George had been patient thus far.
In situations like these, he often let Harmon take the lead, if only because his genteel upbringing (of which George was forbidden to call Shenanigans on) provided them with a certain edge to moments such as these, attempting to push their way through the gatehouse and it's brow-perked, stuck-up, flush-faced, shell-scalped, nose-shaving Troubadour seeking a certain level of comatose courtesy from them. The footman had been offered little more than a few pence and some charmingly appropriate words of confusing, long-winded and nebulous report, Harmon speaking loudly and often to the young fellow and marching without cease through the gates and his supposed guard. He had no doubt the young Boy was more than happy to leave them to the Butler they were now standing in front of, confident Mr. Shambottom (who's name was not quite that pronunciation as he had been adamant in telling Harmon upon introductions being shared, but Harmon seemed incapable of lifting off his accented Essex tongue) had the wherewithal, determination and strength of character to see to the disheveled Ruffians trying to barge into the Society.
Mr Shambottom’s stalwart regard was matched only by the fierceness of his gaze and the resolute belief that he could simply glare away all problems and situations of ill-repute. George firmly believed that Mr. Shambottom firmly believed that a stiff lip and a waxed moustache glare, could send the War home should it ever come knocking at Italy’s borders. So when Harmon sauntered up with a tip of his short brimmed, tall stacked hat (a refuse find, dusted with perfume and patched with skills George wasn’t entirely certain where Harmon had discovered) and a ‘Good Morrow!’ there was a very brief scrutiny and a none too subtle dance of the aging old butler’s eyes across them both. The entirety of which lasted a full ten seconds before, with an imperious clearing of his throat, Mr Shambottom declared with a throated mum of monosyllabic distinction.
“No.”
At which point Harmon did his best impression of shock and outrage, flailing hands covered in the richest of white satins (or what might have been, had they not been through a bar fight, a deck fight and three months worth of travel best left to the place where forgotten memories go to drink) and bulging eyes not a slight bit reddened by their lack of sleep and fast approaching sobriety.
To which Mr. Shambottom seemed entirely immune, weathering the spectacle from Harmon and George’s own rapidly dwindling features, which bristled into an unidentifiable mask of facial hair whenever his temper was in danger of being lost. Many had claimed when George’s face vanished entirely, whole legions were bound to suffer for it.
It would be several minutes of this dual fusillade, as the pair ended the entire thing looming over the stoic butler who continued to remain robustly calm in the face of them, before the chamber door leaning into the Palazzo, would creep open from afar and a woman would stand upon the chipped stone steps with the expectancy of the perturbed.
At which point, Mr. Shambottom, or whatever pronunciation was proper, turned to regard this new blockade and offered the clearing of his throat once more to the pair, who glanced up once at the woman too distant to detail and then back to the Butler as he spoke in that same breathy murmur.
“Mrs. Hogsbender will see you, apparently.”
And that was number two.
The third was the Woman. Hogsbender the Round. Hogsbender the broad. Hogsbender, the Redoubt, the Bastion, the Bitch bull of the Society house and many others that she would later be known and called by Harmon over a half dozen pints and those? Just the few he would remember the following morning. The young Tavern Woman they have acquainted themselves with upon first arrival would regale them neatly of Harmon’s sermon of prose entitled “Hogsbender; Enemy to the Unfairest Gender”.
She sat within her sitting room, a creature fond of dens and cozies. A Mother Bear, a Clucking Hen, a Vicious Ape and mountains to feed small nations of young nips, a fact Harmon sought to mention almost out of the gate. The response with something icy and a demure reassurance that The Hogsbender’s personal lives were quite beyond the ken of courteous and polite conversation.
The interview would devolve from there. Casual wit was thrown back and forth between a viper’s tongue in Harmon and the scalding pot of Mrs. Hogsbender, trading mentions of decor, garments and the inevitable deductions of proper education in each other’s speech that often came from the Highly Sociable. All performed with the most polite of airs, airs that had George curling smaller and smaller in his standing place, for fear that sitting might break the brittle staves and supports of the ancient relics that Mrs. Hogsbender kept around her sitting room walls. Decorative at best.
At one point, her bi-spectacled gaze found George and glanced up at the flopping hat that danced down one side of his head, her neatly trimmed brow perking over slightly plump cheeks and a primly set mouth. George’s eyes nearly vanished into his brow and moustache meeting and with great reluctance and a rumble of incoherent english, reached up to pull the hat off and crush it between his hands, the spraggledee reach of his wisping hair, circling a bald spot, given a cursory glance.
About as long as the glance at the maligned ear that had been hidden beneath with it’s strangely crooked point at either end. Mrs. Hogsbender’s brow rose a fraction higher, something both Harmon and George would comment to one another about in startled shock and relieved camaraderie (“I’ve not seen a woman look so questioning about so little in all my life” “I know, roit?!”) though she, perhaps wisely, did not comment on the fact and returned to berating Harmon about his choice of coloured dress and how inappropriately brilliant it was, no doubt serving as the sign post for their early carnivaling efforts amidst the circuses of England.
The Footman enters toward the height of the situation, a hammer fisted George bundled together in bristling anger, bellowing a
“Now see ‘ere!”
And leveling an accusatory finger, the size of Mrs. Hogsbender’s wrist, toward the unmoved woman. The footman is hesitant and seemingly shaken, as Harmon, twig and slim and dandy of a creature, Harmon, is the only thing standing between them and the brutish George, satin gloves pushing into the stout body of his fellow, a firm voice and eye cast up into George’s face as the pair argue over just what sort of manners could be taught with a proper switch and the right arse.
At which point, Mrs. Hogsbender had received her message and the Footman was gratefully sent on his way. The pair would freeze in place, locked in grips around each other’s vests and jackets, to stare at Mrs. Hogsbender as she offered a cleared throat and a vaguely displeased mention of the Lady wanting their company and attention.
To which Harmon had replied with the most careful of pleasantries, smoothing down his clothing and releasing George to offer Mrs. Hogsbender a stately bow and a
“Most kind, Madam, most kind.”
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