"He belongs to me. It was I who found him out. I will have the very first turn at him," he cried. "I'll knock on the head any man, who presumes to prevent me from proving my theory. Just hold him tight, while I get this steel hook firmly into his collar. Now are you satisfied? This proves everything. Can this levigation be d—d, Jargoon? All his weight is a pound and five ounces!"
He turned round in triumph, and a loud laugh met him. He was weighing my jacket, without me inside it. For mother had told me, a hundred times, that a child had much better be killed, than weighed. At the fright of his touch, I slipped out of my sleeves, and set off at the top of my speed away. In the passage, I found a side door open, and without looking back dashed through it.
"Go it, little 'un!" a cabman cried, the very man who had brought mine enemies; and go it I did, like a bird on the wing, without any knowledge of the ground below. Some of our boys, looking out of a window, called out, "Well done, Tommy! You'll win the—" something, it may have been the Derby, I went too fast to hear what it was. Short as my legs were, they flew like the spokes of a wheel that can never be counted; and I left a mail-cart, and a butcher's cart too, out of sight, though they tried to keep up with me. Such was my speed, on the wings of the wind, with my linen inflated, and my hair blown out,—the nimblest professor, that ever yet rushed to a headlong conclusion, were slow to me. In a word, I should have distanced all those enemies, had I only taken the right road home.
But alas, when I came to the top of a rise, from which I expected to see my dear parents, or at any rate our cinder-heap, there was nothing of the kind in sight. The breeze had swept me up the Barnet road; and yonder was the smoke of our chimney, like a streak, a mile away down to the left of me. All the foot of the hill, which is now panelled out into walls, and streets, of the great cattle-market, remained to be crossed, without help of the wind, ere ever I was safe inside our door. And the worst of it was, that the ground had no cover,—not a house, nor a tree, nor so much as a ditch, for a smallish boy to creep along; only piles of rubbish, here and there, and a few swampy places, where snipes sometimes pitched down, to have a taste of London.
Tired as I was, after that great run, and scant of breath, and faint-hearted—for the sun was gone down below Highgate Hill, and my spirits ever seem to sink with him—I started anew for my own sweet home, by the mark of the smoke of our boiling-house. I could hear my heart going pit-a-pat, faster than my weary feet went; for the place was as lonely as science could desire, for a snug job of vivisection. Of that grisly horror I knew not as yet the name, nor the meaning precisely; but a boy at our school, who was a surgeon's son, used to tell things, in bed, there was no sleeping after. And once he had said, "If they could catch you, Tommy, what a treat you would be, to be lectured on!"
As the dusk grew deeper in the hollow places, and the ribs of the naked hills paler, I began to get more and more afraid, and to start back, and listen at my own footstep. And before I could hear what I hoped to hear—the anvil of the blacksmith down our lane—the air began to thicken with the reeking of the earth, and the outline of everything in sight was blurred, and a very tired fellow could not tell, at any moment, what to run away from, without running into worse. At one time, I thought of sitting down, and hiding in a dip of the ground, till night came on, and my enemies could not see me; but although that might have been the safest plan, my courage would not hold out for it. So on I went, in fear and trembling, peeping, and peering, both behind me and before, and longing with all my heart to see our own door.
But instead of that, oh, what a sight I saw—the most fearful that can be imagined! From the womb of the earth, those four professors (whose names are known all over it), Brachipod, Jargoon, Chocolous, and Mullicles, came forth, and joined hands in front of me. They laughed, with a low scientific laugh, like a surgical blade on the grindstone.
"Capital, capital!" Brachipod cried; "we have got him all snug to ourselves, at last. Let me get my hook into my pretty little eel."
"Famous, famous!" said the deep voice of Jargoon; "now you shall see, how I work my compressor."
"Hoch, hoch!" chuckled Chocolous; "ve have catch ze leetle baird at last. I vill demonstrate his bacilli."
But the one that terrified me most of all was Professor Mullicles; because he said nothing, but kept one hand, upon something, that shone from his long black cloak.
"Oh, gentlemen, kind gentle gentlemen," I sobbed, dropping down on my knees before them, "do please let me go to my father, and mother. They live close by, and they think so much of me, and I am sure they would pay you, for all your inventions, a great deal more than the Government. I only flew once, and I didn't mean to fly, and I am sure it must have been a mistake altogether; and I will promise, upon my Sammy, as Bill Chumps says, not to do it any more. Oh, please to let me go! It is so late; and I beg your pardon humbly."
"Eloquent, and aerial Tommy," replied that dreadful Brachipod, "this case is too momentous, in the interests of pure science, for selfish motives to be recognized. It will be your lofty privilege, to abstract yourself, to revert to the age of unbroken continuity, when that which is now called Tommy was an atom of protobioplasm——"
"Stow that rubbish," broke in Jargoon.
"Ach, ach, ach! All my yaw is on the edge!" screamed Chocolous, dancing with his hands up.
"Proto-potatoes!" spoke Mullicles sternly, advancing to support his view of me.
"D—n," exclaimed all of them, unanimous for once, when there was no view of me to be had; "was there ever such a little devil? After him, after him! He can't get away."
"Can't he?" thought I, though I did not dare to speak, having not a single pant of breath to spare. For, while I was down on my knees for mercy, through the tears in my eyes, I had seen a lamp lit. I knew where that lamp was, and all about it, having broken the glass of it, once or twice, and lamps were a rarity in Maiden Lane as yet. It was not a quarter of a mile away, and the light of it shone upon my own white pillow.
So when those philosophers parted hands, to shake fists at one another, out of the scientific ring I slipped, and made off, for the life of me. My foes were not very swift of foot, and none of them would let another get before him; so that, if I had been fresh and bold, even without any breeze to help me, I might have outstripped them easily. But my legs were tired, and my mind dismayed; and the scientific terms, in which they called on me to stop, were enough to make any one stick fast. And the worst of it was, that having no coat on, I was very conspicuous in the dusk, and had no chance of dodging to the right or left. So that I could hear them gaining on me, and my lungs were too exhausted for me to scream out for father.
Thus, within an apple-toss of our back door, and with nothing but a down-hill slope, between me and our garden, those four ogres of grim science had me lapsing back into their grasp again. Their hands were stretched forth, in pursuit of my neck, and their breath was like flame at the tips of my ears—when a merciful Providence delivered me. I felt something quivering under my feet; over which I went lightly, with a puff of wind lifting the hollows of my hair, and shirt-sleeves. In an instant, I landed on a bank of slag; but behind me was a fearful four-fold splash!
So absorbing was my terror, and so scattered were my wits, that for ever so long I could not make out, what had happened betwixt me and my pursuers, except that I was safe, and they were not. There they were, struggling, and sputtering, and kicking—so much at least as could be seen of them—throwing up their elbows, or their heels, or heads, and execrating nature (when their mouths were clear to do it) in the very shortest language, that has ever been evolved. At the same time, a smell (even stronger than their words) arose, and grew so thick, that they could scarcely be seen through it.
This told me, at once, what had befallen them, or rather what they had fallen into,—videlicet, the cleaning of our vats, together with Mr. John Windsor's; whose refuse and scouring is run away in trucks, upon the last Saturday of every other month. It would be hard to say, what variety of stench, and of glutinous garbage, is not richly present here; and the men from the sewers, who conduct it to the pit, require brandy, at short intervals. In the pit, which is not more than five feet deep, yet ought to be shunned by trespassers, the surface is covered with chloride of lime, and other materials, employed to kill smell, by outsmelling it; and so a short crust forms over it, until the contents become firm and slab, and can be cut out, for the good of the land, when the weather is cold, and the wind blows away.
Now certain it is, that all the science they were made of, could never have extricated those professors, without the strong arms of my father, and mother, and even small me at the end of the rope. The stuff they were in, being only half cooled (and their bodies grown sticky with running so), fastened heavily on them, like tallow on a wick, closing so completely both mouth and eyes, that instead of giving, they could only receive, a lesson in materialism. Professors Brachipod, and Chocolous, being scarcely five feet and a quarter in height, were in great danger of perishing; but Mullicles, and Jargoon, most kindly gave them a jump now and then, for breath. And, to be quit of an unfragrant matter, and tell it more rapidly than we did it,—with the aid of a blue-man from the Indigo works, and of two thickset waggoners, we rescued those four gentlemen from their sad situation, and condoled with them.
Not for £5 per head, however, would any of our cabmen take them home; though a man out of work had been tempted by a guinea, to relieve them a little, with a long-handled broom, and to flush them with a bucket, afterwards. Under heavy discouragement, they set forth on their several ways, surveyed by the police at a respectful distance, on account of the danger to the public health.
My mother was so frightened, at the fright I had been through, that she took it for an urgent sign from Heaven, that my education should be stopped at once. Having had as much of school as I desired, I heartily hoped, that her opinion would prevail; but father was as obstinate as ever, and after the usual argument—in which she had the best of the words perhaps, and he of the meaning—I was bound to the altar of the Muses once again, with a promise of stripes, if I should try to slip the cord. Dr. Rumbelow undertook, that no professor of anything harder than languages—unless it were Professor Megalow—should come in, at any door of the Partheneion, without having tallow poured over him, which he had found, from high Greek authority, to be the right ointment for Neo-sophistæ. And he said that my father must have been familiar with the passage he referred to, and had thus discomfited all the Pansophistæ, better than any modern Deipnosophist could have done. But my father said no; he had never even heard of the gentleman, with the hard name to crack; and as for them Prophesiers, they ought to have prophesied what his clots was, before tumbling into them. He ought to have an action of trespass against them; and, but for the law, he would do so.
To make it quite certain, that no man of science should analyse, synthesise, generalise, or in any way scientise me, I was now provided with a guardian, intrepid of neologisms ten yards long. The father of our Bill Chumps, Mr. Chumps, the Purveyor of Meat, was the owner of a dog, who was the father of a pup, who was threatening, every day, to make mincemeat of the author of his existence. The old dog might have tackled him, Bill told me, or at any rate could have shown a good turn-up, but for having broken his best fighting-tooth, on the spiked collar of the last mastiff he had slain. Through this disability on the part of old Fangs, he found his son Grip too many for him; yet could not be brought to confess it, and abstain from a battle, at every opportunity. These encounters in no wise disturbed Mr. Chumps, but became inconvenient to Mrs. Chumps, when she heard the piano (which had cost £10, for her daughter, Belinda, to learn her scales) upset, and entirely demolished. If it had been possible to hang Grip, hanged he would have been that very day; for the mistress had nursed Fangs through his distemper, and never would listen to a word against him. Whereas the whole fault was upon the side of Fangs; of which I am quite certain, from the character of Grip, as it unfolded itself before me, when he became my own dear dog.
Providentially, their attempt to hang him had proved a miserable failure. Not that he resisted—he was too docile, and kind, and intelligent, to do that—but because his neck was much too thick, and manifold, and his wind too good, for any rope to be of much account to him. And before they could try any other form of murder, his master came home, and made short work with them, knowing the superiority of the dog. Now, that same evening, the day being Monday, the very choice club, to which he, and my father, and Mr. John Windsor belonged, as well as the largest potato-man at King's Cross, and the owner of the Indigo-blue concern, and the most eminent merchant in the cat's meat line, and several other gentlemen of equal distinction, held their bi-daily congress at "The Best End of the Scrag," at the corner.
That night there was a very fine attendance; and my father, who had long been acknowledged to be the wittiest man on our side of the road—perhaps because he got no chance at home, to say what came inside him—upon this occasion was compelled, by the nature of some of the smells he had gone through, to be at his best, as he generally was, after not less than two glasses and a half. And he told the adventure, of the four professors, not as a sad and deplorable thing, but rather as matter for merriment. In such a light did he put it, that all the gentlemen laughed heartily, most of all Mr. John Windsor, who knew, even better than my father did, the variety of organic substance, active in that pit just then.
"There's things there," he said, "to my living knowledge, that'll never come out of their hair while they live. And those big Savage-Johns always have long hair, and as fuzzy as a cat stroked upward. Why, the very last Friday, when I was a-cooling, a pair of them comes with a brazen machine, and asked me, as quiet as a statue, permission for to taste my follet oils. I up with the wooden spoon, and offered them a drop; but that was not their meaning. It was som'at about som'at we gives off, according to them philanderers. And I says—'Government inquiry, gents?' And they says—'No, sir; but for purposes of science.' 'Tell me,' says I, 'what the constitootion is of this here clot,' and they said 'Composite organic' something; while my composites all was upon the upper floor, and never a hurdy-gurdy allowed inside. 'So much for science!' says I; 'Jim, show these gentlemen out, by the back-alley door.' And now that you come to discourse of it, Bubbly, it strikes me they might have come very likely, smelling up a side-wind for your poor Tommy."
"I should hope they have had enough of that," said father; "if they come any more, I'll boil them down, and make 'Science-sauce for the million,' How would you like, John, to pay your money, and get no change out of it, along of such a lot?"
"You mean the missus," Mr. Windsor asked—"won't allow Thistledown, as my Jack calls him, to go to old Rum's any more, I suppose? Afraid of the ladies, Mr. Upmore is."
"I'll tell you what to do," Mr. Chumps broke in; "Upmore, you buy my young dog Grip. I'd give him to you with all my heart, if it wasn't for the bad luck of it; though he is worth ten guineas of anybody's money, for he comes of the best blood in England. Downright House of Lords bull-dog he is; same as should be chained to the pillars of the State, to keep them Glads, and Rads, away. Just you put him in charge of Thistledown—or whatever you call that little yellow-haired chap, and I'll back Grip against all the Science, that ever made a pint contain a pot."
"What's the figure?" my father asked, knowing how generously all men talk, and that Mr. Chumps' bull-dogs were a fashionable race.
"If you was to offer me more than a crown," replied Mr. Chumps, with his fist on the table; "I should say, 'Bubbly, he's no dog of yours, because you desire to insult me.' But put you down a crown, as between old friends, and before this honourable company, I say, 'Bucephalus Upmore, Grip is your dog.' Why so? John Windsor here knows why, and so does Harry Peelings from King's Cross, and so does Bill Blewitt, and Sandy Mewliver, and all this honourable company. And so do you, Bubbly Upmore, if you are the man I have taken you for. Gentlemen, it is because Mr. Upmore has told the best story I have sat and listened to, ever since last election day; he digged a pit for his enemies in the gate, and they fell into it themselves; as well as because my son, Bill Chumps, who will make his mark, mind you, if you live to see it, has taken a liking to this gentleman's son—Thistledown, or Bubble-blow, or Up-goes-the-donkey—they've got at least fifty names for him—and, in my humble opinion, he must be protected from the outrages of all those fellows, philo-this, and anti-that,—my son Bill knows their names, and all about them—who have made the world a deal too clever for a quiet man's comfort."
These very simple and sensible words were received with much knocking on the table; and my father put down his five-shilling piece, so that all the other gentlemen had time to see it, before they began talking, as the subject compelled them to do, of the merits of their children, respectively, severally, and all together. And they parted, in thorough good will, inasmuch as not anybody listened to anybody else.
My father's opinion, at the time, had been that the warmth of Mr. Chumps' political and social feelings (promoted by the comforts of the club) had hurried him into a disregard of money, which his friends should never lose a moment to improve. But when the journeyman came over in the morning, on his way to the Partheneion, with Grip trotting chained at the tail of the cart, my father cried—
"What! Has Chumps no more conscience, than to impose upon a friend like this? I, who have known him all these years, to pay as good a crown-piece as was ever coined, for a one-eyed, nick-eared, hare-lipped, broken-tailed son of a [female dog] like that! Gristles, you go back, and tell your master, that you saw me put an ounce of lead through him."
My father strode in, to fetch his gun, which he kept well-charged in the clock-case now, for the sake of so many Professors; and Grip, for a surety, would have been dead, and boiling, in less than five minutes, except for his luck. His luck was that I, being under debate between my two parents, had slipped out of doors, being old enough now by experience to know, that they took the kindest view of me, when I was out of sight. And coming round the corner, to peep in at the window, just to see whether they had settled my concerns, there I saw this poor dog—hideous they might call him—doubtfully glancing in every direction, dimly aware that the world was against him, scenting the death of a dog in the air. One of his eyes was out of sight, and one of his ears was in need of a sling, his tail (which had lately been cracked by his father) hung limp in the dust with a pitiable wag, and every hair on his body was turned the wrong way. His self-respect had suffered a tremendous blow, by the effort of mankind to hang him yesterday, and by dragging at the tail of a cart to-day; and as sure as dogs are dogs, he was aware of the awful decision against him.
Gristles was a hard man, and would not say a word, to comfort or to plead for him, having got a little snap from him, a month or two ago; so he looked down over the back of the cart, and whistled—"Pop goes the Weasel"—while the poor dog implored him, with all his one eye full of wistful enquiry, what harm he had done.
"All right, guv'nor," shouted Gristles, as my father came forthwith his big double-barrel; "my mare will stand fire like a church. But mind you, it ain't no good to shoot at his head, with nothing no smaller than a dockyard cannon. Have at his heart, where you sees him now a-panting; but for God's sake, guv'nor, don't shoot me."
That fellow's cowardly cruelty made my father relent, for his heart was kind; and before he could put up his gun again, I was lying upon Grip, and hugging him. The unfortunate dog, for his last resource, had appealed to the only weak face he could find, and my own fright enabled me to enter into his.
"You little fool, Tommy, get out of the way," my father shouted; but I would not budge, and Grip put his quivering tongue out, and licked my cheek, and besought me with a little speech of whine.
"Very well," said my father, being glad of an excuse for a milder course, as his wrath went down, and knowing that, if he did this thing, Mr. Chumps would never look at him again, which would cost him as much as £20 a year; "very well, Tommy, if you like the brute you shall have him, and I hope he will be grateful to you. Gristles, here's half-a-crown for you, and you need not tell your master what I said—only that I seemed a little disappointed with the first appearance of the dog; which is rather a good fault, you know, in a dog who has got to keep off strangers; and my compliments, and I begin to feel sure that Grip will soon begin to grow upon us."
This prophecy was fulfilled right well, so far as my mother and self were concerned, and even my father grew fond of Grip, as soon as he found what a wonder he was; but the dog, while regarding him with deep respect, could never forgive his own narrow escape, any more than forget my timely aid; for his memory was as tenacious as his teeth. On me the dog fastened his strong heart at once, with an attachment more than dogged, making the best of whatever I did, expecting no credit for his own good works, humbly and heartily wagging his tail, for the mere hope of a kind word, or look.
And, after a little while, no one who knew him—at least if he were any judge of a dog—could consider him ugly, from a proper point of view, and without any personal feeling. For his eye, that had seemed to be gone, came back, so as nearly to agree with the other one, yet working enough, on its own account, to redouble his power of expression; while his tail (being oiled and done up with bell-wire) returned to its natural tendency; and as for his ear of a gingery yellow, the colour was so rich that it wanted shading, and gained it by having a division introduced. So that, on the whole, he had succeeded, without any serious damage to himself, in impressing the main principle of the present age—that of parental submission to the child.
Now, when I appeared at the Partheneion, under convoy of this gallant animal, Dr. Rumbelow scarcely knew what to do. After looking at Grip, with some surprise, he fired a strong volley of quotations at him; but the dog moved never a tail-point for them, and instead of being frightened, he would not even blink, but gazed at them calmly; as much as to say, "There is not a pinch of shot in the whole of them."
The Doctor, though one of the bravest of mankind, could not return his gaze, with equal largeness and frank placidity of criticism, but shouted for Mercury, his page, and bade him remember the glorious day whereon he slew the monster Argus. Bob Jackson, failing to recall that date, looked as if he would rather keep aloof from Grip, who opened his nostrils, and curled up his lips, and shot fire out of his discordant eyes.
"Good doggie, good doggie,—poor fellow"—said the page, in a tenderly condescending tone, while approaching sideways gingerly; "if he is a very good doggie, he shall have this beautiful collar to wear,—oh lor!"
He was lying on his back, with Grip standing across him, but scarcely thinking it worth while to bite him, unless he should endeavour to make escape. "Fetch me the big cane, labelled No. 1," the Doctor shouted valiantly, "the father of all canes, the rhopalos, which has warmed the back of a prime-minister. With that will I rescue my Hermes, though the Hydra herself stand over him."
"No, sir; no, sir; for God's sake don't go near him," cried Bill Chumps, running up the playground; "Grip can beat any two men in the world, because no blow can hurt him. Leave him to me, sir; I understand him, and he knows me well enough, though he never took to me, somehow or other, as his dear old father does. He has taken wonderfully to Fly Tommy. Somebody come, and give Tommy a good whack."
Of the many brave boys, who had rejoiced in doing this, even without instigation last week, there was not one who would now discharge this duty, for the public weal. "Why should I hit him?" said boy after boy, who said last week, "Why shouldn't I?"—"I am a deal too fond of poor Tommy for that. Hit him yourself, if you want him hit."
"So I will, then, you pack of dirty cowards," answered Chumps, being put upon his mettle, though he told me afterwards that he was in a horrid funk; and he gave me at once a good sounding smack, on a part of my body that was covered with material warranted to wear, and having three stout seams with a piece to let out. Before the echo of the Five's court ceased, Grip was between us, looking up at me, as if to ask, "What am I to do?" doubting in his mind whether justice would allow him to wage war against his late master's son.
"Worthy is he to be piled with praise—not cumulari, but qui cumuletur, boys of the second form observe—inasmuch as he has not doubted to encounter, singly, or in maniple, all the foes of the pusill committed to his charge. Great is the manhood of this dog; and yet it somewhat repenteth me that, provoked by the wanton assaults of science upon the sweet retirement of the Muses, I have promised him the tub, and the collar, and the bowl, of the deceased, and perhaps now constellated animal, Heracles Poikilostiktos. Mercury, brush thy pulverulent petasus, and with the aid of thy lyre, or that of the ever ready-minded Chumps, conduct this formidable animal to the many-strewn couch prepared for him. Partheneionidæ, the hour has struck. With grateful ardour, let us hasten to the banquet of the mind provided for us, by the generous wisdom of the men of old."
With these words, our great master strode to the school-room door; and we (his children and the fruit of his cane) looked vainly for chance of escape from work. Then, with as much of a sigh as childhood yet has learned from nature's book, we followed the learned steps afar, with two for one in length, but only one for two in speed, I ween.
For some years now, I had a quiet time, increasing in knowledge very gradually, but as fast as my teachers thought needful. For the only true way to get on in learning, is not to be in too much of a hurry, counting every step, and losing breath, and panting into violence of perspiration; but rather to take, as the will of the Lord, whatever gets carried into us, allowing it to settle, and breed inside, with the help of imagination. Under the steadfast care of Grip, and furtherance of Dr. Rumbelow, I advanced pretty fairly in fine acquirements, which have proved, once or twice, to be serviceable.
To me, and to all the school, and indeed a considerable number of the houses around, it was a sad and bitter day, when William Chumps, Esquire—for that was his proper style now, under stamp (as he showed us) of several letters—was at last compelled to say farewell to the Partheneion, and the whole of us. He had been elected to a scholarship, founded for that purpose by his father at the Partheneion, to the amount of five shillings a week for three years, as a tribute to humane letters, and the many good contracts for meat Mr. Chumps had performed. And Bill was to take it to Oxford, and perhaps when the "Chumps Scholarship" became talked about, obtain some good orders to supply his college; for a great deal of meat is consumed in Hall.
"Tommy," said Bill, the very day he was to leave, when he saw me crying about his departure, for he always had been so good to me, "keep up your spirits, young fellow, and don't blub. The fault of your nature is, being so soft. Now, why am I going to the grandest old place, and the finest young fellows, on the face of the earth? Simply because I have got so much pluck. I am not such a wonderfully clever cove, though everybody seems to think so; and I have plenty to learn yet, I can assure you. And of course I know well enough, that I am going among big swells, who have a right to be swells, not snobs from the Poultry, and Mincing Lane, such as used to try to snub me here. But do you think I have a particle of funk? Feel the muscle in my arm, Tommy."
"Bill," I replied, "you could knock them all down; but when you had done it, there would be fifty more."
"Tommy, my boy, I will not hurt one of them, unless he endeavours to cock over me. If it comes to any fighting, at my time of life, it must be done with pistols. But my mind is made up, not to meddle with any man, unless he insults me, and then let him look out. They will very soon discover that I mean to be a gentleman, although my father may be called a butcher; and when they see that, if they are gentlemen themselves, they will be very glad to show me the way. The great defect of your character, Tommy, is that you have not got go enough."
"I should think I have heard enough of that," I said; "just because I don't want to fly, to please you chaps that cock over me."
"You are putting the cart before the horse," replied Chumps, having taken already six lessons in logic, from a man who came on purpose; "you have an extraordinary gift of flying, which would make your fortune, Tommy, and enable your father to leave off poisoning the public, if only you would cultivate it. I can do very good Latin Elegiacs, and tidy Greek Iambics, and run a mile in four minutes and three-quarters; but how many years might I hammer at all that, and scarcely turn a sixpence? But you—you have only to put on your wings, and astonish all the North of London. If I had only got your turn for flying, with my own for the classics, and for going to the top, I tell you what it is, Tommy Upmore—in ten years I'd be the Prime Minister of England."
My own opinion was, that without any flying, Bill would arrive at the top of the tree, in about five years, which was a long time yet for any one to look forward to; and thinking so much of him now, and grieving so deeply for the loss of him, I allowed his words to sink into my mind, as they never had done before. Hitherto I had been inclined to think, if ever I thought about it, that my want of proper adhesion to the ground was a plague to me, and no benefit. My father treated it as a thing to laugh at, and to disbelieve in; my mother was afraid that I never might come down, within her reach, and the same as I went up; while the rest of the world was content to take it entirely from a selfish point of view, as a question of science, or of low curiosity.
But before we could say any more about that, "old Rum," as we called him, came into the hall, where Chumps was waiting with his boxes, for his father's meat-van to fetch them. The doctor had already said farewell to Bill, before all the school, and as a public essay; but now he came to say good-bye, and to give him a few kind words, with a friendly heart. Bill was as tall as his master now, being an exceedingly strapping fellow, and thoroughly thriven on the marrow of the ox; but when the Doctor took his hand, and spoke to him in a low, soft voice, without any Latin turn in it, the cup of Bill's feelings began to run over, and I ran away, not to look at it.
Here in a passage, as facts would have it, with my eyes full of tears and shadow, I ran into the arms, or legs, of a strong, hard man. Hard in the matter of bones, I mean, and the absence of any fat about him, but as soft and tender in heart, and vein, as anything he had ever dissected.
"Why, Tommy! It is indeed our Tommy!" exclaimed Professor Megalow. "Prolepsis of our race, what trouble is upon you?"
"Oh, sir," cried I, "if you could only stop Bill Chumps from going away from us! The place will be nothing, after he is gone, and nobody will want to stop here. Whatever you order is sure to be done."
"Well," said the Professor, as he lifted me up, and looked at me kindly with his large, calm eyes, "I have come a long way to make that discovery; and I wish it were so in Great Russell Street."
He was thinking of his labours, and forgetting a far more important matter in our eyes—the two half-holidays procured for us, when he thought that we seemed to require them. For now his vast knowledge, and accuracy, simplicity, gentleness, and playful humour, had won the warm friendship of our Dr. Rumbelow, who seldom caned any of us now, except for lying. For my part, I loved this kind gentleman, and grieved that he had not once asked me to fly for him.
"My friend, you are often in my thoughts," he said, as if he knew all that was passing in my mind; "let us sit down a while in this quiet corner, and consider a highly scientific case, which happens to be in my pocket."
Smiling at the fright his words had caused, he drew forth a pretty little globular box, yellow, pellucid, and inlaid with stars of gold; and this he held so that the light of the sun glanced through it, illuminating things inside, that danced with colour, purple, and orange, and rosy red. I pulled out my handkerchief, and dried my eyes, and pushed back my curls, for a hearty good stare.
"Tommy, your mind is of a wholesome type," said the great Professor pleasantly; "brief should be the pangs of youthful woe. And they are all good to eat, Tommy; and as you suck them, you can pull them out of your mouth, and see the sun shine through, and then put them back, and find them ever so much sweeter."
"Oh, but I can't get at them, sir! What good can they be, if I can't get at them?"
"Your reasoning is wonderfully sound and good, from its own point of view," he answered. "But get at them, Tommy, and they shall be yours; you shall have box and all, if you open it."
This was very hard upon me; for I had no more chance of opening it, than of flying in the air, as people say, and indeed, according to my gifts, much less. In vain I pulled, and squeezed, and pressed, examined every part of it, and then worked away again, screwing up my lips, and eyes, so sternly that the Professor could not help laughing. And the worst of it was, that the more I laboured, the greater the temptation of the inside grew, everything dancing with a play of colours glorious to see, and feel that all was good to eat.
"Oh, sir, I can't, I can't get at them; do please to show me the way, sir," I cried; for truly it was enough to make me cry.
"My boy," said the Professor, looking gravely at me, and seeming to wink with one large clear eye, though it was not a wink, but rather the effect of a most sagacious and delightful nod; "I have long anticipated that result. It is always agreeable to find one's prognosis confirmed by events, though they often fail to do it. No one has found out the secret of this box, though very clever men have striven at it, and among them three noted puzzle-makers. Perfect simplicity is deeper than any depth of complexity. Tommy, behold, and with good will devour. Ha, a practical, rather than a theoretic mind!"
Perhaps he made that observation because, without stopping to ask how the box came open, I fell to at once upon its choice contents. The flavour was altogether new to me, and wonderfully fine and penetrating, leaving no part of the mouth in idleness, and warming the entire length of throat with hope. At the same time, these goodies had just enough about them of roughness, to compel the tongue to stop, and invite it to dwell upon their surface gently, equably, earnestly, and with much delight refraining from speech, while thus better employed.
"Ah!" said the Professor, and one "ah" of his contained all the fulness of three volumes; "Tommy, be just, and consider them fairly. They are made from my own design, and stamped with cuneiform—ah, I see it now! The young mind is plagued so with ancient tongues, that the young tongue rejoices in demolishing their symbols. By taking a patent for this design, I might get on better than by building dragons. But let us return to our point, my good Tommy."
As he spoke, he was setting against one another the tips of his long middle fingers, which I took for the point to be returned to, and said, "Yes, sir, if you please, sir."
"My young friend, I take it that the point, from which we have allowed our minds to be pleasantly diverted, is whether you will allow me just to give you a lift in the air—a very gentle lift; not for any scientific view whatever, but only for a little satisfaction to myself. If from old experience of professors, you have any misgiving, say so, Tommy, and I will not touch you."
"Oh, sir," said I, with my mouth running over; "don't be afraid, sir, to lift me where you like."
At this good encouragement. Professor Megalow nodded, as if in pleasant commune with himself; and then with one hand softly tossed me to his shoulder, where I sate very nicely, as on a spring-cushion, rather than a feather-bed, however. Then he handed me up the box, which I put between my knees, and began to sing, according to my habit, when contented with the world.
"Ah," said the Professor, as he walked about (having, now and then, a little whistle to himself), and took me to look at a map of mountains (placed at a mountainous height above my usual level of intelligence), "Tommy, this is very good; this is quite delightful. Do you know, why this is so delightful, little Tommy?"
"Yes, sir," I replied, for I was very clever then; "it is jolly, because they are so capital to suck."
"Not only that, Tommy; although I am perfectly open to conviction upon that point"—here he opened his mouth, and I popped a goody in, as if he were the boy, and I the celebrated man—"but also because, my most generous young friend, it confirms my opinion, or, in finer words, my theory. Most of us, as we get older and older, grow more and more interested in ourselves. Possibly you are too young, small Tommy, to have any desire as yet to hear an empirical, rather than a scientific opinion, about your peculiar, but not altogether unparalleled, case."
"If you please, sir, to say anything you like. And I won't be afraid, and I won't tell my mother, unless you are sure that you would not be afraid. And if you talk as plainly as you did just now, I will try to make out what the meaning is."
Professor Megalow put me down, with a gentle clap on my back, as if he had found me one too much for him. And then, with a jerk of his prominent chin, and a rub of his nose, he considered me.
And while he was doing all this, such a smile of large good-will illumined us, that I would have been glad to be dissected, if it would please him, and not hurt much.
The only thing that saddened me was this—he did not appear to be at all astonished, by anything discovered in me. And I now called to mind, that he never had shown any special excitement about my case, as all the other scientific men had done. And my mother had said that he could not be half so clever as his reputation was, because of his letting me alone so. Though perhaps he was paid by the year for his work, and the others by the job; which would account for everything. That may have been so, and I thought about it now, and concluded (from brief observation of his hat) that he only got his money at the end of the year.
"The difference," said the Professor calmly, with a glance of affection at his large-skulled hat, which was rolling on the floor without taking any harm, "according to my very humble opinion, is not so much of kind as of degree, my Tommy. It has long been well known that the various families of the human race—as we may venture still to call it—differ very greatly in specific gravity; the Celt, for instance, is especially heavy in proportion to his size, and the Jute the opposite. There was, I believe, an exceptionally light and buoyant race in North America, aboriginal so far as we know; and the lightest member of that race, Tommy, would probably have despised your highest flight. At the same time, and although I have met with a case of almost equal levity—the example being, I regret to say, feminine—you must not imagine that I am endeavouring to disparage your exploits, my dear Tommy. Don't cry, my dear child; I had no idea that you were so sensitive upon this matter. Your admirable master has always told me, that your main desire is to stop upon the ground, and that both your parents wish it. You nod your head, as if I understood your feelings. Then why are your blue eyes full of tears?"
"If you please, sir, I wasn't at all longing to go up. Only I didn't know anybody else had done it. And I shan't care to go up any more, after that."
"Well!" cried the Professor, with his great rich smile; "human nature has no exceptions half so wonderful as its laws are. My good little friend, allow me to comfort you, and to restore your self-respect. It is not by any means a common thing for members of the English race to fly—excuse me for using the popular, but incorrect word, to describe your exploits. But there is a power that beats you, Tommy, in your own province, and that is Time. At three o'clock I have a lecture to deliver upon your antitype, the apteryx, a bird that has abdicated the rights, which some of us desire to usurp."
"Oh, sir, do let me come and hear it, if old Rum will let me go. Bill Chumps has heard you lecture, and he says——"
"I thank him heartily for his approval;" replied the Professor, at the same time showing me his watch, which ticked with a bullet upon cat-gut; "William Chumps is a fine young man, with a great spirit in a strong body; and I would ask your kind master to let you come, if I thought the subject good for you. But, my dear little fellow, I am sure that it is not so. The less your mind runs upon the regions of the air, and the more you endeavour to bring your body, by good feeding, exercise, pleasant sports, and moderate labours, to the normal specific gravity, the better it will be for yourself, and your parents, whose only child you are. And I venture to differ from my learned brethren, Professors Brachipod, and Jargoon, Chocolous, and Mullicles, in thinking that it will be no worse for the interests of science. Good-bye, Tommy; you may keep the box, as a souvenir of this long interview; be sure that you eat all you can of good meat, solid bread, and glutinous material; and don't swallow too much Latin and Greek, which tend to undue elation. If you were a lazy boy, I should not tell you this; but I hear that you are an ambitious boy, and eager to learn everything. I shall observe you, my interesting friend, and from time to time hint to your learned master any trifle that escapes the unmedical mind."
He lifted me up, and kissed my forehead; and as I picked up his hat—a trifle which had escaped his universal mind—and by jumping on a chair clapped it on his mighty head, I could not help paying him the usual tribute paid at his departure—glistening eyes, that is to say, and a smile of loving wonder.
My father, Bucephalus Upmore, had been, at the time of my birth, a Radical, and owed his conversion from loose ideas to no amount of argument, or even of wider observation, but to a little accident. Upon his return, one winter night, from a meeting in St. Pancras, not only of a liberal, but a wildly generous character, somebody tripped him up, and stole his watch, and purse, and Sunday hat. A small man might have accepted this as a lesson against subversive views, and a smaller one as a confirmation of them; but my father was not of that sort. His practice was, to take his stand upon what he considered right, and allow no evidence to move him one hair's breadth from the true conclusions poured into him. And he never read anything, that did not cap and sawder down his own contents.
This had made his life thus far most happy, enabling him to despise all people who differed in any way from him, as well as to enlarge himself, without any compulsion to pay for it. And he might have gone on in this easy way, calling upon the people behind him to rob the people in front of him, if he had not undergone the bad luck to be robbed himself. When he came to speak of this, among his friends, not one of them failed to express deep sorrow, and to assure him that such things must happen, whenever the Conservatives were in office. At the same time they intimated gently, that when he made so much money out of working men, it served him right to lose some of it.
His feelings were hurt by this sometimes; especially when the suggestion came from gentlemen, who had attained that degree, by adulterating the victuals of the working man. However, he smothered his common sense, as the first duty is of Liberals; till his body and mind came thump upon a stumbling-block, and no mistake.
Arising in a vast hall of Reform, to second a motion that all men are equal, and must have the same money for their work (whether they do it, or leave it undone), and must not do more than six hours in a day—for fear of imparting infection to the rest—with his mouth full of reason, and his heart full of hope [that none of his men might be there to hear him], my dear father gave a stamp, and found it fall upon something soft and dull. He felt himself more at home through this, having so much soft stuff round his vats, and his eloquence mounted to full swell, till he wanted to jump to give emphasis. This he attempted to do with a clap of his hands, to complete a grand sentence, when up came something between his legs, and got stuck on the top of his highlows. With laudable agility, my father stooped, while the audience cheered lustily, supposing him to be in quest of some word big enough to express his sentiments.
These, however, demanded outlet, in a very short one, when he found in his hand his own lost hat, with a hole in the brim from the stamp of his heel, and the crown chock-full of heads for speech, and demolitionist statistics. He examined his hat, and descried B. U. just in under the tuck of the lining, where a Liberal always puts his mark, on the Vote-by-ballot principle.
This alone was enough to shake his confidence in his party; though all the gentlemen around him looked quite incapable of doing anything. And he might, as he said to my mother, have believed that his old hat had come down from heaven, if only his new hat, bought last Friday, had been left for him to go home with. That, however, was not the case; his new hat managed to leave that great assembly upon the head of some eminent Liberal; and my father went home with his old hat on, greasy, and dirty, and showing signs of conflict, but containing a head that would be Radical no more.
Now, I need not have told that little story—which repeats itself among such people, more often than it is repeated—except to explain what it was that took us, in the summer holidays, to a place called "Happystowe-on-Sea."
It appears that my father was by no means satisfied so to lose his hats—though in truth it was no great grievance, thus to save the contents at the cost of the case—and like a thorough Briton, as he always was, he determined not to get the worst of it. Several opportunities for reprisal had been allowed to escape him; when, soon after Bill Chumps went to Oxford, there came among us, and excited our principles, a contested election for Marylebone. By means of their noble organization, the Liberals knew, from the outset, that the battle of freedom was sure to be won; or, as our people put it, rank bribery and corruption, truckling and swilling would defeat the right. Nevertheless, a just hope was entertained, on both sides, of a very lively contest, and a fair occasion (without legal intervention) for sounding the capacity of an adversary's head. My father was flying a big blue flag, which we could see from the Partheneion, with "Church and State for ever" on it; and Mr. John Windsor, and Chumps Esquire—as we called the great butcher in respect of his son—and "The Best End of the Scrag," all had the same; and only a man who knocked horses on the head durst hang out the red rag, up our Lane.
I speak of this, only as a circumstance to prove that our neighbourhood was Constitutional, and that the Radical element, however respectable it might have been when kept at home, had no right whatever to come invading us, and desiring to trample on our principles. They knew that for nearly three hundred and fifty yards, the inhabitants were all true-Blue, beginning with the Indigo factory on the South, and going all through the ash-heaps, and ending with my father. But in the wantonness of triumph, when their majority was posted up 2,000 [though our side claimed 1,500 in front] these "Demi-Cats"—as Bill had sent us word from Oxford to entitle them, and so we did—must needs assemble at King's Cross, in their thousands, and resolve to storm every Blue house in Maiden Lane.
The beginning of their enterprise was most glorious; nothing could stand before them. They broke all the glass that had a blue flag near it, and they knocked down every man who had got blue eyes. The premises of Mr. Chumps were sacked; his legs of mutton walked off, as if they were alive, and his salt beef was stuck on poles, even bigger than the skewers he weighed it out with; every drop in the cellars of the Conservative Hotel ran uphill inside a big Radical, and Mr. John Windsor lost soap enough pretty nearly to clean half the Liberals. However, he contrived to get over a back wall, together with his wife and daughter Polly—Jack was luckily at the Partheneion, and the other four gone to see their Aunt, with old Fangs to protect them from the Liberals—and by taking an in-and-out way through the cinders, the three arrived safely at our back door, without breath enough to blow out one of their own dips.
Till now my father had scarcely struck a blow on behalf of the Constitution, beyond giving his vote, and knocking down a man who was anxious to do the like to him; but now it did seem a bit too hard that the Liberals should extinguish thus all liberty of opinion.
"John," he said now, as he brought in the fugitives, and heard a tremendous noise coming up the Lane, "this is what I call coming it too strong. Mrs. Windsor, ma'am, you are all of a tremble. Sophy, get whiskey and water, at once."
"Bubbly," poor Mr. Windsor gasped, "this is most kind, and cordial of you. My dear, you require a stimulant, however much you dislike it. But, Upmore, down with your flag, at once! Down with your flag, that the fellows may go by."
"Oh yes, Mr. Upmore," implored Mrs. Windsor, a lady of a most superior kind; "please not to lose a moment in hauling down your flag; it is flying in the face of Providence. Do cut the ropes, if it won't untie."
"Will I?" said my father, and his face took on, as my mother said afterwards, a very fine expression; "lower my flag, to the scum of the earth! Ladies, go down to the cellar, and keep quiet. You will have no one here, while my flag is flying. Mr. Windsor is a man of high spirit, as he has proved many times, in our debates. He, and I, will go to the boiling-house, and defend the true-blue, come what will."
My mother declares that Mr. Windsor was going, at his best pace, to the cellar-stairs, when she locked him out, and pulled out the key; but mother was always severe upon him, because of his wholesale ways, and talk. At any rate, he did not flag or fly, although he may have longed to do so perhaps.
"Now, John," said my father, as he took his arm, to confirm his courage (which required it), and led him down the red-tiled passage to the boiling-house; "you have had a great many good laughs at my little steam-engine, haven't you? Very well, we'll try it on the 'Great unwashed;' if there happens to be a bit of fire left. My men are all away, the same as yours—or else these fellows would not come to sack us. I gave them the quarter-day to vote, the same as you did with yours; and mine are gone the right colour to a man, I do believe. But I happened to say, 'leave a little steam on;' and I can get up a great deal in ten minutes, and the blackguards won't be here for twenty. They've got three blue houses yet to wreck, and my double-gates will keep them out, at least five minutes."
"I see, I see, what you mean to do. What a glorious fellow you are, Bubbly! I'll go half the waste of phleg."
"Then go and see that all the bolts are right, while I get up steam, and have the double hose ready."
These two gallant, and sturdy, boilers very soon had the front and back gates barred and bolted, and strengthened with struts against the styles; so that all the men who could get at them must take at least five minutes to get through them; and meanwhile the furnace of the little engine was beginning to roar, and the steam to puff.
"Capital! I call this first-rate stoking;" exclaimed my father, as he stopped to breathe. "Now you understand the hose, John? It is only three-inch pipe, and therefore as handy as a walking-stick. You put your nozzle upon that trestle, commanding the back doors, while I keep ready for the time they have broken the front gate down. We have got a big vat of hot stuff to draw from; but I don't think they'll want half of it."
"Bubbly, I don't seem to understand it," said Mr. Windsor, who was slow-headed, and losing his presence of mind, perhaps (although he had got his coat off) from working so hard while he was fat, and with terrible Liberal screeches already arising in the air, above the rattle of the gates; "suppose, my dear friend, that we killed some fellow!"
"No hope of that," said my father, being now in a rancorous, and determined frame; "I am afraid that the temperature won't be above 160°, if so much; and it cools in passing through the air too fast. It will only make their eyes sharp, and their faces clean, as they should be on a holiday. No white feather, John Windsor, now! Ah, they've fetched the blacksmith, as I knew they would. Think of your wife and children, John, and of the British Constitution. Things must be come to a very pretty pass, if a man mayn't syringe a born jackass! Especially when the jackass kicks his gate in."
"In for a penny, then, in for a pound," his brother boiler answered, with his courage up; "whatever you order shall be done, friend Bubbly. This vat shall run away, before I do."
"I'll go bail for the front gate, Johnny, if you'll be ready for the rear attack, supposing they've the cheek to try one. This engine works a double hose, you see, on the principle of a well-coil. Now, my fine fellows, what do you want here?"
The blacksmith, though working against his will—for my father always paid him ready money—had prized one heavy gate off its hinges, and the other was swagging to fall with it.
"We wants you, guv'nor, and your scurvy flag;" cried the leader of the mob, a chimney-sweep.
"B'iler, b'iler; we wants the Tory b'iler!" cried a hundred dirty fellows, as the gates crashed in.
"Well, and you shall have him," said my father, who was standing just outside the slow-house door, with the nozzle of the hose tucked under his arm, and a rod in his right hand to put the pressure on; "if you come a yard further, you shall taste the boiler. Only let blacksmith Grimes get out of the way. I don't wish to boil a respectable neighbour. And I don't want to boil you, unless you insist on it."
Not only Grimes, but a great many others would have liked to get out of the way at this; but the bulk of the tumult behind shoved on, and the heads, that were fain to hang back, got jammed up in front against the smash, and then shot over. Father just waited, till the chimney-sweep, a termagant of the highest rank, was hurra-ing, and waving a soot-brush,—and then he let go hot candles at them. In a long white column, flew the scalding fluid, spreading, like a sheaf, when it met their faces, and coating every man of them with poisonous gray froth. No man could swear, for his mouth was bunged up; and no man could strike, for his arms were stuck to him, with a weight of deposit, like a stalactite. Good stearine it was, of the value of at least three halfpence a pound, in the unrefined state; and it went inside their shirts, and stung like hornets, and settled into every cracked place of the skin, and made a man tight in his linings. And to add to their grief, such a steam arose among them—not to mention something else beginning with same letters—that the slits of any eyes, that were left half open, were as useless as in a thick London fog.
"There's a deal more to come," said my father calmly; "noble reformers, stand shoulder to shoulder; as one of your writers has beautifully said—the deeper we go, the more strength we get."
The issue is told in a ballad written that same night at "The Best End of the Scrag;" which,—though inspired by Liberal ale, for "The Scrag" had not a drop left of its own, and was obliged to send across the road for it—is a poem of high merit; and my father was told upon the best authority that the poet, from first to last, received nearly fifteen shillings for it. Our house subscribed for sixpence-worth, and so did Mr. Windsor; and all the boys of the lower order, up to Grotto-day, were singing—no matter what their politics might be—and wrapping their bulls' eyes up in, "The lay of the soporific soap-boilers." The Radicals bore this satire well, having had their own way in everything, and laughed on the right side of their mouths; and even the men, who had been cased in grease, made a good thing of it, when they scraped themselves, by going to the rag-and-bone-shops. Yet, as bad luck would have it, the leading mind among them—that of Mr. Joe Cowl, the Master-sweep—was not content, and broke out into a summons at the Clerkenwell Police Court. For Mr. Cowl, meeting all the first of the discharges, before the stearine was well up in the hose, was a loser instead of a receiver of deposit. All the soot on his body was clean washed off; and nothing being left to fill the pores, the abnormal exposure of his system led to a pungent, pervasive, and radical catarrh. Mrs. Cowl sent for a doctor, but her husband Joe had still enough vitality to kick him out; and then jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, shouted loudly for a lawyer; and he recommended law.
"But," said my father to Mr. John Windsor, who was urging him to leave home for a while, that Joe Cowl's anger might blow over; "people pretend not to understand it, John; but you know as well as I do what it is. How could I ever live, for a fortnight at a stretch, or even three weeks, as might be needful, without a breath of the air of the works, John?"
"When I was obliged to spend a week in Parree," replied Mr. Windsor (who, as Mrs. Windsor said, had "acclimatised himself uncommon quick to the French style, and their accent"), "I thought I should have died for a day or two, from the downright emptiness of the air. But, my dear fellow, I found out some places, where the air was as nourishing, every bit, as it is at our works on an over-time day. Bubbly, I contrived to bilk the doctor, by going twice a day to a place with a hole in it, over some large cookery vapours. And you must contrive to find a place like that. I'll tell you what, go away to the seaside. At the seaside now, they are always making smells."
"So they are, I am sure," said Mrs. Windsor, who was come to join in the attack on father; "the last time I was at Brighton, my dear, with all the poor children, how I envied you, dwelling,—as the poet so graphically describes it,—in the sweet fragrancy of home. Mr. Upmore, the air is never empty at any fashionable seaside place; and for the sake of your dear wife, and your wonderfully interesting boy, who is a dear friend of my clever Johnny's, you cannot, with any consistency whatever, refuse to respond to the call of duty; for duty it is, and should be looked at in that light, without a second thought of paltry money."
"She has the gift of eloquence," declared her husband; "and sometimes I almost wish she hadn't. It comes to her from her mother's side, whose mother was a celebrated Baptist preacher. And when it is upon her, she has no consideration of other people's money, and not so very much of mine. But you must not take the whole of this for high talk, Bubbly. To make yourself scarce just now, will fetch you a pound, for every penny you have to spend. An old friend of mine is well up the back-stairs; and although he could never do a stroke for me—for some reason, which he explains much better than I can understand it—he whispered to me, last night, 'keep in with the gentleman, who boils higher up the Lane than you do. His fortune is made, if he keeps quiet, and the present Government remains in office. He will have more jobs than he can do, and he must call you in, to help him.' I thought I had better tell you, Bubbly; because we have always been straight-forward; and if you are pulled up in the Police-court, why, you might have to wait months, before you got a contract."
My father stood up, for nothing could be more illustrative of true friendship, more incentive to patriotism, and more ennobling to the human race, than this announcement from his brother boiler. He had passed through a good deal of emotion lately, having been not only toasted largely, wherever he appeared with his purse in his pocket, and visited with post-cards more than once (from people whose names were in the papers) but even invited to a hot dinner, which he took care to go to, at the Mansion-House. For that Lord-Mayor was not one of those, who desire to have no successor.
"John Windsor, we have always been straight-forward. There has never been the shadow of a doubt between us. Our friendship has never known a cloud upon it;" I was home for the holidays now, and these words of my father's made me stare a little; "you know what I am, John,—a humble Briton, who thinks for himself, and sticks to it. Business is business; politics come in the evening, to smoke a pipe with. When I was a Rad, I may have thought of making something out of it. But I only made a loss of two good hats."
"Hear, hear!" interrupted Mr. Windsor; "and now by repulse of the Rads, you have gained three hundred hats, the poet says."
"Stuff!" cried my father; "there were not thirty; and shocking bad hats all of them. You are welcome to your share, if you will take your half of this confounded summons, Windsor."
"Gentlemen, come," said Mrs. Windsor, "if you once begin with politics—the point is to settle where to go to, and I think Mrs. Upmore should have a voice in that. What coast do you prefer, my dear?"
"My views are of very little moment," mother answered quietly, as she came in, with a bottle of cherry-brandy in her hand; "Bucephalus is so bigoted. But I love to see the sun rise over the sea from the window, and then go to bed again."
"Your taste, ma'am, is of the very highest order," said Mr. Windsor, who never could persuade his wife to turn her hand to pickles, and bottled fruit, and gravies; "and many a time have I enjoyed the fine results that comes of it. To see the sun rise over the sea, and the poor fellows shaking about in their boats, and then to go to bed again, while they are catching fish enough for your breakfast, prawns, and lobsters, and a sole with egg and breadcrumbs, and perhaps (if they are lucky) just a salmon-collop—ah, that is what I call seaside! And then, you lounge about, and see fine ladies jumping up and down, as the white waves knock them; and then you have a pipe, and smell fine smells, and talk to an old salt, as if you were his captain; and he shows you, through his spy-glass, how rough it is outside, with the people in the vessels looking enviously at you; and by that time, Bubbly, why you want your dinner; and you eat it, as if you was made for nothing else."
"I don't remember much about it," answered father, though evidently struck by this description; "why, it must be thirty years since I saw the sea. Ah, how we go up and down in life! I dare say I was no bigger than that little shrimp there."
"Mr. Upmore!" exclaimed Mrs. Windsor, whose manner, we were told, was more aristocratic than anything on our side of King's Cross; "Mr. Upmore, with all your opportunities, is it possible that you have not ever felt it your very first duty, to take your dear wife, and your Tommy, to the sea? Whatever should we do, without the sea? A great part of our commerce comes over it, and my Johnny can very nearly swim! Dear Mrs. Upmore, you should not lose a minute, in taking your darling boy to the sea. It seems to be considered so essential now, that all young persons should be taught to swim."
"My Tommy can fly, ma'am," replied dear mother; "and what is swimming to compare with that?"
"I'll tell you what," said Mr. Windsor, "if you want to see the sun rise over the sea, the best chance for it is on the east coast. I'm very partial to Brighton myself, not being so exclusive as Mrs. W. about a little smell here, or a sort of odour there. That feeling of the higher orders seems to be cutaneous."
"Spontaneous, you mean, Mr. Windsor, or perhaps contagious, or indigenous."
"I mean what I say, my dear. And what I say is this—to the best of my knowledge, the sun don't get up out of the sea, at Brighton, though he does come over it, in fine weather, by the time the upper classes are looking about. But I won't pretend to speak positive, because I never got up to look for him. Only this I do say, and it stands to reason,—if you want to compel him to get up there, you had better go where the sea runs east."
"To be sure, I see!" my father answered; "I am not sure, that I should have thought of that. John, you are a clever fellow, after all."
"I should hope that he was;" cried Mrs. Windsor; "because you have made yourself famous, Mr. Upmore, with my husband to stand in front of you, are you going to begin to look down upon us?"
"Don't be so hot, my dear. I assure you, Bubbly, that she means it for the moment; but it goes in two seconds, like a spurt of steam. Now, I happen to know a very nice little place, on the east coast, Norfolk or Suffolk, I believe, for I never can carry all the counties in my head. Happystowe-on-Sea is the name of it; none of your blessed sewers there. I know a man who boils there, twice a week; he would let you in as a visitor, of course, and you would get the nourishment of his air. Barlow his name is, Billy Barlow; a rising man in compos, and cocoa; he has found a way to make one out of the other, and both of them out of old shoes, I believe; and I thought of running down to him, to get a wrinkle; but Mrs. W. seemed to think there was something infra dig in it."
"We cannot be too particular, in my humble opinion," said Mrs. Windsor, "not only not to admit any shadow of fraud, into our own transactions, but in no way to countenance any one tainted with secrets, however lucrative."
"That is the true way of looking at things; all on the square, ma'am, and all above board. And nothing else answers in the long run, does it? However," continued my father, "if I should by any chance be down that way, I might like to look in at Barlow's works,—without letting him know who I was, of course. I should understand all his devices, at a glance."
"He would know me in a moment, if I went down;" Mr. Windsor was trying not to wink at father; "but he never would guess that you were in the trade, if you wear your blue coat, and brass buttons, the one that makes the boys call you 'the Admiral.' And by the sea-side, that would be the proper thing. Only fair play, Bubbly, and honour bright. Snacks—as our Jack says—in whatever you find out."