THE MAN-EATER HUMILIATED. HE ENCOUNTERS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN A
TRAVELLER, WHO, LIKE SHAKESPEARE'S JAQUES, IS "A MELANCHOLY FELLOW";
WHO ALSO, LIKE JAQUES, HATH "GREAT REASON TO BE BAD"; AND WHO, STILL
LIKE JAQUES, IS "FULL OF MATTER."
Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to
the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the
broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men,
he selected--at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and
left, between waste and woodland--the lane that seemed the narrowest and
the dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it mere
mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance--it was
the profound humiliation of diseased self-love--the conviction that, with
all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in
which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. Even the quiet
with which he had escaped was a mortifying recollection. Capture itself
would have been preferable, if capture had been preceded by brawl and
strife--the exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending
over his horse's neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would
he have had!--a new crime on his soul? Perhaps he would have answered,
"Anything rather than this humiliating failure." He did not rack his
brains with conjecturing if Cutts had betrayed him, or by what other mode
assistance had been sent in such time of need to Darrell. Nor did he
feel that hunger for vengeance, whether on Darrell or on his accomplice
(should that accomplice have played the traitor), which might have been
expected from his characteristic ferocity. On the contrary, the thought
of violence and its excitements had in it a sickness as of shame.
Darrell at that hour might have ridden by him scathless. Cutts might
have jeered and said, "I blabbed your secret, and sent the aid that
foiled it"; and Losely would have continued to hang his head, nor lifted
the herculean hand that lay nerveless on the horse's mane. Is it not
commonly so in all reaction from excitements in which self-love has been
keenly galled? Does not vanity enter into the lust of crime as into the
desire of fame?
At sunrise Losely found himself on the high-road into which a labyrinth
of lanes had led him, and opposite to a milestone, by which he learned
that he had been long turning his back on the metropolis, and that he was
about ten miles distant from the provincial city of Ouzelford. By this
time his horse was knocked up, and his own chronic pains began to make
themselves acutely felt; so that, when, a little farther on, he came to a
wayside inn, he was glad to halt; and after a strong drain, which had the
effect of an opiate, he betook himself to bed, and slept till the noon
was far advanced.
When Losely came down-stairs, the common room of the inn was occupied by
a meeting of the trustees of the highroads; and, on demanding breakfast,
he was shown into a small sanded parlour adjoining the kitchen. Two
other occupants--a man and a woman--were there already, seated at a table
by the fireside, over a pint of half-and-half. Losely, warming himself
at the hearth, scarcely noticed these humble revellers by a glance. And
they, after a displeased stare at the stalwart frame which obscured the
cheering glow they had hitherto monopolised, resumed a muttered
conversation; of which, as well as of the vile modicum that refreshed
their lips, the man took the lion's share. Shabbily forlorn were that
man's habiliments--turned and re-turned, patched, darned, weather-
stained, grease-stained--but still retaining that kind of mouldy,
grandiose, bastard gentility, which implies that the wearer has known
better days; and, in the downward progress of fortunes when they once
fall, may probably know still worse.
The woman was some years older than her companion, and still more
forlornly shabby. Her garments seemed literally composed of particles of
dust glued together, while her face might have insured her condemnation
as a witch before any honest jury in the reign of King James the First.
His breakfast, and the brandy-bottle that flanked the loaf, were now
placed before Losely; and, as distastefully he forced himself to eat,
his eye once more glanced towards, and this time rested on, the shabby
man, in the sort of interest with which one knave out of elbows regards
another. As Jasper thus looked, gradually there stole on him a
reminiscence of those coarse large features--that rusty disreputable wig.
The recognition, however, was not mutual; and presently, after a whisper
interchanged between the man and the woman, the latter rose, and
approaching Losely, dropped a curtsey, and said, in a weird, under voice:
"Stranger! luck's in store for you. Tell your fortune!" As she spoke,
from some dust-hole in her garments she produced a pack of cards, on
whose half-obliterated faces seemed incrusted the dirt of ages.
Thrusting these antiquities under Jasper's nose, she added, "Wish and
cut."
"Yshaw," said Jasper, who, though sufficiently superstitious in some
matters and in regard to some persons, was not so completely under the
influence of that imaginative infirmity as to take the creature before
him for a sibyl. "Get away; you turn my stomach. Your cards smell; so
do you!"
"Forgive her, worthy sir," said the man, leaning forward. "The hag may
be unsavoury, but she is wise. The Three Sisters who accosted the
Scottish Thane, sir (Macbeth--you have seen it on the stage?) were not
savoury. Withered, and wild in their attire, sir, but they knew a thing
or two! She sees luck in your face. Cross her hand and give it vent!"
"Fiddledee," said the irreverent Losely. "Take her off, or I shall scald
her," and he seized the kettle.
The hag retreated grumbling; and Losely, soon despatching his meal,
placed his feet 'on the hobs, and began to meditate what course to adopt
for a temporary subsistence. He had broken into the last pound left of
the money which he had extracted from Mrs. Crane's purse some days
before. He recoiled with terror from the thought of returning to town
and placing himself at her mercy. Yet what option had he? While thus
musing, he turned impatiently round, and saw that the shabby man and the
dusty hag were engaged in an amicable game of ecarte, with those very
cards which had so offended his olfactory organs. At that sight the old
instinct of the gambler struggled back; and, raising himself up, he
looked over the cards of the players. The miserable wretches were, of
course, playing for nothing; and Losely saw at a glance that the man was,
nevertheless, trying to cheat the woman! Positively he took that man
into more respect; and that man, noticing the interest with which Losely
surveyed the game, looked up, and said:
"While the time, sir? What say you? A game or two? I can stake my
pistoles--that is, sir, so far as a fourpenny bit goes. If ignorant of
this French game, sir, cribbage or all fours?"
"No," said Losely, mournfully; "there is nothing to be got out of you;
otherwise"--he stopped and sighed. "But I have seen you under other
circumstances. What has become of your Theatrical Exhibition? Gambled
it away? Yet, from what I see of your play, I think you ought not to
have lost, Mr. Rugge."
The ex-manager started.
"What! You knew me before the Storm?--before the lightning struck me,
as I may say, sir--and falling into difficulties, I became-a wreck? You
knew me?--not of the Company?--a spectator?"
"As you say--a spectator. You had once in your employ an actor--clever
old fellow. Waife, I think, he was called."
"Ah! hold! At that name, sir, my wounds bleed afresh. From that
execrable name, sir, there hangs a tale!"
"Indeed! Then it will be a relief to you to tell it," said Losely,
resettling his feet on the hob, and snatching at any diversion from his
own reflections.
"Sir, when a gentleman, who is a gentleman, asks as a favour a specimen
of my powers of recital, not professionally, and has before him the
sparkling goblet, which he does not invite me to share, he insults my
fallen fortunes. Sir, I am poor--I own it; I have fallen into the sere
and yellow leaf, sir; but I have still in this withered bosom the heart
of a Briton!"
"Warm it, Mr. Rugge. Help yourself to the brandy--and the lady too."
"Sir, you are a gentleman; sir, your health. Hag, drink better days to
us both. That woman, sir, is a hag, but she is an honour to her sex-
faithful!"
"It is astonishing how faithful ladies are when not what is called
beautiful. I speak from painful experience," said Losely, growing
debonnair as the liquor relaxed his gloom, and regaining that levity of
tongue which sometimes strayed into wit, and which-springing originally
from animal spirits and redundant health--still came to him mechanically
whenever roused by companionship from alternate intervals of lethargy and
pain. "But, now, Mr. Rugge, I am all ears; perhaps you will be kind
enough to be all tale."
With tragic aspect, unrelaxed by that /jeu de mots/, and still wholly
unrecognising in the massive form and discoloured swollen countenance of
the rough-clad stranger, the elegant proportions, the healthful,
blooming, showy face, and elaborate fopperies of the Jasper Losely who
had sold to him a Phenomenon which proved so evanishing, Rugge entered
into a prolix history of his wrongs at the hands of Waife, of Losely, of
Sophy. Only of Mrs. Crane did he speak with respect; and Jasper then for
the first time learned--and rather with anger for the interference than
gratitude for the generosity--that she had repaid the L100, and thereby
cancelled Rugge's claim upon the child. The ex-manager then proceeded to
the narrative of his subsequent misfortunes--all of which he laid to the
charge of Waife and the Phenomenon. "Sir," said he, "I was ambitious.
From my childhood's hour I dreamed of the great York Theatre--dreamed of
it literally thrice. Fatal Vision! But like other dreams, that dream
would have faded--been forgotten in the workday world--and I should not
have fallen into the sere and yellow, but have had, as formerly, troops
of friends, and not been reduced to the horrors of poverty and a faithful
Hag. But, sir, when I first took to my bosom that fiend William Waife,
he exhibited a genius, sir, that Dowton (you have seen Dowton?--grand)
was a stick as compared with. Then my ambition, sir, blazed and flared
up-obstreperous, and my childhood's dream haunted me; and I went about
musing [Hag, you recollect!]--and muttering 'The Royal Theatre at York.'
But, incredible though it seem, the ungrateful scorpion left me with a
treacherous design to exhibit the parts I had fostered on the London
boards; and even-handed Justice, sir, returned the poisoned chalice to
his lips, causing him to lose an eye and to hobble--besides splitting up
his voice--which served him right. And again I took the scorpion for the
sake of the Phenomenon. I had a babe myself once, sir, though you may
not think it. Gormerick (that is this faithful Hag) gave the babe
Daffy's Elixir, in teething; but it died--convulsions. I comforted
myself when that Phenomenon came out on my stage--in pink satin and
pearls. 'Ha,' I said, 'the great York Theatre shall yet be mine!' The
haunting idea became a Mania, sir. The learned say that there is a Mania
called Money Mania--[Monomania??]--when one can think but of the one
thing needful--as the guilty Thane saw the dagger, sir--you understand.
And when the Phenomenon had vanished and gone, as I was told, to America,
where I now wish I was myself, acting Rolla at New York or elsewhere, to
a free and enlightened people--then, sir, the Mania grew on me still
stronger and stronger. There was a pride in it, sir, a British pride.
"I said to this faithful Hag: 'What--shall I not have the York because
that false child has deserted me? Am I not able to realise a Briton's
ambition without being beholden to a Phenomenon in spangles?' Sir, I
took the York! Alone I did it!"
"And," said Losely, feeling a sort of dreary satisfaction in listening to
the grotesque sorrows of one whose condition seemed to him yet more
abject than his own--"And the York Theatre alone perhaps did you."
"Right, sir," said Rugge--half-dolorously, half-exultingly. "It was a
Grand Concern, and might have done for the Bank of England! It swallowed
up my capital with as much ease, sir, as I could swallow an oyster if
there were one upon that plate! I saw how it would be, the very first
week--when I came out myself, strong--Kean's own part in the Iron Chest
--Mortimer, sir; there warn't three pounds ten in the house--packed
audience, sir, and they had the face to hiss me. 'Hag,' said I to Mrs.
Gormerick, 'this Theatre is a howling wilderness.' But there is a
fascination in a Grand Concern, of which one is the head--one goes on and
on. All the savings of a life devoted to the British Drama and the
production of native genius went in what I may call--a jiffey! But it
was no common object, sir, to your sight displayed--but what with
pleasure, sir (I appeal to the Hag), Heaven itself surveyed!--a great man
struggling, sir, with the storms of fate, and greatly falling, sir, with
--a sensation! York remembers it to this day! I took the benefit of the
Act--it was the only benefit I did take--and nobody was the better for
it. But I don't repine--I realised my dream: that is more than all can
say. Since then I have had many downs, and no ups. I have been a
messenger, sir--a prompter, sir, in my own Exhibition, to which my own
clown, having married into the tragic line, succeeded, sir, as
proprietor; buying of me when I took the York, the theatre, scenery, and
properties, sir, with the right still to call himself 'Rugge's Grand
Theatrical Exhibition,' for an old song, sir--Melancholy. Tyrannised
over, sir--snubbed and bullied by a creature dressed in a little brief
authority; and my own tights--scarlet--as worn by me in my own applauded
part of 'The Remorseless Baron.' At last, with this one faithful
creature, I resolved to burst the chains--to be free as air--in short, a
chartered libertine, sir. We have not much, but thank the immortal gods,
we are independent, sir--the Hag and I--chartered libertines! And we are
alive still--at which, in strict confidence, I may own to you that I am
astonished."
"Yes! you do live," said Jasper, much interested--for how to live at all
was at that moment a matter of considerable doubt to himself; "you do
live--it is amazing! How?"
"The Faithful tells fortunes; and sometimes we pick up windfalls--widows
and elderly single ladies--but it is dangerous. Labour is sweet, sir:
but not hard labour in the dungeons of a Bridewell. She has known that
labour, sir; and in those intervals I missed her much, Don't cry, Hag; "I
repeat, I live!"
"I understand now; you live upon her! They are the best of creatures,
these hags, as you call them, certainly. Well, well, no saying what a
man may come to! I suppose you have never seen Waife, nor that fellow
you say was so well-dressed and good-looking, and who sold you the
Phenomenon, nor the Phenomenon herself--Eh?" added Losely, stretching
himself, and yawning, as he saw the brandybottle was finished.
"I have seen Waife--the one-eyed monster! Aha!--I have seen him!--and
yesterday too; and a great comfort it was to me too!"
"You saw Waife yesterday--where?"
"At Ouzelford, which I and the Faithful left this morning."
"And what was he doing?" said Losely, with well-simulated indifference.
"Begging, breaking stones, or what?"
"No," said Rugge, dejectedly; "I can't say it was what, in farcical
composition, I should call such nuts to me as that, sir. Still, he was
in a low way--seemed a pedlar or a hawker, selling out of a pannier on
the Rialto--I mean the Cornmarket, sir--not even a hag by his side, only
a great dog--French. A British dog would have scorned such fellowship.
And he did not look merry as he used to do when in my troop. Did he,
Hag?"
"His conscience smites him," said the Hag, solemnly.
"Did you speak to him?"
"Why, no. I should have liked it, but we could not at that moment,
seeing that we were not in our usual state of independence. This
faithful creature was being led before the magistrates, and I too--charge
of cheating a cook-maid, to whom the Hag had only said, 'that if the
cards spoke true, she would ride in her carriage.' The charge broke
down; but we were placed for the night in the Cells of the Inquisition,
remanded, and this morning banished from the city, and are now on our way
to--any other city;--eh, Hag?"
"And the old man was not with the Phenomenon? What has become of her,
then?"
"Perhaps she may be with him at his house, if he has one; only, she was
not with him on the Rialto or Cornmarket. She was with him two years
ago, I know; and he and she were better off then than he is now, I
suspect. And that is why it did me good, sir, to see him a pedlar--
a common pedlar--fallen into the sere, like the man he abandoned!"
"Humph--where were they two years ago?"
"At a village not far from Humberston. He had a pretty house, sir, and
sold baskets; and the girl was there too, favoured by a great lady--a
Marchioness, sir! Gods!"
"Marchioness?--near Humberston? The Marchioness of Montfort, I suppose?"
"Likely enough; I don't remember. All I know is, that two years ago my
old Clown was my tyrannical manager; and being in that capacity, and this
world being made for Caesar, which is a shame, sir, he said to me, with a
sneer, 'Old Gentleman Waife, whom you used to bully, and his Juliet
Araminta, are in clover!' And the mocking varlet went on to unfold a
tale to the effect, that when he had last visited Humberston, in the
race-week, a young tradesman, who was courting the Columbine, whose young
idea I myself taught to shoot on the light fantastic toe, treated that
Columbine, and one of her sister train (being, indeed, her aunt, who has
since come out at the Surrey in Desdemona) to a picnic in a fine park.
(That's discipline!--ha, ha!) And there, sir, Columbine and her aunt saw
Waife on the other side of a stream by which they sate carousing."
"The Clown perhaps said it to spite you."
"Columbine herself confirmed his tale, and said that on returning to the
Village Inn for the Triumphal Car (or bus) which brought them, she asked
if a Mr. Waife dwelt thereabouts, and was told, 'Yes, with his grand-
daughter.' And she went on asking, till all came out as the Clown
reported. And Columbine had not even the gratitude, the justice, to
expose that villain--not even to say he had been my perfidious servant!
She had the face to tell me 'she thought it might harm him, and he was a
kind old soul.' Sir, a Columbine whose toes I had rapped scores of times
before they could be turned out, was below contempt! but when my own
Clown thus triumphed over me, in parading before my vision the bloated
prosperity of mine enemy, it went to my heart like a knife; and we had
words on it, sir, and--I left him to his fate. But a pedlar! Gentleman
Waife has come to that! The heavens are just, sir, and of our pleasant
vices, sir, make instruments that--that--"
"Scourge us," prompted the Hag, severely.
Losely rang the bell; the maid-servant appeared. "My horse and bill.
Well, Mr. Rugge, I must quit your agreeable society. I am not
overflowing with wealth at this moment, or I would request your
acceptance of--"
"The smallest trifle," interrupted the Hag, with her habitual solemnity
of aspect.
Losely, who, in his small way, had all the liberality of a Catiline,
"/alieni appetens, sui profusus/," drew forth the few silver coins yet
remaining to him; and though he must have calculated that, after paying
his bill, there could scarcely be three shillings left, he chucked two of
them towards the Hag, who, clutching them with a profound curtsey, then
handed them to the fallen monarch by her side, with a loyal tear and a
quick sob that might have touched the most cynical republican.
In a few minutes more, Losely was again on horseback; and as he rode
towards Ouzelford, Rugge and his dusty Faithful shambled on in the
opposite direction--shambled on, footsore and limping, along the wide,
waste, wintry thoroughfare--vanishing from the eye, as their fates
henceforth from this story. There they go by the white hard milestone;
farther on, by the trunk of the hedgerow-tree, which lies lopped and
leafless--cumbering the wayside, till the time come to cast it off to the
thronged, dull stackyard. Farther yet, where the ditch widens into yon
stagnant pool, with the great dung-heap by its side. There the road
turns aslant; the dung-heap hides them. Gone! and not a speck on the
Immemorial, Universal Thoroughfare.