An ingenious magazine-writer, who lived in the time of Mr. Brock and the
Duke of Marlborough, compared the latter gentleman's conduct in battle,
when he
“In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid;
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage”--
Mr. Joseph Addison, I say, compared the Duke of Marlborough to an angel,
who is sent by Divine command to chastise a guilty people--
“And pleased his Master's orders to perform,
Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”
The first four of these novel lines touch off the Duke's disposition
and genius to a tittle. He had a love for such scenes of strife: in the
midst of them his spirit rose calm and supreme, soaring (like an
angel or not, but anyway the compliment is a very pretty one) on the
battle-clouds majestic, and causing to ebb or to flow the mighty tide of
war.
But as this famous simile might apply with equal propriety--to a bad
angel as to a good one, it may in like manner be employed to illustrate
small quarrels as well as great--a little family squabble, in which two
or three people are engaged, as well as a vast national dispute, argued
on each side by the roaring throats of five hundred angry cannon. The
poet means, in fact, that the Duke of Marlborough had an immense genius
for mischief.
Our friend Brock, or Wood (whose actions we love to illustrate by the
very handsomest similes), possessed this genius in common with his
Grace; and was never so happy, or seen to so much advantage, as when he
was employed in setting people by the ears. His spirits, usually dull,
then rose into the utmost gaiety and good-humour. When the doubtful
battle flagged, he by his art would instantly restore it. When, for
instance, Tom's repulsed battalions of rhetoric fled from his mamma's
fire, a few words of apt sneer or encouragement on Wood's part would
bring the fight round again; or when Mr. Hayes's fainting squadrons of
abuse broke upon the stubborn squares of Tom's bristling obstinacy, it
was Wood's delight to rally the former, and bring him once more to the
charge. A great share had this man in making those bad people worse.
Many fierce words and bad passions, many falsehoods and knaveries on
Tom's part, much bitterness, scorn, and jealousy on the part of Hayes
and Catherine, might be attributed to this hoary old tempter, whose
joy and occupation it was to raise and direct the domestic storms and
whirlwinds of the family of which he was a member. And do not let us be
accused of an undue propensity to use sounding words, because we compare
three scoundrels in the Tyburn Road to so many armies, and Mr. Wood to
a mighty field-marshal. My dear sir, when you have well studied the
world--how supremely great the meanest thing in this world is, and how
infinitely mean the greatest--I am mistaken if you do not make a strange
and proper jumble of the sublime and the ridiculous, the lofty and the
low. I have looked at the world, for my part, and come to the conclusion
that I know not which is which.
Well, then, on the night when Mrs Hayes, as recorded by us, had been to
the Marylebone Gardens, Mr. Wood had found the sincerest enjoyment in
plying her husband with drink; so that, when Catherine arrived at home,
Mr. Hayes came forward to meet her in a manner which showed he was not
only surly, but drunk. Tom stepped out of the coach first; and Hayes
asked him, with an oath, where he had been? The oath Mr. Billings
sternly flung back again (with another in its company), and at the same
time refused to give his stepfather any sort of answer to his query.
“The old man is drunk, mother,” said he to Mrs. Hayes, as he handed that
lady out of the coach (before leaving which she had to withdraw her hand
rather violently from the grasp of the Count, who was inside). Hayes
instantly showed the correctness of his surmise by slamming the door
courageously in Tom's face, when he attempted to enter the house with
his mother. And when Mrs. Catherine remonstrated, according to her wont,
in a very angry and supercilious tone, Mr. Hayes replied with equal
haughtiness, and a regular quarrel ensued.
People were accustomed in those days to use much more simple and
expressive terms of language than are now thought polite; and it would
be dangerous to give, in this present year 1840, the exact words of
reproach which passed between Hayes and his wife in 1726. Mr. Wood sat
near, laughing his sides out. Mr. Hayes swore that his wife should not
go abroad to tea-gardens in search of vile Popish noblemen; to which
Mrs. Hayes replied, that Mr. Hayes was a pitiful, lying, sneaking cur,
and that she would go where she pleased. Mr. Hayes rejoined that if she
said much more he would take a stick to her. Mr. Wood whispered, “And
serve her right.” Mrs. Hayes thereupon swore she had stood his cowardly
blows once or twice before, but that if ever he did so again, as sure as
she was born, she would stab him. Mr. Wood said, “Curse me, but I like
her spirit.”
Mr. Hayes took another line of argument, and said, “The neighbours would
talk, madam.”
“Ay, that they will, no doubt,” said Mr. Wood.
“Then let them,” said Catherine. “What do we care about the neighbours?
Didn't the neighbours talk when you sent Widow Wilkins to gaol? Didn't
the neighbours talk when you levied on poor old Thomson? You didn't mind
THEN, Mr. Hayes.”
“Business, ma'am, is business; and if I did distrain on Thomson, and
lock up Wilkins, I think you knew about it as much as I.”
“I'faith, I believe you're a pair,” said Mr. Wood.
“Pray, sir, keep your tongue to yourself. Your opinion isn't asked
anyhow--no, nor your company wanted neither,” cried Mrs. Catherine, with
proper spirit.
At which remark Mr. Wood only whistled.
“I have asked this here gentleman to pass this evening along with me.
We've been drinking together, ma'am.”
“That we have”, said Mr. Wood, looking at Mrs. Cat with the most perfect
good-humour.
“I say, ma'am, that we've been a-drinking together; and when we've been
a-drinking together, I say that a man is my friend. Doctor Wood is my
friend, madam--the Reverend Doctor Wood. We've passed the evening in
company, talking about politics, madam--politics and riddle-iddle-igion.
We've not been flaunting in tea-gardens, and ogling the men.”
“It's a lie!” shrieked Mrs. Hayes. “I went with Tom--you know I did: the
boy wouldn't let me rest till I promised to go.”
“Hang him, I hate him,” said Mr. Hayes: “he's always in my way.”
“He's the only friend I have in the world, and the only being I care a
pin for,” said Catherine.
“He's an impudent idle good-for-nothing scoundrel, and I hope to see him
hanged!” shouted Mr. Hayes. “And pray, madam, whose carriage was that as
you came home in? I warrant you paid something for the ride--ha, ha!”
“Another lie!” screamed Cat, and clutched hold of a supper-knife. “Say
it again, John Hayes, and, by ------ I'll do for you.”
“Do for me? Hang me,” said Mr. Hayes, flourishing a stick, and perfectly
pot-valiant, “do you think I care for a bastard and a--?”
He did not finish the sentence, for the woman ran at him like a savage,
knife in hand. He bounded back, flinging his arms about wildly, and
struck her with his staff sharply across the forehead. The woman went
down instantly. A lucky blow was it for Hayes and her: it saved him from
death, perhaps, and her from murder.
All this scene--a very important one of our drama--might have been
described at much greater length; but, in truth, the author has a
natural horror of dwelling too long upon such hideous spectacles: nor
would the reader be much edified by a full and accurate knowledge of
what took place. The quarrel, however, though not more violent than many
that had previously taken place between Hayes and his wife, was about to
cause vast changes in the condition of this unhappy pair.
Hayes was at the first moment of his victory very much alarmed;
he feared that he had killed the woman; and Wood started up rather
anxiously too, with the same fancy. But she soon began to recover. Water
was brought; her head was raised and bound up; and in a short time
Mrs. Catherine gave vent to a copious fit of tears, which relieved her
somewhat. These did not affect Hayes much--they rather pleased him, for
he saw he had got the better; and although Cat fiercely turned upon him
when he made some small attempt towards reconciliation, he did not heed
her anger, but smiled and winked in a self-satisfied way at Wood. The
coward was quite proud of his victory; and finding Catherine asleep, or
apparently so, when he followed her to bed, speedily gave himself up to
slumber too, and had some pleasant dreams to his portion.
Mr. Wood also went sniggering and happy upstairs to his chamber. The
quarrel had been a real treat to him; it excited the old man--tickled
him into good-humour; and he promised himself a rare continuation of
the fun when Tom should be made acquainted with the circumstances of
the dispute. As for his Excellency the Count, the ride from Marylebone
Gardens, and a tender squeeze of the hand, which Catherine permitted
to him on parting, had so inflamed the passions of the nobleman, that,
after sleeping for nine hours, and taking his chocolate as usual the
next morning, he actually delayed to read the newspaper, and kept
waiting a toy-shop lady from Cornhill (with the sweetest bargain of
Mechlin lace), in order to discourse to his chaplain on the charms of
Mrs. Hayes.
She, poor thing, never closed her lids, except when she would have had
Mr. Hayes imagine that she slumbered; but lay beside him, tossing and
tumbling, with hot eyes wide open and heart thumping, and pulse of a
hundred and ten, and heard the heavy hours tolling; and at last the day
came peering, haggard, through the window-curtains, and found her still
wakeful and wretched.
Mrs. Hayes had never been, as we have seen, especially fond of her
lord; but now, as the day made visible to her the sleeping figure and
countenance of that gentleman, she looked at him with a contempt and
loathing such as she had never felt even in all the years of her wedded
life. Mr. Hayes was snoring profoundly: by his bedside, on his ledger,
stood a large greasy tin candlestick, containing a lank tallow-candle,
turned down in the shaft; and in the lower part, his keys, purse, and
tobacco-pipe; his feet were huddled up in his greasy threadbare clothes;
his head and half his sallow face muffled up in a red woollen nightcap;
his beard was of several days' growth; his mouth was wide open, and he
was snoring profoundly: on a more despicable little creature the sun
never shone. And to this sordid wretch was Catherine united for ever.
What a pretty rascal history might be read in yonder greasy day-book,
which never left the miser!--he never read in any other. Of what a
treasure were yonder keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they
guarded but was picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from
needy wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation. “A fool, a
miser, and a coward! Why was I bound to this wretch?” thought Catherine:
“I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell me so?); I
who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and might have
mounted--who knows whither?--if cursed Fortune had not baulked me!”
As Mrs. Cat did not utter these sentiments, but only thought them, we
have a right to clothe her thoughts in the genteelest possible language;
and, to the best of our power, have done so. If the reader examines
Mrs. Hayes's train of reasoning, he will not, we should think, fail
to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix all the wrong upon her
husband, and yet to twist out some consolatory arguments for her
own vanity. This perverse argumentation we have all of us, no doubt,
employed in our time. How often have we,--we poets, politicians,
philosophers, family-men,--found charming excuses for our own
rascalities in the monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how
loudly have we abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil's
logic did Mrs. Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the
Marylebone fete, exert in gloomy triumph.
It must, however, be confessed, that nothing could be more just than
Mrs. Hayes's sense of her husband's scoundrelism and meanness; for if
we have not proved these in the course of this history, we have proved
nothing. Mrs. Cat had a shrewd observing mind; and if she wanted for
proofs against Hayes, she had but to look before and about her to find
them. This amiable pair were lying in a large walnut-bed, with faded
silk furniture, which had been taken from under a respectable old
invalid widow, who had become security for a prodigal son; the room was
hung round with an antique tapestry (representing Rebecca at the Well,
Bathsheba Bathing, Judith and Holofernes, and other subjects from Holy
Writ), which had been many score times sold for fifty pounds, and bought
back by Mr. Hayes for two, in those accommodating bargains which he made
with young gentlemen, who received fifty pounds of money and fifty of
tapestry in consideration of their hundred-pound bills. Against this
tapestry, and just cutting off Holofernes's head, stood an enormous
ominous black clock, the spoil of some other usurious transaction. Some
chairs, and a dismal old black cabinet, completed the furniture of this
apartment: it wanted but a ghost to render its gloom complete.
Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding her husband. There is,
be sure, a strong magnetic influence in wakeful eyes so examining a
sleeping person (do not you, as a boy, remember waking of bright summer
mornings and finding your mother looking over you? had not the gaze of
her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast
over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh
springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine's looks upon her
husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about
uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick,
strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one's ear while
watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and
presently the clock began to utter those dismal grinding sounds, which
issue from clocks at such periods, and which sound like the death-rattle
of the departing hour. Then the bell struck the knell of it; and with
this Mr. Hayes awoke, and looked up, and saw Catherine gazing at him.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Catherine turned away, burning red,
and looking as if she had been caught in the commission of a crime.
A kind of blank terror seized upon old Hayes's soul: a horrible icy
fear, and presentiment of coming evil; and yet the woman had but looked
at him. He thought rapidly over the occurrences of the last night, the
quarrel, and the end of it. He had often struck her before when angry,
and heaped all kinds of bitter words upon her; but, in the morning, she
bore no malice, and the previous quarrel was forgotten, or, at least,
passed over. Why should the last night's dispute not have the same end?
Hayes calculated all this, and tried to smile.
“I hope we're friends, Cat?” said he. “You know I was in liquor last
night, and sadly put out by the loss of that fifty pound. They'll ruin
me, dear--I know they will.”
Mrs. Hayes did not answer.
“I should like to see the country again, dear,” said he, in his most
wheedling way. “I've a mind, do you know, to call in all our money? It's
you who've made every farthing of it, that's sure; and it's a matter of
two thousand pound by this time. Suppose we go into Warwickshire, Cat,
and buy a farm, and live genteel. Shouldn't you like to live a lady in
your own county again? How they'd stare at Birmingham! hey, Cat?”
And with this Mr. Hayes made a motion as if he would seize his wife's
hand, but she flung his back again.
“Coward!” said she, “you want liquor to give you courage, and then
you've only heart enough to strike women.”
“It was only in self-defence, my dear,” said Hayes, whose courage had
all gone. “You tried, you know, to--to--”
“To STAB you, and I wish I had!” said Mrs. Hayes, setting her teeth, and
glaring at him like a demon; and so saying she sprung out of bed. There
was a great stain of blood on her pillow. “Look at it,” said she. “That
blood's of your shedding!” and at this Hayes fairly began to weep, so
utterly downcast and frightened was the miserable man. The wretch's
tears only inspired his wife with a still greater rage and loathing; she
cared not so much for the blow, but she hated the man: the man to
whom she was tied for ever--for ever! The bar between her and wealth,
happiness, love, rank perhaps. “If I were free,” thought Mrs. Hayes
(the thought had been sitting at her pillow all night, and whispering
ceaselessly into her ear)--, “If I were free, Max would marry me; I know
he would:--he said so yesterday!”
*****
As if by a kind of intuition, old Wood seemed to read all this woman's
thoughts; for he said that day with a sneer, that he would wager she was
thinking how much better it would be to be a Count's lady than a poor
miser's wife. “And faith,” said he, “a Count and a chariot-and-six is
better than an old skinflint with a cudgel.” And then he asked her if
her head was better, and supposed that she was used to beating; and cut
sundry other jokes, which made the poor wretch's wounds of mind and body
feel a thousand times sorer.
Tom, too, was made acquainted with the dispute, and swore his accustomed
vengeance against his stepfather. Such feelings, Wood, with a dexterous
malice, would never let rest; it was his joy, at first quite a
disinterested one, to goad Catherine and to frighten Hayes: though, in
truth, that unfortunate creature had no occasion for incitements from
without to keep up the dreadful state of terror and depression into
which he had fallen.
For, from the morning after the quarrel, the horrible words and looks
of Catherine never left Hayes's memory; but a cold fear followed
him--a dreadful prescience. He strove to overcome this fate as a coward
would--to kneel to it for compassion--to coax and wheedle it into
forgiveness. He was slavishly gentle to Catherine, and bore her fierce
taunts with mean resignation. He trembled before young Billings, who was
now established in the house (his mother said, to protect her against
the violence of her husband), and suffered his brutal language and
conduct without venturing to resist.
The young man and his mother lorded over the house: Hayes hardly dared
to speak in their presence; seldom sat with the family except at meals;
but slipped away to his chamber (he slept apart now from his wife) or
passed the evening at the public-house, where he was constrained to
drink--to spend some of his beloved sixpences for drink!
And, of course, the neighbours began to say, “John Hayes neglects
his wife.” “He tyrannises over her, and beats her.” “Always at the
public-house, leaving an honest woman alone at home!”
The unfortunate wretch did NOT hate his wife. He was used to her--fond
of her as much as he could be fond--sighed to be friends with her
again--repeatedly would creep, whimpering, to Wood's room, when the
latter was alone, and begged him to bring about a reconciliation. They
WERE reconciled, as much as ever they could be. The woman looked at him,
thought what she might be but for him, and scorned and loathed him with
a feeling that almost amounted to insanity. What nights she lay awake,
weeping, and cursing herself and him! His humility and beseeching looks
only made him more despicable and hateful to her.
If Hayes did not hate the mother, however, he hated the boy--hated and
feared him dreadfully. He would have poisoned him if he had had the
courage; but he dared not: he dared not even look at him as he sat
there, the master of the house, in insolent triumph. O God! how the
lad's brutal laughter rung in Hayes's ears; and how the stare of his
fierce bold black eyes pursued him! Of a truth, if Mr. Wood loved
mischief, as he did, honestly and purely for mischief's sake, he had
enough here. There was mean malice, and fierce scorn, and black revenge,
and sinful desire, boiling up in the hearts of these wretched people,
enough to content Mr. Wood's great master himself.
Hayes's business, as we have said, was nominally that of a carpenter;
but since, for the last few years, he had added to it that of a lender
of money, the carpenter's trade had been neglected altogether for one so
much more profitable. Mrs. Hayes had exerted herself, with much
benefit to her husband, in his usurious business. She was a resolute,
clear-sighted, keen woman, that did not love money, but loved to be rich
and push her way in the world. She would have nothing to do with the
trade now, however, and told her husband to manage it himself. She felt
that she was separated from him for ever, and could no more be brought
to consider her interests as connected with his own.
The man was well fitted for the creeping and niggling of his dastardly
trade; and gathered his moneys, and busied himself with his lawyer, and
acted as his own bookkeeper and clerk, not without satisfaction. His
wife's speculations, when they worked in concert, used often to frighten
him. He never sent out his capital without a pang, and only because he
dared not question her superior judgment and will. He began now to lend
no more: he could not let the money out of his sight. His sole pleasure
was to creep up into his room, and count and recount it. When Billings
came into the house, Hayes had taken a room next to that of Wood. It was
a protection to him; for Wood would often rebuke the lad for using Hayes
ill: and both Catherine and Tom treated the old man with deference.
At last--it was after he had collected a good deal of his money--Hayes
began to reason with himself, “Why should I stay?--stay to be insulted
by that boy, or murdered by him? He is ready for any crime.” He
determined to fly. He would send Catherine money every year. No--she had
the furniture; let her let lodgings--that would support her. He would
go, and live away, abroad in some cheap place--away from that boy and
his horrible threats. The idea of freedom was agreeable to the poor
wretch; and he began to wind up his affairs as quickly as he could.
Hayes would now allow no one to make his bed or enter his room; and
Wood could hear him through the panels fidgeting perpetually to and fro,
opening and shutting of chests, and clinking of coin. At the least sound
he would start up, and would go to Billings's door and listen. Wood used
to hear him creeping through the passages, and returning stealthily to
his own chamber.
One day the woman and her son had been angrily taunting him in the
presence of a neighbour. The neighbour retired soon; and Hayes, who had
gone with him to the door, heard, on returning, the voice of Wood in the
parlour. The old man laughed in his usual saturnine way, and said, “Have
a care, Mrs. Cat; for if Hayes were to die suddenly, by the laws, the
neighbours would accuse thee of his death.”
Hayes started as if he had been shot. “He too is in the plot,” thought
he. “They are all leagued against me: they WILL kill me: they are only
biding their time.” Fear seized him, and he thought of flying that
instant and leaving all; and he stole into his room and gathered his
money together. But only a half of it was there: in a few weeks all
would have come in. He had not the heart to go. But that night Wood
heard Hayes pause at HIS door, before he went to listen at Mrs.
Catherine's. “What is the man thinking of?” said Wood. “He is gathering
his money together. Has he a hoard yonder unknown to us all?”
Wood thought he would watch him. There was a closet between the two
rooms: Wood bored a hole in the panel, and peeped through. Hayes had a
brace of pistols, and four or five little bags before him on the table.
One of these he opened, and placed, one by one, five-and-twenty guineas
into it. Such a sum had been due that day--Catherine spoke of it only in
the morning; for the debtor's name had by chance been mentioned in the
conversation. Hayes commonly kept but a few guineas in the house. For
what was he amassing all these? The next day, Wood asked for change
for a twenty-pound bill. Hayes said he had but three guineas. And, when
asked by Catherine where the money was that was paid the day before,
said that it was at the banker's. “The man is going to fly,” said Wood;
“that is sure: if he does, I know him--he will leave his wife without a
shilling.”
He watched him for several days regularly: two or three more bags were
added to the former number. “They are pretty things, guineas,” thought
Wood, “and tell no tales, like bank-bills.” And he thought over the days
when he and Macshane used to ride abroad in search of them.
I don't know what thoughts entered into Mr. Wood's brain; but the next
day, after seeing young Billings, to whom he actually made a present of
a guinea, that young man, in conversing with his mother, said, “Do you
know, mother, that if you were free, and married the Count, I should be
a lord? It's the German law, Mr. Wood says; and you know he was in them
countries with Marlborough.”
“Ay, that he would,” said Mr. Wood, “in Germany: but Germany isn't
England; and it's no use talking of such things.”
“Hush, child!” said Mrs. Hayes, quite eagerly: “how can _I_ marry the
Count? Besides, a'n't I married, and isn't he too great a lord for me?”
“Too great a lord?--not a whit, mother. If it wasn't for Hayes, I might
be a lord now. He gave me five guineas only last week; but curse the
skinflint who never will part with a shilling.”
“It's not so bad as his striking your mother, Tom. I had my stick up,
and was ready to fell him t'other night,” added Mr. Wood. And herewith
he smiled, and looked steadily in Mrs. Catherine's face. She dared not
look again; but she felt that the old man knew a secret that she had
been trying to hide from herself. Fool! he knew it; and Hayes knew it
dimly: and never, never, since that day of the gala, had it left her,
sleeping or waking. When Hayes, in his fear, had proposed to sleep away
from her, she started with joy: she had been afraid that she might talk
in her sleep, and so let slip her horrible confession.
Old Wood knew all her history since the period of the Marylebone fete.
He had wormed it out of her, day by day; he had counselled her how to
act; warned her not to yield; to procure, at least, a certain provision
for her son, and a handsome settlement for herself, if she determined
on quitting her husband. The old man looked on the business in a proper
philosophical light, told her bluntly that he saw she was bent upon
going off with the Count, and bade her take precautions: else she might
be left as she had been before.
Catherine denied all these charges; but she saw the Count daily,
notwithstanding, and took all the measures which Wood had recommended to
her. They were very prudent ones. Galgenstein grew hourly more in love:
never had he felt such a flame; not in the best days of his youth; not
for the fairest princess, countess, or actress, from Vienna to Paris.
At length--it was the night after he had seen Hayes counting his
money-bags--old Wood spoke to Mrs. Hayes very seriously. “That husband
of yours, Cat,” said he, “meditates some treason; ay, and fancies we are
about such. He listens nightly at your door and at mine: he is going to
leave you, be sure on't; and if he leaves you, he leaves you to starve.”
“I can be rich elsewhere,” said Mrs. Cat.
“What, with Max?”
“Ay, with Max: and why not?” said Mrs. Hayes.
“Why not, fool! Do you recollect Birmingham? Do you think that
Galgenstein, who is so tender now because he HASN'T won you, will be
faithful because he HAS? Psha, woman, men are not made so! Don't go to
him until you are sure: if you were a widow now, he would marry you; but
never leave yourself at his mercy: if you were to leave your husband to
go to him, he would desert you in a fortnight!”
She might have been a Countess! she knew she might, but for this cursed
barrier between her and her fortune. Wood knew what she was thinking of,
and smiled grimly.
“Besides,” he continued, “remember Tom. As sure as you leave Hayes
without some security from Max, the boy's ruined: he who might be a
lord, if his mother had but--Psha! never mind: that boy will go on
the road, as sure as my name's Wood. He's a Turpin cock in his eye, my
dear,--a regular Tyburn look. He knows too many of that sort already;
and is too fond of a bottle and a girl to resist and be honest when it
comes to the pinch.”
“It's all true,” said Mrs. Hayes. “Tom's a high mettlesome fellow, and
would no more mind a ride on Hounslow Heath than he does a walk now in
the Mall.”
“Do you want him hanged, my dear?” said Wood.
“Ah, Doctor!”
“It IS a pity, and that's sure,” concluded Mr. Wood, knocking the ashes
out of his pipe, and closing this interesting conversation. “It is a
pity that that old skinflint should be in the way of both your fortunes;
and he about to fling you over, too!”
Mrs. Catherine retired musing, as Mr. Billings had previously done; a
sweet smile of contentment lighted up the venerable features of Doctor
Wood, and he walked abroad into the streets as happy a fellow as any in
London.