The Wayfarers
by J. C. Snaith · English · Gutenberg #34776 · 444,625 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Wayfarers
Author: J. C. Snaith
Release date: December 28, 2010 [eBook #34776]
Most recently updated: October 6, 2022
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34776
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAYFARERS ***
[Frontispiece: “‘It is most strange, madam ... that you should not be
certain of the name of your husband.’” (Chapter XIII.)]
THE WAYFARERS
BY
J. C. SNAITH
Author of "Mistress Dorothy Marvin," "Fierceheart, the Soldier," "Lady
Barbarity," etc
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1902
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I THE DEVIL TO PAY
II LADY CYNTHIA CAREW
III INTRODUCES A MERITORIOUS HEBREW
IV WE START UPON OUR PILGRIMAGE
V I VINDICATE THE NATIONAL CHARACTER.
VI CONTAINS A FEW TRITE UTTERANCES ON THE GENTLE PASSION
VII AN INSTRUCTIVE CHAPTER; IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF A LITTLE
LEARNING IS DANGEROUS, MUCH MAY BE CALAMITOUS
VIII WE GET US TO CHURCH
IX WE GO UPON OUR WEDDING TOUR
X WE ARE BESET BY A HEAVY MISFORTUNE
XI I COME A PRISONER TO A FAMILIAR HOUSE, AND FIND STRANGE COMPANY
XII I DISCOVER A GREAT AUTHOR WHERE I LEAST EXPECT TO FIND ONE
XIII I FIND OUT CYNTHIA: CYNTHIA FINDS OUT ME
XIV AMANTIUM IRÆ
XV AMORIS INTEGRATIO: WE ARE CLAPT IN THE STOCKS
XVI WE ARE SO SORELY TRIED THAT WE FAIN HAVE RECOURSE TO OUR WITS
XVII WE MAKE ACQUAINTANCE WITH A PERSON OF DISTINCTION
XVIII CONTAINS A PANEGYRIC ON THE GENTLE PASSION
XIX WE APPEAR IN A NEW CHARACTER
XX DISADVANTAGES OF A CHAISE AND A PAIR OF HORSES
XXI WE REAP THE FRUITS OF OUR AUDACITY
XXII THE LAST
THE WAYFARERS
CHAPTER I
THE DEVIL TO PAY
When I opened my eyes it was one o'clock in the day. The cards lay on
the table in a heap, and on the carpet in a greater one, the dead
bottles in their midst. The candles were burnt out; their holders were
foul with smoke and grease. As I sat up on the couch on which I had
thrown myself at nine o clock in the morning in the desperation of
fatigue, and stretched the sleep out of my limbs and rubbed it out of
my brain the afternoon strove through the drawn blinds palely. The
half-light gave such a sombre and appropriate touch to the profligate
scene that it would have moved a moralist to a disquisition of five
pages. But whatever my errors, that accusation was never urged against
me, even by my friends. You may continue in your reading, therefore,
in no immediate peril. The ashes were long since grey in the grate;
there was an intolerable reek of wine-dregs and stale tobacco in the
air; and the condition of the furniture, stained and broken and tumbled
in all directions contributed the final disorder to the room. Indeed
the only article in it, allowing no exception to myself, that had
emerged from the orgy of the night without an impediment to its dignity
was the picture of my grandfather, that pious, learned nobleman,
hanging above the mantelpiece. A chip off a corner of his frame might
be urged even against him; but what was that in comparison with the
philosophical severity with which he gazed upon the scene? In the
grave eyes, the grim mouth, the great nose of his family, he retained
the contemplative grandeur which had enabled him to give to the world
in ten ponderous tomes a Commentary on the _Analects of Confucius_.
The space they had occupied on my book-shelf, between the _Newgate
Calendar_ and the _History of Jonathan Wild the Great_, was now
unfilled, since these memorials of the great mind of my ancestor had
lain three weeks with the Jews.
By the time my wits had returned I was able to recall the fact that the
previous night, whose evidences I now regarded, was the last I should
enjoy. It was the extravagant ending to a raffish comedy. Finis was
already written in my history. As I sat yawning on my couch I was a
thing of the past; I had ceased to be; to-morrow at this hour I should
be forgotten by the world. I had had my chin off the bridle for ten
years, and had used that period to whirl my heels without regard to the
consequences. I had played high, drunk deep, paid my court to Venus,
gained the notoriety of the intrigue and the duel--in fact, I had taken
every degree in rakishness with the highest honours. I had spent or
lost every penny of my patrimony, and fourteen thousand pounds besides;
I could no longer hold my creditors at bay; various processes were out
against me; the Jews had my body, as surely as the devil had my soul.
But it was more particularly a stroke of ill-fortune that had hastened
on the evil day. The single hair whereon the sword over my head had
been suspended must have been severed sooner or later, even had it not
suddenly snapped at four of the clock of the previous afternoon. At
that hour I had killed a cornet of the Blues within a hundred yards of
the Cocoa Tree, in the presence of my greatest enemy. Lord knows it
was in fair fight, marred it is true by a little heat on the side of
both; but the only witness of the deed, and he an accidental one, was
Humphrey Waring, my rival and my enemy. He of all men was best able to
turn such a misadventure on my part to account. The moment poor
Burdock sank sobbing to death in Waring's arms, and he cried with his
grim laugh, "You will need to run pretty swift, my lord, to prove your
_alibi_," I knew that fate had reserved for the last the cruellest
trick of all she had it in her power to play.
Possessed by the knowledge that I must inevitably perish in a rope, or
less fortunately in a debtor's jail, for the instant the hand of the
law was laid on my coat, the state of my affairs would never permit it
to be removed. I went home and hastily summoned a few choice spirits
to my lodgings in Jermyn Street that evening; and I spent the last
night of my freedom in that society, expecting at every cast of the
cards and every clink of the bottle to hear the boots of the "traps"
from Bow Street upon the stairs. Yet all night long they never came,
and here it was one o'clock in the afternoon, and I still in the
enjoyment of my liberty. And now, as I sat in the sanity of daylight,
refreshed by an excellent sleep, I felt myself still to be my own man.
Therefore I called to François my valet to draw up the window-blinds,
and to have the goodness to bring me a bottle of wine.
This blackguard of an Irishman bore in baptism the name of Terence, but
I called him François, because one holds that to be as indubitably the
name of a valet as Dick of an ostler, and Thomas of a clergyman.
Besides, I have such an hereditary instinct for polite letters, that I
would as lief have called him after his own honoured patronymic as by
that of our excellent Flaccus himself. François waded through the
kings and queens and aces on the carpet, let the daylight in, and then
withdrew to fetch a clean glass and a bottle of Tokay.
"The last bottle, me lord," says he.
"We drain the last bottle on the last day," says I. "Can aught be more
fitting? _Finis coronal opus_!"
As this was the last time I should take the cup of pleasure to my lips,
I made the utmost of it; sipped it carefully, turned it over on my
tongue, held the glass up to the light, meditated on my past a little,
on my present case, and what lay before me. I suppose it was a
particular generous quality of the wine that kindled a new warmth in my
spirit. Why, I asked myself, should I sit here, tamely waiting on my
fate? Why should I be content to have my person contaminated with the
dirty hands that would hale it to an ignominious death, or a thing less
bearable? Why should I not cheat the Jews and my evil fortune in this
last hour? Nothing could be easier than to leave the law in the lurch.
This course was so consonant to the desperation of my temper and
affairs, that I had no sooner entered on the second glass of this last
bottle, than I was fully convinced of its propriety. It was surely
more fitting that a gentleman should select the hour and the manner of
his exit from the world, than submit like a common ruffian to the
dictation of the law in these important matters. To die by the hand of
oneself is not the highest sort of death, it is true; but I am one who
would advance, although the ancient and best writers are against me in
this matter, that there are occasions when a man may best serve his
dignity by renouncing that which has ceased to be a cherished object to
him. In this, at least, I have Cato the younger with me.
Indeed I had already taken this resolve rather than submit my pride to
those inconveniences that so depress the spirit, when a third glass of
wine put me in mind of a thing the most importunate of any. There was
a certain lady. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to consider of a
ruined gamester broken by Fortune on her wheel, pausing in his last
extremity for such a reason. But there it was. I could have wished to
see the tears of defiance once again on her cheeks. In spite of the
world, in spite of her family, of my evil history, of my cunning,
plausible enemy, she had given me her proud little heart. She was the
one person I might have turned to in this black hour, who would not
have requited me with a sneer or a cold glance. Her stern old father
had no sooner discovered how her affections stood committed towards me,
and had learned the colour of my reputation, than he had whisked her
away from town to his seat in the remote west country, and had vowed
upon his soul to have me ducked in a ditch if I so much as showed my
nose in those parts.
These thoughts of dear, insolent little Cynthia had induced reflections
that I could well have done without. It was plain that this last cast
of the cards had left the game in the hands of Mr. Humphrey Waring. He
had long had the ear of the old duke, Cynthia's father, and no man knew
better how to push the advantages my misfortunes had given him over me.
He would marry the greatest heiress in the west country, hate him as
she might, whilst Jack Tiverton, the worthless rogue on whom she doted,
or, if it please you better, the Right Honourable Anthony Gervas John
Plowden-Pleydell, fifth Earl of Tiverton, that ill-fated nobleman,
rotted in durance, or writhed in a rope at Tyburn, or spilt his brains
on the carpet of his lodgings. But for all that I had a mind to
attempt a little more mischief before I perished. Why not go to poor
little town-bred Cynthia, immured in the country like a bird in a cage,
and throw her obstinate old father and her cunning suitor into such a
fright as they would not be likely to forget? Indeed, why not?
However, when I came to reflect on this scheme more carefully, I found
that I had hardly zest enough for it. My ruin was too complete.
Besides, it might cost Cynthia dear. I should have been well pleased
to look on my pretty young miss once again and watch the tears course
down her cheeks in the stress of our farewell, for I would have you
know that I am a man of sentiment when in the humour. But it would be
a hollow business and little of a kindness to the child to have her
weep for such a broken profligate. I should purchase the discomfort of
my enemies at too high a price.
Yet I must come to a decision speedily. Every instant I expected to
hear the law upon the stairs. Should I spare it any further trouble
there and then, or make an attempt to break out of town and lead it a
dance across the country? The drawback in the first course was its
somewhat arbitrary nature. It was so final and so certain that chance
would have no opportunity. The drawback to the second was that I had
not a guinea in the world. That morning I had staked my last and lost
it. However, as I weighed the pros and cons with a whimsical
deliberation I was taken with a fortunate expedient. Chance had been
the ruling passion of my life. It had brought me to this pass. Why
should I not employ it to solve this problem? I summoned M. François.
"Take two pistols," I said, "into the next chamber, but load one only.
Cock them both, however, but use particular care that nothing shall
suggest which is charged and which is not. Then bring them here and
lay them side by side upon this table, still remembering not to betray
the fatal one."
M. François bowed, and solemnly carried away the weapons from the
sideboard. I awaited his return with an emotion akin to pleasure. I
had tasted most of the delights that chance could afford me; but even
I, who had staked houses, lands, servants, furniture, and every guinea
of my fortune, had not yet gambled with my life. Thus, when I came to
play the greatest stake that is in the power of any man to play, it was
but fitting that I should enjoy some little exhilaration in that act.
M. François returned in rather more than two minutes with the pistols,
and set them on the table on the top of the cards. They were both
cocked, and it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. M.
Francis coughed in his well-bred manner, and then sighed deeply.
"I beg your pardon, my lord," he said, at the verge of tears, "and I am
sure your lordship will overlook the liberty on an occasion--on an
occasion that is not likely to occur again. But may I say, my lord,
with what deep regret I take farewell of your lordship? I am sure
there could not have been a better, kinder master."
"François, I subscribe heartily to that," says I, "and I am sure there
could not have been a bigger blackguard of a servant. And may I say,
François, that I never took a deeper pleasure in anything than in
parting with you; and I may even add that if a minute hence I am called
elsewhere, I go with the less irresolution, because I am firm in the
opinion that wherever it may be, I cannot be worse served than I have
been at your hands."
"Your lordship is more than kind," says François humbly.
"No thanks, I beg," says I. "But, François, if chance, who hath served
me nearly as ill as you have and for a rather longer period, sees fit
to arrange that I shall perish by my own hand, I do not doubt that you
will desire some small memento, some small souvenir of so fortunate an
occasion."
"Your lordship is more than kind," says François, more humbly than
before.
"You overwhelm me, François," says I. "If there is any little
knick-knack your fancy turns to, you have only to mention it. The Jews
will but claim it otherwise, and I would almost as lief it fell into
your hands as into theirs."
"As your lordship so emboldens me," says M. François, "I should most
greatly cherish the picture of your grandfather, that wise good
nobleman, that hangs above the mantelpiece, for I am sure I could
devise no more fitting memorial of his grandson."
"François," says I, "would I did not know you for a rogue, for the
chastity of your taste does you so much honour it honours me. But
would you bereave me of the last badge of my respectability? Friends,
fortune, estate, the consideration of the world, all are gone, and you
would now deny me the solace of my heritage. Yet I commend your wisdom
even here, since if you rob others as you have robbed myself, you will
presently be able to purchase half the kingdom of Ireland, and set up
among the landed gentry. You will then, I doubt not, find an ancestor
or two come not amiss. And if of my grandfather's pattern so much the
better, for their virtue will purchase you more credit than any of your
own. But I would recommend myself that you took a few ancestors over
with the property. They would cost less in a lump. Besides, they tell
me they are cheaper in Ireland than anywhere else, except France, where
they are even more common than matrimony."
M. François was gathering himself to make a proper reply to this
harangue, when suddenly we both heard the long-expected footfalls on
the stairs.
"Secure that door," said I. "I will not be taken until chance hath
arbitrated on my destination."
Saying this, without the hesitation of an instant I picked up one of
the pistols lying side by side among the cards. François slipped to
the door and turned the key. Then he went to the mantelpiece, took
down the picture, and placed it under his arm.
"Farewell, my lord," he said, "I leave you with inexpressible regret."
He ran to the window, cast it open, and with the most astonishing skill
and agility, squeezed himself through the opening, my grandfather and
all; and the roof being well within his reach, he first laid the
picture on the tiles, then drew himself up after it, and showed the
cleanest pair of heels to the law as ever I saw. And I was so taken
with the ready wit and contrivance of the rogue, that although I had
the cocked pistol pressed to my temple, I could not pull the trigger
for the life of me. For I stood all a-shake with very laughter, so
that the cold muzzle of the weapon tapped now against my forehead, now
against my nose, now against my cheekbone, till I vow it was a miracle
the hammer did not descend. But in the middle of all this the door was
tried and shaken, followed by a fierce tap on the panel, and then came
the clear tones of a woman.
"Open--open the door. Jack, it is I!"
At the sound of that voice the pistol fell from my hands altogether.
Striking the carpet with a thud, it exploded under my feet and knocked
a great hole in the wainscot. For an instant the room was full of
smoke, gunpowder, and a mighty noise; but the moment I recovered my
courage I unfastened the door and confronted the cause of it--Cynthia
Carew! She too was the victim of a not unnatural bewilderment, and as
pale as linen.
"Ods sputterkins!" she cried. "What a taking you have put me in! I am
all of a twitter. Whose brains have you spilt? Not your own, I'll
warrant me, for you never had any. Give me a kiss now, and get me some
ratafia to compose me, and we'll let it pass."
"Cynthia," I gasped, but giving her the first of these requisites, "how
came you here, in heaven's name?
"Ratafia!" she cried, "ratafia, or I perish."
"There's never a drop in the place," says I. "No, nor cherry-brandy,
nor aromatic vinegar neither."
"Another kiss then," says Cynthia, pressing her white cheek against me,
and casting her arms about my neck.
I led her within and set her down on the couch. She bore all the
evidences of having made a long journey. So far from being dressed in
the modishness that was wont to charm St. James's Park, she was covered
by a long, dun-coloured cloak, wore a country hat, if I'm a judge of
'em, in which the feathers were crumpled; her shoes were muddy, and she
carried a strange look of fear and uneasiness that I had never seen
about her before. I procured a clean glass and filled it with wine
from the last bottle and made her drain it, for she looked so pale and
overborne.
"Now," says I, "how came you here? and what brings you?"
"Oh, Jack," says she, "I am run away." She suddenly broke forth into a
flood of tears.
"The devil you are!" says I.
"Yes," says she, sobbing as though her heart would break, "and I'm not
sorry neither."
"You wouldn't confess it an you were," says I.
"No, I wouldn't," she sobbed.
I must admit that the sight of the sweet chit was the one thing in all
the world that had the power to please me at that hour, yet there was
not a thing that could have happened to leave me in so sore a case.
Here had my prettiness come and thrown herself on my protection--on the
protection of a man utterly ruined, whom the law was already dogging
for his liberty, if not his life. In sooth I must send her back again.
It was no sort of a reception, especially when one fell to consider the
heroical fashion of her coming to me. But what else was one to do? I
was at my last gasp, without so much as a guinea, or a roof for my
head, since to stay in that house was to court arrest, nor had I a
friend in the world to whom I would dare to recommend her.
"Cynthia," says I, "I dote upon the sight of you; I am filled with joy
to see you sitting there, but--but----"
How could I tell the child!
"But--but?" She sobbed no more. Mopping her tears, she crumpled the
sopping handkerchief in her little fist, sat perfectly upright in her
seat, and stared so straight at me that I felt the blood hum in my ears.
"But--but!" says I again--devil take me if I could tell her.
"But--but?" says she on her part; and it was wonderful to see her blue
eyes come open and her proud lips spring together like the snap of a
watch-case.
"Well, Cynthia, dear, it is simply this," says I, going headlong into
it. "You find me a ruined gamester, without a friend or a guinea in
the world, who even at this moment is being hunted for his debts, and,
if I dared say it to you, something worse. Now there is but one way
out of it. You cannot stay here; there is not a friend to whom I may
confide you; child, you must go back to your father."
Instead of growing red, the colour that shone I am sure in my face, she
grew as pale as snow, and her eyes sparkled with a grim beauty that
discomposed me more than it charmed me. She rose from the couch,
lifted her chin out of her white throat, and kicked the kings and
queens and knaves on the carpet in all directions.
"Never," she cried. "I will not go back to my father. I said I would
not marry this Mr. Waring; whereon my lord said he would lock me in my
room until I was of another mind. And he did lock me in it; and I
broke out of it; and I will not go back, no, not if I must subsist on
crusts picked from the kennel, and the clothes rot off my body, and I
sleep o' nights in a dry ditch or the porch of a church."
"Faith!" says I, "that's well spoke, monstrous well spoke."
"I hate this Mr. Waring," says the little fury. "May I be crost in
love, if I do not."
"And if I do not too," says I, "may my heart smoke in purgatory. But
come tell me, is it for himself you hate him, or is it for love of me?"
"A plague take all catechisms," says she. "But I will tell you for
another kiss."
I think two persons in love could never have been in a worse plight
than Cynthia and I. There seemed no course open to us, other than to
flee together, we knew not whither. Before even this could be
considered, however, we had to find the means.
"What money have you left in your poke?" I asked her.
"Twelvepence exactly and a halfpenny over."
I whistled long and shrill. "Which is twelve-pence exactly and a
halfpenny more than there is in mine. At nine o'clock this morning I
staked my all, including three periwigs, nine pairs of silk breeches,
stockings, five cambric brocaded waistcoats, silver-buckled shoes,
sword, duelling pistols, house and furniture, the Odes of Horace, and
my man-cook--staked 'em on the queen of hearts and lost 'em. Think on
it, my pretty--lost 'em on the queen of hearts."
"I care not for that," says Cynthia. "I will not go back, and so you
must make the best of me."
"But, child, what can I do when I'm taken?"
"You must not be taken."
"In that case," says I, "the only chance we have is to get away from
here at once, furnished with the clothes we stand in, and the sum of
twelve-pence halfpenny."
CHAPTER II
LADY CYNTHIA CAREW
Having come to this odd resolve, it behoved us to lose no time. But
whither we should go, neither of us knew. North, south, east, or west,
one latitude was as good as another. We should be equally served in
each. As for the means at our disposal, we had the sum of twelve-pence
halfpenny sterling. I am sure that much the same thoughts were
uppermost in the minds of us both, for the moment I looked at little
Cynthia sitting on the couch with a tight mouth and ratter quizzical
eyes, I broke forth into a shout of laughter, which she returned so
promptly that it became a question as to whom the honour of the first
peal belonged.
In the midst of this pleasantry I walked to the door of the room and
locked it again. I had no mind to be taken unawares by the enemy; and
provided I was not, François' example had shown that a way of escape
was always open.
"Now, my dear," says I, "we have no time to lose; let us be putting our
few affairs in order. Look round this despoiled chamber, and tell me
if you observe any article in it that could be turned into money at a
pawnshop, or is likely otherwise to serve us on our journey. I am
sorry to say that every object of _vertu_ that I ever possessed upon
which we might at a pinch have raised a seven-shilling piece has
already been called upon to perform that office. There is one
exception even to these, it is true, but that cannot help us now, and I
rejoice to think so. For five minutes before your arrival I gave away
to a connoisseur, a dilettante, a lover of the beautiful, Sir Godfrey
Kneller's picture of my famous grandfather. I think I could never have
held up my head again had I given up that eminent nobleman to the
ignoble usages I have suggested. I foresaw this calamity; let me take
the credit therefore of its aversion."
"You gave it away without receiving a farthing for it!" cries Cynthia
aghast. "Oh, what a folly, Jack! Had we it now we could make thirty
shillings of it at any dealer's."
"I know, I know!" says I triumphantly, "I grant that; therefore do you
not more clearly see how finely I have acted by my grandfather?"
"Burn me if I do," says Cynthia. "Jack, what a fool thou art! For I
see never a thing of value left in the place; or stay, we might put
that pair of old iron pistols in a case and raise a loaf of bread on
them. I suppose that on the floor is the one with which you tried to
take your life, and as the one other's cocked, I suppose that's loaded
too."
"Tried to take my life," says I. "Cynthia, what words are these?"
"A truce to dissimulation, if you please," says Cynthia tartly, "for
feather-headed fellow that you are, yet do no better at it than any of
the other arts and sciences at which you have tried and failed."
I turned to the table and began sorting a handful of cards to cover my
confusion. A clever woman is the devil! Cynthia, to add a sting to
her speech, picked up the discharged pistol from the carpet,
ostentatiously searched for its case, and put it in. She then took up
the other.
"Is this loaded, or is it not?" she asked.
"No, it's not loaded," says I. "Pull down the trigger and put it in
too."
"Then, if it's not loaded, why was it cocked?" The question was
decidedly disconcerting. I was by no means willing to go into the
details of that matter, and therefore hesitated to find a reason.
"You don't know whether it's loaded or not," says Cynthia, sternly.
"Most certainly I do. Have I not said that it is not loaded?"
"And have I not said," says the impudent Cynthia, "that you don't know
whether it's loaded or not?"
"But, my dear child," says I, "have I not positively said that the
thing's not loaded?"
"Oh yes, I admit that," says the provoking creature. "But you must
admit too, sir, that I have more faith in my own judgment than I have
in yours. I say again that you don't know whether that pistol is
loaded or whether it is not."
"I'll lay you two to one in hundreds that I do," says I hotly.
"Would not a case of iron pistols against the sum of twelvepence
halfpenny be more appropriate in the circumstances?" says Cynthia.
"I believe you are right there," says I.
Cynthia then presented the pistol at the wall and a strange thing
happened. The room was filled with a reverberating crash, and when the
smoke that arose had lifted a little it was discovered that a large
mirror had been shivered into a thousand pieces.
"There," says Cynthia triumphantly.
As for me, I stood aghast for a moment, perfectly at a loss to explain
the pistol's strange behaviour. Then I suddenly broke out into a fit
of uncontrollable laughter; the admirable François had loaded them both.
It was then the turn of Cynthia to stand aghast.
"I hope your misfortunes have not deprived you of your reason," says
she, more tartly than ever; and added, "I knew all along that you
didn't know whether it was loaded or not."
"Come, come!" says I, keenly anxious, you may be sure, to change the
topic. "We have already tarried here over-long. I will tell you the
whole story in a more convenient place and season. If we don't go at
once, I am afraid we shall not go at all."
"True," says Cynthia, seating herself again on the couch with the most
deliberate and provoking coolness.
"What new whimsey is this?" says I, utterly nonplussed.
"I think, my Lord Tiverton," says Cynthia, with remarkable gravity,
"that you have overlooked an important particular."
"Which? What?" says I.
"Nay, my lord," says she, "I am the last person in the world to remind
you."
That might be true enough so far as it went, but the pretty roguish
chit composed her features and her person into such an affectation of
solemnity, and there was such a saucy twinkle in her eyes too, that all
the words in the English tongue could not have spoken more plainly than
she did without uttering any. It is, I suppose, one of the highest
gifts of her sex, though to be sure, would it were exercised more!
"Dammy," says I, "you mean--er--er; you mean that I must ask you to
marry me."
Instead of replying at once, she bent down and picked up half-a-dozen
cards from the floor, arranged them in the shape of a fan, and held
them in front of her eyes.
"La," says she, "your lordship is too kind. Pray ascribe my blushes to
my country breeding."
"Pah!" says I, "we have not the time for play-acting now. The moment
is very ill-chosen."
"Oh, I grant you that," says she, "but as you will allow that it was
none of my choosing, why should I forego the peculiar privileges that
my sex have ever derived from this position? No, as I'm a woman, I
will have this thing carried through in the most proper and approved
manner. Ods lud, sir! what notions have you got! I will be coy if I
choose, or haughty, or easy, or gracious, or mocking, or disdainful,
just as my mood is and as I've a mind to be. Now then, my lord, down
on to your noble knees, and pour forth your foolish speeches that are
meant to be so grand, which you must forget in the middle, whereon you
will descend out of a rather turgid poetry into a bald and somewhat
blasphemous prose. For I will have your lordship to know that I will
be wooed as a woman, else I will not be wooed at all. Down, down on to
your knees, my lord, and up, up with your apostrophes."
"What a consummate folly is this," says I, "when at any moment we may
be ta'en."
But the pretty little fool sat as demure as a mouse, not relaxing a lip
or twitching an eyebrow, i' faith as adorable a picture of a person as
any I've seen off a painted canvas. There was that tantalizing air
about her which at once invited, yet forbade; that aroused that which
it denied. I vow nothing could have been more taking than the sight of
little Cynthia sitting there as straight as any arrow that ever Cupid
shot, her knees and heels together, and her hands spread out with the
palms turned down, and her dainty toes peeping from underneath her
petticoat. Indeed, so was I worked on by her graces and airs that I
was like to forget the grim pass in which we were involved. Nay, I
gradually began to solicit her in a formal manner; a piece of behaviour
that contributed as much to her whimsical pleasure as it did to my
embarrassment. And when in accents of undying regard, I came to ask
for her hand in exchange for my heart and fortune, she was so charmed
with the natural fervour with which I did it, that she stopped me
imperiously, in the middle of much passion, and says: "I would have
your lordship go over again that splendid passage that you have just
uttered, that hath the fine swearing and the great humility in it. I
never heard anything choicer; Mr. Betterton never surpassed it."
And when I had humoured her as much as she wished and that was not
until I was thirsty and hot, and she was somewhat weary of keeping the
strict attitude that she thought best suited to receive my addresses
in, says she: "I declare, sir, you have pleased me vastly. You are as
good a suitor as any of them all. Mr. Waring never wooed me half so
well. As for Mr. Stokes, and Colonel Regan, and Sir John Dufty, and my
lord Viscount Brighouse, you compare very well with them too. You have
not the fine brawny pease-and-bacon appearance of Sir John, it is true,
nor is your voice so rich and noble as the Colonel's, begorra, nor is
your nose so well curved as Mr. Stoke's, nor have you a pretty little
lisp like my lord Viscount, but in the sum-total of your attributes you
do very fairly well. And therefore as your lordship's fortune is so
considerable, and you have already gained the approbation of my father,
I think the only course open to me--Oh, Jack, listen! What in the name
of heaven is that?"
"You may well ask," says I. "One, two, three, four, five probably or
more, according to their boots on the stairs, gentlemen from Bow Street
come to wait upon us."
"Oh, what shall we do!" says poor Cynthia, clapping her hands.
"Keep very calm, child, and carefully heed what I say. They will not
molest you; I am their game. But I doubt gravely whether I shall fall
to them at present. My way lies through that window and along the
tiles, and whilst they follow, you will simply go downstairs and walk
out at the front door. Go as swiftly as you can down to Piccadilly to
the gates of Hyde Park. And if I am not already come there before you,
wait till I arrive. It is to be considered, of course, that I may have
more difficulty than I apprehend in slipping these fellows."
Here the door was roughly taken and the next instant so heavy a blow
was delivered against it as partly drove in one of the panels. I had
just time to run into the adjoining chamber for a hat and a
riding-cloak, to plant a kiss between brave little Cynthia's brows, and
abjure her not to be afraid, when the door was driven in, and three or
four ugly wretches came tumbling one upon another pell-mell into the
room.
CHAPTER III
INTRODUCES A MERITORIOUS HEBREW
I had hardly time to open the window ere they were recovered of their
entry and on their feet. Seeing what I was about to attempt they made
a rush, but I did not bear youth and vigour in my limbs for nothing.
With a quickness that I'll warrant would have done no discredit to a
cat, I had poised myself on the precarious sill, and had twisted myself
into a favourable position for reaching the roof. It was easily in
reach, as this chamber very happily was at the top of the house. I had
barely taken a firm hold on the iron gutter that ran along the edge of
the tiles, before I had drawn up one knee, and was in the act of
dragging up the other as fast as I could, when it was seized by a hand
from the room below. Luckily for me, I had a firm enough hold of the
roof to get some little purchase for my imprisoned leg, whereby I was
enabled to deal my adversary a pretty smart kick in the teeth, which
sent him cursing back into the room. Thereupon I scrambled
willy-nilly, hands and knees, on to the tiles. Not one moment too
soon, however. My pursuers evidently numbered fleet and active fellows
among them. Their blood was up too. For scarcely had I gone ten yards
along the edge of the tiles, moving on all-fours for safety, ere
another fellow was also in possession of the roof. This was not at all
to my liking, and a good deal outside my calculations, since I had not
expected that these clumsy Bow Street runners would attempt to follow
me in this fashion.
My pursuer gave a view-halloa and followed me so fast that I realized
at once that at this game Jack was like to be as good as his master.
Perchance the fellow was better schooled in this mode of procedure than
I, for he was clattering behind me, preparing to grab my heels before I
could take my bearings. I did not know where I was, and had not the
least idea as to how I should get away. But one thing was plain. I
had embarked on so bold a course that the moment there was a limit to
my daring all would be lost. Therefore, hearing the Bow Street
gentleman wheezing and grunting a yard or two behind me, I stopped and
rose to my feet, and turned round so suddenly as considerably to
endanger my own safety and to take him entirely unawares. And I sent
my fist such a crack in his eye, that only a miracle saved him from
toppling over the parapet into the middle of Jermyn Street, twenty feet
beneath.
While Mr. Catchpole sprawled and wallowed with his arms and legs
outstretched striving to save himself from falling over the brink, and
howling to his mates, whose heads were just showing above the gutter,
to come to his assistance, I took the occasion to alter my tactics.
Instead of crawling along the edge, I began climbing up in a vertical
direction. And my pursuer being but a runner from Bow Street after
all, had been considerably cooled in his zeal, and accordingly allowed
me rather more of elbow room, whilst his companions, of whom two more
had now come upon the top, observing the nature of his accident, were
in no such hurry as he had been to come by one themselves.
I mounted painfully enough as high as the chimney pots, not without
some damage to the skin of my hands and knees, and a good deal of
slipping and sliding. A game of hide-and-seek followed. Reaching the
opposite slope of the roofs, which concealed me and put me farthest
away from the enemy, I crept as swiftly as I could from chimney-stack
to chimney-stack with ever a keen eye for a means of getting down again
into the street. Some yards ahead I saw that the straight line of the
tiles was broken by a dormer window. I made to this for here was the
very chance that I desired. Alas! when I reached it I found it secured
from within. I had no time in which to break a pane of glass in the
hope that I might put my hand through and discover the fastenings. A
couple of the traps had already found out in which direction I had
gone, and were even now standing on the apex, and beckoning to the
others. I moved away to another dormer window a few yards further on.
It too was fast, but looking ahead I saw, greatly to my relief, that a
third was standing open. My satisfaction had a short life, however.
For scarcely had I made two yards towards it ere I observed a thing
that in my haste I had overlooked. The line of the houses ended
abruptly; the open window belonged to another row. Between ran an
alley or a narrow street, wide enough to make me pause in my career.
Hard pressed as I was, I must confess that I had no fancy to attempt a
leap so precarious. I turned to go back, but the enemy had followed so
smartly on my heels that I saw in a glance that there was no chance of
retreating by the way I had come. My only hope lay in a forward
direction; I could not possibly retire. Nor must I hesitate an instant
either. The closer I came to this gulf in the houses the more
desperate it looked, but my resolve was already taken. A drowning man
clutches at a straw.
Impeded as I was with a cumbersome riding-coat, I could not hope to
make the leap successfully. Hastily pulling it off, therefore, I
folded it up in some rude fashion, for I could not afford to lose it,
and pitched it over a space between the houses. It landed in safety
well over the immediate brink. The traps, apprehending the nature of
the feat I was about to attempt, were coming along the roof with
wonderful expedition. Indeed, they are almost within an arm's-length
of me when I started on the run to make the leap. With teeth set, and
it must be confessed some little sickness of anticipation in my spirit,
I ran as hard as I could, and hurled myself into the air with a
despairing energy. That I covered the gulf and landed with my knees on
the coat I had cast across, I have always ascribed to that benevolent
Providence that hath such a jealous regard for the worthless. And in
sooth when I had actually arrived there it was one of the greatest
wonders in the world that I did not fall back again in the recoil, or
did not begin to roll sideways and so tumble over the lower edge. But
somehow I recovered my balance before either of these calamities
happened. Then I felt that I might breathe again.
There was precious little to fear that the men from Bow Street would be
bold enough to follow me. For when I came to contemplate, now as you
may believe with no little satisfaction, the magnitude of the hazard
intervening between us, it cost me a shudder in despite of my
complacency. And as in their case it was not a life and death matter
on which line of the roofs they happened to stand, and they had no
thoughts of adorable little Cynthia to spur them on to these great
risks, I think they may be pardoned for giving back before that which I
with so many sweats and misgivings had accomplished. Nor do I lay any
unction to myself, since I am sure that had I stood in their shoes, or
had I played for a lesser stake, I would have had none of such risks
either. Nay, I am not altogether clear in my mind that had I not been
heated by the fine excitements of the hue and cry I should have been
wrought up to do it as it was. There can be little doubt, I think,
that the chase makes a much nobler and more adventurous creature of the
fox than ever consists with his vulgar and common character.
Seeing my pursuers had halted on the opposite brink, and were
presenting such a helpless and bewildered appearance as plainly showed
they had no stomach for a similar deed, I was able to resume my riding
coat at my ease, and even to engage in a few words of conversation as I
did so. Says I:
"Certainly, gentlemen, I think you are well advised in not seeking to
come over. 'Pon my soul I would not have come over myself had you not
pressed me so hard! Here is a guinea to drink my health, and now I
will wish you good afternoon!"
Such is the power of habit that I fumbled in several pockets in search
of a gold piece to toss them, ere I recollected the bankrupt condition
in which I stood. Perforce I had to be content with a bow and a
lifting of the hat, whereupon I went my way along the roof while they
were left at the end of their wits to discover a means by which they
might circumvent me.
I had not an instant of time to lose, however, if I was to make good my
escape. There were doubtless persons in the street below who had had a
keen eye for these proceedings. No sooner would they see in which
direction the cat was to jump than they would act accordingly.
Therefore it behoved me to be as bold and as quick as ever. The open
dormer window offered the readiest mode of egress. I made to it at
once, and peering within saw that the chamber, a bedroom, was very
happily empty. I had no difficulty in squeezing my body through the
narrow opening and so came into the room. Having done this, I securely
fastened the window to present a further obstacle to my enemies. The
great thing that lay before me now was to make my way downstairs as
cautiously as I could, and to slip out of the house without attracting
the attention of its occupants, or of those of my foes who might be
lurking about in the street. But much address was required to perform
all this successfully, as you will readily understand.
First I opened the door of the bed-chamber with noiseless care, and
then groped my way through the gloom and strangeness of the place to
the stairs. And mighty rickety and full of noises they were when I
found them. They began so sheer and abruptly, and so close to the
bed-room door, that in spite of my caution, I was on them long ere I
thought I was, and as a consequence nearly pitched headlong down their
whole length. Mercifully I recovered my balance in the nick of time,
but not before, as it seemed to my nervous ears, I had set up an
intolerable clatter that appeared to echo and re-echo through every
room of the house. Step by step, I crept down the stairs, and paused
to listen on every one. It was so dark that I had to be very tenacious
of the walls. But fortune was still on my side. There seemed not a
soul in all the house, nor could I hear a sound. Yet every step I
descended the place grew darker and darker; there was not so much as a
glimmer of light from a door or a window to be discerned; while the
walls were so close about me that when I stretched out my hands I could
feel them on either side. Presently I ceased to descend, whereon much
shuffling of my feet ensued, and I concluded that this was some kind of
a landing. More shuffling and gingerly manoeuvring followed, and then
the stairs began again, and the place grew darker than ever. The
darkness became so great that I could not see my hand before my face;
and as I had not the means about me to procure a light, nor would have
dared to employ them had they been in my possession, I began to marvel
where in the world I was coming to.
At last the stairs ended altogether, and on pushing carefully forward,
my nose suddenly came against an unexpected obstacle. Running my hands
over it, I judged it to be a door. I put my ear to the wood, but
listen as I might I could hear no sound. Whither it led or what lay
behind it I had not the vaguest notion, nor was there a speck of light
by which I might make a guess. But when the handle of the door came
into my fist, I decided not to flinch the situation whatever it might
present. A bold course had been my salvation hitherto; come what might
I would continue in it. Therefore, I cautiously turned the handle, and
opened the door an inch at a time, I daresay I had got it about five
inches apart when it was rudely grasped from the other side, and flung
wide open in my face. A Jew stood before me, as true a child of Israel
as ever I set eyes on. He cast up his hands and gurgled in his anger
and surprise.
"Why, what the deffil!" says he at last.
"How do you do, sir," says I, cordially holding out my hand. "Proud to
meet you, sir, infernally proud to meet you."
Although I had hoped that my air and tone were the very pattern of
affability, I doubt if this Hebrew thought them so; or even if he did,
he hardly seemed to think they became me in the circumstances as
handsomely as I had hoped they would. For he gurgled and cackled, his
tawny countenance grew redder and redder, his hands trembled, and he
contorted his body into a truly fantastic shape. Meantime I gazed past
him to see whence he had emerged, in the hope that I might get some
clue as to what would be the best line of conduct to adopt. To my
infinite pleasure I saw that I had come upon the threshold of a
pawnbroker's shop, since a truly miscellaneous collection of articles
lay scattered about it, whilst the character and nation of my
inquisitor alone warranted the theory. Yet in an instant was my
satisfaction turned to anger, for there, staring into my very eyes with
all the meditative grandeur he had of yore, was that learned nobleman,
my grandfather. It was well for M. François that he was not at that
moment within my reach.
"What do you do here?" says the Jew, having discovered his tongue at
last. "Do you think I do not know? You haf come to rob my house.
Benjamin, bring your blunderbush. In broad daylight, too. O heaven,
what effrontery!"
"My dear Mr. Moses," says I winningly, "what words are these?
Effrontery--rob your house; to conceive that I, the best friend your
tribe ever had or for that matter ever will have, should be thus
accosted by you! I am here as a client, sir; and to conceive that you
of all men should deny a client when he takes these monstrous pains to
come to you in privacy!"
Mr. Moses was a good deal reassured by my address. But after all his
race are a good deal too tenacious to be put off so lightly. He
demanded to know in what manner I had come there and he did it so
boisterously too, and in a fashion so calculated to attract the
attention of persons in the street that I judged it wisest to make a
clean breast of how matters stood with me.
"Well, Mr. Moses," says I, "if you must know I am that great benefactor
of your tribe, Lord Tiverton. My lodgings are about six doors up the
street, and they have been visited this afternoon by the dirtiest set
of minions from Bow Street as ever I saw. And so hard was I put to it
to clear them that I took to the housetops, whereupon, seeing your
dormer window open, I gave them the slip by climbing into it, and here
I am. And mark you, my dear Mr. Moses, I would not so honour the
dormer windows of all and sundry, no, rabbit me an I would. For I am
mighty particular as to whose hands I would accept an obligation from.
But if a friend cannot take a benefaction from a friend, then who in
all the world is one to take it from? As Flaccus himself has said."
Mr. Moses, you may be sure, was mollified indeed.
"I am sure I beg your lordship's pardon," says he. "A thousand times
most humbly I am sure I do. Benjamin, put by your blunderbush; and
withdraw the curtains across the window, sirrah, for I have seen the
traps walking up and down the street, and peering here and there and
everywhere this last ten minutes; yes, that I have. Is there any
particular in which I can serve your lordship?"
"Yes, by thunder, that you can!" says I. "I must get away from here
unknown as quickly as you might count ten. The traps are still about
in the street you say?"
"See, my lord, there is one going past the window now."
As he spoke I took the precaution of drawing farther back into the
shadow of the stairs, for it was even as he said. The next instant Mr.
Moses pushed the door to in my face, and as he did so, wheeled round to
confront (as I guessed) two or three of the traps who were coming into
the shop.
"A sheeny, by the Lord!" I heard one say, in a voice so coarse that it
set my teeth on edge.
"What is your pleasure, good gentlemans?" says Mr. Moses in a tone of
incredible politeness. "If I, a poor old clo'es-dealer as I am, can be
of service to you, I cannot tell you how happy you will make me."
"Well, ole Father Abraham," says the foremost man, "we're on the 'eels
of a hearl, d'ye see. We've been a-chasing of him on the 'ouse-tops,
we have so, and he's just a-been a-squeedgin' of himself through your
dormer window, and he's left us in the lurch, d'ye see. He's in your
bed-room, you can wager, and we're a-going up to rout him out."
"Is he so?" says Mr. Moses. "God-a-mercy! is it possible? Benjamin,
get your blunderbush, and go and bring him down."
I was so charmed with the comedy that was being played, that at some
little risk I had opened just a small crevice in the door, in order
that I might peer through upon the actors. Benjamin, a youth about as
tall as the counter, but wonderfully keen and sharp of feature, put
himself in possession of an antiquated fire-arm, probably the most
obsolete weapon ever handed down from early times.
"Be damned to Benjamin," says the man from Bow Street, "and be damned
to his blunderbush; we're a-going up to look ourselves."
"And wherefore, gentlemans," says Moses in a tone like silk, it was so
soft, "should Benjamin and his blunderbush be damned? Benjamin is a
good boy, and his blunderbush is a good weapon. If this earl is in my
chamber, depend upon it one or the other shall bring him down."
"No; we'll go up ourselves, ole Shylock," says the other, "for this
hearl is so full of hell, that as likely as not he'd beat Benjamin to
death with his own blunderbush, crikey-likey! he would so."
"Nay, that he would not," says Mr. Moses, "for Benjamin would blow the
heart out of him, if he but advanced one step upon him."
Mr. Moses was evidently a master of fence, and determined as my enemies
might show themselves, they could make nothing of his subtle, cringing
ways. They might have excellent reasons for overhauling the house, and
going upstairs, as indeed they had, yet they had not the wit to enforce
them. For every additional argument he had a new excuse to advance,
which at least if it contributed nothing whatever to the case in point,
yet served to obscure the issue and to distract and confound those
concerned in it. It was truly remarkable how he managed to lure and
cheat them with the most specious words that could mean nothing
whatever; and yet at the same time, and therein lay his art, they
listened to him and never once seemed to doubt his sincerity. And it
seemed too that this cunning Hebrew had something of a trump card to
play, and this he had reserved for the last.
"An earl did ye say, sirs?" says he, with a vast air of reflection.
"It could not have been by any chance the Earl of Tiverton?"
"Yes, by thunder," they cried together, "the man himself."
"Well now, I call that whimsical," says he, "seeing as how I see his
lordship running at the top of his legs past this window not five
minutes before you came here."
"You did that," says one of my enemies, "then why in thunder couldn't
you say so before, instead o' keepin' us argle-hargling here, you piece
o' pork, you hedge-pig!"
With a stream of oaths and vituperation they tumbled out into the
street, whilst Mr. Moses, with his hands outspread and a cringing,
shrugging, smiling yet deprecating aspect, looked the picture of a
highly ingenuous bewilderment. No sooner had they passed away in the
hot pursuit of some phantom of myself, than Mr. Moses opened the door
he had pushed so lately upon me, and informed me that the immediate
danger was overpast. He waved away the thanks I offered him, with a
great deal of politeness, assuring me that he was more than repaid by
the happiness he took for having been of some slight service to so fine
a specimen of the nobility as myself.
"But if there is any leetle thing in the way of pizness," says he, "I
am the man, your lordship."
"Yes, Mr. Moses, I have been thinking of it," says I, and indeed I had.
"Now you see I am very tolerably attired." I unbuttoned my riding-coat
and threw it open to display as elegant a costume as ever I had from
Tracy. "Unhappily I have not a guinea in the world"--let me do Mr.
Moses the justice of recording that in the face of this announcement he
retained his countenance wonderfully well.--"But I will barter
breeches, coat, waistcoat, ruffles, stockings, buckled shoes, for a
plain drab shoddy suit, some common hose, and a pair of hob-nailed
boots. By this exchange I think we shall both be gratified; you on
your side by receiving things of about twelve times the value of what
you give away; and I on mine by obtaining a tolerable disguise to my
condition when I start on my itinerary, for I hardly think I should
recognize myself in such a uniform, whilst as for my mamma, dear
sainted buckram lady! if at the end of all the journeying that is
before me I come before the gates of Heaven in it, she will hold a
bottle of vinegar before her fine-cut nose, and say _c'est un faux
pas!_ and get me denied the _entrée_. She will ecod! for I would have
you to know, my dear Mr. Moses, I am of a devilish stiff-backed family.
Look at my grandfather. What a majestical old gentleman it is, even as
in his declining years he takes his ease in his pop-shop, with
christening mugs and dirty candlesticks about him on the one hand, and
saving your presence, Mr. Moses, a Jew dealer on the other. But there,
my good fellow, we will not talk about it."
Mr. Moses, seeing his advantage in this proposal--indeed he was so
excellent a fellow that had he not done so, I do not doubt he would
still have tried to accommodate me--fully entered into this idea, and
did his best to fish this chaste wardrobe out of the varied contents of
his shop. Indeed such hidden stores did it contain, that after the
contents of divers boxes, and cupboards, and back parlours, and
mysterious receptacles had been examined, the necessary articles were
forthcoming, and I was shown into one of the chambers leading from the
shop, in order to effect this change in my attire.
It would have made you laugh to see the figure I cut--my snuff-coloured
coat and pantaloons, fitting in most places where they touched, gave me
such a rustical appearance that an ostler or a tapster became a
gentleman by the comparison. The hose was rather better, however, but
the boots were not only the thickest and clumsiest as ever I saw, but
were much too big into the bargain. A hat was also found for me that
matched very well indeed with this startling change in my condition;
and a thick, coarse brown cover-all in lieu of the smart riding-coat I
had set out with. Mr. Moses certainly had as good a bargain as he
could have wished, but certainly not a better one than his merits
deserved; whilst I had come by the most effectual disguise to my
station, and one well calculated to mislead Sheriff's officers and Bow
Street runners, for in all my extended experience of the tribe they
have ever been clumsy fellows, blind of eye and thick of understanding,
incapable of seeing beyond the noses on their faces. With mutual
respect and pleasure, therefore, and many pious hopes for the welfare
of my grandfather, whom I was moved to say could not have been left in
more worthy hands, I took my leave of Mr. Moses. And seeing he was a
Jew, I must say that he was the best conditioned Jew as ever I met.
I took my way very cautiously on leaving the shop of my friend the
Hebrew. At first I kept well in the shadow of the houses and peered
carefully about. My enemies, however, appeared to be still away on the
false scent. The twilight of the autumn afternoon was gathering in as
I pursued my way towards little Cynthia. She was to have met me at the
gates of Hyde Park nearly an hour ago. As I turned into Piccadilly
without meeting with a sign of my enemies, for no reason whatever I was
suddenly stabbed with the pain of a most bitter speculation. Suppose
my little Cynthia was not there to meet me after all! Suppose I had
tarried so long that, fearing I was taken, she had gone from the
rendezvous! Suppose something unforeseen and mysterious had befallen
her, as such accidents occasionally do! In a flash I realized how
dear, how inexpressibly dear she was to me. If aught bereft me of her
now, she, the one friend I had, the one creature who believed in me,
worthless ruined fellow as I was, the one person who would dare to
stand at my side and face the sneers and the scorn of the world, life
would indeed have no savour left in it. I should neither have the
heart nor the desire to continue in that which would become a burden
and a mockery. And in sooth so did this terrible thought take hold of
me, that a kind of fatality came upon me. I began to have a sense of
foreboding, as they say one may have in a dream; I felt the blood grow
slow and thin in my limbs; I was taken with a cold shivering; and my
spirit flagged so low that I would have wagered a kingdom at that
moment that some dire circumstance had happened to my love, and even
more particularly to me.
In the very height of this fever of insane fears, I came to the end of
Piccadilly, and there in the increasing gloom of the evening were the
gates of Hyde Park. And there too, like a sentinel on guard, so proud
and strict she was of outline, was my little Cynthia. She stood there
all unconscious of the fact that the simple sight of her was enough in
itself to reconcile a ruined man to his empty life.
CHAPTER IV
WE START UPON OUR PILGRIMAGE
All the way I had come I had heightened my disguise by mouching along
with my hat low down over my eyes, the collar of my coat turned up to
my ears, and my hands stuck deep in my pockets. And so effectual was
this mode, that though Cynthia was awaiting me in fear and impatience,
I had walked right up to her and taken her by the arm ere she knew I
was so near.
"Oh, Jack," she sobbed, "I--I am so glad. S--something s--seemed to
tell me that you would never return. I was certain you were ta'en, and
that I should never see you again, except between the iron bars of a
prison."
I kissed her.
"Foolish child," says I, with dignified forgetfulness, "to entertain
such silly fears. Alas, you women, that you should give way to
weaknesses of this sort! What would you say of us men now, if we were
so easily afflicted?"
It was fine the way in which I wielded my advantage, and clearly showed
to the shrinking little creature how ill the poor weak female character
compared with the hardy, resolute male. But as this instance goes to
show, I do not really think that the masculine character is so much
sterner than the feminine; for is not its pre-eminence largely a matter
of assumption? A man scorns and conceals the weaknesses a woman
flaunts and cherishes.
The twilight was deepening rapidly and giving way to an evening of
heavy clouds and rainy wind, when arm-in-arm we started to walk we knew
not where. We started to walk into the night and the country places,
away from our enemies, and from those who would sever or deter us. We
had not the faintest idea as to the place we were bound for. One spot
was as good as another. Involuntarily we turned into the park,
although we knew not why we should. But I suppose we felt that every
step we took into this mysterious nowhere of our destination, we were
leaving the law behind, and that together, friendless and resourceless,
but ever hand-in-hand, we were beginning our lives anew.
We moved away at a brisk round pace, possessed with the thought of
putting a long distance between us and our foes. And in the pleasure
of having come together again we walked lightly and easily for long
enough, not heeding the way, nor the wind, nor the threat of the
rainclouds and the dark evening. We rejoiced in the exquisite sense of
our comradeship, and in the thought that every step we took together
was a contribution to our freedom. We came out of the park again, and
went on and on, past the houses of Kensington, and then past straggling
and remoter places, the names of which I did not know.
In a surprisingly little while, as it seemed to us, sunk in the
obsession of our companionship, we were groping in the unlit darkness
of the country lanes, with the lights of the town we had left fading
away behind us. But we must have been walking considerably more than
two hours, and at a smart pace, to judge by the distance we had made.
It was then that I pressed Cynthia's hand and says:
"Are you not tired, little one?"
"Nay," says she, "my feet are slipping by so light, I do not know that
I am walking. I could journey on all night in this way."
I was vastly gratified by this brave speech. But for myself, although
I too had no weariness, and to be sure I could not have confessed to it
if I had, I was yet being bitten very severely by the pangs of hunger.
All day I had taken nothing beyond a glass or two of wine. Therefore I
now felt a pressing need.
"At least," says I, "I hope you are hungry?"
"Well, since you mention it," says she, "I think I am."
"That is well," says I, "for I am most abominably so. I believe I
never was so hungry in my life before; and I am sure I never had
scantier means of appeasing it. Only conceive of twelvepence halfpenny
to the two of us for our board and lodging."
It now became our business to find an inn of the meaner sort, in which
we might invest this munificent sum. But as we had long since left the
bricks and mortar of the town behind, a house for our entertainment was
not so easily come by.
We walked on and on, but still no welcome inn appeared; and presently
the lamps of the great city itself had vanished, till we were left in
the utter darkness of the country lanes. There was no evidence of a
human habitation anywhere about, and we knew not where we were.
By this time both of us were tired as well as most bitterly hungry.
Poor little Cynthia hung so heavily on my arm, that I knew fatigue had
mastered her. Yet so brave she was, that despite all the pains and
difficulties she endured, she would not admit that she was weary.
Indeed, when I asked her to confess it, says she: "Nay, not I," as
stoutly as she would have done three hours before. Yet when we came to
a bank of earth beside the way, and I bade her rest upon it for a
little while she could raise no very great objection.
I suppose two persons could never have taken their repose with more
singular feelings than did we upon that bank of earth. Whither we were
going that night, and what was to become of us we did not know. There
was the sum of twelvepence halfpenny between us and destitution, but
even this could not avail us in such a solitary darkness, in the
absence of a house and human aid. Happily the night was wonderfully
mild, and we in our coats and stout boots were warmly clad. Otherwise
we might have perished where we sat. The pains of fatigue, allied to
the pangs of hunger, had bereft us of both the energy and the
inclination to proceed. We must have tarried on that bank considerably
beyond an hour, mutually consoling one another. For my part little
Cynthia's courage almost reconciled me to these present circumstances,
but you may be sure I was bitterly distressed for her. I had admitted
her into my care, foolishly no doubt, and because there was scarcely an
alternative; and this was the sort of provision I had to offer. Come
what may, something must be done. The child could never be left to
suffer thus. I must find food and a sanctuary of some sort for her.
However, even as I pondered on our case, hunger and weariness did their
worst.
For some time I had known by Cynthia's failing answers and the
heaviness with which she leant against me, that she was becoming more
and more completely overborne. And I'll swear so monstrous brave she
was that never a word of complaint passed her lips, nor yet a tear
escaped her. And then her little head nestled up to my coat-sleeve,
and the next moment she sighed and was dead asleep upon it. In spite
of her resolution, the excitements, the distresses and the pains of
that long day had overpowered her. Yet I dare not have her pass the
night in this exposure on a moist bank of earth, with the night-wind
playing on her face, and the clouds that had banked themselves over the
moon for ever increasing and threatening to descend upon us in a
drenching rain. Therefore, dire as my own case was, I roused myself to
a desperate attempt to discover a meal and a lodging for the night.
I had not the heart to try to arouse the poor child, as you may
suppose; wherefore, disturbing her as little as I could, I gathered her
in my arms, for after all her fine spirit she was but a feather of a
thing, and carried her before me along the lane. It was an effort of
despair, for the never-ending darkness revealed no glimpse of what I
sought. Every now and then the wind brought a spatter of the expected
rain; but this, when it came upon my lips, carried a kind of
refreshment in it. I doggedly set my teeth and marched along with my
warm burden, and I think the weight of responsibility that was in my
arms, added to the one upon my heart, fostered a grim determination in
me to succeed in my search at any cost. The lanes seemed interminable,
and every one the same. All my limbs were one strange, numb ache; I
had become so faint with hunger that I moved in a kind of delirium; and
in the end every step I took became so mechanical a thing as to be an
effort of the will without the co-operation of the senses.
Heaven knows what the hour was when one of these lanes I had been
eternally taking all night long ended in a partly-unhinged gate. My
first instinct was to snatch an instant's rest upon it; but this I
dared not do. I could never have set my paralysed limbs in motion
again had I done so. Indeed it was but the presence of poor little
Cynthia in my arms that prevented my sinking to the earth as I stood.
But looking beyond the gate I could indistinctly define various dull
masses that I believed to be the outline of haystacks or farm
buildings. Brushing through the rickety gate with an accession of new
strength that the idea had lent me, I had not proceeded many yards in
the stubble-field beyond ere I knew that at last I had come to a
farmstead. There was not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere, nor
could I make out in the total darkness which was the house itself.
Approaching nearer it grew plain that these were farm buildings.
Considering, however, my exhausted condition, the lateness of the hour,
and the probability that the house was some distance off, I decided to
make the best of what lay before me. No sooner had I taken this
resolve, than the moon, as if in recognition of it, showed itself
suddenly for the first time that night from out of its wrack of rain
clouds. By its aid and the smell issuing from within I was made aware
that I stood before the entrance to a cow-hovel.
There was no door to it, therefore I was able to carry Cynthia straight
in. The cows in their various stalls paid us hardly any attention as I
groped my way past them. The place was of a somewhat considerable
extent, and coming to the end of it, I discovered a space in the far
corner where the clean straw was stored. Dispersing a bundle of it
with my feet, I deposited my poor little one very gently into the warm
bed thereby made. Careful as I had been not to disturb her, the change
in her position had its effect. She gave the same sigh with which she
had gone to sleep, and says:
"Jack, Jack, where are you? I do believe I've been to sleep."
"Then go to sleep again, my prettiness," says I.
"But what is this?" says she. "This is surely not the bank of moist
earth in the lane I went to sleep on. Where are we then? What place
is this so warm and snug?" A rustle. "Straw!" A sniff. "A cow-shed!
Oh dear, I am----! Oh, could we----! and, oh, Jack, dear, how did we
get here?"
The sound of Cynthia's voice and the knowledge that there was a roof
for her head and a couch for her body at last, however mean they might
be, did much to lift me out of my own sorry predicament. Faint and
numb as I still was, my brain seemed to have its capacity restored.
And at least I could gauge by my own sufferings those which Cynthia
strove so valiantly to conceal.
"Are you not hungry, little one?" says I.
"Are you?" says she.
"Most damnably so," says I.
"Then I am too."
Now I would have you mark that hunger is a great wit. Cynthia sniffed
a second time. "Cows," says she. "Oh, what good fortune!"
"But my dearest prettiness," says I, "hungry as we are I do not exactly
see how these cows can help us. Although to be sure I will undertake
to knock one down and skin it, and make the fire and such like menial
offices, if you will cut it up and cook it."
"Goose that you are," says Cynthia. "You almost deserve to perish of
your emptiness. What about the milk?"
"Odslife!" cries I, "to think that I should not have thought of that.
Ye gods and little fishes, I must go find a pot, or a pail, or a pan to
hold it in!"
The happy prospect of such sustenance endowed us both with new vigour.
Without more ado I began groping about in this moonlit hovel to
discover these utensils. But it was no such easy matter. Look where I
might, inside the place and outside of it, amongst the straw and
fodder, or among the cows themselves, there was devil a pail that I
could see. Yet so insistent was our case that we could not be put off
by any small detail of this sort. We were both of us thoroughly awake
by now and fully bent on assuaging our distresses. And Cynthia in
particular showed her good resources.
"Jack," says she, "give me your hat. It is bigger than mine."
"To be sure," says I. "I had not thought of that. But I will go and
do the milking. I do not choose that you undertake these menial
offices, my pretty, like a common dairymaid."
"I am afraid you can have no choice in the matter," says Cynthia, now
thoroughly awakened and full of importance at the prospect. "You speak
as though it were indeed the simplest thing in the world to milk a cow.
'Pon my word, sir, I would vastly like to see you at that exercise. It
requires a mighty long apprenticeship, I would have you to know; and
luckily I have had it during the time I have lived in Devonshire. Were
it to be left to you, I am thinking we should come by precious little
else than your good intentions."
I bent my head in silence under this merited reproof. Our resolve was
a brave one, for in the darkness and strangeness of the place it was
not easy to carry it out. However, Cynthia, armed with my hat, if you
please, was not the person to stick at trifles. She groped her way
among the cows in a most valiant manner, and presently, having the good
fortune to find one with a calf by its side, her task was made lighter
than it might have been otherwise. I encumbered her with my
assistance. The assistance in question consisted in holding the hat,
while she performed the more delicate operation. And I could not help
remarking that for a town miss, who in Saint James's Park or Bloomsbury
had quite enough of airs, affectation and incapacity to pass as a
person of the finest _ton_, she showed a degree of aptitude quite
foreign to her quality.
"It is rarely done," says I, as the hat grew weightier and weightier.
"And I protest that you astonish me. It is as unmodish a performance
as ever I saw. I wish some of your friends could see you now."
"Oh, Lord," says Cynthia, in great terror from beneath the udder, "I
would not have them see me for the world. I vow if they did I should
die of it."
"I believe you would," says I; "and I believe they would also."
Cynthia had the first drink from the hat, which, being of a good, stiff
felt quality, and being pretty commodious too, for its business as you
know was to enclose a great brain, it made an admirable receptacle.
But to drink from it without spilling the milk was not by any means a
simple performance. Great address was required, but the expert Mrs.
Cynthia contrived it somehow. And when she fitted her lips to the
brim, there was never a drop that left this quaint vessel but it went
to its right destination.
"How warm and delicious it is!" says she, after bibbing a most
immoderate quantity. "How refreshed I feel!"
Shaking with laughter, I followed her example. Yet the vigour with
which I did it, combined with my clumsier masculine methods, had
unfortunate consequences. I choked and sputtered and turned a good
deal down my coat ere I was able to get any satisfaction out of my
labours. However, when I had learned to control my impatience, and had
found the true knack of drinking hot milk out of my own hat, it was
almost worth enduring the pangs of so shrewd a hunger to have such an
exquisite recompense. One hatful did not suffice us either. We
returned to the cow again and again; and with such excellent
consequences, that for the nonce, we were both strongly agreed that no
meal of rare dishes served on silver with powdered servants behind our
chairs had ever given us any pleasure to approach our present one.
Indeed, so delicately satisfied did we feel within, and such a sense of
sweet lassitude was stealing over us, as made the thoughts of our couch
of straw a thousand times more delectable than any pillows and lavender
sheets we had ever slept in--nay, we really marvelled that if this was
a state of mind incident to a vagabond roving life, how any one could
ever do aught else but adopt it? Truly it must be the ignorance of the
world. People could not know of these Arcadian delights. Who would
trouble else to be a peer, for ever sweating and fuming in the toils of
one's position, spending one's days in contriving fresh devices for the
defeat of weariness and in the excitement of new appetites? Who would
game and drink every night in order to forget the _ennui_ of the world,
only to find day by day that instead of forgetting it, the intolerable
oppression of it did increase?
After shaking down several bundles of sweet-smelling hay and making of
it a rare soft bed, I was about to lie in it, when the propriety of the
feminine character was most excellently manifested. With a good deal
of confusion in her voice, and I'll swear in her face too, though
unhappily the darkness of this far corner was so great I could not
observe it, my companion intimated her modest doubts. It seemed we had
not yet been through the hands of the clergyman. Be sure that this
marvellously bashful proper miss did not use words of this rude
character. In faith, I hardly think that she used words at all; and if
she did, certainly not more than three at a time, and even they were of
such a nature that taken by themselves they could have no meaning
whatever. But so evident were the poor child's modest distresses, and
so keen her desire not to act in anywise contrary to the conventions of
that propriety in which her sex has ever been foremost, that I nearly
cracked a rib with my vulgar mirth.
"So be it, Mrs. Puritan," says I. "But upon my soul more _bourgeois_
reasons I never heard. 'Fore Gad, though, a most meritorious
respectability."
Little Cynthia, however, was not to be smoked out of her demeanour.
She persevered in it in the most straight-laced manner, and in the end
I was fain to erect a barrier of hay between us, and build up a second
couch for myself. Thus we might at a pinch be said to occupy separate
chambers, though to be sure the partition between us was not stout
enough to prevent us conversing as we lay in our separate beds. But it
was little talk that passed between us. We were so delightfully weary
that it began and ended in "Good-night!" The next minute an
unmistakable indication came from Mrs. Cynthia's apartment, and a
minute afterwards I was sunk in the honestest and therefore the most
delicious sleep I had enjoyed for many a year. I neither dreamt nor
wandered, but just dropt into a profound insensibility which was
continued well into the daylight of the morning. This rare refreshment
was destined to end in a somewhat peremptory fashion.
I think it must have been a kick or a blow that waked me. For I came
to my senses with an unnatural suddenness and a curse on my tongue. It
was broad day, and the misty morning sun was struggling in through
numerous chinks in the roof and walls of the hovel. A farmer with a
pitchfork in his hand was standing before me. He was almost
inarticulate with rage. As I opened my eyes he burst out into a
violent Doric that I hope these pages are much too chaste to adequately
reproduce.
"Well I nivver in all my born days," says he, stamping his feet, and
then rounding his period with a most ferocious kick on my shin.
"Get up, ye impident scoundrel, and I'll beat ye to purpose so I will.
In my own barn, in broad daylight too. O the impidence, the domned
impidence of it!"
The kick had greatly helped me to realize the state of the case. We
had been discovered by the owner of the cow-house, and he, with true
British respect for the rights of property, was not unnaturally
incensed that two persons were so calmly infringing them. For by this
he had discovered poor little Cynthia, whom I was able to observe
through the frail portion of hay between us, sitting up in her bed with
a very woeful, frightened countenance.
"Whoy theer's a woman too," says the farmer. "Well if this doan't beat
all I ivver heard. O you impident hussy."
"My good fellow," says I, fearing lest he should deal Cynthia a kick
also, "I am afraid you are under some misapprehension in this matter.
Allow me to explain."
I thought it to be an occasion when the very nicest suavity of tone and
manner was required, for the consequences were like to be uncommonly
ruffling else. Therefore I could not have been more careful of my
courtesy had I been addressing my remarks to the King. But all I got
for my pains was the sight of a great bewilderment that suddenly ran in
the farmer's purple face.
"Whoy, a dom'd foreigner," says he. "That makes it wuss, an hundred
times wuss, that it do. I'll give you foreigner, I will too. A
foreigner in my plaace, among my cows, lying in my hay. Come out o' it
and I'll break your yedd in two plazen; once for yersen, and once for
t' little witch with the blue eyes. How d'ye like that, Mister
Foreigner?"
Crack came the blunt end of the pitchfork at me so smartly, that it was
only the fact that I was expecting some small manifestation of the kind
that enabled me to get up my arm quick enough to save my head.
As my attempt at a polite argument had had such an unfortunate effect
upon him, I judged that I should best serve my skin by advancing a less
formal sort of rejoinder, but one that might more directly appeal to
his rustic character.
"Enough of this, sir," says I, "But just lay down your pitchfork, take
off your jacket and step outside, and you shall be the judge as to
whether I am a foreigner, or as good an Englishman as you are yourself."
The effect upon him was excellent. His anger melted at once at this
proposal, so clearly was it after his own mind.
"'Tis fair speaking anyway," says he. "I could not have spoken it
better myself. Come on this way, my lad, we'll soon set this matter to
rights."
Cynthia was terribly frightened. She clung to my arms, and refused to
let me follow the farmer into the yard.
"Much as I admire your solicitude, my prettiness," says I, "it is most
highly inconvenient. For do you not see that this is as much an affair
of honour as an appointment at Lincoln's Inn Fields? Mr. Chawbacon has
suffered an injury at our hands, and you who milked his cow last night
should be the last to deny it. Wherefore should he not have the
satisfaction that he desires? You would not, I am sure, have me put
off my gentility now that I cease to wear its livery. It is the only
reparation that I can make to Mr. Chawbacon, and if I denied it to the
honest fellow I should cease to respect myself."
Poor little Cynthia having no substantial argument to advance against
this--indeed how could she have?--had recourse to a flood of tears, at
once the most natural, formidable and convincing one her sex can set
up. But greatly as her behaviour embarrassed me, I was committed with
the farmer, and I have such an instinct in these matters, that
notwithstanding Cynthia's very real distress, I could not possibly have
backed out of my position with any shred of credit. Therefore taking
off my great-coat I bade the poor frightened child wrap herself in it
up to her ears and to stay where she was, that she might neither hear
nor observe that which was going forward. She obeyed me in this, and
lay sobbing softly to herself while I went forth to do battle with my
friend the farmer.
On stepping out of the hovel into the yard I found my antagonist was
surrounded by three or four of the farm yokels, and moreover was
stripped to the waist. To judge by his expression he was plainly
animated by the highest intentions towards me, and was prepared to give
quite as much or even more than he was likely to receive.
"Now then, my lad," he says briskly, "I'm a-going to do as well by you
as Tench did last week by the Fightin' Tinman. Now then, Joe Barker,
and you, Bill Blagg, come on with them there pails and moppses."
To my infinite delight I saw that the two children of the soil in
question were bearing two buckets of water towards us with a sponge
floating on the top of each.
"We can't have this done in due and proper form according to the
reggerlations," says this sportsman of a farmer in an apologetic voice,
"because you see we've got no judge, and none o' these men o' mine
could be trusted with the dooties. I wish Squire was here, I do so.
We _could_ have it all done proper then accordin' to the reggerlations.
Squire was Tench's backer down Putney way last week, and knows all the
reggerlations off by heart, does Squire. He only lives just across the
road, and if you'll wait a minute I'll have him fetched."
"No, my good man," says I hastily, "we'll have no squires if you
please. We can trust one another, I suppose. Let me suggest that a
knock-down ends the round, and that we set-to again when we feel able."
"That seems fair," says the farmer. "But I should a-liked Squire to
ha' been here all the same, and I'm thinking he'd a-liked to ha' been
here too. He's the best sporting man in Surrey, is the Squire, and
fair death on the reggerlations."
Having fixed up all the preliminaries of an encounter in this
expeditious fashion, I proceeded to prepare for the fray. I imitated
the farmer's excellent example, divested myself of coat, waistcoat and
shirt, and bound up my breeches with a leathern belt I was able to
borrow from a flattered and delighted yokel. It was in this negligent
attire that I regarded my antagonist, and devoutly hoped the while that
my little Cynthia was still sobbing among the hay in the hovel.
CHAPTER V
I VINDICATE THE NATIONAL CHARACTER
The farmer held out his hand with a grin, but quite in the approved
manner, and I seized the occasion of shaking it briefly to run over his
points. He was extremely broad: a hard-looking, powerful fellow,
apparently capable of taking a deal of punishment. But his years were
against him. He was considerably on the wrong side of fifty to judge
by his looks, and in height I had the advantage of a full four inches.
To judge by the attitude in which he set himself, I doubted whether,
whatever his experience of these encounters, he had much science to
recommend him. For myself I must confess I was hugely delighted with
the whole thing, and entered into it with the spirit of a boy. A match
or a contest or a wager of any kind has ever been peculiarly acceptable
to me. Indeed was it not this fondness, amounting almost to a passion,
that had so largely contributed to my present position? I had always,
I think, been pretty ready with my hands; had had some little practice
in night affrays with footpads and persons of that kidney; had
witnessed more than one set-to in the ring; whilst as for the matter of
science, I had in my younger days taken so keen an interest in this
invaluable art, as to put myself under the tutelage of acknowledged
masters of it. Therefore I was not without a certain confidence in
myself, although there was a grim determination about the mien and air
of the farmer that was not to be despised. He was unmistakably game
and full of the true fighting instinct, but his years were no friends
of his intrepidity.
Disregarding all subtleties and finesse, as well became his blunt,
rustical, honest character, we had no sooner greeted one another and
got our hands up, than the farmer came at me both hands pell-mell, with
his head down, like a bull at a gate. His onset was so fierce and
sudden, that I was by no means prepared to receive it, and he had me at
a decided disadvantage. He had rained in a full dozen of short-armed
blows, right and left, left and right at my face, at my ribs, at my
chest, ere I could even so much as find my fighting legs, or bring into
action any little skill that I might possess. My long-unpractised ward
could not prevail at all against such an onslaught. I received
half-parried blows on the mouth, which cut my lip and broke a tooth, on
the right eye which partially closed it up, and a full one in the ribs.
This last was the worst of all, as for a time it deprived me somewhat
of my wind and made me sob to catch my breath. And while I was meeting
with these misfortunes, the bystanding yokels, whose sympathies were
all on one side and that not mine, as you may suppose, were dancing
with delight, and shrieking their hoarse encouragement.
"Go it, varmer. Give un pepper, give un snuff!"
However, by this I had pulled myself together somewhat, and had found a
means of coping with this hand-over-hand style of fighting. There was
plenty of room to dodge in. This I began to make use of. Indeed it
was the only chance I had of protecting myself, for I was quite
incapable of standing up to the farmer's terrible blows. But as soon
as I could find myself sufficiently to begin dancing out of his reach,
the game turned at once in my favour. There was devil a bit of guile
or finesse in the heart of my honest adversary. The moment I gave
ground, he pursued me, hitting the air. Happily for me he was much too
slow and heavy in this kind of warfare ever to get his knuckles near
the place he desired.
In a little while his great jowl grew inflamed, the sweat poured off
his forehead into his eyes, his breath came short and thick, and his
hitting grew gradually weaker and less sustained. It was not yet that
I went in, however. I continued to prance round and round him, there
being plenty of room in which to do so; and at every futile blow he
grew more unsteady. But all this while I had a keen eye for my
opportunity. It was coming slowly but surely, for I was well enough
versed in the matter to know better than to go so much as an inch to
meet it. I waited then with a wary patience, sometimes letting him get
nearer than I need have done to encourage him in his course. Not that
this was necessary, for the old fellow was as game as any pet of the
"fancy" that ever buffed in the ring. But not again did I allow him to
get his "ten commandments" home on me; I had had enough of that. And
at last having allowed him to spend himself entirely, I quickly
selected the moment of my advantage, even deliberated on it to make
quite sure, and then stiffened every muscle into trim. I made a
pretence of closing up with him. This had the effect of luring him
into another futile rush. As he came hitting blindly, I feinted, and
as he went past, my right went out at the most correct fraction of an
instant, and down went the gallant farmer into the muck of his own
barton. The Fighting Tinker himself could not have done it more
neatly, I'll vow. But the old fellow was of a rare British mettle. He
was no sooner down than he was up again. Apparently he was ashamed to
be seen in such a humiliating posture.
I, for my part, had barely time to wipe away the blood that was oozing
from my broken lip, ere the farmer was up and at me again. But I was
not to be caught napping a second time. By this I was perfectly calm
and sure of myself, for I felt that I enjoyed a command of the methods
that were likely to bring me success. Instead of dodging from my
opponent on this occasion I allowed him to come right up and literally
hurl himself on his own undoing. For again at the exact instant I got
a beautiful lead on to his point, and stunned as much by the unexpected
check to his own impetus as by the blow itself, he fell flat on his
back. This time he lay half stunned. He made several attempts to rise
immediately, but was quite unable to do so.
Seeing him to be somewhat the worse, his yokels ran to him, whilst I
went too, and rendered him all the assistance that lay in my power. He
lay puffing and panting in the mire of the yard, half-dazed by his
disaster, otherwise apparently not a penny the worse. He was still
full of fighting courage; but unfortunately he lay as weak as a child
from the shock of the blow and the fall. Strive as he might he was
quite unable to rise. His yokels of course were at a loss to know what
to do in the circumstances, but I did what I could by propping his head
on my knee, and dispatching one of the men to the house for some
brandy. And at this moment who should arrive but little Cynthia with a
very white face indeed, and in such a quiver of distress as plainly
said that she had witnessed the whole affair from the seclusion of the
cowhouse.
"Oh," says she, taking charge of the farmer at once, and sponging his
face and his breast with the cold water, "you are neither of you
killed, I hope. Oh, you pair of ruffian wretches! Have you much pain,
poor farmer? Lean your head on Jack, and take things gently a little.
And do you, What's-your-name? bring his coat and put over the poor
man's shoulders."
While these delicate attentions were going forward, my sturdy adversary
was recovering remarkably.
"I'm all right, my wench," says he. "But I'm dom'd if I can stand up
again, much as I should like. Your mate's done me fair for once, and I
can tell you he's the only man hereabouts that ivver gave Joe Headish
his bellyful. Dom'd if I don't go at 'im again. Here, let be; let me
get up."
By a sudden effort he tried to rise, but immediately fell back again in
a still more dilapidated state. But the arrival of the brandy did a
good deal to restore him, and a little afterwards he was on his legs.
Feeling himself in no condition to continue, reluctant as he was to
admit the fact, he held out his hand, and we both subscribed to the
articles of peace.
By the time I had donned my clothes in the seclusion of the hovel, and
had emerged forth again in all the respectability of my great-coat,
coat, waistcoat, and shirt, the farmer was thoroughly recovered and
talking to Cynthia in the most friendly spirit. At my appearance, says
he:
"I don't know who you are, young man; I don't know you from Adam, that
I don't, but I respect you. You're of the right stuff, my lad, and
pretty handy with your mauleys. I ax pardon for calling you a
foreigner. Whatever part you come from, and whatever your occipation
may be, dom'd if you're not as true-blood an Englishman as I am mysen.
And I don't care who hears me say it."
"I thank you, sir," says I gravely. "But I am sure the apology should
come from me. I on my side ask your pardon for using your cowhouse and
using your milk in the small hours of the morning."
"Don't name it," says the farmer. "You're quite welcome to the best
I've got. And dom me if it comes to that you shall have it too. You
come along with me, and bring the little wench as well. Purty a little
wench as ivver I see, she is so!"
I suppose it was the rudest and coarsest invitation either of us had
ever had in our lives, but it was certainly the heartiest; and this
I'll vow, there never was an invitation in this world more promptly and
thankfully accepted. Indeed at the first hint of it our hearts almost
leapt with joy, and then a tear sparkled in Cynthia's eyes as she
curtsied to the farmer. It was really fine to observe the behaviour of
the honest fellow. There was not a spark of animosity in him. He had
arbitrated on the merits of the case in his own fashion, and he now
acquiesced in the result with the same game spirit with which he had
arrived at it. And I am perfectly certain for my part that there was
more wisdom in the man's instincts of justice than may at the first
sight appear. If all the world would recognize his as the accepted
manner of adjudicating on its private and individual grievances, it
would be found the best method, the one least likely to breed bad
blood, and the one most calculated to engender a mutual respect in the
parties concerned. And now having delivered this superior sentiment as
a sort of grace before meat, let us follow our good farmer to his
dwelling with the cheerful expedition that we did on the occasion
itself.
The excellent man, although evidently puzzled as to who we might
be--our mode of life was certainly such as to justify his gravest
suspicions--was at great pains to conceal any doubts of our character
and occupation that he might entertain. But the moment we entered the
ample food-smelling kitchen of the farm, the ceiling hung if you please
with hams, a rare dish of bacon frizzling before the fire, and a
breakfast table that to our charmed eyes was almost overborne with good
homely and appetizing things, we had to run the gauntlet of the
farmer's wife. She was a little, keen-featured, hard-faced woman,
with, as we were soon to discover, the devil of a sharp tongue. She
ruffled her feathers as soon as she saw us.
"Lork-a-mercy!" says she, "I didn't know, Joseph, as 'ow you was
a-bringing of company to breakfast."
"I didn't know mysen," says Joseph complacently. Then followed a
moment of embarrassment. It was plainly the good man's duty to present
us to his wife. She very properly expected it of him. But as in his
own phrase he did not know us from Adam himself, he was at a loss to
know in what terms to represent us. Nor did the pause that ensued help
matters at all. The farmer's wife had from the first, as her manner
showed, been by no means disposed to view us favourably. There was
evidently something in our appearance that had caused her to take a
strong prejudice against us. One cannot be surprised that this was the
case, however, seeing that we were both unwashed, and as unkempt as we
possibly could be, whilst to add a final touch to the picture we
presented, I was embellished with a puffy and discoloured eye, and a
bloodied lip. These misfortunes, when her good man had made
appearances ten times more unfortunate by his hesitation, his wife was
only too ready to take as a confirmation of her suspicions. We were a
pair of worthless persons, and Joseph was unable to account for the
sudden impulse that had led him to bring us into that respectable
abode. For if we were persons of some credit, why did not Joseph say
so at once? His wife sniffed, and after gazing at us in a most
disconcerting manner, was moved to say:
"Joseph, I'm surprised at you. I'll have no wicked vagabond
play-actors here. I've always done my best to keep this house
respectable, and, please God, it shall always be so. How dare you
bring such people here? I'll be bound you found them sleeping in your
barn, and then, soft-hearted fool that you are, you bring them in to
breakfast. Oh, I know; you can't deceive me. It is not enough then
that they should trespass on your premises, lie on your hay, and rob
your hen-roosts, but you must encourage 'em in it into the bargain, and
bring them into this clean, wholesome kitchen that you know I've always
took such a pride in."
The farmer turned as red as a cabbage. In his heart he was bound to
admit that every word his wife uttered was true in substance. But he
was a very honest fellow; and though he might feel that he was greatly
to blame for taking a couple of vagrants so much under his wing, he was
not the man to go back on his hospitality. He stood by us nobly.
"Wife," says he, "what words be these? If I choose to ask a lady and
gentleman to come and sit at table with me, shall my own wife insult
them lo their faces?"
"Lady and gentleman!" says the redoubtable wife. "A pretty sort of
lady and gentleman, ain't they? A brazen madam with a hat on. Oh, and
curls too! Lord, look at her! If she's not a play-actress I've never
seen one. And what a bully of a rogue she has got with her, too. Hath
he not the very visnomy of a footpad? He's lately escaped from Newgate
Gaol, I'll take my oath on't."
There could be no doubt that this good lady was blest with a tongue of
the sharpest kind. Her husband was terribly put out by it. Poor
little Cynthia was, too. For all her high breeding and her modish
London insolence, which in circumstances favourable to it was wont to
sit so charmingly upon her, she could hardly restrain her tears. I
suppose it is that a woman can never bear to be ridiculed, or abused,
or put in a false position. The poor child trembled and clung to my
arm, while her face grew pink and white by turns.
"Oh, Jack," she whispered, "do say something that will put us right.
Tell them who we are. I cannot bear to be spoken to like this."
"You surely would not have me spoil the comedy just now?" says I. "I
am enjoying it vastly."
In sooth I was. I dare say it is that I am always keenly alive to
these odd passages in life, and that I am more prone to seize the
whimsicality of a matter than is a person of a better gravity. I vow
it was finer than a play to me to witness a highly rustical farmer and
his spouse violently quarrelling because Mr. Chawbacon had degraded his
rural abode by bringing a duke's daughter into it. And here was the
storm growing shriller, the farmer redder and angrier, and poor little
Cynthia ready to faint with the humiliation of it all.
The state of the case was not improved when the farmer turned his back
on his wife in the middle of her invective. And doubtless to define
his opinion of her behaviour and to show that he was determined to
stand by us, come what might, he very civilly asked us whether we would
care to have some hot water from the kettle and go upstairs and perform
our ablutions. You may guess with what alacrity we accepted this
invitation; indeed nothing could have better accorded with our needs
and our wishes. But no sooner had the farmer spoken to this tenor than
Mistress Headish broke out shriller than before:
"What can you be thinking of, Joseph Headish?" says she. "Do you think
I would trust two such rapscallion persons out of my sight in our clean
upper chambers, and so many things to tempt their honesty in them, too?
No; if they want to wash themselves, they must do it at the pump in the
yard, as their betters have had to do often enough. And why people
like that, leading the vagrant, masterless life they do, should require
to wash themselves at all, I don't know. And as you have promised them
a bite to eat, they shall have it, after they have washed themselves.
But not in my nice clean kitchen. I'll send 'em out half a loaf of
bread and a piece of cold bacon, and a mug of my good October ale, and
they can take it sitting on the pump, and think themselves lucky to get
it too."
"Peace, woman," says the farmer, in a voice of such dudgeon as did him
the highest credit. "Are you the master in this house, or am I?"
To emphasize the inquiry he brought his hand down with such a force
upon the breakfast-table as set the dishes rattling; whilst he
indicated the answer by peremptorily bidding us follow him upstairs.
This we were in something of a hurry to do, and we soon found ourselves
in a spacious bed-chamber, which smelt of cleanliness to such an extent
that, knowing how very ill our own persons must consort with it, we
began to feel that the farmer's wife was justified of her grievances.
That worthy shrew, having thoroughly aroused her honest husband, did
not think fit to interpose any active resistance to his commands, but
contented herself by staying below, and in delivering a shrill
monologue from the foot of the stairs.
CHAPTER VI
CONTAINS A FEW TRITE UTTERANCES ON THE GENTLE PASSION
We had to wait a minute for the hot water and fresh towels which our
host had had the forethought to order for us. These were presently
brought by a strapping servant lass, whose ill-repressed grins proved
that she had been a spectator of these incidents. While we waited, the
good man's apologies for his wife were truly comic. He chivalrously
made it clear to us that her defects sprang from the very excess of
excellencies in her character.
"A notable good woman," says he, while her voice continued to shrill up
the stairs. "A fine, honest, energetic woman--a woman in a thousand.
Always strivin', savin', and cleanin' she is, the very model of what a
housewife should be. If she's got a fault, it is her over-anxiousness.
She will look on the dark side of things; and she's that dreadful
suspicious, all in the interest of her household, that if a stranger is
seen with his head over the fence, she can't sleep for a week after it,
being so certain in her mind that the hayricks are going to be fired,
the stock taken, the farmstead broken into, and our throats cut as we
lie in bed. But I know you'll overlook it; she don't mean nothing by
it, as you can see with half an eye. She's a rare good woman as ivver
I see; it's only her worritin' frettishness for the welfare o' the
farm; you do understand that, don't you?"
"Perfectly," we said together, an assurance that relieved the good man
mightily.
"You know, what upsets her most," says he, "is that I can't put a name
to ye. For myself, although I came by you promiscuous like at the
onset, I likes you and I believes in you. I think you're the right
sort, only a bit down in the world. But of course she don't know that.
She's not seen you use your ten commandments, young man; and she don't
know what pretty little ways your nice little wife 'ave." Cynthia
blushed such a brilliant colour at this complimentary reference that
the farmer paused to chuckle. "Begs your pardon, I'm sure, my dear,"
says he, "if I've put my big foot in it. Not his wife. Well, well, I
thinks none the worse o' 'im for that, I don't; but if I was you I
would not let the mistress know it. Her virtue makes her that
disagreeable sometimes as you wouldn't believe. Now if you can give me
a name by which I can introjuice you by, fair and square, as though you
was friends o' mine, it'll make things easier, do you see, when we sits
down to breakfast."
"Well," says I, "since you ask it of us, this lady is the Lady Cynthia
Carew, daughter to the Duke of Salop, and you can call me the Earl of
Tiverton."
Instead of betraying any surprise at finding us in the possession of
dignities which, to say the least, he could not have expected us to
enjoy, the farmer betrayed not a whit of it, but broke into a fit of
laughter and clapped me upon the shoulder.
"Oh, if it comes to that," says he, "you can call me the Cham of
Tartary and my old missis the Queen of Sheba."
Nor would he, in spite of the solemn assurances that I rather delighted
to give him, be convinced of our true condition.
"No, my lad," says he, still laughing at the humour of it, "you may be
pretty handy with your mauleys, and I would be the last to be denying
that, but you're no more the pattern of a nobleman than I am. You
should try this game on with a greener chap than me. You must not
think because I'm a plain farmer that I can't recognize the real
slap-up nobility when I meets them. Now if you allowed yourself to be
some sturdy vagabond that's too idle to work for his livelihood, or a
strolling actor that is a peddling along the country with his
puppet-show, or an incorrigible rogue that's lately out of the stocks
for robbing hen-roosts, and was lying last night in my cowhouse to take
more than his lodging, I wouldn't disbelieve you. But an earl!--no,
you've overshot the mark a bit, my lad. Say a bart now--be satisfied
with just a blessed bart--and we'll let it pass at that."
"No, rat me if I will," says I, pretending to be angry. "I'll have my
earldom, or I'll have nothing at all."
"But surely a bart's good enough for anybody," says the farmer, fully
entering, as he supposed, into the humour of the thing. "Why, I
wouldn't mind being a bart mysen. Come, let it go at a bart, my lad.
Yes, I'll pass you at a bart out of respect for your fisticuffs, but
between you and me I don't think my old mis'ess will."
"No," says I, "'od's blood! I will not be a bart as you call it. I
will be the Right Honourable Anthony Gervas John Plowden-Pleydell,
Fifth Earl of Tiverton, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,
or I will be nothing at all."
"Very well, then," says the farmer perfunctorily, "since that is your
humour, we'll have it at that. But wait till I announce your title to
my old mis'ess, and hear what she's got to say about it. And this
little wench--pretty little wench, I'll allow--she's daughter to my
lord the Duke of who?"
"To my lord the Duke of Salop," says I, importantly, dwelling on each
syllable of her title for the jest's sake, "and you can call her my
Lady Cynthia Mary Jane Carew."
"Dom'd if I don't then," says he. "And here come the clean clouts and
the warm water. Here, Jenny, put them down there for his lordship and
her ladyship. And we'll leave his lordship and her ladyship to do
their dressing, and then they'll please condescend to honour our humble
meal. Now, then, my girl, off with you below; and how dare you have
the impertinence to stand grinning there like a Cheshire cat, before my
lord and my lady, too!"
With a great guffaw for the honour of his own wit, the farmer left us
to our much-needed toilets. The reflections with which we made them
would have served a philosopher of the kidney of my grandfather, for
instance, for a monstrous fine homily on the true value of rank and
title. What were they worth when enclosed in a suit of homespun? They
required all the appurtenances with which they are hedged about in the
public mind to be of any value whatever. It seemed that a lord derived
the consideration of the world from his silk stockings and the congees
of his servants--not from any intrinsic merits within himself; and it
was with this trite reflection that I looked in the hand-glass, and
smiled in something of a cynical manner at the unredeemed villainy of
the countenance that I found there. A lively scrubbing did a little
for it, it is true, but that could not obliterate the traces of my
recent bout with the farmer, nor the growth of beard upon my chin, nor
enhance the rude, ill-fitting clothes in which my friend the Jew had,
as it seemed, so effectually disguised me. Cynthia, however, who had
the true feminine ingenuity in these matters, having washed her face
and trimmed up her curls a little--Lord knows how!--contrived to make a
very much better appearance in the role of the duke's daughter than
ever I was like to do in that of the noble wearer of the Order of the
Garter. When we were sufficiently furbished to think of going down to
that delicious meal, in which the greater part of our thoughts were
centred, says I as we descended:
"Remember now, we are under no alias whatever. I am my lord, and you
are my lady."
"But surely," says Cynthia, who in so many ways had the true feminine
imperviousness to the whimsicality of things, "is this not the very
height of imprudency? If we leave evidences behind us at every place
at which we tarry we shall be certainly taken in three days."
"Rest content," says I, "they will never inquire in out-of-the-way
places of this sort. In dangerous places we can still be incognito.
But do you not see the cream of this affair is that our real names are
the best disguises we can wish to have? We are far less likely to be
recognized by them than any we might adopt."
It was with this conviction that we came in to breakfast, and
confronted the farmer and his wife. Determined to play up to my part,
I bowed to the farmer's wife with a most sweeping air, as though she
were a woman of the first fashion, and I made her as gracious a speech
as I could possibly make. There were a thousand apologies in it, and a
great many compliments to her, her husband, her kitchen, and more
sincerely, the hot meal we were dying to partake of. I did it with all
the breeding I could summon, and to see such ceremony issuing from so
common not to say low a person, dumbfounded the good wife so
completely, that even her powers of speech forsook her. She blinked,
and nodded her head, and fidgeted this way and that; and when little
Cynthia, taking her cue from me, curtsied to her with the best grace of
a lady-in-waiting to her most gracious Majesty, as indeed the naughty
miss was destined to be, the poor goodwife was so taken by confusion
that she trod on the cat, and the cat I doubt not would have knocked
over the dish of bacon on the hearth in its fright, had not I, in
anticipation of some such disaster, very gallantly interposed between
them.
The farmer himself, although equally at a loss to reconcile our manners
with our appearance and presence in that place, was evidently too much
of a lover of his joke to let the occasion pass.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, wife," says he, "that these are a lady and
gentleman of the first nobility. You would run on so when they first
came in that you gave me no chance of saying who they were. Just tell
the mis'ess, my lord, who your lordship and her ladyship may be, for I
domm'd if I don't forget."
This I did with a good deal of unction, for seeing what a comic effect
our manners had had on the good woman, our names in all probability
would have one still more singular. This proved to be the case, for no
sooner had I, with much apologetic modesty for the circumstances which
had impelled me to it, played the herald to my fair companion and
myself, than our hostess became the victim of an even more remarkable
nervousness, and grew as apologetic on her part as she had been
cross-grained before.
"La," says she, "I can never forgive my husband for not having told me.
To think you should honour us by sitting down in our humble
farm-kitchen to our humble fare, and you should be treated so unseemly!
But it is so like my husband not to have told me. La, will your
lordship have ale, or does your lordship prefer to take a little
claret-wine of a morning? We have it, although it is not on the table.
Jenny, go this minute and fetch the claret-wine for his lordship."
It seemed that our hostess having got over the first shock of our
identity, proposed to match our breeding with some of her own. She
began to use a high clipping tone that she evidently kept for company,
and became so assiduous in the attentions she paid us, and so heedful
of our wants, that we profited vastly by her credulity, if that is the
right name to apply to it. Her husband, however, was not so lightly to
be imposed upon, as he was at pains to show. At every polite effort
put forward by his wife, he counteracted it by a wink or a cough, or a
chuckle, or a snigger. And he put the handles to our names in such a
voice of banter as greatly distressed his wife, who continued to
overpower us with her civilities. At last, says she:
"Your lordship and your ladyship must really excuse my husband. He is
a very good honest man to be sure," here she sank her voice to a
mysterious whisper, "but he is a little vulgar and low-bred in these
things, although," with a still lower voice and more mystery, "I would
not have him hear me say it for the world. You see he is not come of
so good a family as I am. His folk were a little vulgar and low-bred
too, and people said at the time that for all his farm and his prize
heifers it was the last thing to be expected that a person like me
would ever marry him. Ah, well, I suppose it is always a mistake to
marry out of one's station, although to be sure no one could have a
kinder, better husband. But your lordship and your ladyship follow me,
do you not? He almost makes me blush for his manners, that he do."
"My dear madam," says I, "I am sure we both feel for you from the
bottom of our hearts, and understand the occasion perfectly."
And could there have been a prettier comedy? First we had had the
husband apologizing for the wife, and now we had the wife apologizing
for the husband. Lord knows whether she allowed us to be what we were
or not, but she certainly entertained us to a royal breakfast. Two
famished people never sat down to a finer meal in this world than the
one we partook of. And when we left our honest but wonderfully
ill-assorted host and hostess, about nine of the clock in the morning
to continue on our way, we were most handsomely fortified in mind and
body.
As we passed from the farmyard and struck into the fields the sun was
showing handsomely, and the thrushes were singing their lusty notes.
It was as fine a spring morning as the heart could desire. The
virginal airs played on our faces; the birds called to one another from
hedge to tree; the little lambs frisked among the white daisies in the
meads, as hand-in-hand we took our way again. We still had no clear
idea as to whither we were going. But we were mightily content
wherever our way might lead. The sense we had of our liberty was a
something we had never tasted before. Had we not cast off the trammels
of the world? We could begin life again; and be whom we chose. We
were a pair of unknown persons, moving among unknown people in unknown
places. Every hour we passed in these solitudes of nature had
something of the glamour of romance invested in it. For we did not
know how our next meal would be come by, or what would be the next
shelter for our weary heads when nightfall overtook us. But we cared
not. We were in the crisp, free, open air, snuffing the sunshine, and
trampling across a carpet of flowers over hill and dale, while the
spring birds sang.
I think we were too desperately happy to talk much. Cynthia was
radiant, and as light of foot and heart as the birds that called to us
from the green hedges. The words of an appropriate ballad were on her
lips:
When Strephon wooed his Chloe dear,
All in the springtime of the year.
And I took the infection of her spirits also, I was sensible, ere we
had walked a mile, of a frank, jovial, devil-may-care lightheartedness,
not so fresh and buoyant as my little one's perhaps, since I had lived
a little longer, had therefore had the brightness of my youth more
overlaid with the rust of the world, and had a greater weight of
responsibility, more particularly for her, upon my shoulders. It was
little I felt it, however. For suddenly as we walked in these sweet
fields, an idea was born in my mind that banished everything except the
thrill of joy it brought.
"My prettiness," says I, "we could not wish for a perfecter wedding
morning."
"That we could not," says she, so promptly that it struck me she had
been expecting some such suggestion from me. Her blushes were
adorable, it is true, but I believe they were more a matter of instinct
than the offspring of any particular commotion in her bosom.
"Wilt marry me, pretty one," says I, "at the first church we come to,
that hath a snug parsonage sitting in honeysuckle beside it?"
"Ay, that I will," says she, cocking up her thin with an archness of
invitation that was not to be denied.
I suppose it was that the adventures we had already had together had
given us the most perfect understanding of one another. There was a
feeling of proprietorship between us; and had not each given up
everything in life for the other's sake?
"My dear," says I, feeling that a little sentiment would not come amiss
this rare spring morning, "I hope you have realized what I have to
offer you. I have but my blasted reputation, my destitute condition,
my debts, my crimes, my prostituted name. This is all the estate that
a very humble, constant heart is endowed with."
"They will serve," says Cynthia simply. "If you were the wickedest man
in England, and by your own account you are not far removed from that
state, it would be the same. It is not for what you be that I like
you; it is for what I think you to be."
"If it comes to that," says I, "I don't suppose it is me at all you
care for. It is not myself you are in love with, nor my virtues, nor
my vices, nor my hair, my eyes, my clothes, my understanding, nor
anything that is mine. You are at that romantical instant of your
womanhood when you have fallen in love with the name of love. If
instead of a man I were a tame white mouse, or a bob-tailed rabbit, or
a bull-calf you would invest me with all the pretty fancies that are
running in your head, so that the reflection in your mind would yet be
the one that you most wished to see. But a truce to philosophy, let us
to church."
Cynthia was so evidently of my mind in this last particular that she
laughed, and resumed the singing of her ballad, as we strode out the
brisker for our intercourse.
CHAPTER VII
AN INSTRUCTIVE CHAPTER; IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF A LITTLE LEARNING
IS DANGEROUS, MUCH MAY BE CALAMITOUS.
As we took our way through the grass of a most charming flower-coated
country, there was a kind of rivalry between us as to who should be the
first to spy a church. The honour of doing so had not fallen to either
of us, when Cynthia suddenly darted from the path to pick some white
violets out of a hedge.
"Why," says she, in the delight of finding them, "we will make
ourselves a posy apiece to carry with us to church, as it is our
wedding morning. Oh, look at the marsh-marigolds at the side of the
brook there!"
She gave me the violets to hold, with some injunction as to the correct
manner of holding them, for my handling of them was much too crude to
please her, and ran away again to fetch the pretty yellow flowers. All
sorts of things she gathered for our nosegays, lady-smocks all silver
white from the meadow, and daisies pied and violets blue, cowslips and
even a blue-bell. Nothing would content her but that we should make
them up into posies there and then; which we did, and bound them round
with grasses. But hardly had we finished this pastoral employment and
continued on our way, when we became the victims of a singular
diversion. We passed out of one meadow over a stile into another of a
similar kind. But in the second a few cows were browsing. To these we
paid no heed, but walked jauntily enough through the pasture,
apprehending no danger; but by the time we had come perhaps to the
middle of the field we were startled by a commotion behind us. Turning
round to discover whence it arose, we were horrified to find what the
source of it was. A young bull with its head grounded and its tail in
the air was charging down upon us. A single exclamation and a
frightened instant of hesitation in which to take our bearings, and
evolve a mode of escape, was all we had time for. The bull was coming
so furiously that it was almost upon us, yet we were stranded full in
the middle of the field, with no chance whatever of taking refuge in
flight. But happily my eye lit on a tree, a sturdy young sapling a
yard or two off. Thither I pushed the terrified Cynthia, and literally
lifted her into one of the lower branches, whilst she, with an
admirable conception of the case and how to act in it, scrambled with a
mighty rending of her garments into the boughs above. I clambered
after her madly, not a second too soon. The vigorous snorting young
bull crashed his horns against the tree with great force. He was so
near to my leg that I instinctively felt it to be gashed wide open;
whilst such a mighty shake did its impact give to our place of refuge
that it was indeed a mercy we were not both of us thrown on to the
ground to be gored and trampled on. But despite our fright we were
able to cling to the branches; and when at last I was able to get a
glimpse of my leg, I found to my relief that I had been the victim of
my imagination.
The bellowing beast made divers onslaughts against the bark of the
tree, whilst we very fearfully hurried up higher and higher, dreading
at each stroke of our enemy to feel ourselves flying through the air.
Providentially, however, by clinging with rare tenacity to our vantage
place we were able to maintain ourselves in the security of the highest
branches of all. And presently our adversary having wreaked a good
deal of his fury on the offending tree, desisted from an occupation
that brought him so little profit, and having walked off a yard or two,
proceeded to regard us morosely. He seemed prepared to stay in that
employment too for an indefinite period. But feeling our position,
snug as it was and safe for the time being, to be yet highly
precarious, since the very boughs on which we sat swayed and cracked
and creaked in a truly alarming fashion, I determined to play a coup,
ere any melancholy thing should happen which would put it out of my
power to play one.
Divesting myself with much difficulty of my cloak, although Cynthia
rather audaciously, considering her own position at the time, lent me a
hand, I committed that garment to her charge, and proceeded to select
the most favourable moment for a speedy flight to the nearest hedge.
Keeping perfectly motionless in our unhappy posture, we presently
contrived to lull the unsuspecting bull into a state of quiescence
which I am sure he would have been the first to admit, had he but
known, the circumstances hardly warranted. For suddenly taking an
advantage of his sleeping vigilance, I made a leap off the tree as far
as possible from the spot on which he stood watching. It was then a
case of run devil, run baker. I'm sure no poor devil ever ran more
fleetly than I did then; whilst I am equally sure that there never was
a baker in this world that ran more swiftly than that roaring,
rampageous bullock. Luckily for my precious bones I had a fair good
start of the fellow, and the distance to the hedge was less than a
hundred yards. Had it been otherwise this history had never been
written else, for not for a moment do I think Cynthia would ever have
troubled to write it; nor between ourselves, do I think she would ever
have been capable of doing so, even had her ambition jumped in that
direction. Running pell-mell, my heart beating holes in my ribs, and
the clear tones of Mrs. Cynthia issuing from the topmost branches of
the tree in words of lusty encouragement such as: "Bravo, lad, bravo!
Mightily done!" I panted to the hedge with the bull ever at my heels,
and had just the strength to take a second leap at the green brambles,
and half jump, half scramble through their tenacious barriers, and so
into the neighbouring field, while the bull, foiled for the second
time, raged and vented his disappointment from the other side.
Meanwhile little Cynthia, with a delightful intrepidity, also took
advantage of our enemy. While Mr. Bull continued to thrust his head at
the hedge in his mighty rage, and roared forth his threats,
high-couraged little Cynthia, if you please, very simply and
dexterously dropped down my cloak out of the tree, neatly dropped down
after it, and then with the most gallant coolness gathered herself up
again, the cloak too, and even stayed to recover our late discarded
posies, which the bull had evidently thought too mean to be worthy of
his regard. With these articles tucked away in one hand, she gathered
her skirts in the other, and away scudded her dainty ankles through the
grass to the opposite fence. All this time the bull, foiled and
nonplussed as he was, continued to fume and rush at the fence that kept
him from me, but never for an instant did he guess that Cynthia was in
the act of cheating him too.
Convinced by this that my little one had made good her escape, I could
not restrain my joy. I began to jump and clap my hands, and bellow out
hearty encouragements and applause to her across the field. This
behaviour so surprised the bull, that he whisked angrily round to
discover the cause of it. He beheld Cynthia in the very height of her
rapid victorious transit. Away he dashed, head down, in pursuit of
her, but she was much too well advanced in her flight to have any fear
of him whatever. By the time he had come level with the tree, Cynthia
was calmly climbing into security over the stile; and when the
outwitted animal rushed up and thrust his nose over it, she tauntingly,
if a trifle vain-gloriously, shook the cloak and the posies at him.
Never, I think, did I see an act more neatly or more bravely performed.
When we came presently together again in the middle of an adjoining
field, a sort of half-way house from where the bull had respectively
left us, we were both in high feather and mightily pleased with
ourselves and one another.
"I declare," says I, "that hunting the fox becomes a tame and foolish
sport by comparison. In all my amusements, from cards to
cudgel-playing, I was never furnished, I'll swear, with so entertaining
an episode. Besides, I am vastly proud of your conduct this morning,
my prettiness. Come, let us waste not a moment; I am dying to get
married at once."
The deep crimson in Cynthia's cheeks, that her late eminent exertions
had induced, lent her even more of an adorable appearance than even I
had ever observed in her. And when she tossed me my cloak, and gravely
gave one of the posies into my hands, I think I never saw the eyes of a
woman beam with such mirth and high spirits. Flushed and breathless as
we were, no two human persons could possibly have been happier.
Already our haphazard, vagrant life had proved the antidote of that
weariness of the world, that fatigue of mind and body, the chains of
polite life had induced. Already we had come to take a fraternal
pride, as it were, in one another. We no longer had to apprehend how
we should get through the day without perishing of weariness, but
rather how to pass it without perishing of hunger and violence. And we
were revealing such unexpected qualities to ourselves and each other in
overcoming these calamities that we were falling in love anew with our
own heroic attributes, and were already prepared to vow to one another
that we were a monstrous well-assorted pair. Indeed, the foolish bull
had given us such a fine conceit of ourselves, that on the score of the
hour of high-wrought happiness he brought us, he must, I am sure, be
allowed after all to be our friend.
A good deal of walking through the blossoming fields brought us at last
on to a good broad highway, and a little later having climbed up a
hill, we saw from the top of it the thing we were seeking. A village
nestled below, and very properly the tallest roof among the collection
that clustered there together, and by far the most imposing object of
them all, was a sweet little country church, grey with age, surrounded
by a low stone wall whose crannies were filled with moss. Approaching
it we were overjoyed to find that a pretty little parsonage stood
beside it, which in every particular matched the quaint and venerable
appearance of the church itself. But no sooner had we come to the
latticed gate of the parson's house than our pleasure fled suddenly
away. We had been bold enough in the contemplation of the deed, and
had even been disposed to treat it airily. Yet when our fingers fell
on the parson's latch, we were suddenly confronted with its magnitude.
We were going to be married!
Now although I had started from town not twelve hours before as cynical
and desperate a character as any to be found, the humane influences
that had been brought to bear upon me, even in that short period, had
not been without their effect. I began to see things in their true
relation once again, and even to be sensible of feelings I had so long
outlived that I almost forgot that I had ever known them. For
instance, the emotion of timidity that overtook me at the parson's
gate, I could have sworn I had never met with before in my life. The
uncomfortable sense of the bashful business to follow caused me to
falter with my hand still at the latch, and to parley with Cynthia.
"I think you had better go first, my prettiness," says I seductively,
"I don't doubt that you will make a better hand of it than I, and you
will have a better knowledge of how to talk to the parson. I am so
devilish unused to talking to parsons, d'ye see."
"Oh, yes, I quite see that," says Cynthia significantly, "and I also
see that you are afraid."
"I dare say you might have shot wider of the truth," says I. "It is
the first time I have been called on to smell this kind of powder, and
burn me! if ever I want to be called on again."
"I hope you won't be," says Cynthia.
She herself, I must confess, was as cool as a cucumber. Her colour was
a little high perhaps, and the animation in her eyes was, I think, more
than usually fine. But take her altogether, she seemed to have all the
calmness and assurance of an old campaigner, whilst I was wincing and
starting like a raw recruit. They say that all women are alike in
this. They go to church as complacently as they go to Ranelagh, and
take as keen an enjoyment from the reading of the marriage service as
they do in the performance of the Italian dancers at the theatre in
Covent Garden. And it is said again that never a man of us all,
whatever his years, disposition and ideas, comes to this ceremony but
what he is beset with those same qualms that fastened upon me so
unexpectedly at the parson's gate.
When we walked up the pretty garden and came to the door of the
parson's house, it was Cynthia who unhesitatingly knocked upon it. But
the operation had to be repeated ere it was replied to. And when at
last the door was drawn back from within we were confronted by a stout,
red-faced woman in a gown of printed calico. Her sleeves were rolled
up above the elbow, her cap and apron were awry, and there was a look
of industrious ill-temper about her that contributed nothing to our
encouragement. She stuck her hands on her hips, filled the whole of
the doorway with her defiant presence, very like the dragon in the
fable that barred the way to the princess in the enchanted palace, and
surveyed us in a grimly critical fashion from top to toe.
"Is the parson at home?" says the audacious Cynthia.
"He be!" says the woman in a loud, harsh voice.
"We wish to see him then, if you please," says Cynthia.
"What might your business be?" says the woman, looking us all over with
a really disconcerting keenness.
"I think we must explain that to the parson himself," says Cynthia.
"Then I think you will not then," says the woman, mighty uncivilly.
"I've formed my own opinion of you. You shall not see the master, not
if I know it. He's got such a character for softness of heart all
about the countryside that you vagrant beggars come for miles to get
what you can out of him. It's mortal lucky he's got me to look after
him, or he would have given away the shirt off his back this many a
year ago."
It was impossible to deny that the good woman's estimate of our station
and business was shrewd enough. We were certainly a pair of vagrants,
if ever there was a pair in the world, and were certainly come to get
something of the parson that we had no means of requiting him for. And
I am sure neither of us, singly or together, would have stood a chance
of melting that adamantine bosom, since everything we said seemed more
clearly to reveal our humble not to say destitute condition; indeed we
had come to the point where this clergyman's uncompromising guardian
was about to bang the door in our faces, when the parson himself made a
very welcome intervention.
He came shuffling along the path from some remote part of the vicarage
garden, in a pair of old down-trodden carpet slippers, wearing over an
old-fashioned wig a beaver grotesquely battered and green with age.
His cassock hung in tatters at his heels, and he made about as unkempt
and disreputable a figure of a clergyman as it was possible to
conceive. Besides, he was a very small and insignificant rat of a
fellow, and had a strange odd way of peering through his horn
spectacles. But the moment he began to speak such a pleasant twinkle
of courtesy came into his ugly countenance--by itself it was plain to
the point of ugliness, although to this day Cynthia will never allow it
to be so--and his voice was so wondrous musical, that straightway we
forgot that he had such a singular appearance, and fell in love with
him.
"A very good morning to you," says he. "I hope you are drinking in
this golden morning that God hath sent us. Hey, what a thing it is to
be a human being!"
As he came up and observed Cynthia more closely, he, bowed with a
wonderful grave dignity, and took off his hat with a flourish that
became him most inimitably well. Such courtesy from an appearance so
discourteous never was seen.
"La, master, what be you at?" says the woman, highly scandalized by so
polite a demeanour. "Do you not see these are an arrant pair of
vagrant beggars? I must get you more artful spectacles if you will
stay so close at your book-reading."
"Peace, my good Blodgett," says the parson. "Do you think I do not
know breeding when I see it? It is a rare possession that nothing can
disguise. There is sensibility here, in this fair countenance, and
pride and candour, and the features are almost highly classical in
their outline. A little too full in the lips perhaps, yes, I think a
little too full, or this would have been the countenance of Minerva
with the animation of Diana in it. I must remind you again, my good
Blodgett, that appearances are apt to deceive; _non semper ea sunt quæ
videntur_, as the excellent Phædrus has so wisely said. You will do me
the honour, I hope, my dear young lady, of entering my house and
partaking of a glass of my gooseberry-wine and of eating a piece of
Banbury cake. And you, sir, also, I hope and trust; although in your
case the credentials you bear in your countenance are nothing like so
noteworthy. But as Plautus very pertinently asks, _non soles respicere
te_, to look at oneself ere one abuses another, the less said the
sooner we shall mend it, _tulum silentii præmium_. Come this way, I
beg you."
During this peroration poor Blodgett wrung her hands and shook her
head, and kept repeating some such mystical phrase as:
"He is off at the top again! He is off at the top again!"
However, this strange old parson, all unconscious of the distress of
mind he was occasioning his handmaid or housekeeper, or whatever she
might call herself, flowed on and on in his extraordinary monologue,
and led us indoors into a spacious room full of a remarkable disorder
of books, which doubtless composed his library. Books open and shut,
piled up and overlaid, were on the table, and under the table, on the
chairs, and on the floor. Any square inch of space wherein a book
might insinuate itself, there was a book to be found. Dusty,
black-letter, grimy Aldine, foxed Elzevir, any folio, quarto, or
octavo, providing it was old enough and dirty enough, was assembled
there. Those that lay open seemed to be annotated and scored under,
and embellished with marginal notes in a delicate minute handwriting,
on every page. And among all these tomes there was never a one that
was in a new dress, or done in a reasonable easy print, nor one written
by a reasonably modern author. To observe the _Paradise Lost_, with
the imprint of Jacob Tonson upon it, was to be startled with that sense
of gratified surprise that one would experience at unexpectedly meeting
with a personal friend in a foreign country.
The parson was an odd match to his books. His conversation was as
musty, learned and interminable as themselves. He talked of all topics
but those that could have been of the least interest to anybody. He
never thought to ask who we were, or what business had brought us
thither, but having lured us into his library, he very vigorously began
to engage us with matters at least a thousand years old. We were very
polite at first, and nodded our heads in deep interest at the mention
of the first Punic war, and kept saying, "Ah, to be sure!" and
inserting "yes" and "oh yes" whenever we found half a chance to get in
so much in the middle of some animadversions he thought fit to make on
the behaviour of the Carthaginians generally. But when proceeding to
move with an air of great mystery and consequence to topics of the most
inconsequent character, and presently to prove to us that in his
opinion the battle of Cannæ, or it may have been Marathon, or the siege
of Troy for aught we knew or cared, was not so important and decisive
an affair as the historians of these times had represented, our
observance of a polite interest showed signs of giving out.
We might shuffle, however, and shift our stations, and cough, and take
our weight off our right leg and lean it on our left, but it never made
one bit of difference to this terrible monologue. The old parson, with
his eyes half closed and his hands spread forth, poured out the finest
prose in his mellifluous voice, with every period rounded to such a
perfection that had he been a historian and his speech a printed page
the world could never have sufficiently admired his attainments. And
every emphasis and quantity seemed so indubitably exact in the
classical tongues he so freely quoted, as must have made him the envy
of pedagogues and the paragon among them all. And all this time we
were striving to maintain our well-bred interest as best we might, and
inwardly cursed Rome and Greece and the whole race of poets, historians
and soldiers that ever sprang from them.
His mind was filled with a vast deal of knowledge of a recondite sort.
It could have been of no possible service to anybody, least of all to
himself. Yet he moved lightly and easily from one antediluvian topic
to others more antediluvian still. He was armed with a great array of
theories of no moment at all, and a matchless sheaf of facts that
proved and disproved and proved them over again. How weary we became!
How we fidgeted and looked at one another in our despair, for he grew
more minute as he proceeded, and called up, extempore, authority upon
authority to show that Lais was a woman of virtue, and that Virgil did
not write his own works. He split straws with Aristotle, and picked
holes in his Ethics. He said that Cicero was a windbag, and that Plato
was a dunce. He said that Herodotus was loose in his facts, and no
more worthy of credence than Plutarch, and that Plutarch was not a whit
better than Herodotus neither. He said that Homer was the biggest
impostor in history. He had nothing to do with the _Iliad_, whilst as
for the _Odyssey_, he had long come at the truth that it was by a
female hand, most probably one of the Hesperides, though to be sure he
had not quite satisfied himself as to which, just as the plays of the
poet Shakespeare would one day be allowed to be the handiwork of Lord
Bacon, the eminent lawyer and philosopher; and again, as the world,
purblind as it was, would one day discover that Mr. Fielding's
so-called novel of _Joseph Andrews_ had sprung from the fertile brain
of Mr. Colley Gibber. Indeed I was so fearful lest he should take
steps to disprove my grandfather's claims to have produced his
celebrated Commentary on the _Analects of Confucius_, that I became
quite desperate, and determined to put a stop to the unceasing current
of his talk, even at the risk of making a hole in my good manners.
Having reached a point in his discourse wherein he showed that Cæsar
did not cross the Rubicon, I slapped my hand on the table with a vigour
that knocked down half-a-score of tomes and startled everything and
everybody but the speaker himself; and, says I, at the top of my
heartiest voice:
"I quite agree with you there, sir; I do indeed."
"I presume, sir," says the parson, "you know the authorities there are
against us, and what adversaries of weight, Cæsar himself, Suetonius,
and Plutarch, to name only three, that we have to face."
"I care not if there are three thousand," says I valiantly, "in this
matter I am entirely of your mind."
The parson, whose simplicity was as great as his learning, grasped my
hand with the utmost fervour.
"My dear sir," says he, "I can never sufficiently extol your spirit.
It is excellently said, sir, excellently said. Would that there were
more persons like you in the world. I can but offer you some
gooseberry-wine and a piece of Banbury cake, but I am sure you are very
welcome. I do declare that Blodgett has forgotten them; I will go and
see about them myself."
At last in the very height of our sufferings we obtained in this truly
unexpected, not to say whimsical fashion, a brief instant of relief.
It was plain that this learned wight was possessed of a mind of the
most singular simplicity and inconsequence. Everything that was told
him he took for gospel. He had the faith of a child. Everything that
had the least interest for himself he felt that all men were
languishing to hear of. With him evidently to think was to act; he was
the slave of his own whims; no sooner did he mention a thing than he
went straightway and performed it.
The prospects of being united in the bonds of wedlock by so
extraordinary a gentleman were indeed remote; but armed with the
knowledge of his character we had already gained, we concluded that if
we beat about the bush at all, he would be quite content for his own
part to detain us a "month of Sundays" in his library, while he
unfolded his facts and propounded his theories. On his own initiative
he would not be in the least likely to surrender a single moment to our
affairs. We must be bold and decisive, and grapple firmly with him.
Therefore when the good parson returned, preceding the umbrageous
Blodgett, who bore the Banbury cakes and the gooseberry-wine on a tray,
before he had the chance to open his mouth to take up his discourse,
says I, in a truly dramatic manner:
"If it pleases you, sir, we are here, this lady and I, to ask you to
marry us."
"Marry you," says he, without a moment's reflection. "I shall be
delighted. Blodgett, have the goodness to set down the tray on the top
of the _De Imitatione_ there and go and find the clerk, and tell him to
open the church. And tut, tut! my good woman, how often must I beseech
you not to dust my books with your sacrilegious apron."
While Mrs. Blodgett flounced out to find the clerk, and the good parson
in the height of his courtesy poured out the gooseberry-wine and served
us with it, Cynthia and I fell to talking at the top of our voices
about nothing at all, since we were certain that as soon as the parson
got an opportunity he would furnish us with a criticism of Strabo's
geographies, which, however damaging to that worthy ancient, would be
even more so to us; or prove that it was a vulgar error to speak of
Castor as the twin of Pollux; and proceed to demonstrate that Achilles
was vulnerable in other places than his heel.
CHAPTER VIII
WE GET US TO CHURCH
By the time the parson had served us solemnly with our refection, I
deemed it proper to give him some relation of our circumstances. I was
emboldened to do so because his simple, honest character made him easy
to talk to; it was also essential that he should be let some little way
into the state of our affairs, since we had but the sum of twelvepence
halfpenny with which to requite him for his services and to vail the
clerk. And again I talked to him the more readily because while he was
engaged with these matters, he was not so likely to revert to those
that concerned us less.
He received the confessions of our bankrupt condition with a breadth of
generosity that was truly noble in its magnitude.
"I am grieved that you should have thought fit to name that matter,"
says he. "What a world it is for pounds, shillings, and pence, to be
sure! One cannot come into it, nor go out of it, nor even enter into a
highly natural and commendable contract for its advantage, but what
somebody has to be feed. And I blush to say that that somebody is
generally some old rogue of a parson; but I hope, sir, you agree with
Tully when he says----"
"Yes, sir," says I hastily, "I quite agree with Tully, I have ever been
of Tully's opinion. And, sir, let me say that we are overcome with
your generosity. But there is yet another matter that irks us; we have
no ring by which we can be wed into matrimony."
"An even more trivial thing," says the parson, "the good Blodgett,
honest widow that she is, shall lend you hers."
It was bravely resolved of the parson, but I dare swear we both
shuddered at the same instant, when we conceived of the courage
required to put it into practice. To think of us "vagrant beggars"
summoning that redoubtable dragon to deliver up her marriage ring! It
would be perilously like commanding an ogre to cut off his own head.
I'll vow that Cynthia trembled a little; whilst she goes even farther
and says I grew as pale as death.
"Do you think, sir," said Cynthia fearfully, "that good Mrs. Blodgett
will be so kind?"
"She will be delighted, my dear madam," says the parson. "She will be
delighted!"
We were still wrestling with our honest doubts on the score of Mrs.
Blodgett's delight, when lo and behold! that formidable fair burst into
the room, redder in the face than ever, for she was out of breath. She
had seen the clerk, and he had gone that minute to open the door of the
church. And she conveyed this piece of news in such a brisk and
important tone as seemed a good deal out of keeping with her severity
of character. She had an air of interest which we had certainly not
expected her to betray in our humble affairs. And when the parson
without a word of preface had the audacity to prefer his proposal in
regard to the ring she bore on her finger, an audacity that caused us
both to hold our breaths, since we were fully persuaded that Blodgett
would at least break into a most violent diatribe against the impudence
of some people, drawing an affecting parallel with the late departed
saint whose relict she was, and how wild horses should not tear her and
this venerable sanctified token of their marital harmony apart, to our
surprise her reply was mercifully brief.
"Humph!" says she. Having glanced at us for a very embarrassing
period, during which time a good deal of perplexity distorted her harsh
features, says she: "Well, I never did! Is it a runaway?"
"You can take it at that," says I.
A very singular change was being wrought in this stern matron. Where
is the female bosom that can resist a wedding, or a touch of the
romantical? Not even that of the Spartan Blodgett. The more she
pondered the matter in hand the less terrible she became. She began to
ask a dozen questions of us in a greatly mollified voice. Nay, the
tone she used to Cynthia might even be called indulgent.
"Well," says she, "seeing as how it is an emergency, you shall have my
ring this once, but it goes against my conscience, I am sure. You are
doing a very wicked thing, young woman. To think of a little chit like
you running away to get married! I am sure I ought not to countenance
it. Oh, what will your mother say?"
"I have not a mother," says Cynthia, putting her hands to her eyes, and
smiling at me through her fingers.
This admission seemed considerably to ease the mind of Mrs. Blodgett,
and forthwith she began wrestling with the wedding-ring on her fat
finger. In the meantime her master was very fortunately engrossed in
another matter, and we were therefore spared his comments.
It seemed that Blodgett had brought him that day's _London Gazette_,
which had been left by the coach at the village alehouse. It was the
newspaper that claimed the parson's attention while his housekeeper
struggled with her wedding-ring. I vow it was as whimsical a sight as
ever was seen to witness the good lady growing redder and redder in her
face, and puffing, grunting, and twisting her countenance into the most
fantastical shapes, while she freely "dratted the thing," and called
down a murrain upon it. But strive as she might, the precious ring
still clung faithfully to her finger. Presently Cynthia was fain to
take a hand at hauling it off, but she fared not a whit better than
Mrs. Blodgett. Whereon I was called on, and after several very natural
and becoming protestations on my part as to my inability and so forth,
even I was pressed into the service. I tugged and hauled away with
what gravity I might, but never an inch would that wretched ring budge.
In the height of this deadlock, I was seized with a brilliant expedient.
"One of the rings round the curtain-pole," says I. "Surely one of them
will do most admirably well, and at least there will be no difficulty
about getting it off, nor on neither."
Now when I proffered this suggestion Mrs. Cynthia blushed such a colour
and looked so ill at ease, that I half began to doubt whether this idea
was so fine after all. And indeed, Blodgett took me up warmly.
"Wedded in a curtain-ring indeed!" says she. "I'facks, that she never
shall be. Who ever heard of such a thing! Has the man no decency!
Rather than that, my dear, I will run to neighbour Hodge's and borrow
hers. As she's a thin body it should slip off easy."
There and then the scandalized Blodgett was as good as her word.
Favouring me with a glance of such scorn and contempt that a person
more impressionable would have been rooted to the spot, she flounced
out of the room all in a moment, and directly afterwards passed by the
library window, running quite excitedly down the garden path. Surely a
whole chapter of dissertation might be written on the metamorphosis of
Mrs. Blodgett. From openly deriding Cynthia she had passed to an
almost motherly tenderness towards her. She had become as concerned
for her as though she had been her own daughter. She was no longer
"wench," or "vagrant beggar," nay nor even "young woman," but just "my
dear." And why was this? Do you think it was because she had suddenly
lighted on some latent virtues in my little madam, some strain of moral
loveliness, some unexpected beauty in her mind and heart? I am sure I
crave the pardon of her ladyship, but it was devil a one of these
things that had such a magic effect on Mrs. Blodgett. It was simply
that she had run away to get married, and that this was her wedding
morning. Oh, woman, woman! where is the daughter among you that can
resist the blandishments of Hymen?
While this was going forward, and we were congratulating ourselves in
secret on the most fortunate course this portentous affair was like to
take, an incident happened that shook me dreadfully, and recalled to my
mind much more sharply than I cared, the kind of fortune I was about to
endow my bride with. For the time being I had forgotten the colour of
my reputation, the character of my past, and my black prospects for the
future, in the cheerful topsy-turvy madness of the last twelve hours.
But now all of a sudden, in the least expected fashion, I was reminded
as to who I was, and what I was. The parson, who all the time had been
deeply involved in his news-sheet, suddenly cast it down, uttered a
loud exclamation, and with tears in his honest eyes began striding down
in his agitation, and knocked down many an unoffending book.
"_O tempera! O mores!_" says he, "In what degenerate days do we live!
To think that this should be the grandson of such a grandsire! No; I
cannot believe it of him; nay, I will not believe it of him."
You may guess that as there was a grandfather in the case I pricked up
my ears at once, and on looking at the newspaper saw that which
confirmed my premonition. There was a paragraph in the column of
"Newest Intelligence" that ran in this wise:
"On Tuesday evening in the near neighbourhood of divers well-known
coffee-and-chocolate-houses in Saint James's Street, Piccadilly, was
found the body of Mr. Richard Burdock, of His Majesty's 4th Regiment of
Horse Guards. The unfortunate gentleman had been done to death by a
sword-wound in the upper part of the chest. Precisely in what manner
the deceased came by his end is not at present known, but we are
informed that on the following day an information was laid against the
Earl of Tiverton, a nobleman whose name has been most unhappily
notorious of late. A warrant was at once procured for the arrest of
Lord Tiverton, and on an attempt being made to put it in force at his
lordship's residence later in the day, a most desperate struggle
ensued, and his lordship with the assistance of his household succeeded
in effecting, for the time being, his escape. We learn, however, that
the celebrated Mr. John Jeremy of Bow Street has the matter in hand;
that Mr. Jeremy with his world-famed acumen is in possession of a clue
as to Lord Tiverton's whereabouts; that Mr. Jeremy is already actively
following up the same, and that presently an event may transpire that
shall set all the town by the ears."
I directed Cynthia's attention to this account, and she was so startled
by it that she changed colour, and offered so many visible evidences of
her distress, that I feared she would have excited the suspicions of
the parson, yet after all that must have been an impossible feat, for I
am sure the honest parson was a man so utterly without guile, that he
was incapable of harbouring any sort of suspicion against a
fellow-creature. Besides he was still fully occupied in lamenting the
low repute into which our name had fallen, with a grief so genuine that
I did not know whether to be touched or amused by it.
However, I could not pay much heed to the parson at that minute, being
deeply concerned for little Cynthia. I began to fear that I had done
an ill-considered thing in allowing her to see the news-sheet. I had
never tried to find out how far she was acquainted with my history of
the past few years--my gaming, duels, intrigues and debts. That she
must have known of it to some extent was certain. She had heard of
them from my own lips in a haphazard sort of way; and again, they were
too well known to be suppressed, as witness the conduct of her father
in the matter of my suit. At his hands, and those of my friends, and
of my rival too, they would certainly lose nothing of their magnitude.
Whatever she had heard of me, she had been able to condone. But now
confronted with a more circumstantial charge against me, clothed in all
the authority of black and white, a charge of the most terrible
character that can be preferred against any person, it came on her with
a cruel force that almost crushed her down. She stood faltering, with
the newspaper still clutched in her hands; her lips trembled, and the
tears gathered slowly in her eyes.
"I don't believe it," said she, in a low, shaking voice.
She held out her hand, and I, despite the presence of the parson, took
it to my lips with the same passion with which she had extended it to
me. If a man in the midst of all the contumely and detraction of the
world, can yet get one woman to believe in him, it is enough!
Meantime the parson, whatever he may have thought of our behaviour, not
that it is altogether certain that he happened to witness it, was so
strangely ingenuous that he took my little one's distress to spring
from the same source as his own. He laid it all to that precious
Commentary on the _Analects of Confucius_!
"Your grief does you honour, my dear madam, allow me to say," says he,
wiping the memorials of his own from his red eyes. "It honours you
vastly. It is something in this benighted age to know that the
reverence for polite letters has not yet died out amongst us. And I,
on my part, will never be persuaded that the descendant of so noble and
learned a gentleman, whatever the errors of his youth, could fall into
an act of such a hideous kind. I blame the publick press too for
disseminating such a story. If it is false, as I believe it to be, oh,
the pity of it! But if it should be true, the pity is the greater.
With your permission, I will destroy this newspaper, lest this
scandalous thing it contains should come under the eye of Blodgett, and
she should spread it amongst the village folk."
I protest with all my settled views on life, and my arbitrary way of
looking at things, I did not know whether to burst out into a shout of
laughter, or fall a-weeping too, for, ecod! there was an affecting side
to the affair when our simple old parson tore up the offending
newspaper in a hundred pieces, all to preserve the fair name of that
philosopher who had perished of the gout a full thirty years ago.
Cynthia was so greatly shaken, that to defend her from his observation
I was even moved to indulge in the parson's fondness for the dead
languages and abstruse theories. However, I had just induced him to
quarrel with Cicero on the strength of something that Cicero ought to
have said and yet had not said at all, when Blodgett returned, bearing
the ring.
That redoubtable lady observed Cynthia's distress at once, but did not
put the same construction on it that her master had.
"Very natural to be sure," says she. "Weddings are strange, exciting
things, and apt to upset the strongest of us. I remember the first
time I went through the ceremony. I was mortal worried by it."
Mrs. Blodgett having by this time fully entered into the affair, took
Cynthia in hand. She insisted that Cynthia should go with her
upstairs, "to tidy herself like," and be accomplished generally in a
manner more befitting the occasion. Indeed so enthusiastic had the
housekeeper become about it that she even proposed to search for some
of her own discarded nuptial garments, which she ventured to say with a
bit of fettling and contriving, a pleat here and a tuck there, Cynthia
after all might not lack for a wedding-gown. The conceit of a young
lady who a week ago had been of the first fashion, appearing as a bride
in a gown that had once done duty for the admirable Blodgett, convulsed
me with laughter. And this behaviour was heightened rather than
depressed when I recollected that such an attire would consort very
aptly with the hobnailed appearance of the bridegroom.
During the absence of the ladies upstairs, the parson had the
forethought to give me a two-shilling-bit, for the purpose of feeing
the clerk. I was so struck by this further instance of his generous
courtesy, that I asked the name of my benefactor, for I swore that I
would not rest content until I had repaid him. It seemed that this
obscure country clergyman bore the name of Scriven. It is a name as
far as I can make out, that has not yet come to any eminence in letters
or the humane arts; nor has it attained to any signal preferment in
that Church of which it is so true an ornament. His great learning,
his simple ingenuous character, his notable generosity, his tenderness
of heart, his implicit courtesy have never advanced him one step, so
far as I can gather, in the world's opinion. For aught I know he is
still the country parson on his forty pounds or so a year, whilst many
a sleek old worldling with half of his learning and a tithe of his
humanity is my lord Bishop riding by in his gilt coach with footmen
behind it, the recipient of a hundred times more kudos and emolument.
When Cynthia came down again she looked wonderfully spic and span. Her
hair had been done into a becoming rustic mode, most admirably neat,
and showed off its qualities of abundance, gloss and curliness to true
advantage. She had not thought fit to call in the aid of Mrs.
Blodgett's gown it is true, but her own became her as well as another,
and happily at the same time afforded no index to her degree. It was a
plain and simple country dress, sober in hue and severe in its style.
Yet it fell so exactly into the exquisite lines of her shape, that she
and the dress became one as it were; and if there was a woman's tailor
who could have exhibited a lovely figure more artfully than that, she
must have been good Mrs. Nature herself. Cynthia, for all her country
clothes, looked so sweet, arch and dainty too, so much the gentlewoman
without the affectations that go with _ton_ and "fine," that by their
absence the breeding that lurked in every inch of her, the carriage of
her person, slender and small as it was, the set of her head, and the
cast of her features became more apparent.
These evidences had even an effect on Mrs. Blodgett. She was mightily
pleased with her _protégée_.
"I don't know who _you_ are, young man," says she, "and I won't say all
that's in my mind about you, but I hope you know that you are taking a
real born lady to wife. Such white hands I never did see, and such
pretty ways, saving her presence, as she 'ave too. You are not a
quarter good enough, young man, for the likes of her, and just keep
that in your mind and live up to it. But I gravely misdoubt me as to
whether you will, for take you all round you are about as disreppitable
and low a fellow as ever I saw. To think that such as you should have
lured the pretty lamb from her father's house. But as I've told her,
it is not yet too late for her to go back again."
Although neither Cynthia nor I was greatly inconvenienced by this crude
statement of the case, except in the matter of the smiles we strove in
vain to control, the parson, good, honest man, was not a little
disconcerted by it.
"Tut, tut!" says he, "my good Blodgett, your tongue runs too fast.
However excellent the motives may be that inspire you, I could wish you
had a somewhat less direct manner of expressing them. I really cannot
have you intervene between plighted lovers, at the very steps of the
altar. And whatever the personality of our young lady, if truth
compels us to admit that our young gentleman is scarcely so fortunate
in his physical semblance, I am sure he hath a very nice mind."
With these panegyrics we ultimately got us to church. Now it is not to
be expected, I hope, that a man should describe his own nuptials. If
there are three acts in his life on which he is the least qualified to
speak, are not those his birth, his marriage, and his burial? For in
not one of them can he testify with any certainty as to whether he went
through them on his heels or his head. Besides, I am one who holds
that there should be a becoming reticence in these things.
I can recall perhaps an empty, musty-smelling church, and the clerk, a
solemn, unctuous man, with a graveyard cough. Some little wind of the
affair had evidently got abroad in the village, owing to the exertions
of Mrs. Blodgett in quest of the wedding-ring. Thus the ceremony was
not so entirely private as we could have wished. A few women in
aprons, and some with babes in their arms kept the porch and the
immediate interior of the church. It seemed that they did not venture
to go further owing to their awe of the clerk. Various ragamuffin
children of tender years played hide-and-seek round the gravestones and
their mothers' gowns. When however the wedding party came along in a
kind of little procession, they desisted for a minute, and having
safely seen the parson precede us into the sacred edifice, they put out
their tongues at Cynthia and myself, and made several references of a
nature uncomplimentary to us couched in the form of rustic wit.
Mrs. Blodgett had undertaken the office of chief bridesmaid. She would
have undertaken that of groomsman too, had I given her the least
encouragement. She made an impressive figure at the altar rails, clad
in a severe black hood; whilst she was quite conscious of her
conspicuous position, and stood calm and erect in the dignity of her
infinite experience. What whispered but animated counsel she proffered
to Cynthia during the brief period in which we waited for the parson to
emerge from the vestry, I know not, but I would have given a good deal
to have been a party to it, for I am sure that if the look on Mrs.
Cynthia's countenance was any index to its character, it would well
have been worth setting down in this place.
At the last moment when the tension of our minds was very great, the
clerk became obstreperous. He asked parson Scriven in a significant
undertone for the special licence that was to marry us, as the banns
had not been put up and cried in church. Of course we were not
furnished with anything of the kind.
Parson Scriven, as became his amiable casual character, was not at all
disconcerted by such an informality.
"Pooh and faugh!" says he. "Banns and licence, John, stuff and
nonsense! Why should an honest couple be hedged about in this way? If
they have no licence, upon my soul I will marry them without."
The clerk was scandalized. The parson, however, would hear no
argument. He was not the person to allow his head to interfere with
the dictates of his heart.
"Parson's main obstinate," said the clerk, scratching his head. "And I
do believe he cares no more for law an' regulation than the gypsies on
the common. It won't be legal, this won't, but bless you what'll
parson care!"
So long as we could get this awkward business over we cared as little
for law and regulation as this singular old clergyman. Therefore, when
he disdained the opinions of the clerk, and reiterated his intention to
marry us, we breathed again.
At last all was ready, and the parson came out of the vestry with his
book and his gown, and smiled upon us with benevolent self-possession.
We strung ourselves for the great ordeal. Yet as a preliminary we were
confronted with one that we found vastly the more awkward of the two,
and one that we had not anticipated either. How we both came to
overlook it, I know not, unless the palpitation that our minds were in
was the secret of it. It had never occurred to us that the parson
could not marry us unless he was informed of our names. But when he
made that very obvious and natural stipulation it came upon us as a
thunderbolt. What a pair of arrant fools we were, not to have thought
of that contingency, and to have provided for it!
When the parson bluntly demanded this of us, we stood staring
open-mouthed at one another, a pair of zanies. I pursued a bold
course, however. To give our own was out of the question in that
public place, and more particularly as the newspaper had just
acquainted the reverend gentleman of my black history. Therefore, says
I, with an impudent assurance:
"John Smith and Jane Jones."
"How truly national!" says the officiating clergyman in a rapture of
sentiment. "How exquisitely English are these names, to be sure!"
I durst not look at my poor little Cynthia. But somehow I felt that
she was trembling and deadly pale, and ready to sink to the ground
under this humiliation to her native delicacy. I fear that I was of a
much coarser grain. I had suffered too much from the world already to
be easily bowed with a sense of shame. "Needs must when the devil
drives," was a good enough motto for me. We were in a pretty tight
corner, and if we ever came out of it at all, we must expect to lose a
little of our tender skins in doing so.
My little one was most monstrous brave. Having recovered the
possession of herself, she set her teeth and went through the thing
gallantly. I'faith she was of a good mettle. In spite of Mrs.
Blodgett's opinion of my worth, my little miss answered the
all-important query in such a clear affirmative voice as never was
heard, and entered into vows of a sort that argued some degree of
rashness on her part. Even at the time I was inclined to raise a doubt
of her ability to be the equal of them. Nor hath aught subsequently
transpired to cause me to forego this estimate of the matter. When we
had been duly put through these trials, we were led into the vestry to
write our names in the marriage register.
"Oh, Jack," whispers Cynthia, as we went, "whatever shall we do? I am
sure it cannot be legal."
"I am sure I don't know," says I. "What a folly of mine not to have
thought of it sooner!"
"It was my place to think of it," says Cynthia. "The folly is mine."
"No, not at all," says I. "What have you to do with it, a chit as you
are? The folly is mine, I tell you."
"Then I tell you it's not," says Cynthia flatly, and stamping her
petulant shoe on the very steps of the altar.
CHAPTER IX
WE GO UPON OUR WEDDING TOUR
I am sure it is expected of me to improve this occasion with a few sage
remarks, for could anything have been more ominous to the prosperity of
our married life? But I hope I have too much chivalry in me to say to
what extent this evil presage has been borne out since, and I dare Mrs.
Cynthia to do so. _Revenons à nos moutons_, a phrase I think that
always looks better in French. We got through all these important
matters at last, even to the forging of the honoured names of Jane
Jones and John Smith, or Jane Smith and John Jones, I forget precisely
which, in the parish register. Then having vailed the clerk with the
parson's two-shilling-bit, and having thanked and bid farewell to our
kind benefactors, we moved out of the church amid the acclamation of
the whole female and juvenile population of the village, and got us
with some speed upon our wedding-tour.
Now we had made about half-a-mile along the highway at a round pace,
when Cynthia to her great concern discovered that she had carried away
upon her finger the ring that Mrs. Blodgett had borrowed from a
neighbour.
"Oh, this will never do," says she. "We can never rob such kind honest
people."
"I suppose we cannot," says I, "but the value of that ring will come in
wonderfully apt this evening when we desire a lodging for our
weariness."
"Oh, Jack, how can you!" says she. "We must take it back at once."
And willy-nilly with never another word my pretty one, with a fine
indignant colour in her face, turned about and set her nose straight
back to the parson's door. And taking a material view of the matter,
honesty was just as good a policy in this case as any other, for when
we had come to the parson and Cynthia had got her mission off her lips
and the ring off her finger, all in due time, the kind man was so
pleased by our worthy behaviour, that says he to Mrs. Blodgett: "There,
there, what did I say? I knew you judged them too harshly," and
straightway invited us to an excellent repast of potherbs and boiled
mutton, that even then was smoking on the table.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when we set out again on our
travels. We took the highway, and followed it mile upon mile, through
pretty hamlets, past inviting inns, lush green meadows, and here and
there a shady little copse. Up hill and down dale we went, and always
in something of a joyful spirit, for no two people could be more happy
in their freedom, or more careless of what might befall. The moment
was enough for us. We were sound in limb and spirit, stout of heart,
too, I ween, and my little wife had the sum of twelvepence half penny
in her pocket. An avenging law was doubtless pursuing me, and a stern
parent was most probably pursuing her, but we were so taken up with one
another that we could think only of our present happiness. Avaunt dull
care, it was our wedding journey.
Who could help being happy in the soft airs of the spring afternoon?
They were so generous, and the sun was so mild and pleasant, that we
discarded our cloaks, and I bore them both over my arm. But we were
not allowed to remain in this paradise very long without being rudely
reminded of its insecurity. After awhile, growing hot with our
exertions and a little weary also, we began to desire a cool shady
place in which to rest. A hill more than usually steep lay before us,
and having toiled to the top, at considerably less of a pace than the
one at which we had started, found there the spot we were in need of.
Seating ourselves under a tree covered with snowy blossom we proceeded
to take our earned repose. And we had been in this occupation perhaps
five minutes or so, when our attention was directed to the sound of
wheels at the foot of the hill we had just overcome. A pair-horse
chaise was coming up at a round pace. It was occupied by two persons,
and was so striking in colour and design that it was in the distance
likely to be recognized sooner than the people in it. This proved to
be the case. No sooner had it come into view than Cynthia clutched at
my arm in a quick, frightened manner.
"Look, look!" says she. "Oh, what shall we do? 'Tis papa's curricle
coming up the hill, and on my life, it is papa within it."
I needed no second exhortation. There was an instant of time in which
we both looked wildly about us, backwards and forwards, only to
discover that it was impossible to get away from our present place
without being caught in the act of doing so. A hedge was at our back,
another was on the opposite side of the way, and in front stretched the
long level surface of the road. Yet there was just one chance of our
passing unnoticed, though heaven knows a precarious and remote one!
There was a slight declivity running under the hedge at our backs. It
was a kind of dry ditch, but the bed of it was so shallow that it could
hardly be dignified by the name of ditch at all. I commanded Cynthia
to lie perfectly flat in this, face downwards, and to squeeze herself
as far into the earth as she could get, whilst I did the same, though
in regard to the last particular I fear my precept was higher than my
resolution. Meantime the chaise came grinding and grunting up the
hill, at the same smart pace, while we lay in our ridiculously
inadequate hiding-place, perfectly convinced in our own minds that we
must be discovered. What an agony of suspense we lay in, stretched
full length, Cynthia's head pressed firmly against my heel, and our
noses nestling in the dry earth! We durst hardly breathe as the
carriage came nearer and nearer.
How it was its occupants failed to see us I cannot understand, for we
could have been scarcely shielded at all from their observation. But
sure enough the curricle went past us, and as it did so we could even
detect the familiar voices issuing out of it, above the noise of the
horses and the vehicle. One belonged to my lord the Duke, Mrs.
Cynthia's papa, a terribly irascible loud-toned voice to be sure;
whilst the other, smooth, polished and elegant, was that of Mr.
Humphrey Waring.
When at last they had fairly passed us by at a deuce of a rattle, we
were able to sit up from our tight positions and show our noses again.
We gazed at one another solemnly, and then broke into a peal of
laughter apiece.
"Phew!" says I, "it was as bad a two minutes as ever I've had. I
thought papa sounded very angry too."
"Poor papa!" says Cynthia, with a very odd mingling of sorrow and mirth
in her face. "I wouldn't have given much for you, sir, had he spied
us; and for that matter I would have given even less for myself."
"I suppose he is in full pursuit of us?" says I.
"There cannot be a doubt of it," says his daughter. "And if I know
anything of his Grace, he'll hardly sleep in his bed again until he
hath tracked us down. He's a terrible implacable man when he's
aroused. He'll be hunting us night and day, and he'll spend his last
penny sooner than he'll be baulked by us, now that he hath seen fit to
start on this business."
"Humph!" says I, "a nice energetic old gentleman to have for a
father-in-law, to be sure. And that smooth villain Waring too. Did
you not catch his voice also?"
"Yes," says Cynthia, flaming, "the wicked, wretched, contriving
villain. What can he hope to get by it all?"
"A wife," says I.
"He's like to go empty-handed there at least," says Cynthia. "What a
mercy it was we were married this morning!"
"I doubt whether we were," says I. "I do not know that the ceremony
will hold in the sight of the law."
"Then," says Cynthia, "we will be married over again in our real names
and with a proper licence at the first church we can."
"Nor will that avail you," says I, "when he hath got me hanged."
Mrs. Cynthia grew thoughtful, but says she after a moment's reflection:
"When he does that I will put an ounce of lead into his heart, then I
can be hanged beside you."
At this perforce I had to capitulate before her ingenuity.
We resumed our way somewhat chastened in spirit. We looked keenly
ahead of us along the road as we went, for any sign of the vehicle that
had lately overtaken us. Any inn or alehouse that happened to lie at
the roadside we passed with particular caution, lest our papa and his
companion should have broken their journey there. As time went by, and
we had begun to forget the excellent repast of boiled mutton and
potherbs with which we had been regaled by parson Scriven, we cast our
eyes on these wayside places of entertainment with another end in view.
We were growing honestly tired and hungry. Coming to one that wore an
air of unobtrusive respectability and general cleanliness, we
determined to part with half of our fortune in exchange for some bread
and cheese and ale.
Having first been at the precaution to convince ourselves that his
Grace's curricle lingered nowhere about the house, we went in and
called for our modest refreshment. And we were engaged in doing
justice to it with a good deal of zest, when to our great fear we heard
the sound of wheels on the road, and by the time we could turn round
and look out of the inn-window a chaise had come to a stand in front of
the door. It needed but a glance to tell us that we might have been
spared our alarm, since it was not the one belonging to Mrs. Cynthia's
papa. This was a much less imposing carriage, of a prim colour and
cast that was designed not to attract any attention. It contained two
persons. The first who alighted from it was a middling drab-coated
kind of a fellow, smug of countenance, and not to be looked at twice.
He was doubtless the unliveried servant of a well-to-do tradesman; an
estimate that was borne out by the deferential, not to say obsequious
air with which he stood at the side of the vehicle, and assisted the
second occupant to get out. This was a vastly more imposing person.
He was a great fat, heavy-featured man, with an almost overpowering
consequentialness about him. He moved with a slow but dignified strut,
spoke in a very loud voice, and yet there was a tone of affable
condescension about him too that was very baffling. He might be the
mayor or an alderman of some provincial town, some local big-wig, or
even a pursy magnate of commerce.
By the time he had moved in his heavy dignity into the room in which
Cynthia and I were seated at our bread and cheese, the landlord had
taken note of his visitor, and had come forward to greet him with all
the respectful familiarity of one who was happy to meet again an old
and cherished and highly-valued client.
"No other than Mr. John Jeremy, by all that's wonderful," says the
landlord, bowing and smiling. "_The_ Mr. John Jeremy, as I'm a
licensed victualler."
No sooner had the landlord uttered the name than I looked hastily at
Cynthia, and she looked hastily at me. Where had we heard that name so
recently, and in what connexion? Suddenly the same flash of
recollection illuminated the minds of us both. It was the name of the
celebrated Bow Street runner, as given in the _London Gazette_. I
think we both went hot and then cold. But when the first emotion of
surprise was overpast, a dogged resolution succeeded to it and with it
a determination to put, if need be, as bold a face upon the matter as
we could. After all there was nothing about us by which we could be
identified. Appearances were certainly in our favour; and the black
eye I had that morning received from the farmer was not the least
likely thing of all to stand me in good stead.
"Sit tight," I whispered to her, "and we'll keep asipping out of the
same pot as unconcerned as possible."
Mr. Jeremy having seated himself with majestic negligence at a table
immediately opposite us, turned to his companion and says:
"Wattle you 'ave, Willum?"
"Make it porter," says Willum, in a voice of extreme melancholy.
"Wattle you 'ave, Mr. Johnson?" says Mr. Jeremy, addressing the host, a
reel-faced worthy of simple ways, who seemed pleased with himself and
all the world.
"Make it porter, Mr. Jeremy, as you're so haffable," says he; "and what
might be your own?"
"If you 'ave any of that there sloe-gin, mine's sloe-gin," says Mr.
Jeremy.
These preliminaries being arranged to the satisfaction of all
concerned, and the host having retired to fetch the refreshment, Mr.
Jeremy remarked to his companion with a wonderful air of reflection:
"Honest, unassooming feller."
"Very," says the other, more gloomily than ever.
Mr. Jeremy then observed us for the first time. We returned his gaze
with one of the most simple unconcern.
"Nice day," says he.
"Very," says I heartily.
Here the host returned with the refreshment, and having pledged each
other, they drank solemnly and copiously.
"Well, Mr. Jeremy," says the host, "what are you after this time? It's
a murder, I know, for you to be taking it on. You never do nothing
under a murder, you don't, as I've heard you say."
"You don't mean to say as you 'aven't 'eard?" says Mr. Jeremy. "The
whole case was printed in this morning's _Gazette_. It's no small
thing, this isn't, I can tell you. The quality's in it, to start with."
"Ha!" says the landlord, with breathless interest. "Is it a hanging
matter?"
"Of course," says Mr. Jeremy. "And a hearl, and a thorough bad lot
too. A thorough wicked feller with a record as black as your hat. I
always say when one of that sort goes wrong he's much worse than
ord'nary."
"If it's you that says it, Mr. Jeremy, there can be no manner of doubt
about it," says the landlord.
He appeared to hang on every word that the man from Bow Street uttered.
That worthy gentleman who was by no means unaware of the impression he
created, was at pains in a dozen little ways to heighten it. Now and
then he would halt in a mysterious manner, wink and nod, and then
continue in a truly oracular way. It was plain that he felt himself to
be a man of a great reputation, and it would certainly be no fault of
his if he failed to sustain it. Nor was he content to work on the mind
of the landlord, but continually looked across at us to see what effect
he was having on our susceptibilities. Observing this, I began at once
to betray an interest in all he thought fit to say and do; an interest
more exaggerated than the landlord's even, and certainly less sincere.
"Are you the great Mr. John Jeremy from Bow Street, sir?" says I at the
first opportunity. I asked it in a voice of as much timidity as I
could summon, as one astonished at his boldness.
Instead of replying, the gentleman from Bow Street closed his eyes in
exquisite self-satisfaction, threw his head back against the wall and
folded his arms across his chest.
"How can you ask?" says the landlord, replying for him. "Who else can
he be? I should ha' thought your eyes would ha' told you that with one
look at him."
"I am very proud to meet you, sir," says I, and added, turning to
Cynthia: "Who would have thought it, Betsy, that you and I of all
people would ever have met the great Mr. Jeremy from Bow Street in
London."
"Don't mention it," says Mr. Jeremy, opening his eyes with vast
condescension.
"Oh, Mr. Jeremy," says my little Cynthia, playing up to her part in the
comedy with admirable instinct, "would you--could you let me have a
peep at the--at the handcuffs?"
Mr. Jeremy needed no second invitation to exhibit the badges of his
office. He took them from his pocket and laid them on the table with
an air. And nothing would content Cynthia but she must rise from her
seat, go over to the gentleman from Bow Street, and have the manacles
clapped upon her wrists to see how they felt. Her curiosity was very
prettily and justly simulated. It was done to the life, and no one
could have been more pleased by it than Mr. Jeremy.
Not content with thrilling Cynthia with the handcuffs, the gentleman
from Bow Street was anxious to impress everybody else. He presently
produced the warrant for the wicked earl's arrest; also a handbill
offering one hundred pounds reward for any information that should lead
to the apprehension of the person whose full description was contained
therein.
"But that's only a matter of form, you know," says Mr. Jeremy. "I've
already got all the information that I want in this 'ere," Mr. Jeremy
solemnly tapped his forehead. "It's only a work of time. We knows
everything about him: his age, his height, his complexion, his general
appearance, how he was drest, and his religious views. All there is to
know of him we knows. I wouldn't give a snap of the fingers for that
man, no that I wouldn't, not if you paid me to do it."
"Wonderful!" says the landlord, his eyes dilated with admiration.
"Wonderful smart! What a mind you must have, sir."
"_I_ didn't say so," says Mr. Jeremy, "Though I wouldn't contradict you
there. A feller's got to have a mind for our perfession. A numscull
can't make head or tail of it, can't a numscull. It's observation that
does it, d'ye see? You've got to put two and two together, and to know
how many beans make five. Now in the case of this 'ere hearl, I've
made such a liberal use o' my faculties that the noose is as good as
round his neck. Pore feller, I'm sorry for him."
Mr. Jeremy's sorrow was reproduced in the face of each one of his
hearers. In that of his man and the innkeeper it was sincere enough,
and at least in mine and Cynthia's it was very well simulated. One and
all professed the greatest admiration for the gentleman's genius. To
be sure, in what way it had been manifested was not very clear; but as
his speech, his behaviour, and the airs he gave himself furnished
incontestable proofs of its possession, how could we help doing homage
to it? He sat like a potentate, and received the court we paid to him
as by no means more than his due. But he was generous as well as
great, for having ordered his own glass to be replenished, he asked us
all to name our tipple, wherein we had the privilege of drinking his
health.
As soon as we felt that we could slip off without attracting any
particular attention to our going, we took the road again. Yet in the
precautions we were at to get away as little observed as might be, we
were more ill-served than by an ostentatious departure. For our one
object being to retire quickly and privily, we discovered when we had
gone a few yards on the road that we had not paid our reckoning. Thus
when the landlord awoke to this fact, we should be much more freely
discussed and commented on than by paying our score and effecting our
retirement at our leisure. Cynthia, who had a wonderful itch of
honesty, was mightily put out, and was all for going back and for
requiting the landlord at any cost. But I demurred to this strongly.
The sooner we put a few country miles between ourselves and Mr. Jeremy
the better, said I. Yet Cynthia argued more subtly, and more justly,
as I was fain to allow. Mr. Jeremy and the innkeeper had taken no
suspicion of us to the time of our leaving the inn, said she, and if we
were at the trouble to go back again, frankly admit our lapse of
memory, and even go out of our way to behave honestly, we should be far
more likely to continue in their good graces, than if we left them in
the lurch as I proposed. In that event we should infallibly get
ourselves and our concerns talked about.
Admitting the justness of this reasoning, I consented after a brief
argument to our going back. Mrs. Cynthia was pleased indeed, partly
because this course was such a tribute to her wisdom, and again because
she would not have to carry on her nice conscience an act that fretted
it. When we re-entered the inn it seemed that the landlord had already
discovered his loss, and was in the very act of calling us harsh names.
Indeed he was so occupied with this and was expressing himself so
fervently, whilst Mr. Jeremy laughed at him in a humorous key, that he
was not conscious of the fact that we stood behind him, until I said:
"I quite agree with you, host, in all you have said, if such was our
intention. But as it happens, nothing could be farther from it. The
moment we discovered our omission, we returned to rectify it."
The landlord was in a great taking when he heard my voice at his back.
Having listened to his apologies that were no less fervent than his
previous abuse, and having taken them in very good part, I demanded to
know the amount of the score, and smiled at Mr. Jeremy while I did so,
in an intimate way, for I judged a display of some little familiarity
towards him was the most calculated to propitiate that gentleman.
Eightpence was the score, a sum fortunately well within our truly
modest means. But judge of our desperate chagrin an instant later when
Cynthia, the custodian of our poor fortune, having felt in all her
pockets, declared that the purse which contained it was not to be
found. Search as she might, there was never a trace of it. We stared
at one another blankly, and then at the landlord, and then at Mr.
Jeremy. It was this last good gentleman who saved the situation for
us, since he burst out a-laughing. Thereon I broke into a roar; and
presently Cynthia, Willum, and the landlord were roaring too. And
could anything have been more ludicrous than two persons leaving an inn
without paying the reckoning, and wending all the way back again for
the purpose of rectifying the error with devil a penny between them
with which to do so!
Under cover of the commotion that this discovery provoked, I racked my
wits to find an excuse for our behaviour.
"You may laugh, gentlemen," says I, with a sudden gravity, "but it is
no laughing matter for us, let me tell you. My wife's pocket hath been
picked, and how we are to get back home with not so much as a penny
between us, strike me dead if I can say!"
"Why, 'tis a case for Mr. Jeremy's genius," says Cynthia, smiling at
that flattered person in a most bewitching manner. "He must devise us
a means out of his infinite wit."
"Peace, woman," says I, angrily. "Is it not enough then that you
should lose all our travelling money and bring us into disgrace with
our honest host, whom we are unable to requite for his hospitality, but
you must lose the control of that unlucky tongue too, and let it grow
so familiar with the name and attainments of one of the foremost
persons of his age that it brings us into disrepute with him also?"
I spoke with my tongue in my cheek to be sure, and Cynthia more than
once had to bite her lips to restrain her merriment. But Mr. Jeremy
nodded his head delightedly all the time, and purred with satisfaction.
"No offence, no offence," says that gentleman. "Don't mind me, my
pretty one. But since you ask my opinion as to 'ow you shall get back
home again, I think after carefully considering all the circumstances,
the only means I can discover is 'Shanks's mare.'"
"Ha ha! he he!" we all laughed at this desperate piece of wit.
The upshot was that we were allowed to depart indebted to the innkeeper
in the sum of eightpence. The loss of our money was a blow. Why it
should have been I cannot tell, for after all it was very little the
right side of destitution. Cynthia was quite unable to say in what
manner she had lost it, and when I came to put a few shrewd questions
to her on the subject, she was so vague in her ideas and so uncertain
in her answers, that it became a moot point at last whether her fortune
of twelvepence halfpenny had not existed from the first in her
imagination only.
CHAPTER X
WE ARE BESET BY A HEAVY MISFORTUNE
It was about sundown now. We had not so much as a penny to purchase a
loaf of bread. Night was coming on; there were no friends to whom we
might recommend ourselves; and at least two parties of persons were
engaged in hunting us down in that vicinity. To set against these
inconveniences we had only our liberty and our comradeship; and
although our bellies were like to go empty, and our heads unpillowed
that night, and for full many a weary one to come, we did not rail
against our lot. We were as free as the air and could defy the polite
conventions. Lest we should fall in again with Mr. Waring and our
papa, or less dangerously with Mr. Jeremy, we decided to forsake the
high road and its publicity, and take to the fields. All ways were
alike to us; north, south, east, and west, it did not matter.
We had not gone far across the country when the twilight overtook us.
We did not view it with the least apprehension, however. The night
promised to be so mild, and we were so warmly found against it with our
cloaks and thick clothes, that another evening couch in a barn or a
cowhouse would not greatly daunt us. Indeed we had already made up our
minds to this, unless Providence should throw a more luxurious one in
our path. In the event this proved to be the case, for after awhile
our wanderings brought us to a kind of common, across which smoke was
seen to be rising. It came from a fire of sticks as we presently
found, and on coming to it, we discovered ourselves in the midst of a
gypsy encampment.
Four or five persons of a dirty, ragged and uncouth sort, were busying
themselves about the fire in various ways. One was tending it with
fuel, another was adjusting a great cooking-pot that sat in the midst
of the embers, a third was cleaning a clasp-knife with a piece of rag
and a tuft of grass, a fourth had two parts of a flute in his hand and
was striving to fix them together; an old woman sat staring into the
blaze with her hands on her knees, smoking a pipe; and a young woman,
by no means destitute of a swarthy beauty, sat beside her with a child
at her breast.
The reception we met with at the hands of these simple strange people
was at first reserved and suspicious to a degree. One of the men
addressed us in a barbarous tongue, the like of which I have neither
heard before nor since. I could not make a word out of it. Showing
plainly that we were at a loss in this language, the man translated it
into good if a trifle rustic English:
"What do you want?" says he roughly.
"Leave to sit down by your cheerful fire a little," I replied. They
were in no hurry to extend this permission to us, but by the time that
Cynthia with excellent tact had greatly admired the babe in its
mother's arms, and I, who amongst my accomplishments pride myself as
being somewhat of an amateur of the flute, had pieced that instrument
together, for its owner did not appear to understand much about it, and
had been at pains to make ourselves agreeable to our company in several
ways, their gruff reserve grew sensibly less. And shortly, so much did
our addresses have their effect, that we found ourselves seated around
the fire, with a pleasant odour of cookery tickling our noses. For
after all bread and cheese and ale, although excellent in themselves to
be sure, do not form a very enduring diet.
By the time the meal was ready the moon had risen. Sitting in the
midst of these strange gypsy people, beside a bright fire that threw up
its flames to the open fields, and clothed trees and hedges and the sky
itself with a vagueness and mystery that we had never noticed in them
before, we became possessed with a sense of the weirdness of the shapes
about us. They made the folk we had come amongst seem more singular
than they might otherwise have appeared. However, the meal we
presently partook of in their company did much to alleviate this
feeling of strangeness. When the lid was taken off the hissing
cauldron, and platters, spoons and knives were produced, the circle
about the fire was increased by the arrival of other gypsies of various
ages and both sexes.
As their guests, they had the courtesy to serve us first. From the pot
was produced a hot and grateful mess, that to persons with appetites
sharpened to the degree that ours were, was deliriously palatable. It
appeared to consist of fowls, mutton, hares, onions, and potatoes, and
probably other meats and vegetables not so easy to detect. We were
also given some excellent ale in a great horn tumbler, and a hunch of
barley bread apiece. We feasted indeed on the liberal fare, and were
fain to pay a second visit to the cauldron.
It was to be remarked that our entertainers were much better disposed
toward us after supper than before. Their suspicion and reserve melted
more and more, and instead of using the Romany language, ordered their
conversation in ours, that we might take some profit of their
intercourse. They all showed this amenable disposition with the
exception of the old cro
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