A LOUNGE IN THE PARK—THE NOON OF FASHION—THE FAIR EQUESTRIAN—A LOVER ON FOOT—BOUNCE’S COMFORTERS—THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER—A FRIEND’S ADVICE
It was high noon in the great world of London—that is to say, it was about half-past five p.m.—and the children of Mammon were in full dress. In the streets, gay, glittering, well-appointed carriages were bowling smoothly along, with sleek horses stepping proudly together, and turning, as coachmen say, on a sixpence, guided by skilful pilots who could drive to an inch. Inside, shaded by parasols of the most gorgeous hues, sat fair delicate women, dressed to the utmost perfection of the art, with aërial bonnets at the very back of their glossy hair and dainty heads, bent down as they reclined upon their cushions till every upward glance shot from beneath those sweeping eyelashes bore a tenfold shaft of conquest against the world. Anon taper fingers in white kid gloves were kissed to a dandy on the pavement, and the fortunate dandy bowed, and sprang erect again, a taller man by an inch. ’Tis always judicious to appear on the best of terms with smart ladies in coroneted carriages. Bond Street was in a state of siege—“Redmayne’s” looked like a beehive—“Hunt and Roskell’s” resembled a flower-show—country cousins were bewildered and overcome—quiet old gentlemen like ourselves were pining for their strawberries and their roses—wearied servants meditated on the charms of beer—the narrow strip of sky overhead smiled blue as the Mediterranean, and the tide of carriages in Piccadilly was like the roar of the ocean. In the Park, though the space was greater, yet did the crowd appear no less—double lines of carriages blocked up the drive by the Serpentine, and unassuming broughams with provokingly pretty faces inside halted perforce amongst the matronage of England, defiant in the liveries and escutcheons of their lawful lords. In the Ride the plot was thickening still, and half a country seemed to be gathering on “the broad road”—we speak literally, not metaphorically—mounted on steeds worth a prince’s ransom, we ought to say, but here our conscientious regard for verity compels us to stop short, and to remark that although every now and then our eye may be gladdened by that most beautiful of all spectacles, a handsome woman on a fine horse, yet in many sorry instances the gentlemen of England, who “sit at home at ease,” effectually prevent their wives and daughters from enjoying a like sedentary composure, by mounting them on the veriest “rips” that ever disgraced a side-saddle. “He’ll do to carry a lady,” they say of some wretch that has neither pace nor strength nor action for themselves, and forthwith gentle woman, blest in her ignorance, tittups along, nothing doubting, upon this tottering skeleton. Fortune favours her own sex, but if anything happens a woman is almost sure to be hurt. No—to carry a lady a horse ought to be as near perfection as it is possible for that animal to arrive—strong, fast, well-shaped, handsome, and fine-tempered, his good qualities and his value should correspond with the treasure and the charms which are confided to his charge. But we have said there are exceptions, and Blanche’s bay horse, “Water King,” was a bright particular star among his equine fellows. Humble pedestrians stopped to gaze open-mouthed on that shapely form—the marble crest, the silky mane, the small quivering ear, the wide proud nostril, and the game wild eye—the round powerful frame, hard and smooth and well-defined as sculptured marble, showing on the “off-side” its whole lengthy proportions uninterrupted save by girth and saddle-flap, and the little edge of cambric handkerchief peeping from the latter. High-couraged as he was gentle, few horses could canter up the Ride like “Water King,” and as he bent himself to his mistress’s hand, snorting in his pride, his thin black tail swishing in the air, and his glossy skin flecked with foam, many a smart philosopher of the “nil admirari” school turned upon his saddle to approve, and drawled to his brother idler, “’Gad, that’s a monstrous clever horse, and rather a pretty girl riding him.” Major D’Orville thought they were a charming couple as he accompanied Miss Kettering and her steed with the careful air of proprietorship seldom assumed save by an accepted suitor. The Major was a delightful companion for the Park. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. He had the knack of making that sort of quiet disjointed conversation which accords so well with an equestrian tête-à-tête. Defend us at all times from a long story, but especially on horse-back! The Major’s remarks, however, were seldom too diffuse. “You see that man on the cream-coloured horse,” he would say; “that’s Discount, the famous money-lender. He gave a dinner yesterday to ten people that cost a hundred pounds, and he is telling everybody to-day all the particulars of the ‘carte’ and the ‘bill.’ Do you know that lady with the dark eyes and a netting all over her horse?—that’s Lady Legerdemain—she keeps a legion of spirits, as she says, and will raise the dead for you any night you like to go to her house in Tyburnia proper.” “How shocking!” Blanche replies, with a look of incredulity. “Fact, I assure you,” returns the Major. “Sir Roger Rearsby asked to see an old brother-officer who was killed at Toulouse, and they showed him his own French cook! but Lady Legerdemain says the spirits are fallible, just like ourselves. Who is this in uniform?—why, it’s ‘Uppy’—he don’t look very disconsolate, does he, Miss Kettering?” and the Major smiled a meaning smile, and Blanche looked down and blushed. “Some men would not ‘wear the willow’ so contentedly,” proceeded D’Orville, lowering his voice to half-melancholy tone—“it’s setting too much upon a cast to ask a question when a negative is to swamp one’s happiness for life. I honour the man that has the courage to do it, but for my part I confess I have not.” “I never knew you were deficient in that particular,” replied Blanche, looking down again, and blushing deeper than before. Blanche! Blanche! you little coquette, you are indeed coming on in the atmosphere of London—you like the Major very much, but you do not like him well enough to marry him—yet you would be unhappy to lose him, you spoilt child!—and so you lead him on like this, and look more bewitching than ever with those downcast eyes and long, silky lashes. Notwithstanding their difference of years, our pair are playing a game very common in society, called “Diamond cut diamond.” “I am a thorough coward in some things,” returned D’Orville, not without a flush of conscious pride, as he remembered how his spirit used to rise with the tide of battle; “like all other cowards, nothing would make me bold but the certainty of success.” He pressed closer to “Water King’s” side, and sank his voice almost to a whisper as he added—“Could I but hope for that, I could dare anything. Could I but think that my devotion, my idolatry, was not entirely thrown away, I should be——” The Major stopped short, for Blanche turned pale as death, and her head drooped as if she must have fallen from her horse.
What made the girl start and sicken as though an adder had stung her to the quick? What made her lean her little hand for support on “Water King’s” strong, firm neck? Because her brain was reeling, and everything—joy—sunshine—existence—seemed to be passing away. Was it for the mute reproach conveyed by that pale face amongst the crowd—was it for the calm, broad eye, bent on her “more in sorrow than in anger,” and seeming, as it gazed, to bid her an eternal farewell?
Frank Hardingstone had seen it all. Unobserved himself among the pedestrians that thronged the footway, he had marked Blanche and her cavalier as they paced slowly down the Ride, had marked the girl’s flush of triumph as her admirer drew closer and closer to her side, had marked that nameless “something” between the pair which people can never entirely conceal when they “understand each other,” and had drawn his own conclusions from the sight. But the decencies of society must be preserved, though the heart is breaking, and Frank drew himself up and took his hat off with a bow that did honour to his qualities as an actor. The old gentleman in gaiters and the tall boy from Eton on either side of him never guessed the amount of mental agony undergone by a fellow-creature whom they actually touched! Civilisation has its tortures as well as barbarism. Blanche, too, returned the courtly gesture, but her weaker nature was scarcely equal to the effort, and had it not been that Uncle Baldwin had fidgeted up, on the instant, in more than his usual hurry to get home, she was conscious that her strength must have given way, and—feel for her, beautiful and daring Amazons who frequent the Ride!—that she must have burst into tears, and made a scene in the Park!
Now old Bounce, albeit a gentleman of extremely punctual habits, as is often the case with those who have nothing to do, and, moreover, a man of healthy appetite and a strong regard for the dinner-hour, had never before betrayed such a morbid anxiety to get home and dress as on the occasion in question. The fact is, he, too, was restless and excited, although the sensation had its own peculiar charms for the veteran, who entertained at sixty a spice of that romance which is often erroneously considered peculiar to sixteen. Yes, “the boy with the bow” no more disdained to take a shot at Bounce than at Falstaff, and our old friend was even now balancing on the brink of that eventful plunge which, if not made before “the grand climacteric,” it is generally thought advisable to postpone sine die. Mary Delaval had made an unconscious conquest. The feeling had been gradually but surely developed, and the constant presence of such a woman had been too much, even for a heart hardened by more than forty years of soldiering, baked by an Indian sun, and further defended by triple plies of flannel, worn for chronic rheumatism, and usually esteemed as effective a rampart against the assaults of love as the “æs triplex” of Horace itself. First the General thought, “This Mrs. Delaval was a very nice creature. Zounds! it’s lucky for her I’m not a younger man!” then he arrived at “Beautiful woman, begad. Zounds! it’s lucky for me she’s not half aware of her attractions!” and from that the transition was easy and natural to “Sensible person; such manners, such dignity; fit for any position in the world. Zounds! I’ll make her Mrs. Bounce—do as I like—my own commanding-officer, nobody else to consult—of course she won’t throw such a chance away.” This latter consideration, however, although he repeated it to himself twenty times a day, had hitherto prevented the General from making any decided attack. When a man, even an old one, really cares for a woman, he is always somewhat diffident of success, and Mary’s sexagenarian suitor, though bold as brass in theory, was like any other lover in practice. But the breakfast at the barracks had wonderfully encouraged the General. He found Mrs. Delaval constantly at his side. He knew nothing of her previous acquaintance with D’Orville, still less could he guess at the secret which lay buried in her heart, and which was fading her beauty and deepening her expression day by day. How could he tell whose tears they were that blistered the newspaper on that “African Mail” column?—so the natural conclusion at which he arrived was, that the same charms which had done such execution in India, and had driven the Cheltenham widow to the verge of despair, were again at their old tricks; and that, having succeeded in attaching the most adorable of her sex, it only remained for him, in common humanity, to present her with all that was left of his fascinating self. And now began in earnest the General’s qualms and misgivings. It was a tremendous step; he had never done it before; though often on the brink, he had always drawn back in time, and yet many of his old friends had got through it. Mulligatawney had married a widow—by the by, was Mrs. Delaval a widow? he never thought of asking—perhaps her husband was alive! At any rate this state of uncertainty was not to be borne, and after consulting one or two of his old cronies, and getting their opinions, he would take some decided step—that he would—ask the question, and stand the shot like a man. The General agreed with Montrose—
In pursuance of this doughty resolution, our veteran warrior took advantage of his niece’s long tête-à-tête with Major D’Orville to drop behind on the black cob, and sound his two old friends, Mulligatawney of the Civil Service, and Sir Bloomer Buttercup of no service at all, save that of the ladies, on the important step which he meditated taking.
“Lonely place, London,” said the General, reining in the cob, and settling himself into what he considered a becoming attitude, “at least for a bachelor. No solitude like that of a crowd.—What?”
“Better be alone than bothered to death by women,” growled Mulligatawney, a thin, withered, sour-looking individual, with a long yellow face. “I like London, en garçon, only Mrs. Mulligatawney always will come up whenever I do. Egad, you bachelors don’t know when you’re well off.”
“Poor bachelors,” simpered Sir Bloomer Buttercup, riding up with his best air, he having dropped behind (a young rogue!) to make eyes at a very smart lady on the trottoir. “Poor fellows, nobody lets us alone, Bounce, and yet we’re perfectly harmless—innocent as doves. I wish I was married, though, too; it fixes one, eh? keeps the butterfly constant to the rose;” and Sir Bloomer heaved his padded chest with an admirably got-up sigh, still shooting œillades at the nowise disconcerted lady on the trottoir. You would hardly have guessed Sir Bloomer to be sixty-five; at least, not as he appeared before the world on that cantering grey horse. To be sure, he had his riding costume on; riding hat, riding wig, riding coat, trousers, boots, and padding; not to mention a belt, the loosening of which let the whole fabric fall to pieces. They say he is lifted on his horse; we have reason to believe he could not walk five yards in that dress to save his life. Perhaps if we saw him, as his valet does, divested of his beautiful white teeth, his dark hair and whiskers, his florid healthy colour, and that stalwart deep-chested figure of buckram and wadding which encases the real man within, we might not be disposed to question the accuracy of Burke’s “Peerage and Baronetage” in point of dates. But as he sits now, on his high broke horse, in his well-stuffed saddle, the very youngest of the shavelings who aspire to dandyism call him “Buttercup” to his face, and plume themselves on his notice, and quote him, and look up to him, not as a beacon, but an example.
“You’re right, sir,” says the General, with his accustomed energy, in a tone that makes the black cob start beneath him. “Don’t tell me—should have married forty years ago. Never mind; better late than never. Now, I’ll tell you, I’ve thought of it. We’re not to live entirely for ourselves. How d’ye mean? I’ve thought of it, I tell you!”
“Thought of it, have you?” rejoined Mulligatawney, with a grim smile; “then at your time of life, Bounce, I should recommend you to confine yourself to thinking of it.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” lisps Sir Bloomer. “Bounce, I congratulate you. Introduce me, pray. Is she charming? young? beautiful? graceful? Happy Bounce—lucky dog—irresistible warrior!” The General feels three inches taller, and resolves to settle the matter the instant he gets home. But Mulligatawney interposes with his sardonic grin. “No fool like an old one. You’ll excuse me, but if you ask my advice, I’ll give it you in three words, ‘Do and Repent’; you’ll never regret it but once—experto crede.” The General turns from one to the other, like the Wild Huntsman between his ghostly advisers, the Radiant Spirit on his white charger, and the Mocking Demon on his steed from hell—he feels quite incapable of making up his mind.
“Delightful state,” says Sir Bloomer;—“Always in hot water,” growls Mulligatawney. “Lovely woman; affectionate nurse; take care of you when you’re ill,” pleads the one;—“Cross as two sticks; open carriage in an east wind; give a ball when you’ve got the gout,” urges the other. “Interchange of sentiment; linked in rosy chains; heaven upon earth,” lisps the ancient dandy;—“Always quarrelling; Kilkenny cats; if you must go to the devil, go your own way, but not in double harness,” grunts the world-worn cynic: and the General turns his cob’s head and accompanies his niece home, more perplexed than ever, as is usually the case with a man when, bethinking him that “in the multitude of counsellors there is safety,” he has been led into the hopeless labyrinth of “talking the matter over with a few friends.”
RECONNOITRING—BLANCHE’S ALBUM—“SITTING HIM OUT”—CROSS-PURPOSES—A SMITTEN DANDY—HAIRBLOWER IN LONDON—THE TRUE-BLUE KAFFIRS—WETTING A PLANT—GOOD ADVICE—A CURE FOR LOW SPIRITS—THE REAL GLASS SLIPPERS
“Look who it is, Rosine!” exclaimed Blanche, as her maid rushed to the window of her dressing-room, commanding as it did a view of Grosvenor Square, and a peep at every visitor who came to that front door, which was even now reverberating from a knock applied by no feeble hand.
“Il n’y a pas de voiture, mademoiselle,” replied Rosine; “ce n’est qu’un monsieur à pied—mais il n’est pas mal, lui, je trouve.” The latter observation escaped Rosine more as a private reflection of her own than a remark for her lady’s ear, and was indeed no more than due to the general appearance of Frank Hardingstone, as he stood at that well-known door, his strong heart beating like a girl’s.
“Run, and say I’ll be down directly, Rosine, if it’s any one for me,” said Blanche, her colour rising as she thought who it was likely to be, and wondered why he had not called before, and determined to punish him and keep him waiting, and be very cold when they did meet, and so show him that she did not choose to be accountable to him indeed for her actions, and would ride in the Park with whom she pleased, and was utterly indifferent to his good opinion, and independent of him altogether—and thus resolving, our consistent young lady looked at herself in the glass, and was pleased to see that her eyes were bright and her hair smooth, and that she should confront Frank armed with her best looks, which proves how entirely careless she was of that gentleman’s admiration.
In the meantime the object of all this severity was kicking his heels in the spacious drawing-room appropriated to morning visitors, whither he had been conducted by an elaborately polite footman, who after informing him that “the General was hout, and Miss Kettering at ’ome,” made a precipitate retreat, leaving him to his own thoughts and the contemplation of his well-dressed figure in some half-dozen mirrors. Frank soon tired of these resources, and found himself driven to the table for amusement, where he found the usual litter of handsomely-bound books, costly work-boxes, grotesque paper-cutters, and miniatures painted in all the glowing colours of the rainbow. He was nervous (for him)—very nervous, and though he took one up after another, and examined them most minutely, he would have been sorely puzzled to explain what he was looking at. Nor did a contemplation of Blanche’s portrait in ivory serve to restore the visitor’s composure, albeit representing that young lady smiling with all her might under a heavy crimson curtain. He shut up the case with a savage snap, and replaced it with a bitter sneer. But if the representation of Miss Kettering’s outward semblance met with so little favour, neither did her album, which we may presume was the index of her mind, seem to afford greater satisfaction to this discontented young man. It opened unfortunately at some lines by Lord Mount Helicon, “addressed to B—— on being asked whether the disfigurement of the object was not a certain cure for any man’s love,” and was entitled—
“Rubbish,” growled Frank; “that any man in his senses should write such infernal nonsense, and then have the face to put his name to it! His moss-rose, indeed! and this is what women like. These are the coxcombs they prefer to a plain, sensible, true-hearted gentleman—put wisdom, talent, courage, faith, and truth in one scale, and weigh them against a soft voice, a large pair of whiskers, and varnished boots in the other—why, the boots have it twenty to one! and it is for this thoughtless, ungrateful, unfeeling, volatile, ill-judging sex that we are all prepared to go through fire and water, sacrifice friends, country, fame, position, honour itself! Blanche! Blanche is as bad as the rest, but I at least will no longer be such a fool. I have no idea of becoming a pis-aller—a substitute—a stop-gap—if this hair-brained peer should change his mind, and that warlike roué find some one he likes better than Miss Kettering. O Blanche! Blanche! that I had never known you, or having known you, could rate you at your real value, and give you up without a struggle!”
“How do you do, Miss Kettering? What a beautiful day!” Only the last sentence of the foregoing, be it observed, was spoken aloud; Frank had just schooled himself to the point of separation for ever, when the door opened and Blanche entered, looking so exactly as she used, with the same graceful gestures, and the same kind smile, that her empire was, for the moment, completely re-established; and although she, too, had meant to be very reserved and very distant, she could not forbear greeting her old admirer with all the cordiality of bygone days. These young people loved one another very much; each would have given the world to pour forth hopes, and fears, and misgivings, and vows, and reproaches, and pardons, into the other’s ear, but the lip will tremble when the heart is full, and they got no further than “How do you do?” and “What a beautiful day!” Blanche was the first to regain her composure, as is generally the case with a lady, perhaps from her being more habituated to losing it—perhaps from her whole training being one of readier hypocrisy than that of man. Be this how it may, the deeper water, when stirred, is longer in smoothing its ruffled surface; and whilst the lover’s lip shook, and his heart beat, the girl’s voice was steady and tranquil, though she dared not trust herself, save with the commonplace topics and every-day conversation of society. They tried Chiswick—the new singer—the Drawing-room—Lady Ormolu’s ball—the opera—and the Park; this last was tender ground, and Blanche coloured to the temples when Frank hesitated and stammered out (so different from his usual manly, open address) that he “thought he had seen her yesterday, and her horse was looking remarkably well. By the by, was she not riding with——”
“Major D’Orville,” announced the polite footman, with the utmost stateliness; and our handsome hussar made his appearance, and paid his respects to Miss Kettering in his usual self-possessed and dignified manner, contrasting favourably with poor Frank’s obvious embarrassment and annoyance, now heightened by the intrusion of so unwelcome a visitor at such an unlucky moment. A few seconds more might have produced an explanation, a reconciliation—possibly a scene—but that cursed door-knocker could not be still, even for so short a space; and Mr. Hardingstone was once more at a dead-lock.
And now began another game at cross purposes, which, though not uncommon amongst ladies and gentlemen who are of opinion that “two form pleasanter company than three,” is, nevertheless, a dull and dreary recreation when persisted in for any length of time. It is termed “sitting each other out,” and was now performed by Frank Hardingstone and the Major in its highest perfection. But here again the man of war had an advantage over the civilian. Besides the occupation afforded him by his moustaches, of which ornaments even D’Orville acknowledged the value in a case like the present, he was thoroughly at his ease, and consequently good-humoured, lively, and agreeable; whereas Frank was restless, preoccupied, almost morose. He had never before appeared to such disadvantage in Blanche’s eyes. But if he hoped to obtain her ear by dint of patient assiduity, and an obvious intention to remain where he was till dinner-time, he must have been grievously disappointed, for again a thundering knock shook the house to its foundations, and “Lord Mount Helicon” was announced by the polite footman, with an extra flourish on account of the title. His lordship greeted Blanche with the greatest empressement, nodded to the gentlemen with the most hearty cordiality, as though rivalry was a word unknown in his vocabulary, and settled himself in an arm-chair by the lady’s side with a good-natured assurance peculiarly his own.
“Do you ride to-day, Miss Kettering?” said he, with the most matter-of-course air. “I promised the General to show him my famous pony, so I have ordered ‘Trictrac’ (that’s his name) to be here at five—perhaps you’ll allow me to accompany you.”
Frank looked intensely disgusted: he had brought no hacks to town, and if he had, would never have proposed to ride with his lady-love in such an off-hand way. Even the Major opened his eyes wider than usual, and gave an extra twirl to his moustaches; but “Mount” rattled on, nothing daunted: “We shall have Lacquers here directly. I met him as I drove up Bond Street, coming out of Storr and Mortimer’s, and I taxed him on the spot with the accusation that he was going to be married. He couldn’t stand the test, Miss Kettering! he blushed—actually blushed—and tried to get rid of me by an assurance that he was very busy, and that we should meet again in the Park. But I know better; he’s coming here, I can take my oath of it. His hair is curled in five rows, and he never wears more than four, save for particular occasions. He is very fidgety about his ‘chevelure,’ ‘his chevalier,’ he calls it; and went the other night to hear ‘The Barbiere,’ as he himself acknowledged, ‘to get a wrinkle, you know, about dressing and shaving and all that.’”
Blanche laughed in spite of herself; and Frank, seizing his hat in ill-concealed vexation, bade her a hurried farewell, and rushed out of the house, just as the redoubtable Lacquers made his appearance, “got up,” as Lord Mount Helicon had observed, with the greatest magnificence, and fully resolved in his own mind to push the siege briskly with the heiress, and at least to lose no ground in her good graces for want of attention to the duties, or rather, we should say, the pleasures of the toilette.
Poor Frank was very wretched as he stalked down the sunshiny street, and almost vowed he would never enter that house again. He felt a void at his heart that quite startled him. He had no idea he was so far gone. For a time he believed himself really and utterly miserable; nor did the reflection that such a feeling was a bitter satire on his boasted strength of mind—on that intellectual training of which he was so proud—serve to administer much consolation. Like the ruined gamester, who
Frank felt inclined to quarrel with the world in general, and buttoned his coat with savage energy when the poor crossing-sweeper held out her toil-worn hand for a penny. He relented too, and gave her money, and felt ashamed that he should have thought for an instant of visiting his own afflictions on that hard-working creature, the more so as a sailor-looking man in front of him had evidently given a trifle to the poor industrious woman.
Frank thought he recognised those broad shoulders, that large, loose frame and rolling gait; in another moment he was alongside Hairblower, and clasping the delighted seaman’s hand with a warmth and cordiality by no means less vigorously returned.
“The last person as I ever expected to come across hereaway,” said Hairblower, his broad, honest face wrinkling with pleasure. “I little thought when I came cruising about this here place as I should fall in with friends at every corner; and pretty friends they’ve showed theirselves, some on ’em.”
As the seaman spoke these last words in bitter and desponding tones, Frank remarked that he looked pale and haggard; and though his clear eye and good-humoured smile were the same as ever, he had lost the well-to-do air and jovial manner which used to distinguish him at St. Swithin’s. Frank asked if there was anything wrong: “You know I’m an old friend, Hairblower; I can see something has happened—can I assist you? At any rate, tell me what is the matter.”
The tears stood in Hairblower’s eyes, and again he wrung Frank’s hand with a grasp like a vice, and his voice came hoarse and thick as he replied, “God bless you, Mr. Hardingstone, you’re a real gentleman, you are, and though I’m a plain man and poor—poor, I haven’t five shillings left in the world—you think it no shame to be seen walking and talking with the likes of me in the broad daylight, and that’s what I call manly, sir: no more didn’t Master Charlie—poor lad! he’s far enough now; many’s the time he’s said to me, ‘Hairblower,’ says he—but that’s neither here nor there. Well, Mr. Hardingstone, things has gone cross with me now for a goodish bit: the fishin’ ’s not what it used to be, nor the place neither. Bless ye, I’ve seen the day when I could take and put my ten-pound note on the old table at home, ay, and another to the back of that! but times is altered now, betterer for some, worserer for others. I’ve had my share, mayhap, but I’ve been drifting to leeward a long while back, and I’ve had a deal of way to fetch up. Well, sir, I’m pretty stiff and strong yet, and the Lord’s above all, so I thought I might just get things together a bit, and streak up here to London town, and so look out for a berth in some of these here ships a-going foreign. I’ve neither chick nor child to care for me at home, and I reckoned as a voyage wouldn’t hurt me no worse now than five-and-twenty years ago. Well, sir, to make a long story short, I got a bit o’ money together, as much as would buy me an outfit and chest, and such like, for I meant to ship as second mate at the worst, and I always liked to be respectable; and when I’d got that I’d got all, but I didn’t owe no man a farthing, and so would be ready to clear out with a clean breast. Lord, sir, what a place this here town is for sights: go where I would there was something to be seen. To be sure I hadn’t many shillings to throw away, and I just looked straight afore me, and I never so much as winked at the mammon horse, nor the stuffed sea-serpent, nor the biggest man in Europe, nor the fattest woman, nor the world turned upside down, nor none on ’em, till I was brought up all standing by a board, where they offered to show me some True-blue Kaffirs, all alive and as dark as natur’. Well, sir, I knew a very respectable Kaffir family once, on the coast of Africa, where we used to land a boat’s crew, at odd times, for fresh water and such like; and, thinks I, I’ll just go and have a peep at the True-blues, and see if they remind me of my old friends. There they was, Mr. Hardingstone, sure enough. Old True-blue was a stampin’, and yellin’, and hissin’, and makin’ of such a disturbance as he never got leave to do at home, and his wives, five or six on ’em, was yowlin’, and cryin’, and kickin’ up the devil’s delight, as I never see them when they was living decently in the bush. Well, sir, when the True-blues held on for a while to have their beer, the company was invited to go and inspect ’em closer, and pat ’em, and feel ’em, and I made no doubt they was Ingines myself, when I got the wind of ’em; but just as I was castin’ about to see if I could fish up an odd word or two of their language, only to be civil, you know, to strangers, True-blue’s wife—she comes up and lays hold of me by the whiskers, and grins, and smiles, and points, and pulls at ’em like grim Death; and old True-blue himself—he comes up and has a haul, too, and grins, and chatters, and looks desperation fierce, and so they holds me amongst ’em. You see, Mr. Hardingstone, they’re not used to beards, ’cos it’s not their natur’, nor whiskers neither. Well, I looked uncommon foolish, and the company all began to laugh; and I heard a voice behind me say, ‘Why, it’s Hairblower!’ and I turns round, and who should I see but an old friend of mine, by name Blacke, as was a lawyer’s clerk at St. Swithin’s: friend, is he?” and Hairblower ground his teeth, and doubled a most formidable-looking fist, as he added, “if ever I catch him I’ll give him his allowance; friend, indeed! I’ll teach him who his friends are.”
For a while the seaman’s indignation was too strong for him, and he walked on several paces without saying a word, forgetful apparently of his companion and his situation, and all but his anger at the unworthy treatment to which he had been subjected. As he cooled down, however, he resumed: “Well, Mr. Hardingstone, in course we went out together, and we turned into a Tom-and-Jerry shop to have some beer, and spin a bit of a yarn about old times; and I asked him about his missus, and he remembered all the ins-and-outs of the old place, and I liked to talk to him all about it, ’specially as I shouldn’t see it again for a goodish while; and we had some grog and pipes, and was quite comfortable. After a time, a chap came in—a big chap, in a white jacket and ankle-boots—and he took no notice of us, but began braggin’ and chaffin’ about his strength, and his liftin’ weights and playin’ skittles and such like; and Blacke whispers to me, ‘Hairblower,’ says he, ‘you’re a strong chap; put this noisy fellow down a bit, and perhaps he’ll keep quiet.’ Well, he kept eggin’ of me on, and at last I makes a match, stupid like, to lift a heavier weight than the noisy one. So the landlord, he brings in half-a-dozen fifty-sixes, and I beats him all to rubbish. So he was somethin’ mad at that, and offered to play me at skittles for five pounds, or ten pounds, or twenty pounds; and I said it was foolish to risk so much money for amusement, but I’d play him for a sovereign, ’cos, ye see, my blood was up, and I wasn’t a-goin’ to knock under to such a land-lubber as this here. ‘Sovereign!’ says he, ‘I don’t believe as you’ve got a sovereign,’ and he pulls out a handful of notes and silver, and such like; and, says he, ‘Afore I stake,’ says he, ‘let me see my money covered; it’s my belief that this here’s a plant.’ ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ says Blacke, the first time he spoke to him; ‘my friend’s a gen’l’man, and can show the ready against all you’ve got—coin for coin, and shillin’ for shillin’.’ With that I pulls out my purse and counts my money down on the table—eleven golden sovereigns and a five-pound note. So we gets to skittles quite contented, and I puts my purse back in my jacket pocket, and gives it to Blacke to hold. Well, sir, I polished him off at skittles, too, and he paid his wager up like a man, and treated us all round, and behaved quite sociable-like; so we got drinkin’ again—him and me and Blacke—at the same table. After a time my head began to get bad—I never felt it so afore—and the mixture I was drinkin’ of—gin it was and beer—seemed to taste queerish, somehow, but I thought nothing of it, and drank on, thinking as the stuff would soon settle itself; but it didn’t though; for in a little while the room and the tables and the chairs seemed to be heavin’ and turnin’ and pitchin’, and I felt all manner of ways myself, and broke out into a cold sweat, and says I, ‘I think I’ll go out into the fresh air a bit, for I’m taken bad,’ says I, ‘someway; but don’t ye disturb yourselves, I’ll soon be back again.’ So Blacke he helped me out, and directly I got into the yard where the skittles was, I see the place all green-like, and after that I remember no more till I found myself on the landlord’s bed up-stairs; and by that time it was ten o’clock at night, so I up and asked what was become of my friend; and the landlord he told me both the gentlemen was gone, and that they had said I didn’t ought to be disturbed, and that I was often so; and they was goin’ away without payin’ the score, but the landlord was a deep cove, and he wouldn’t let them off without settling, so they paid it all, and so walked away. Well, I got my jacket and walked away too; and all in a moment I thought I’d heard of such things, and I’d feel in my pocket to see if my purse was safe. There was the purse sure enough, but the money was gone, every groat of it—there wasn’t a rap left to jingle for luck, Mr. Hardingstone. Well, sir, it all came across me at once—I’d been hocussed, no doubt—they drugged my lush, the thieves, and then they robbed me—and my old friend Tom Blacke, as I’ve known from a boy, was at the bottom of it. The landlord, he thought so too; but he was in a terrible takin’ himself for the character of his house, and he gave me half-a-crown, and begged I’d say nothin’ about it; and that half-crown, all but sixpence I gave just now to a poor creatur’ that wanted it more nor me, is the whole of my fortun’, Mr. Hardingstone. But it’s not the money I care for—thank God, I can work and get more—it’s the meanness of a man I once thought well of. That’s where it is, sir, and I can’t bear it. Blacke by name, and black by natur’—he must be a rank bad ’un; and I’m ashamed of him, that I am!”
Hairblower got better after making a clean breast of it. He had no friends in London—none to confide in, none to advise him; and his chance meeting with Frank Hardingstone “did him a sight of good,” as he said himself, and “made a man of him again.” Nor was the rencontre less beneficial to Frank. When a man is suffering from that imaginary malady (none the less painful for being imaginary) which originates in the frown of a pretty girl, there is nothing so likely to do him good as a stirring piece of real business, to which he must devote all his energies of body and mind. Byron recommends a sea-voyage, with its accompanying sea-sickness; the latter he esteems a more perfect cure than “purgatives,” or “the application of hot towels.” Not but that these unromantic remedies may be extremely effective; but, failing such counter-irritants, we question whether a visit to Scotland-yard, and an interview with those courteous and matter-of-fact gentlemen who preside over our well-organised metropolitan police force, be not as good a method of cauterising the wound as any other, more particularly when such a visit is undertaken for the express purpose of seeing a friend through an awkward scrape. Frank soon had Hairblower into a cab, and off on his way to the head-quarters of that detective justice which is anything but blind; where the seaman, having again told his unvarnished tale, and been assured that his grievances should meet with the promptest attention, was dismissed, not a little comforted, though at the same time most completely puzzled. Frank’s assistance to his humble friend, however, did not stop here. He liked Hairblower, partly, it must be confessed, because the seaman was so strong and plucky, and possessed such physical advantages as no man despises, though he who shares them himself often rates them higher than the rest of the world. Frank enjoyed associating with men of all sorts, but more especially he relished the society of such daring spirits as are accustomed to look death in the face day by day, in the earning of their very subsistence, and to trust their own cool heads and strong hands amidst all the turmoil of the deep, “blow high, blow low.” Many a wild night had he been out in the Channel with his sailor friend, when an inch or two more canvas, or a moment’s neglect of the helm, would have made the reckless couple food for those fishes after which they laboured so assiduously; and our two friends, for so we must call them, notwithstanding their difference of station, had learned to depend on each other, and to admire reciprocally the frame that labour could not subdue, the nerves that danger could not daunt. So now the gentleman talked the sailor’s affairs over with him as if he had been a brother. He gave him the best advice in his power; he recommended him to go back to St. Swithin’s to prosecute the fishing trade once more, and with the same delicacy which he would have thought due to one of his own rank, he offered to lend him such a sum of money as would enable him to begin the world again, and expressly stipulated that he should be repaid by instalments varying with the price of mackerel and the success of the fishing.
“If once you get your head above water, I know you can swim like a duck,” said Frank, grasping the honest fellow’s hand, “so say no more about it. We’ll have rare times in the yawl before the summer’s quite done with; and till then, God bless you, old friend, and good luck to you!”
As Hairblower himself expressed it, “you might have knocked him down with a feather.”
How different the world looked to Frank when he parted with his old companion from what it had seemed some few hours before, as he left the great house in Grosvenor Square. There is an infallible recipe for lowness of spirits, nervousness, causeless misery, and mental irritation, which beats all Dr. Willis’s restorative nostrums, and emancipates the sufferer more rapidly than even the famous “Ha! ha! Cured in an instant!” remedy. When oppressed with ennui, the poet says—
and so, when the bright sky above seems leaden to your eyes—when the song of birds, the prattle of children, or the gush of waters, fall dully upon your ear—when the outward world is all vanity of vanities and existence seems a burden, and, as Thackeray says, “Life is a mistake”—go and do a kindly action, no matter how or where or to whom; but, at any sacrifice, at any inconvenience, go and do it—and take an old man’s word for it, you will not repent. Straightway the fairy comes down the kitchen chimney, and touches your whole being with her wand. Straightway the sun bursts out with a brilliant smile, the birds take up a joyous carol, the children’s voices are like the morning hymn of a seraph choir, and the babbling of the stream woos your entranced ear with the silver notes of Nature’s own melody. Those are now steeds from Araby which seemed but rats and mice an hour or two ago. That is a glittering equipage which you had scouted as a huge, unsightly pumpkin. You yourself, no longer crouching in dust and ashes, start upright, with your face to heaven, attired in the only robe that preserves eternal freshness, the only garment you shall take away with you when you have done with all the rest—the web of charity, that cloak which covers a multitude of sins. You have, besides, this advantage over Cinderella—that whereas her glass slippers and corresponding splendour must be laid aside before midnight, your enchantment shall outlast the morrow; your fairy’s wand can reach from earth to heaven; your kindly action is entered in a book from which there is no erasure, whereof the pages shall be read before men and angels, and shall endure from everlasting to everlasting.
OUR HUMBLE ACQUAINTANCES—THE SCRATCH OF A PEN—A SCOUT’S INFORMATION—THE MAJOR’S MEDITATIONS, NOT FANCY-FREE
In the meantime, whilst the higher characters of our drama are fluttering their gaudy hour in the bright sunshine of fashionable life, whilst the General and Blanche and Mary, and Mount Helicon and D’Orville and Lacquers, and all of that class are driving and dining, and dressing and flirting, and otherwise improving their time, grim Want is eating into the very existence of some amongst our humbler friends, and Vice, too often the handmaid of Penury, is shedding her poison even on the scanty morsel they wrest from the very jaws of danger and detection.
Tom Blacke, as we have already seen, has overleapt the narrow boundary which separates dissipation from crime; and poor Gingham knows too well that opportunity alone is wanting to confer on him a notoriety infamous as that which is boasted of by his more daring associates. He is out now at all hours, chiefly, however, during the night, and obtains supplies of money for which she cannot account, and about which she has been taught it is better not to question him. He drinks, too, with more circumspection than was his wont, and has dreadful fits of despondency, during which he trembles like a child, and from which nothing seems to arouse him save the prattle of his infant. He is very diligent, too, in making inquiries as to the sailing of divers ships for the United States; and, being a sharp fellow, has acquainted himself thoroughly with the geography of that country, and the amount of capital requisite to enable a man to set up for himself under the star-spangled banner. He has already hinted to his wife that if he could but get hold of a little money he should certainly emigrate; and by dint of talking the matter over, Gingham, although she has a dreadful horror of the sea, contracted at St. Swithin’s, is not entirely unfavourable to the plan. Poor woman! she has not much to regret in leaving England. Let us take a peep at their establishment in the Mews, as they sit by the light of a solitary tallow candle, the mother stitching as usual, though her eyes often fill with tears, whilst ever and anon she glances cautiously towards the cradle, to see if the child is asleep, and listening to its heavy, regular breathing, applies herself to the needle more diligently than before. This is the hour at which Tom usually goes out; but to-night he shows no signs of departure, sitting moodily with his chair resting against the wall, and his eyes fixed on vacancy. At length he rouses himself with an effort, and bids Rachel make him some tea.
“I’m glad you’re not going out to-night, Tom,” says his wife; “I feel poorly, somehow, and its lonesome when you’re away for long.”
“I’d never go out o’ nights, lass,” replies Tom—“never, if I wasn’t drove to it. But what’s a man to do?—this isn’t a country for a poor man to live in—there’s no liberty here. Ah, Rachel, you’re made for something better than this; stitching away day after day, and not a gown or a bonnet fit to put on. You’re losing your looks too—you that used to be so genteel every way.” Mrs. Blacke smiles through her tears; he has not spoken to her so kindly for many a long day. “There’s a country we might go to,” he adds, looking sideways at her, to watch the effect of his arguments, “where a man as is a man, and knows his right hand from his left, needn’t want a good house to cover him, nor good clothes to his back. We’d be there in six weeks at the farthest—what’s that?—why, it’s nothing; and the child all the better for the sea air. There’s a ship to start next Thursday, first class, and all regular. In two months from this day we might be in America; and they don’t keep a man down there because he is down. Rachel, I’d like to see you dressed as you used to be; I’d like to bring up the little one to be as good as its parents, at least. I’d like to be there now; why, the dollars come in by handfuls, and silk’s as cheap as calico.”
How could woman resist such an El Dorado? How could such an inducement fail to have its due weight? His wife feels that she could start forthwith, but there is one insuperable difficulty, and she rejoins—
“Ah, that’s all very well, Tom, and we might get our heads above water over there, it’s likely enough. But how are we to get to America?—people can’t travel nor do anything else without money; and where is it to come from?”
“You know,” replied Tom, with a meaning smile on his pale, anxious face; and while he speaks the clock of a neighbouring church strikes ten.
“Any way but that, Tom,” says his wife, with a shudder. “I’d do anything, and bear anything for you; but not that, Tom—not that, as you’ve a soul to be saved!”
“It must be that way, or no way at all, missus,” Tom hisses between his teeth, keeping down his anger and a rising oath with a strong effort. “I’ve done all I can; it’s time for you to take your share. Why, look ye here, Rachel; a hundred pound’s a vast of money—a hundred pounds is five hundred dollars. Oh, I’m not going blindly to work, you may depend. If we could begin life with half that, over the water, it would be the making of us. I’d leave off drinking—so help me heaven, I would!—take the pledge, and work like a new one. You’d have a house of your own, Rachel, instead of such a dog-hole as this; and I’d like to see one of them that would take the shine out of my wife on Sundays, when she was tidied up and dressed. Then we’d put the little one to school, when she’s old enough, and we’d keep ourselves respectable, and attend to business, and be a sight happier than we’ve ever been in this miserable country. And all just for the scratch of a pen; Rachel, d’ye think I’d refuse you a trifle like that, if you was to ask me?”
“O Tom, I never could do it,” says his wife; “good never would come of such a sin as that.”
“Well, Rachel,” rejoins her husband, “there’s some men would make ye. Well, you needn’t draw up so; I’m not going to come it so strong as all that. Let’s talk it over peaceably, any way. And first, where’s the harm? There’s Master Charlie, if ever he comes back from the wars, isn’t he to marry Miss Blanche? And so it’s six to one, and half-a-dozen to the other. And what’s a hundred pounds out of all their thousands? Besides, didn’t the old lady mean to leave you as much as that? and didn’t you deserve it? And if she had lived, wouldn’t she have signed her own name; and where’s the harm of your doing it for her? You can write like your old mistress, Rachel,” adds the tempter, with a ghastly smile; “there’s pen and ink yonder on the mantelpiece. Come!” Rachel wavers; but education and good principles are still too strong within her, and she assumes an air of resolution she does not feel, as she takes up her work, and replies—
“Never, Tom, never!—not if you was to go down upon your bended knees. O Tom, Tom! don’t ask me, and don’t look at me so, Tom. I’ve been a good wife to you; don’t ask me to do such a thing, Tom; don’t.”
Her husband pauses for a moment, as though nerving himself for a strong effort, and answers, speaking every word distinctly, and as if in acute physical pain—
“Then it must come out, wife; you must know it all, sooner or later; and why not now? Rachel, I’m wanted—they’re looking for me, the bloodhounds—it’s my belief they were after me this very morning. If I don’t cross the seas on my own account, the beaks will send me fast enough on theirs.”
“O Tom, Tom! what have you done?” interrupts his wife, clasping her hands, and straining her eyes, dilated with horror, upon her husband’s working features. “It’s not—— Tom, I can’t bring myself to say it. You haven’t lifted your hand against another?”
“No, no, Rachel,” says he; “not so bad as that, lass, not so bad as that; but it’s fourteen years, anyhow, if they bring it home to me. I must cut and run, whatever happens. Now, there’s some men would be off single-handed, and never stop to say good-bye; but I’m not one of that sort. I couldn’t bear to leave you and the child; and I won’t neither. Rachel, do you mind the time when we sat on the beach at St. Swithin’s, and what you said to me there? Well, dear, that’s past and gone, now; but you’re not changed, anyhow. Will you do it, Rachel, for my sake?”
The poor woman wavers more and more; she is white as a sheet, and the perspiration stands in beads on her lip and forehead. Tom produces a pen and ink, and a certain document we recognise as having lain in Mrs. Kettering’s writing-case the night she died at St. Swithin’s. But his wife shrinks from the pen as from a serpent, and he has to force it into her fingers.
“It’s the last time, Rachel,” he pleads; “I’ll never ask you to do such a thing again. It’s the last time I’ll do wrong myself, as I stand here. It’s but a word, and it will be the saving of us both; ay, and the little one yonder, too—think what she’d be growing up to, in such a place as this. You sign, dear, and I’ll witness—I can write my own name, and my old master’s too; he’s dead and gone now, but he didn’t teach me law for nothing.”
She does not hear him; her whole being is absorbed in the contemplation of her crime. But she does it. Pale, scared, and breathless, she leans over the coarse deal table; and though the dazzling sheet is dancing beneath her eyes, and her hands are icy cold, and her frame shakes like a leaf, every letter grows distinct and careful beneath her fingers, and burns itself into her brain, the very facsimile of her old mistress’s signature. The clock strikes eleven; and at the first clang she starts with the throb of newly-awakened guilt, and drops the pen from her failing grasp. But the deed is done. From that hour the once respectable woman is a felon; and she feels it. To-morrow morning, for the first time in her life, she will awake with the leaden, stupefying, soul-oppressive weight of actual law-breaking guilt; and from this night she will never sleep as soundly again.
Tom prided himself, above all things, on being “up to trap,” as he expressed it. He thought his own cunning more than a match for all the difficulties of his situation and the vengeance of the law. He was considered “a knowing hand” amongst his disreputable associates, and had the character of a man who was safe to keep his own neck out of the noose, whatever became of his comrades’. But, though a bold schemer, he was a very coward in action, and his nerves were now so shattered by hard drinking that he was almost afraid of his own shadow. A bad conscience is always the worst of company, but to a man not naturally brave it is a continual bugbear—a fiend that dogs his victim, sleeping or waking—sits with him at his meals, pledges him in his cups, and grins at him on his pillow. Tom possessed this familiar to perfection. Like all “suspected persons,” he conceived his movements to be of more importance in the eyes of Justice than they really were; and although the “hocussing” and robbery of Hairblower richly deserved condign punishment, he was suffering from causeless alarm when he informed his wife that he was “wanted” on that score. The truth is, the police were on a wrong scent. The landlord either could not, or would not, give them any actual information as to his guests; he “remembered the circumstance of the gentleman being taken ill—did not know the parties with whom he was drinking—thought they were friends of the gentleman—the parties paid for their liquor, and went away, leaving the other party asleep—it was no business of his—had never been in trouble before, he could swear—commiserated the party who had got drunk, and gave him half-a-crown out of sheer humanity—had known what it was to want half-a-crown himself, and to get drunk too—was doing an honest business now, and thought publicans could not be too particular.” So the blue-coated myrmidons of Scotland Yard got but little information from Boniface; and for once were completely at fault, more especially as Hairblower, more suorum, did not know the number of the note he had lost—could swear it was for five pounds, but was not quite clear as to its being Bank of England. Under these circumstances, Tom, had he only known it, might have walked abroad in the light of day, and put in immediate practice any schemes he had on hand. Instead of this he chose to lie in hiding, and only emerged in the evening, to take his indispensable stimulants at one or other of the low haunts which he frequented. Men cannot live without society; the most depraved must have friends, or such as they deem friends, on whom to repose their trust; and Tom Blacke, in an unguarded moment of gin and confidence, let out the whole story of the will (though he was cunning enough to omit the forgery) and boasted what an engine he could make of it to extort money from Miss Blanche’s guardian, and how he was certain of getting at least a hundred pounds, and detailed the proposed plan of emigration, and, in short, explained the general tenor of his future life and present fortunes to Mr. Fibbes; of all which matters, though by no means a gentleman of acute perception, that worthy did by degrees arrive at the meaning, quickening his intellects the while with many pipes and a prodigious quantity of beer. Now, Mr. Fibbes had been concerned in his earlier youth in a business from which his size and his stupidity had gradually emancipated him, but which, compared with his present trade, might almost be called an innocent and virtuous calling. It consisted in ascertaining by diligent and clandestine vigilance the relative merits of race-horses as demonstrated by their private trials, and is termed in the vernacular “touting.” What may be the moral guilt of such forbidden peeps we are not sufficient casuists to explain, but it is scarcely considered amongst the least particular classes a respectable way of obtaining a livelihood. Nor did the association gain additional lustre from the adhesion of Mr. Fibbes, who, until his great frame grew too large to be concealed, and his hard head too obtuse to make the best of his information, was the most presuming, as he was least to be depended on, of the whole brotherhood. In this capacity, however, he had made the acquaintance of Major D’Orville, a man who liked to have tools ready to his hand for whatever purpose he had in view; and Mr. Fibbes had been careful to keep up the connection, by respectful bows whenever they met in the streets, or at races, or such gatherings as bring together sporting gentlemen of all ranks. On these occasions Mr. Fibbes would make tender inquiries after the Major’s health, and his luck on the turf, and the well-being of his white charger, and sundry other ingratiating topics; or would inform him confidentially of certain rats in his possession which could be produced at half-an-hour’s notice, without fail—of terriers, almost imperceptible in weight, which could be backed to kill the rats aforesaid in an incredibly short space of time—of toy-dogs surpassing in beauty and discreet in behaviour—or of the pending match against time which “The Copenhagen Antelope” meant to square by running a cross, or, in other words, losing it on purpose to play booty. Primed with such conversation he amused the Major, who liked to study human nature in all its phases, and they seldom met without a lengthened dialogue and the transfer of a half-crown from the warrior’s pocket into Mr. Fibbes’ hand; the latter accordingly lost no opportunity of coming across his generous patron.
Now, Mr. Fibbes had observed, by hanging about Grosvenor Square and making use of his early education, that Major D’Orville was a constant visitant at a certain house in that locality; indeed, on more than one occasion he had held the white horse at the very door which was honoured by the egress and ingress of Blanche Kettering herself. We may be sure he lost no time in discovering the name of the owner, and mastering such particulars of her fortune, position, general habits, and appearance as were attainable through the all-powerful influence of beer; so when Tom Blacke made his ill-advised confidences to his boon companion, omitting neither names, facts, nor dates, Mr. Fibbes, who, to use his own words, was “not such a fool as he looked,” put that and that together quite satisfactorily enough, to be sure he had some information well worth a good round douceur, for the ear of his friend the Major. And he waylaid him in consequence, the first sunshiny afternoon on which, according to his wont, D’Orville appeared in the neighbourhood of his lady-love’s domicile.
“Want yer horse held, Major?” said he, leaning his huge, dirty hand on the white charger’s mane. “Haven’t seen your honour since we won so cleverly at Hampton—no offence, Major!”
“None whatever, my good fellow,” said the Major, who, by the way, was never in a hurry, though few men loved going fast better; “none whatever; but I’m busy now, I’ve no time to stop. Good-day to you.”
“Well, but, Major, see,” pleaded Mr. Fibbes, still smoothing the white horse’s mane, “I’ve got something at my place you would like to look at—she’s a real beauty, she is—I refused five sovereigns for her this blessed mornin’; for I said, says I, no, says I, not till the Major has seen her, ’cause she is a rare one—not that you care for such in a general way, Major, but if once you clapped eyes on ‘Jessie,’ you’d never rest till you got her down at the barracks. I never see such a one.”
“Such a what?” inquired D’Orville, gradually waxing curious about such manifold perfections.
“Why, such an out-an’-outer,” retorted Mr. Fibbes, half angrily; “none of your brindles—I can’t abide a brindle—they may be good, but they look so wulgar. No, no, Jessie’s none of your brindles.”
“Well, but what is she, my good fellow?” said the Major; “I can’t stay here all day.”
“Bul,” replied Mr. Fibbes, throwing into the monosyllable an expression of mingled anger and contempt, which, having given the Major sufficient time to digest, he followed up by the real topic on which he was anxious to enlarge. “No offence, Major,” he repeated, “but I’ve got something else to say—you’ll excuse me, sir—but you’ve stood a friend to me, and I won’t see you put upon. Major, there’s a screw loose here—it’s not on the square, you understand.”
“What do you mean?” said the Major, amused in spite of himself, at the ungainly nods and winks with which Mr. Fibbes eked out his mysterious communication.
“Well, Major,” replied his informant, “what I mean is this here. Some men would hold out in my place, and I’ve seen the day when my information was worth as much as my neighbours’; but when I’ve to do with a real gent, why, I trusts to him, and he gives what he pleases. Now, Major, look at that there house—it’s a good house up-stairs and down, fixtures and furniture all complete, I make no doubt—Major, there’s a man of straw in that house.” Mr. Fibbes paused, having delivered himself of this oracular piece of information; but, finding his listener less interested in the discovery of the artificial stranger than he had reason to expect, he proceeded in his own way to clear up his metaphor. “What I says is this—a bargain’s a bargain; now the young woman as owns that house has got the boot on the other leg—my information’s good, Major, you may depend on it; there’s another horse in the stable, sir—there’s a young gent as owns all the property they keep such a talk about; I won’t ask ye to believe my naked word, Major” (such a request, indeed, would have been superfluous), “but what should you say if I was to tell you—I’ve spoke to the party as has seen the will?”
“Why, I should say that if you have any information that is really well-authenticated, I’ll pay you fairly for it, as I always have done,” replied D’Orville, unmoved as usual, though in his innermost heart a tide of doubts and hopes and fears was swelling up, in strange tumultuous confusion.
“Well, Major,” whispered his informant, “as far as I can learn, for I ain’t no scholar, you know—but as far as I can learn, there’s been a will found, and by that will the young lady as owns this here house don’t own it by rights, and can’t keep it much longer. There’s a old gentleman as lives here, rayther a crusty old gentleman, so my mate tells me, and he knows nothing good or bad; but it stands just as I’ve said, you may depend; and instead of Miss Kettering, if that’s her name, being such a grand lady, why she’s no better off than I am, and that’s where it is. My mate wouldn’t deceive me no more than I’m deceivin’ you. Thank ye, Major, you always was a real gentleman; thank you, sir, and good-day to you. You won’t come up and take a look at Jessie?” So saying, Mr. Fibbes put his dirty hand, not quite empty, however, into his pocket, and with a snatch at his rough hat, and an awkward obeisance, took his departure, his linen jacket and ankle-boots fading gradually in the direction of the nearest public-house, whither he proceeded incontinently to “wet his luck,” after the manner of his kind.
D’Orville laid the rein on his favourite’s neck, and paced along at a slow, thoughtful walk, the white horse wondering, doubtless, at his master’s unusual fit of equestrian meditation. And what were the suitor’s feelings as he pondered over the news he had just received, the downfall of his golden castles in the air, the blow which would surely fall heavy on that bright, happy girl, whom he had been endeavouring to attach to himself day by day? Did he mourn over his withered hopes of wealth and ease? did he regret the melting of the vision, and pine for the domestic future, now impossible, which he had contemplated so often of late? or did he chivalrously resolve to give his hand to a penniless bride where he had been wooing a wealthy heiress, and to love her even more in her misfortunes than he had admired her in her prosperity? Alas! far from it. Some fifteen years ago, indeed, young Gaston D’Orville would have sacrificed his all to a woman, almost to any woman, and been well pleased to throw his heart into the bargain; but fifteen years of the world have more effect on the inner than the outward man, and the boy of five-and-twenty thinks that a glory and a romance which the man who is getting on for forty deems a folly and a bore. The Major was not prepared to give up everything, at least for Blanche, and his first sensations were those of relief, almost of satisfaction, as he thought he was again free—for of course this arrangement couldn’t go on; it would be madness to talk of it now: no, he would make his bow while it was yet time: how lucky he had never positively committed himself: nobody could say he had behaved ill. Of course he would take proper measures to ascertain the truth of that rascal’s report; and if it had foundation, why, he was once again at liberty. He had his sword and his debts, but India was open to him, as it had been before, and a vision stole over him (the hardened man of the world could scarce repress a smile at his own folly)—a vision stole over him of military distinction, active service, a return to England—and Mary Delaval. So the Major drew his rein through his fingers, pressed his good horse’s sides, and cantered off, but did not, that afternoon, pay his usual visit in Grosvenor Square.