofa, and was kicking his
feet violently into the cushions.
" You don't understand him, Tufty my boy," said Lord Cinqbars,
with a very superior air. " You ain't up to these things, I tell
you ; and I suspect, by Jove, that you never were in love in your
life. I know what it is, sir. And as for Brandon, Heaven bless
you! I've often seen him in that way when we were abroad.
When he has an intrigue, he's mad about it. Let me see, there
was the Countess Fritzch, at Baden-Baden ; there was the woman
at Pau ; and that girl—at Paris, was it?—no, at Vienna. He
went on just so about them all ; but I'll tell you what, when we
do the thing, we do it easier, my boy, hay ?"
And so saying, my Lord cocked up his little sallow beardless
face into a grin, and then fell to eyeing a glass of execrable claret
across a candle. An intrigue, as he called it, was the little
creature's delight ; and until the time should arrive when he could
have one himself, he loved to talk of those of his friends.
As for Tufthunt, we may fancy how that gentleman's previous
affection for Brandon was increased by the latter's brutal addresses
to him. Brandon continued to drink and to talk, though not
always in the sentimental way in which he had spoken about his
loves and injuries. Growing presently madly jocose as he had