CHAPTER II. THE HERITAGE OF THE SON
CHAPTER III. THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHEARS
CHAPTER IV. ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
CHAPTER V. THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL
CHAPTER VI. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER VII. MOTHER AND SON
CHAPTER VIII. INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
CHAPTER IX. THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
CHAPTER X. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
CHAPTER XI. DOINGS AT AN INN
CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH ALE IS SHOWN TO HAVE ONE QUALITY OF WINE
CHAPTER XIII. THE MATCH OF FALLOW FIELD AGAINST BECKLEY
CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNTESS DESCRIBES THE FIELD OF ACTION
CHAPTER XV. A CAPTURE
CHAPTER XVI. LEADS TO A SMALL SKIRMISH BETWEEN ROSE AND EVAN
CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH EVAN WRITES HIMSELF TAILOR
CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN
CHAPTER XIX. SECOND DESPATCH OF THE COUNTESS
CHAPTER XX. BREAK-NECK LEAP
CHAPTER XXI. TRIBULATIONS AND TACTICS OF THE COUNTESS
CHAPTER XXII. IN WHICH THE DAUGHTERS OF THE GREAT MEL HAVE TO DIGEST HIM AT DINNER
CHAPTER XXIII. TREATS OF A HANDKERCHIEF
CHAPTER XXIV. THE COUNTESS MAKES HERSELF FELT
CHAPTER XXV. IN WHICH THE STREAM FLOWS MUDDY AND CLEAR
CHAPTER XXVI. MRS. MEL MAKES A BED FOR HERSELF AND FAMILY
CHAPTER XXVII. EXHIBITS ROSE’S GENERALSHIP; EVAN’S PERFORMANCE ON THE SECOND FIDDLE; AND THE WRETCHEDNESS OF THE COUNTESS
CHAPTER XXVIII. TOM COGGLESEY’S PROPOSITION
CHAPTER XXIX. PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER XXX. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART I.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART II.
CHAPTER XXXII. IN WHICH EVAN’S LIGHT BEGINS TO TWINKLE AGAIN
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE HERO TAKES HIS RANK IN THE ORCHESTRA
CHAPTER XXXIV. A PAGAN SACRIFICE
CHAPTER XXXV. ROSE WOUNDED
CHAPTER XXXVI. BEFORE BREAKFAST
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY
CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK
CHAPTER XXXIX. IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM
CHAPTER XL. IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME
CHAPTER XLI. REVEALS AN ABOMINABLE PLOT OF THE BROTHERS COGGLESBY
CHAPTER XLII. JULIANA
CHAPTER XLIII. ROSE
CHAPTER XLIV. CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS
CHAPTER XLV. IN WHICH THE SHOP BECOMES THE CENTRE OF ATTRACTION
CHAPTER XLVI. A LOVERS’ PARTING
CHAPTER XLVII. A YEAR LATER, THE COUNTESS DE SALDAR DE SANCORVO TO HER SISTER CAROLINE
CHAPTER I.
ABOVE BUTTONS
Long after the hours when tradesmen are in the habit of commencing
business, the shutters of a certain shop in the town of
Lymport-on-the-Sea remained significantly closed, and it became known
that death had taken Mr. Melchisedec Harrington, and struck one off the
list of living tailors. The demise of a respectable member of this
class does not ordinarily create a profound sensation. He dies, and his
equals debate who is to be his successor: while the rest of them who
have come in contact with him, very probably hear nothing of his great
launch and final adieu till the winding up of cash-accounts; on which
occasions we may augur that he is not often blessed by one or other of
the two great parties who subdivide this universe. In the case of Mr.
Melchisedec it was otherwise. This had been a grand man, despite his
calling, and in the teeth of opprobrious epithets against his craft. To
be both generally blamed, and generally liked, evinces a peculiar
construction of mortal. Mr. Melchisedec, whom people in private called
the great Mel, had been at once the sad dog of Lymport, and the pride
of the town. He was a tailor, and he kept horses; he was a tailor, and
he had gallant adventures; he was a tailor, and he shook hands with his
customers. Finally, he was a tradesman, and he never was known to have
sent in a bill. Such a personage comes but once in a generation, and,
when he goes, men miss the man as well as their money.
That he was dead, there could be no doubt. Kilne, the publican
opposite, had seen Sally, one of the domestic servants, come out of the
house in the early morning and rush up the street to the doctor’s,
tossing her hands; and she, not disinclined to dilute her grief, had,
on her return, related that her master was then at his last gasp, and
had refused, in so many words, to swallow the doctor.
“‘I won’t swallow the doctor!’ he says, ‘I won’t swallow the doctor!’”
Sally moaned. “‘I never touched him,’ he says, ‘and I never will.’”
Kilne angrily declared, that in his opinion, a man who rejected
medicine in extremity, ought to have it forced down his throat: and
considering that the invalid was pretty deeply in Kilne’s debt, it
naturally assumed the form of a dishonest act on his part; but Sally
scornfully dared any one to lay hand on her master, even for his own
good. “For,” said she, “he’s got his eyes awake, though he do lie so
helpless. He marks ye!”
“Ah! ah!” Kilne sniffed the air. Sally then rushed back to her duties.
“Now, there’s a man!” Kilne stuck his hands in his pockets and began
his meditation: which, however, was cut short by the approach of his
neighbour Barnes, the butcher, to whom he confided what he had heard,
and who ejaculated professionally, “Obstinate as a pig!” As they stood
together they beheld Sally, a figure of telegraph, at one of the
windows, implying that all was just over.
“Amen!” said Barnes, as to a matter-of-fact affair.
Some minutes after, the two were joined by Grossby, the confectioner,
who listened to the news, and observed:
“Just like him! I’d have sworn he’d never take doctor’s stuff”; and,
nodding at Kilne, “liked his medicine best, eh?”
“Had a-hem!—good lot of it,” muttered Kilne, with a suddenly serious
brow.
“How does he stand on your books?” asked Barnes.
Kilne shouldered round, crying: “Who the deuce is to know?”
“I don’t,” Grossby sighed. “In he comes with his ‘Good morning,
Grossby, fine day for the hunt, Grossby,’ and a ten-pound note. ‘Have
the kindness to put that down in my favour, Grossby.’ And just as I am
going to say, ‘Look here,—this won’t do,’ he has me by the collar, and
there’s one of the regiments going to give a supper party, which he’s
to order; or the Admiral’s wife wants the receipt for that pie; or in
comes my wife, and there’s no talking of business then, though she may
have been bothering about his account all the night beforehand.
Something or other! and so we run on.”
“What I want to know,” said Barnes, the butcher, “is where he got his
tenners from?”
Kilne shook a sagacious head: “No knowing!”
“I suppose we shall get something out of the fire?” Barnes suggested.
“That depends!” answered the emphatic Kilne.
“But, you know, if the widow carries on the business,” said Grossby,
“there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get it all, eh?”
“There ain’t two that can make clothes for nothing, and make a profit
out of it,” said Kilne.
“That young chap in Portugal,” added Barnes, “he won’t take to
tailoring when he comes home. D’ye think he will?”
Kilne muttered: “Can’t say!” and Grossby, a kindly creature in his way,
albeit a creditor, reverting to the first subject of their discourse,
ejaculated, “But what a one he was!—eh?”
“Fine!—to look on,” Kilne assented.
“Well, he was like a Marquis,” said Barnes.
Here the three regarded each other, and laughed, though not loudly.
They instantly checked that unseemliness, and Kilne, as one who rises
from the depths of a calculation with the sum in his head, spoke quite
in a different voice:
“Well, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn? No use standing
here.”
By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee
Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and
partake of a morning draught. Barnes, the butcher, had no objection
whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the
occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive
them. In single file these mourners entered the publican’s house, where
Kilne, after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important
question, what it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence
in his views as to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of
the drink best befitting that early hour and the speaker’s particular
constitution, poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.
“Here’s to him, poor fellow!” said Kilne; and was deliberately echoed
twice.
“Now, it wasn’t that,” Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the
midst of a smacking of lips, “that wasn’t what got him into
difficulties. It was expensive luckshries. It was being above his
condition. Horses! What’s a tradesman got to do with horses? Unless
he’s retired! Then he’s a gentleman, and can do as he likes. It’s no
use trying to be a gentleman if you can’t pay for it. It always ends
bad. Why, there was he, consorting with gentlefolks—gay as a lark! Who
has to pay for it?”
Kilne’s fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.
“I’m not saying anything against him now,” the publican further
observed. “It’s too late. And there! I’m sorry he’s gone, for one. He
was as kind a hearted a man as ever breathed. And there! perhaps it was
just as much my fault; I couldn’t say ‘No’ to him,—dash me, if I
could!”
Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much-despised
British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy
soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments—just
to freshen the account—and a surety that he who debits is on the spot,
to be a right royal king of credit. Only the account must never drivel.
“Stare aut crescere” appears to be his feeling on that point, and the
departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for the
running on of the account looked deplorable and extraordinary now that
Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, and it
was precisely his doing so which had prevented it from being brought to
a summary close long before.
Both Barnes, the butcher, and Grossby, the confectioner, confessed that
they, too, found it hard ever to say “No” to him, and, speaking
broadly, never could.
“Except once,” said Barnes, “when he wanted me to let him have a ox to
roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out
against him on that. ‘No, no,’ says I, ‘I’ll joint him for ye, Mr.
Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home’;—ha!
ha!”
“Just like him!” said Grossby, with true enjoyment of the princely
disposition that had dictated the patriotic order.
“Oh!—there!” Kilne emphasized, pushing out his arm across the bar, as
much as to say, that in anything of such a kind, the great Mel never
had a rival.
“That ‘Marquis’ affair changed him a bit,” said Barnes.
“Perhaps it did, for a time,” said Kilne. “What’s in the grain, you
know. He couldn’t change. He would be a gentleman, and nothing’d stop
him.”
“And I shouldn’t wonder but what that young chap out in Portugal’ll
want to be one, too; though he didn’t bid fair to be so fine a man as
his father.”
“More of a scholar,” remarked Kilne. “That I call his worst
fault—shilly-shallying about that young chap. I mean his.” Kilne
stretched a finger toward the dead man’s house. “First, the young
chap’s to be sent into the Navy; then it’s the Army; then he’s to be a
judge, and sit on criminals; then he goes out to his sister in
Portugal; and now there’s nothing but a tailor open to him, as I see,
if we’re to get our money.”
“Ah! and he hasn’t got too much spirit to work to pay his father’s
debts,” added Barnes. “There’s a business there to make any man’s
fortune—properly _di_rected, _I_ say. But, I suppose, like father like
son, he’ll becoming the Marquis, too. He went to a gentleman’s school,
and he’s had foreign training. I don’t know what to think about it. His
sisters over there—they were fine women.”
“Oh! a fine family, every one of ’em! and married well!” exclaimed the
publican.
“I never had the exact rights of that ‘Marquis’ affair,” said Grossby;
and, remembering that he had previously laughed knowingly when it was
alluded to, pursued: “Of course I heard of it at the time, but how did
he behave when he was blown upon?”
Barnes undertook to explain; but Kilne, who relished the narrative
quite as well, and was readier, said: “Look here! I’ll tell you. I had
it from his own mouth one night when he wasn’t—not quite himself. He
was coming down King William Street, where he stabled his horse, you
know, and I met him. He’d been dining out-somewhere out over
Fallowfield, I think it was; and he sings out to me, ‘Ah! Kilne, my
good fellow!’ and I, wishing to be equal with him, says, ‘A fine night,
my lord!’ and he draws himself up—he smelt of good company—says he,
‘Kilne! I’m not a lord, as you know, and you have no excuse for
mistaking me for one, sir!’ So I pretended I had mistaken him, and then
he tucked his arm under mine, and said, ‘You’re no worse than your
betters, Kilne. They took me for one at Squire Uplift’s to-night, but a
man who wishes to pass off for more than he is, Kilne, and impose upon
people, he says, ‘he’s contemptible, Kilne! contemptible!’ So that, you
know, set me thinking about ‘Bath’ and the ‘Marquis,’ and I couldn’t
help smiling to myself, and just let slip a question whether he had
enlightened them a bit. ‘Kilne,’ said he, ‘you’re an honest man, and a
neighbour, and I’ll tell you what happened. The Squire,’ he says,
‘likes my company, and I like his table. Now the Squire’d never do a
dirty action, but the Squire’s nephew, Mr. George Uplift, he can’t
forget that I earn my money, and once or twice I have had to correct
him.’ And I’ll wager Mel did it, too! Well, he goes on: ‘There was
Admiral Sir Jackson Racial and his lady, at dinner, Squire Falco of
Bursted, Lady Barrington, Admiral Combleman—our admiral, that was; “Mr.
This and That”, I forget their names—and other ladies and gentlemen
whose acquaintance I was not honoured with.’ You know his way of
talking. ‘And there was a goose on the table,’ he says; and, looking
stern at me, ‘Don’t laugh yet!’ says he, like thunder. ‘Well, he goes
on: Mr. George caught my eye across the table, and said, so as not to
be heard by his uncle, “If that bird was rampant, you would see your
own arms, Marquis.”’ And Mel replied, quietly for him to hear, “And as
that bird is couchant, Mr. George, you had better look to your sauce.”
Couchant means squatting, you know. That’s heraldry! Well, that wasn’t
bad sparring of Mel’s. But, bless you! he was never taken aback, and
the gentlefolks was glad enough to get him to sit down amongst ’em. So,
says Mr. George, ‘I know you’re a fire-eater, Marquis,’ and his dander
was up, for he began marquising Mel, and doing the mock polite at such
a rate, that, by-and-by, one of the ladies who didn’t know Mel called
him ‘my lord’ and ‘his lordship.’ ‘And,’ says Mel, ‘I merely bowed to
her, and took no notice.’ So that passed off: and there sits Mel
telling his anecdotes, as grand as a king. And, by-and-by, young Mr.
George, who hadn’t forgiven Mel, and had been pulling at the bottle
pretty well, he sings out, ‘It’s Michaelmas! the death of the goose!
and I should like to drink the Marquis’s health!’ and he drank it
solemn. But, as far as I can make out, the women part of the company
was a little in the dark. So Mel waited till there was a sort of a
pause, and then speaks rather loud to the Admiral, ‘By the way, Sir
Jackson, may I ask you, has the title of Marquis anything to do with
tailoring?’ Now Mel was a great favourite with the Admiral, and with
his lady, too, they say—and the Admiral played into his hands, you see,
and, says he, ‘I’m not aware that it has, Mr. Harrington.’ And he
begged for to know why he asked the question—called him, ‘Mister,’ you
understand. So Mel said, and I can see him now, right out from his
chest he spoke, with his head up—‘When I was a younger man, I had the
good taste to be fond of good society, and the bad taste to wish to
appear different from what I was in it’: that’s Mel speaking; everybody
was listening; so he goes on: ‘I was in the habit of going to Bath in
the season, and consorting with the gentlemen I met there on terms of
equality; and for some reason that I am quite guiltless of,’ says Mel,
‘the hotel people gave out that I was a Marquis in disguise; and, upon
my honour, ladies and gentlemen—I was young then, and a fool—I could
not help imagining I looked the thing. At all events, I took upon
myself to act the part, and with some success, and considerable
gratification; for, in my opinion,’ says Mel, ‘no real Marquis ever
enjoyed his title so much as I did. One day I was in my shop—No. 193,
Main Street, Lymport—and a gentleman came in to order his outfit. I
received his directions, when suddenly he started back, stared at me,
and exclaimed:
“My dear Marquis! I trust you will pardon me for having addressed you
with so much familiarity.” I recognized in him one of my Bath
acquaintances. That circumstance, ladies and gentlemen, has been a
lesson to me. Since that time I have never allowed a false impression
with regard to my position to exist. I desire,’ says Mel, smiling, ‘to
have my exact measure taken everywhere; and if the Michaelmas bird is
to be associated with me, I am sure I have no objection; all I can say
is, that I cannot justify it by letters patent of nobility.’ That’s how
Mel put it. Do you think they thought worse of him? I warrant you he
came out of it in flying colours. Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness
in their inferiors—that’s what they do. Ah!” said Kilne, meditatively,
“I see him now, walking across the street in the moonlight, after he’d
told me that. A fine figure of a man! and there ain’t many Marquises to
match him.”
To this Barnes and Grossby, not insensible to the merits of the recital
they had just given ear to, agreed. And with a common voice of praise
in the mouths of his creditors, the dead man’s requiem was sounded.