'What the deuce do you mean?' whispered Melmotte. 'You've been at it from the beginning and ought to know. When I wanted to ask Brehgert, you swore that you couldn't squeeze a place.'
'Can't say anything about it,' said Lord Alfred, with his eyes fixed upon his plate.
'I'll be d---- if I don't find out,' said Melmotte. 'There's either some horrible blunder, or else there's been imposition. I don't see quite clearly. Where's Sir Gregory Gribe?'
'Hasn't come, I suppose.'
'And where's the Lord Mayor?' Melmotte, in spite of royalty, was now sitting with his face turned round upon the hall. 'I know all their places, and I know where they were put. Have you seen the Lord Mayor?'
'No; I haven't seen him at all.'
'But he was to come. What's the meaning of it, Alfred?'
'Don't know anything about it.' He shook his head but would not, for even a moment, look round upon the room.
'And where's Mr Killegrew,--and Sir David Boss?' Mr Killegrew and Sir David were gentlemen of high standing, and destined for important offices in the Conservative party. 'There are ever so many people not here. Why, there's not above half of them down the room. What's up, Alfred? I must know.'
'I tell you I know nothing. I could not make them come.' Lord Alfred's answers were made not only with a surly voice, but also with a surly heart. He was keenly alive to the failure, and alive also to the feeling that the failure would partly be attached to himself. At the present moment he was anxious to avoid observation, and it seemed to him that Melmotte, by the frequency and impetuosity of his questions, was drawing special attention to him. 'If you go on making a row,' he said, 'I shall go away.' Melmotte looked at him with all his eyes. 'Just sit quiet and let the thing go on. You'll know all about it soon enough.' This was hardly the way to give Mr Melmotte peace of mind. For a few minutes he did sit quiet. Then he got up and moved down the hall behind the guests.
In the meantime, Imperial Majesty and Royalties of various denominations ate their dinner, without probably observing those Banquo's seats. As the Emperor talked Manchoo only, and as there was no one present who could even interpret Manchoo into English,--the imperial interpreter condescending only to interpret Manchoo into ordinary Chinese which had to be reinterpreted,--it was not within his Imperial Majesty's power to have much conversation with his neighbours. And as his neighbours on each side of him were all cousins and husbands, and brothers and wives, who saw each constantly under, let us presume, more comfortable circumstances, they had not very much to say to each other. Like most of us, they had their duties to do, and, like most of us, probably found their duties irksome. The brothers and sisters and cousins were used to it; but that awful Emperor, solid, solemn, and silent, must, if the spirit of an Eastern Emperor be at all like that of a Western man, have had a weary time of it. He sat there for more than two hours, awful, solid, solemn, and silent, not eating very much,--for this was not his manner of eating; nor drinking very much,--for this was not his manner of drinking; but wondering, no doubt, within his own awful bosom, at the changes which were coming when an Emperor of China was forced, by outward circumstances, to sit and hear this buzz of voices and this clatter of knives and forks. 'And this,' he must have said to himself, 'is what they call royalty in the West!' If a prince of our own was forced, for the good of the country, to go among some far-distant outlandish people, and there to be poked in the ribs, and slapped on the back all round, the change to him could hardly be so great.