Equally surprised and mystified at the complete manner in which the
tables had been turned upon him, Bracy stood listening with a
disgusted expression of countenance to the peals of laughter which his
discomfiture elicited from his companions.
“Yes, laugh away,” growled the victimised practical joker; “it’s
all very funny, I dare say, but one thing I’ll swear in any court of
justice, which is, that you have been talking real Persian, at least if
what Frere jabbers is real Persian.”
“Of course I have,” returned Leicester, still in convulsions. “When
Frere and I planned this dodge we knew what a wide-awake gentleman we
had to deal with, and took our measures accordingly. I learned four
Persian sentences by heart from his dictation, and pretty good use I
have made of them too, I think.”
“It was not a bad idea, really,” observed Bracy, who, having got over
his annoyance at the first sense of defeat, instantly recovered his
good-humour. “How well you are got up! I did not recognise you one bit
till you pulled off the barnacles.”
“Yes, I got little Stevens, who does the light comic business at one
of the minors, to provide the apparel and come and dress me. I hope you
admire my complexion; he laid on the red and yellow most unsparingly.”
“He has done it vastly well,” returned Bracy. “I shall cultivate that
small man; he may be extremely useful to me on an occasion.”
“Now we ought to be going upstairs,” interrupted Frere; “these waiter
fellows are beginning to stare at us suspiciously too. I say, Bracy, cut
it short, man; we have had all the fun now, and I’m getting tired of the
thing.”
“Ya, Meinheer,” rejoined Bracy aloud, adding in a lower tone, “The
slaveys will swallow that or anything else for Persian. They are all
more or less drunk, by the fishy expression of their optics.”
Laura Peyton was astonished somewhat later in the evening by the
Addiscombe professor leaning over the back of the sofa on which she was
seated and asking whether she had enjoyed her last valse at Almack’s the
evening before last.
“Surely you can feel no particular interest about such a frivolous and
unintellectual matter, sir,” was the reply.
“I was about to follow up the inquiry by asking whether your partner
made himself agreeable.”
“To which I shall reply, after the Irish fashion, by asking how it can
possibly concern you to know, sir?”
“Merely because I have the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance.”
“That, in fact, you are one of those uncommon characters who know
themselves,” returned Laura with an arch smile. “Is not that what you
wish to impress upon me, Mr. Leicester?”
Charley laughed, then continued in a lower tone, “I saw you knew me. Did
your own acuteness lead to the discovery, or are there traitors among
us?”
“Your friend Mr. Arundel’s expressive features let me into the secret
of his acquaintance with the English language before we went down to
supper; but I entered into a contract, not to betray the plot if he
would tell me all I might wish to know about it, so the moment he came
up I made him inform me who you were. What a gentlemanly, agreeable
person he is!”
As she said this a slight shade passed across Leicester’s good-natured
countenance, and he replied, more quickly than was his wont--
“I had fancied Miss Peyton superior to the common feminine weakness of
being caught by the last handsome face.”
“What a thoroughly _man_-like speech!” returned the young lady. “Did I
say anything about his appearance, sir? Do you suppose we poor women
are so utterly silly that we can appreciate nothing but a handsome face?
Your professor’s disguise has imbued you with the Turkish belief that
women have no souls.”
“No one fortunate enough to be acquainted with Miss Peyton would
continue long in such a heresy,” replied Leicester, with the air of a
man who thinks he is saying a good thing.
“Yes, I knew you would make some such reply,” returned Laura. “You first
show your real opinion of women by libelling the whole sex, and then try
to get out of the scrape by insulting my understanding with a personal
compliment. Wait,” she continued, seeing he was about to defend himself,
“you must not talk to me any more now, or you will excite Lady Lombard’s
suspicions and betray the whole conspiracy. Go away, and send my new
friend Mr. Arundel Hassan Bey here; Lady Lombard committed him to my
charge, and I want to cultivate him.”
Leicester tried to assume a languishing look, which he was in the
habit of practising upon young ladies with great success, but becoming
suddenly conscious of the wig and spectacles, and gathering from
Laura’s silvery laugh that such adjuncts to an interesting expression
of countenance were incongruous, not to say absurd, he joined in her
merriment, then added, “You are in a very wicked mood to-night, Miss
Peyton; but I suppose I must e’en do as you bid me, and reserve my
revenge till some more fitting opportunity;” then, mixing with the
crowd, he sought out Lewis and delivered the young lady’s message
to him, adding in his usual drawling tone, “You have made a
what-do-ye-call-it--an impression in that quarter. Women always run
after the last new face.”
“You are right,” returned Lewis, with a degree of energy which startled
his listless companion; “and those men are wisest who know them for the
toys they are, and avoid them.”
Leicester gazed after his retreating figure in astonishment, then
murmured to himself, “What’s in the wind now, I wonder; is the good
youth trying to keep up the Asiatic character, or suddenly turned
woman-hater? Confound that little Peyton girl, how sharp she was
to-night!”
“How very well Mr. Leicester is disguised!” observed Laura Peyton to
Lewis, after they had conversed in German for some minutes on general
topics.
“Yes,” replied Lewis; “though I can’t say his appearance is improved by
the alteration.”
“A fact of which he is fully aware,” returned Laura, smiling.
A pause ensued, which was terminated by Laura’s asking abruptly, “Do
gentlemen like Mr. Leicester?”
“Really I have not sufficient knowledge of facts to inform you, but I
should say he is a very popular man.”
“Popular man! I hate that phrase,” returned his companion pettishly. “It
is almost as bad as describing any one as a man about town, which always
gives me the idea of a creature that wears a pea-jacket, lives at a
club, boards on cigars, talks slang, carries a betting-book, and never
has its hair cut. Can’t you tell me what you think of Mr. Leicester
yourself?”
“Well, I think him gentlemanly, good-natured, agreeable up to a certain
point, cleverish---”
^ “Yes, that will do; I quite understand. I don’t think you do him
justice--he has a kind heart, and more good sense than you are disposed
to give him credit for. You should not form such hasty judgments of
people; a want of charity I perceive is one of your faults. And now
I must wish you good-night; I hear my kind old chaperone anxiously
bleating after me in the distance.”
So saying she arose and hastened to put herself under the protection of
“a fine old English gentlewoman,” who, with a hooked nose, red gown,
and green scarf, looked like some new and fearful variety of the genus
Parroquet. At the same time, Bracy summoned Lewis to join the Prince,
who was about to depart, which, after Lady Lombard had in an enthusiasm
of gratitude uttered a whole sentence in the largest capitals, he was
allowed to do.
Leicester accompanied them, tearing himself away from Professor
Malchapeau, who had singled him out as a brother savan, and commenced
_raconte_-ing to him his affecting history, thereby leaving that shaggy
little child of misfortune to lament to his sympathising hostess the
melancholy fact that “Zie Professor Addiscombe had cut his little tale
off short, and transported himselfs avay in von great despatch.”
’Twere long to tell the jokes that were made, the new and additional
matter brought to light, as each of the quartette, assembled round a
second edition of supper in Bracy’s rooms, detailed in turn his own
personal experiences of the evening’s comicalities--the cigars that were
smoked, or the amount of sherry cobbler that was imbibed: suffice it
to say, that a certain lyrical declaration that they would not “go home
till morning,” to which, during their symposium, they had committed
themselves, was verified when, on issuing out into the street, the cold
grey light of early dawn threw its pale hue over their tired faces and
struggled with sickly-looking gas lamps for the honour of illuminating
the thoroughfares of the sleeping city.
Leicester’s cab, with his night-horse--a useful animal, which, without
a leg to stand upon, possessed the speed of the wind, and having every
defect horseflesh is heir to, enjoyed a constitution which throve on
exposure and want of sleep, as other organisations usually do on the
exact opposites--was in waiting. Into this vehicle Charley (who bore
some token of sherry cobbler in the unsteadiness of his gait), having
made two bad shots at the step, rushed headlong and drove off at an
insane pace, and in a succession of zigzags.
Frere and Lewis watched the cab till, having slightly assaulted an
unoffending lamp-post, it flew round a corner and disappeared; then,
having exchanged a significant glance suggestive of sympathetic
anticipations of a sombre character in regard to the safety of their
friend, they started at a brisk pace, which soon brought them to Frere’s
respectable dwelling. While the proprietor was searching in every pocket
but the right one for that terror of all feeble-minded elders, that pet
abomination of all fathers of families, that latest invention of the
enemy of mankind--a latch-key--they were accosted by a lad of about
fifteen, whose ragged clothes, bronzed features, and Murillo-like
appearance accorded well with his supplication, “_Per pietà Signor,
denaro per un pover’ Italiano_.”
[Illustration: 0094]
Frere looked at him attentively, then exclaimed, “I tell you what, boy,
it won’t do; you’re no more an Italian than I am. You should not try to
impose upon people.”
The boy hung down his head, and then replied doggedly, “It’s your own
fault; you’ll let an English boy starve in the streets before you’ll
give him a bit of bread, but you are charitable enough to them foreign
blackguards.”
“That’s not true,” replied Frere. “However, liar or not, you must be
fed, I suppose; so if you choose to take a soup-ticket, here’s one for
you.”
“No,” returned the boy proudly, “you have called me liar, and I won’t
accept your miserable bounty. I’d sooner starve first.”
“As you please,” returned Frere, coolly pocketing the rejected ticket.
“Now have the goodness to take yourself off. Come, Lewis.”
“I’ll join you immediately,” replied Lewis.
“Mind you shut the door after you, then,” continued Frere, “or we shall
have that nice lad walking off with the silver spoons.” So saying, he
entered the house.
Lewis waited till his retreating footsteps were no longer audible, then
fixing his piercing glance upon the boy, he said in an impressive voice,
“Answer me truly, and I will give you assistance. Where did you learn to
speak Italian with so good an accent?”
“In Naples, sir!”
“How did you get there?”
“I served on board a man-of-war.”
“And how have you fallen into this state of beggary?”
The boy hesitated for a moment, but something led him instinctively to
feel that his confidence would not be abused, and he answered: “When we
got back to England and the crew were paid off I received £15.
I got into bad company; they tempted me to everything that was wrong.
My money was soon gone; I had no friends in London, and I wouldn’t have
applied to them after going on so bad if I’d had any. I sold my clothes
to buy bread; and when I had nothing left I begged, and lately I’ve
passed myself off as an Italian boy, because I found people more willing
to give to me.”
“And do you like your present life?”
“No, I have to bear cold and hunger; and when people speak to me as _he_
did just now it makes me feel wicked. Some day it will drive me mad, and
I shall go and murder somebody.”
“What do you wish to do, then?”
“If I could buy some decent clothes, I’d walk down to Portsmouth and try
and get afloat again.”
“And what would it cost to provide them?”
“I could rig myself out for a pound.”
Lewis paused for a moment, then added quickly: “Boy, I am poor and
proud, as you are, therefore I can feel for you. Had I been exposed to
temptation, friendless and untaught, I might have fallen as you have
done. You have learnt a bitter lesson and may profit by it; it is in my
power to afford you a chance of doing so.”
He drew a card from his pocket and wrote upon it a few words in pencil,
then handing it to the boy, continued: “There is the direction to a
friend of mine, the captain of a ship about to sail in a few days; show
him my card, and tell him what you have told me. There is a sovereign
to provide your dress, and five shillings to save you from begging or
stealing till you get to Portsmouth; and when next you are tempted to
sin remember its bitter fruits.”
As he spoke he gave him the money. The boy received it mechanically,
fixed his bright eyes for a moment on the face of his benefactor, and
then, utterly overcome by such unexpected kindness, burst into a flood
of tears. As Lewis turned to depart the first rays of the rising sun
fell upon the tall, graceful figure of the young man and the tattered
garments and emaciated form of the boy.
Far different was the scene when Lewis Arundel and the creature he was
thus rescuing from infamy met again upon the _RAILROAD OF LIFE!_