When the devil suggests some pleasant but wrong scheme to frail
humanity, his dupes generally find him a most amiable and efficient
patron at the beginning of the enterprise, however he may leave them
in the lurch when the fatal catastrophe approaches. To give that
much-abused personage his due, on the occasion to which we are about to
allude, he adhered to his word like the gentleman Shakspere has declared
him to be, for, as at seven o’clock the very small curtain of the very
“minor” theatre at Tickletown drew up, and the limited orchestra, with
a hoarse, eccentric, and _ad libitum_ bass, left off playing, four
distinguished-looking young gentlemen entered the stage-box, and
arranged the drapery in such manner that, themselves unseen, they might
alike be able to witness the performance and criticise the house, which,
in virtue of its being the fascinating-Courtenay Trevanion’s (_alias_
Jack Sprattly’s) benefit, was crowded by all the rank and fashion of
Tickletown.
Any person who had very closely observed this same box, might have
perceived peeping from under the corner of the red curtain nearest
the stage, a little, eager, restless, excited face, watching with the
deepest and most engrossing interest every trifle that occurred, as
though it presented some great and striking novelty. Had the looker-on
been of a speculative turn of mind, he might have wondered why this
little, bright face, which ought naturally to have expressed nothing but
childish delight and surprise, should have had this expression marred
by an anxious, scared look, which occasionally passed across the boy’s
intelligent features. To the reader, however, this evidence that Hugh
Colville was feeling slightly ill-at-ease, even in the midst of his
enjoyment, need present no mystery. But as the play proceeded, and Polly
made her appearance, looking like a single angel, and singing like a
whole covey of them, interest and delight overpowered conscience; and
when Jack. Sprattly came on in jet black boots and moustachios, and
bright red coat and cheeks, and swaggering about the stage as Macheath,
and looking so charmingly impudent, sang in a rich rollicking tenor,
“How happy could I be with either,” toll-derolling at the end with a
devil-may-care joviality, which produced him three several encores, Hugh
Colville’s delight waxed to such a pitch that he mentally decided, if
the Doctor had suddenly appeared, armed with his stoutest cane, and then
and there varied the performance by flogging him before the faces of the
assembled audience, the exquisite pleasure he enjoyed would have
been cheaply purchased at even that frightful cost. Then followed a
pantomime! Hugh’s first pantomime!
Juvenile reader whose first pantomime is yet to come, mark my words, the
words of one who speaks from experience! You look forward eagerly, no
doubt, to the wonderful time when you shall be a grown-up man, and do as
you please, which you firmly believe will involve always sitting up till
three o’clock in the morning; riding a prancing horse all day; eating
unlimited plum-pudding without uncomfortable consequences; and having
that very pretty little girl next door, with whom you danced--and, in
your small, unassuming way, flirted also--at the children’s ball last
Christmas, grown up into a beautiful wife for you, who will always do
exactly what you wish with her, and never go near Howell and James’s at
any price. You have heard poets and other licensed story-tellers rave
about there being
“Nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream;”
or prate of the delights of ambition; the charms of fame; the pleasures
of hope and of memory; the satisfaction of a good conscience; or the
inestimable blessings of domestic felicity--which, in a general way,
means buying cradles, paying taxes, and settling bills:--you may have
heard all this, and believed much or little of it, as your bump of
veneration happens to be largely developed or otherwise. But what I am
going to tell you is a “great fact;” and do you remember it, and act
upon it accordingly. The happiest time of your life ought to be,
and probably therefore will be, the glorious night on which you, a
light-hearted, merry child, witness your first pantomime!--and you may
go with my compliments to Papa and inform him that I say so.
At all events, Hugh Colville felt strongly that until he had seen a
clown he had been ignorant of the real dignity of human nature, or
the sublime heights to which, properly cultivated, it was capable of
soaring. Columbine also (as enacted by that houri, Rosetta Matilda
Slammock) impressed him with a deep sense of the sylph-like grace and
ethereal purity of woman,--all but the very pink calves of her seraphic
legs, in regard to which, beautiful and praiseworthy as they were,
viewing them in the abstract as mere bounding, pirouetting, sliding,
and gliding machines, he could not help indulging some scruples of
conscience, mentally classing them with unpaid-for toffy, clandestine
nine-pins on Sunday, and the few other examples of the “pleasant, but
wrong” principle, which had come within the limits of his juvenile
experience; and he was just considering that, if Heaven had vouchsafed
to place him in the proud and enviable position of her elder brother, he
should have mildly remonstrated against her making such a very prominent
feature of her legs; when to his surprise and regret, Virtue suddenly
triumphed amidst ablaze of fireworks, and Vice being punished in the
person of the Lurid Wizard of the Forty-locked Murderer’s Cavern, who
was dragged by three supernumerary fiends-to a naughty place under the
stage, the curtain fell, and all was over.
The next phase of the evening was to Hugh one strange and uncomfortable
scene of inexplicable confusion. Biggington, Norman, and his
companions, went behind the scenes, under the auspices of Jack Sprattly,
who did not look nearly so brave and glorious out of his scarlet coat;
and Hugh followed them for fear of being lost, receiving at their hands
much the same kind and degree of attention that a little dog would have
met with.
Of all miserable, desolate, chaotic-looking places, the stage of a
theatre in _dishabille_ is one of the most forlorn. The incomprehensible
machinery for scene-shifting, the frightful backs of all the brilliant
effects, the dirt, the smell of the lamps, the ropes, the rubbish,
the dangerous trap-doors, the tired, sleepy carpenters, the haggard,
snobbish actors, and, worse than all, the pale, hollow-eyed actresses,
with their forced, heartless laughter--a very mockery of mirth--of
all places for destroying illusion, commend me to the region behind
the-scenes as the most dismally effectual.
Biggington, Norman, and Stradwick, having disappeared somewhere within
the mysterious precincts of the green-room where they remained long
enough for Terry to jump over everything, and tumble down everywhere,
and set wrong bells ringing in all kinds of unexpected places, and
have a terrific combat with nobody in virtue of a “property” sword
and buckler wherewith he had illegally armed himself--the party
re-assembled, and without further delay proceeded to “The Bull.”
This remarkable quadruped must have been, in his interesting lifetime,
a most rare and wonderful creature, at least, if he at all resembled his
portrait, which hung creaking on a species of jovial gibbet in front of
the hostelrie bearing his name. The picture certainly _may_ have been a
likeness, but as it represented the bovine original got up, regardless
of expense, in richly-gilt hoofs and horns, with his tail twisted over
his back in the shape of a horizontal figure of eight, ending in a
bright golden flame, while such a cluster of Hyperion curls waved over
his massive-brow, as involuntarily to suggest the idea of his wearing
one of those false fronts, paraded by self-deluding old ladies in the
forlorn hope of deceiving society on the score of their undesirable
longevity, we can scarcely conceive the artist to have adhered to nature
with a proper degree of pre-Raphaelite severity. Be this as it may, the
present proprietor of the Bull had exerted all his energies to provide
a supper commensurate with the dignity and gullibility of the givers
of the feast; and Hugh Colville’s eyes sparkled with delight, when the
goodly array of nice things first met his gaze; for, though by no means
greedy, he was still almost a child, and was a hungry school-boy into
the bargain--need we say more?
Then arrived Courtenay Trevanion (_alias_ Jack Sprattly) and the young
ladies, who from a strict sense of propriety, which was one of their
marked characteristics, had refused to come unless they might be allowed
to bring with them Mrs. Belvidera Fitz-Siddons as _chaperone_. This
great lady, for such she was in every sense of the word, had done
the heavy tragic business for many years with immense _éclat_, until
latterly she had grown too heavy even for that, which fact had been
painfully impressed upon her by reason of her constantly, at harrowing
moments of heart-rending despair, disappearing suddenly from before
the streaming eyes of the astonished audience down traps calculated to
support mortals of moderate (but not immoderate) weight. Finding that
these unexpected disappearances tended to impart a burlesque character
to her acting, rather than to increase the pathos thereof, Mrs. B.
Fitz-Siddons had wisely restricted herself to such parts as suited her
advanced years; and now having, by the trifling addition of sixpence
weekly to his salary, bribed the call-boy to chalk B. T. (beware traps!)
upon all dangerous footing, she still shone in the elderly comic line,
and played Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Backbite to delighted audiences. For
the rest, this illustrious woman rejoiced in a pair of large, bold,
uncomfortable black eyes; a man’s voice, slightly the worse for
wear, and----and a little failing she had in regard to liquor; stiff
horse-hair-like curls, which might have been her own only that she had
a harmless scruple against wasting money on paying her bills; and
a generally hooked outline, so essentially Israelitish, that
her green-room cognomen of “Mother Moses” appeared by no means
inappropriate. Of the young ladies we will only say that, like _all_
young ladies, they were irresistible.
Just at first starting, matters appeared a little dull and unpromising;
the fact being that the two elder Tickletonians, not finding, when put
to the test, that they were quite such thorough men of the world as they
imagined themselves, suffered under an uncomfortable inability to
make small talk; while Jack Sprattly, possessing a most inconvenient
appetite, was so engrossed with the good cheer before him, that
conversation, under the circumstances, became a physical impossibility.
As the supper progressed, however, and more especially when the
champagne (which really was not bad for Tickle-town) had made two or
three rounds, affairs began to brighten. Mrs. Fitz-Siddons, unlike the
voracious Macheath (which hungry highwayman still continued to demolish
a supper more fitted for forty thieves than for one), was able to eat,
drink, and talk at the same moment; and soon, by the cheerful, not to
say jolly, style alike of the sentiments she expressed and of the manner
in which she expressed them, succeeded in placing the “young people,” as
she called them, upon a more friendly footing.
“Cora-lee, my love,” she began (and be it observed, parenthetically,
that this, noble woman spoke with a slight Irish brogue--a philological
fact to be accounted for only by the hypothesis, which she herself
had started on a particular occasion, when she was suffering from a
temporary nervous affection which confused her speech and imparted a
slight unsteadiness to her gait, viz., that her mother must have been
an Irishman), “Cora-lee, my love! don’t ye see Mr. Biggington waiting to
take wine with ye; thank ye, sir, since you’re so very pressing I’ll not
refuse; only up to my thumb, if you please, sir” (as she spoke, she,
with delightful unconsciousness, ran her thumb up the glass as the wine
advanced, until her digit and the champagne reached the brim
simultaneously). “Your health, Mr. Norman, sir; O-phaliur, my darling,
the same to the fortunes of the colville family. Go you;--it’s the
cavalry you’re going into, Mr. Norman, they do tell me, and it’s an
ornament you’ll be to the ridgimint--fine men they are, the Lancers. I’d
a brother in them once; maybe you’ll have heard tell of Major
Fitz-Siddons? Six feet six did he stand in his stocking-soles, till he
fell gloriously leading a forlorn hope at the siege of--of--bless the
name of the place! now I can’t for the life of me lay my tongue to it.”
“Troy, perhaps,” suggested Terry, politely.
“Belleisle, more likely,” put in Jack Sprattly; it was the first word
he had uttered since they sat down, and he had a largish tartlet in his
mouth as he spoke;--swallowing the morsel, he continued in a whisper to
Biggington, next to whom he was seated--
“The major was no major at all, but only a private, and was drummed out
of the regiment for stealing the captain’s shirts.”
Having once found his tongue, which was not until he had more than
satisfied even his uncompromising appetite, Jack proceeded to make use
(we can scarcely in conscience say, good use) of it, to relate all sorts
of anecdotes, theatrical and otherwise, of which the wit was so small
as scarcely to deserve the name, while what ought to have been the moral
was rather the reverse.
Then, quite by accident, another gentleman connected with the theatre
called to speak to Mr. Sprattly, so of course he was invited to join
them, and proved a great acquisition to the party, as it was generally
reported of him that there was no subject, grave or gay, human or
divine, on which he could not perpetrate a bad pun; and certainly on
that evening he did his best, or more correctly, his worst, to justify
popular opinion. And thus a vast amount of nonsense was talked, and many
bottles of wine drunk, until Norman conceived that the time was ripe for
the execution of his project.
It has before been intimated that the apparent friendship existing
between Biggington and Norman was based upon a most false and hollow
foundation,--the truth being that the cock of the school, who was
older than Norman, had, in times past, availed himself of his superior
strength to bully, and impose insults and indignities upon, his junior,
under which the proud spirit of the embryo lancer had chafed, until a
deep thirst for revenge was excited, which he only waited a favourable
opportunity to satisfy. During the previous year, a change had taken
place in their relation to each other. Biggington having grown up, was,
by the immutable laws of nature, prevented from growing any higher,
while Norman, in obedience to the same laws, grew steadily after him
until he also had attained the full stature of man; while, although of a
slighter build, he had so strengthened his frame by athletic exercises,
that he was now no contemptible antagonist even for the colossal
Biggington. That the bully himself was aware of this fact, may be
gathered from the extreme care with which he avoided giving Norman an
opportunity of picking a quarrel with him--a line of policy which, until
the evening in question, had proved most successful. Norman, although
apparently enjoying himself to the utmost, and constantly hastening
the circulation of the decanters, contrived to drink very little wine;
Biggington, on the other hand, who was essentially animal in his tastes,
indulged freely, until the effects became unmistakably apparent in his
flushed cheeks and rapid, thick utterance. During the earlier part
of the evening he had devoted his attentions to the amiable and
accomplished Juliet Elphinstone (_alias_ Betsy Slasher) as he found that
young lady, who was of a singularly affable, not to say free and easy,
disposition, least trouble to get on with; and Biggington hated trouble.
But as Coralie’s diffidence vanished before the influence of the
champagne, and the polished compliments which Norman from time to time
addressed to her not unwilling ears, she laughed and displayed her
white teeth and uttered piquant nothings in the prettiest broken English
imaginable, till she appeared altogether so fascinating, that Biggington
began to perceive he had made a mistake, which the wine he drank
rendered him determined at all hazards to remedy.
Norman, who watched him closely, remarking this, redoubled his
attentions to Coralie, and Biggington’s dissatisfaction and
ill-temper became so unmistakable that they were observed even by
Mrs. Fitz-Siddons, whose troublesome nerves were again beginning to
inconvenience her, as was evinced by a slight disposition towards the
unromantic spasmodic affection popularly termed winking, with which
she punctuated (so to speak) her sentences. Feeling desirous that so
agreeable an evening should end as harmoniously as it had begun, she
tossed off a final bumper of claret (Mrs. Fitz-S. was great at claret),
and, turning to the young ladies, began--
“Cora-lee, my love--O-phaliur, my darling, all that’s bright my dears,
must (_wink_)--the fondest hearts must part; ‘parting is such sweet
sorrow,’ you remember! Not another drop, I’m obleeged to ye, Mr.
Biggington, sir--well, if you will have it so I suppose I must (_wink_);
we weaker vessels you know--”
“Hold as much as the strong ones,” interposed Jack, “and carry it off a
precious sight better too, and no mistake,” he added _sotto voce_ to his
punning friend, glancing towards Biggington as he spoke.
In the meantime, the young ladies having risen, were looking for
their bonnets and mantles. Terry, whose strong point was activity, had
discovered Miss Ophelia’s shawl, and, with many grimaces as of a polite
monkey, had placed it over her shoulders; and Norman was about to
perform the same friendly office by Coralie, when Biggington sprang
to his feet, and advancing with a slight unsteadiness in his gait,
exclaimed in a hoarse, angry voice--
“Give me that shawl directly, Norman; I intend to escort Miss Coralie
home.”
“Excuse me,” was the quiet reply; “having found the shawl, I shall not
yield the privilege of placing it over the fair owner’s shoulders, to
you or any one.”
“Won’t you?” returned Biggington, with an oath; “we’ll soon see that!”
and as he spoke he grasped the shawl with one hand, while he attempted
to push Norman aside with the other.
Drawing back to avoid his grasp, Norman whispered to Terry, “Watch and
see who strikes the first blow, and then lock the door and put the key
in your pocket.”
Irritated at the tenacity with which Norman still retained his hold on
the shawl, Biggington pressed angrily forward, when, by putting out
his foot, Norman contrived to trip him up, while, by a slight push, he
caused him to lose his balance, so that he reeled and would have fallen,
had not Jack Sprattly caught him just at the critical moment. Rendered
furious by the laugh which followed his discomfiture, and losing sight
of his habitual caution from the effects of the wine he had drunk,
Biggington’s savage nature blazed forth in all its full ferocity, and,
springing forward with a bound like that of some wild animal, he aimed a
blow at Norman’s head, which if it had taken effect as it was intended,
would have ended the struggle at once.
But Norman was prepared for such a salute, and, dodging aside, received
the blow on his shoulder, whence it glanced off innocuously; then,
before his antagonist could recover his guard, he rushed in and planted
a well-directed hit on his face, in a direction which was certain to
render him the proprietor of a black eye for the next week to come, at
the very least. Thereupon ensued a grand shindy. Terry, in obedience
to Norman’s directions, having recorded in the tablet of his memory the
fact that Biggington had struck the first blow, hastened to lock the
door and secrete the key; having accomplished these feats, he called
out, “A ring! a ring!” at the same time exhorting the combatants to
take it sweetly and easily, and to fight fair, and like gentlemen of the
sixth form.
The two girls, frightened out of their affectation, shrank into the
farthest corner of the apartment, where they clung to each other in
speechless terror. Mrs. Belvidera Fitz-Siddons, considerably flustered
(no other word could express her exact state of mind so graphically), in
trying to get out of the way, fell first over, and finally upon, a sofa,
where, after making one or two abortive efforts to rise, she remained
uttering incoherent ejaculations to which no one paid the slightest
attention.
Jack Sprattly made a feeble and futile attempt to bring about a
reconciliation; but his friend--who, from being invariably cast as
the benevolent uncle, or philanthropic benefactor, in all the genteel
comedies, had, by a not unnatural reaction, acquired a sanguinary and
democratic habit of mind--drew him back, muttering in a theatrical
whisper--
“Let the serpent-brood of haughty aristocrats prey upon each other,
Jack; there will be more room in the world for the honest sons of
labour.”
In the meantime, after a short but spirited rally, the combatants came
to the ground together, when Terry picked up Norman and gave him a knee,
while Stradwick, frightened out of his wits (the few he possessed), did
the same by Biggington. Five or six rounds ensued; but as Norman, who
was, to begin with, the most scientific pugilist, appeared perfectly
cool and self-possessed, while Biggington was furious with rage, and
excited and bewildered by the wine he had imbibed, each round terminated
in Norman’s favour; he having escaped any disfiguring blow, while his
antagonist’s countenance already showed marks of severe punishment. When
the seventh round commenced, and Norman again succeeded in planting
a well-directed hit on the bridge of his adversary’s nose, it became
evident that the bully’s temporary courage was failing him, and that one
or two more rounds would completely exhaust it.
By this time the landlord of the inn and his myrmidons had been aroused
by the noise, and were clamouring at the door demanding admission; but
so effectually had Terry hidden the key, that Jack Sprattly, unable
to find it, was reduced to shout to them to burst the door open. This,
however, was more easily said than done, for the door was made of stout
oak, and he fastenings were strong and in good repair.
In the eighth round Biggington, rendered furious by pain, pressed so
hard upon Norman that, in avoiding his blows, he entangled his foot in
the carpet, and stumbled, while at the same moment a left-handed hit
from his opponent catching him on the side of his head, brought him to
the ground so violently that, when raised on his seconds knee, he stared
wildly about him and scarcely appeared conscious where he was; but a few
moments served to restore him, and when time was called, he sprang
to his feet with an expression of countenance which showed he meant
mischief.
Biggington, elated by his success, fought with more energy and spirit
than he had shown in the last round or two; but in attempting to end
the conflict by a tremendous hit, he overreached himself, and Norman,
seizing his opportunity, drew back his arm, then flinging it out from
the shoulder, with the force and rapidity of a sledge-hammer, caught his
antagonist a crashing blow between the eyes, before which he went down
like a shot, and when time was again called, he remained stunned and
insensible. At the same moment the fastenings of the door suddenly gave
way, and the landlord and his wife, supported by the entire _dramatis
personae_ of the establishment, appeared upon the scene of action in
various attitudes of terror and amazement.