Britton at the Chequers.—The Visit.—A Mysterious Stranger.—The Good
Company.
Britton, the smith, was in truth a great man at the Chequers, in
Westminster. His love of liquor suited the landlord amazingly, and his
custom, when the whim took him, of treating everybody who happened to
be present, turned out an exceeding good speculation for mine host.
Sots and topers came from far and near to the Chequers, upon the chance
of a treat from “King Britton,” as he was commonly called, and they
would wait patiently drinking at their own proper costs until the smith
got intoxicated enough to act the great man, and order drink for all at
his own expense.
This acted well for the landlord, whose liquor was constantly kept
flowing at some one’s expense, and he put up patiently with the brutal
jests of the smith, many of them being accompanied with personal
ill-usage, rather then turn the tide of prosperity that was pouring
into his house.
Many were the conjectures as to the source of Britton’s ample means;
but although all supposed them to proceed from some not over honest
means, all were so much interested in their continuance that the
curiosity excited produced no further result than whispered expressions
of wonder and wise shakes of the head.
It was true that Britton had been watched to Learmont’s house, but it
never for a moment entered the heads of the busybodies at the Chequers
that he visited the great Squire Learmont himself, and whether or not
he had some accomplice at Learmont’s house, which enabled him to rob
the wealthy squire, was the only thought suggested by tracing him more
than once to the hall door of Learmont’s princely and much talked of
abode.
Daylight was commonly shut out of the old oaken parlour of the Chequers
before it was all necessary, by the orders of Britton, who found
himself more at home and enjoyed his liquor better by candle or
lamplight than with a bright setting sun streaming in upon his drunken
orgies.
It was upon one of these occasions that the shutters had been closed by
the obsequious landlord at least an hour earlier than necessary, and
for which he had been rewarded by a crack on the pate with a pewter ale
measure, and that made him dance again, that a more than usually
thronged company filled the parlor of the ancient house.
Britton sat in an arm-chair in the first stage of intoxication. His
eyes were inflamed and blood-shot, and his whole visage betrayed the
debasing influence of habitual drunkenness. He wore a strange mixture
of clothing; a richly-laced coat which he had bought from the window of
a tailor, who had only charged him double price for it and a kick,
contrasted oddly with a coarse red night-cap that he wore, and the pipe
stuck in the buttonholes of the rich laced waistcoat, presented a
strange anomaly of elegance and vulgarity.
The company were some smoking, some drinking, and some talking; but it
was easy to see that the general attention was fixed upon Britton, who
there sat, as he considered, in his glory.
“Landlord!” he roared, in a voice that made the glasses ring again.
“Landlord! I say, curse on you for a sluggish hand, come hither!
Where’s your respect for your king, you keeper of bad butts—you thief,
you purloiner of honester men’s sack?—Come hither, I say.”
“Ha!—Ha!” laughed a man, who had come a long way to chance a treat at
the Chequers—“Ha!—Ha!—That’s good. Ho!—Ho!”
“Who are you?” roared Britton.
“I—I—oh—I—I—am—a cordwainer from the Borough, sir.”
“How dare you call me, ‘Sir?’”
“Why—a—a—really—”
Some one here charitably whispered to the cordwainer the fact of
Britton’s kingly dignity! And with many winks and nods he corrected
himself, and said,—
“I humbly beg your majesty’s most gracious pardon.”
“You be d—d!” said Britton. “You are a cordwainer, are you?—A cobbler,
you mean—a patcher of leaks in bad shoes. Hark ye, Mr. Cordwainer, the
next time you presume to laugh at anything I say, I’ll make a leak in
your head.”
“May it please you, King Britton,” interposed the landlord, “I am here!”
“No you ain’t,” cried Britton, tripping up the landlord, who forthwith
fell flat on the floor, “you are there!”
This was a stock joke, and was perpetrated nearly every evening; so the
company laughed accordingly, particularly those who had seen and heard
it before, the new-comers not being fully up to the wit of it.
Here the landlord rose, and rubbing the injured part of his person,
said with a groan,—
“Well, gentlemen, did you ever know the like of that?”
“Here, come back with a bowl of punch,” cried Britton; “and, do you
hear, some spiced canary—come, quick!”
“May I venture to ask!” said the landlord, still affecting to writhe
with pain, “if the spiced canary is to be all round?”
“No, you may not ask!” said Britton; “off with you!”
“We’ll drink your majesty’s health,” said a pale thin man, with great
humility.
“Oh, you will, will you?” said Britton.
“We will—we will,” cried many voices.
“Drink away, then!” roared Britton.
“Your majesty has not yet ordered anything for us to drink,” said one.
“No, no, his majesty don’t mean,” said Britton. “You are a set of
rascals—thieves all.”
“Ah,” said the cordwainer, casting his eyes up to the fly-cage that
hung from the centre of the ceiling, “there is a great deal of
dishonesty in the world.”
“There ain’t, and you are a liar!” cried Britton.
At this moment the door was flung open, and a wild figure stood in the
entrance taking up the laugh of the guests in a strange discordant
tone, and pointing the while at the smith with exultant look.
Britton started from his chair, but he was scarcely able to stand, and
staggering into it again, he muttered,—
“Mad Maud, by all that is damnable!”
“Britton—Andrew Britton!” shrieked Maud, clapping her hands together “I
have found you—Ha!—Ha!—Ha!—I have found you!”
The persons assembled in the parlour looked at each other in speechless
amazement, and the majority of them in the excitement of the moment
finished at once whatever liquor they had before them.
“Britton!—Britton!” shrieked Maud, “are you not glad to see me? I heard
your voice—too well I know it! Oh, oh, I was passing—I was crawling
past this door when your voice struck upon my ear. Andrew Britton, I
won’t leave you now! Stop, stop—yes, I must do my errand. I had it from
one of bright things that live among the stars—I must do my errand.”
She fumbled for a time among her strange mass of many-coloured
clothing, and produced at length a small piece of paper. She gazed at
it for a moment, and then kissed it devotedly.
“It saves me from horror,” she said, in a low, unusual tone. “It saves
me from cramp and colds, from the frost and the scorching heat, but I
am bound to show it to you—all of you shall see it. It is blessed, and
was given to poor Mad Maud by the bright spirit. Look, do—you, and you,
and you. Are they not brave words—words to save and bless?”
She glided among the guests, and held for a moment before the eyes of
each the slip of paper that Ada had given her, till she came near the
smith, when she replaced it in her bosom, saying,—
“Not to you, man of blood—not to you. Ho!—Ho! Andrew Britton, not to
you!”
The smith had sat till now as if paralyzed; but, when Maud was making
for the door, he suddenly cried with a tone of anger, while his face
swelled with wild passion,—
“Hold—stop that witch! Kill her—tear her to pieces—curses on her!”
He rushed forward as he spoke, and would most probably have done the
poor creature some fatal injury, had he not been suddenly stopped by a
tall, stout man, who rushed from a corner of the room, upsetting
several persons in his progress, and placed himself before Maud.
“Stop!” he cried, in a voice of command—“touch the woman at your peril.”
For a moment Britton paused, while his face worked with fury, and he
more nearly resembled some wild animal at bay than a human being.
Suddenly, then, collecting all his energies, he sprang forward with a
cry of rage; but the stranger adroitly stepped on one side, at the same
time that he threw a chair, on which he had his hand, across Britton’s
path, who fell over it with great violence. Britton lay a moment as if
stunned by the fall, and several of the company began to cry shame upon
the stranger, who stood quite calm awaiting the rise of his foe.
The landlord, however, who had witnessed some of the affair from the
bar, now rushed in in a state of great indignation with the stranger,
for not allowing King Britton to do just what he liked.
“Troop out of my house,” he cried. “How dare you insult a customer of
mine? Troop, I say. Go after your pretended mad woman. You want to rob
the house, both of you. Troop, I say.”
“Suppose I won’t go?” said the stranger.
“Then suppose I make you, you vagabond?” cried the enraged landlord.
“You can’t,” said the stranger.
“Now by the mass that beats all the impudence ever I heard of,” cried
the landlord. “Here, Gregory—Gregory! My staff! We will have this
fellow out in the king’s name. My staff, I say! Was there ever such a
rogue to assault my best customers; and then not run away.”
The stranger laughed in spite of himself at this last remark of the
landlord’s and turning to the company, he said,—
“Every one here present can witness that I only interfered with this
drunken ruffian to prevent him from committing an assault upon a
maniac, and his present condition arises partly from intoxication, and
partly from falling over a chair in an attempt to attack me.”
“You are a scoundrel,” said the landlord.
“Out with him! Turn him out!” cried the company, with one voice.
“My staff! My staff!” roared the landlord, gathering courage from the
unanimous support he seemed likely to receive.
“You need not trouble yourself for your staff,” said the stranger, “I
am going, and if you required a staff, I, could lend you mine, friend.”
The stranger took from his pocket, as he spoke, a small bright silver
staff.
“W—w—what! Who—who are you?” stammered the landlord.
“It matters not just now who I am,” said the stranger, “but look to
your house, sir—it has grown disorderly of late.”
With a slow step the stranger then left the room, amid an universal
stare of astonishment from the company.
“Well, I never—” cried the landlord, “a silver staff! He belongs to the
office of the High Bailiff of Westminster, as I’m a sinner.”
“And yet you wanted to turn him out,” said the cordwainer.
“Landlord, you are an intemperate man,” said another.
“The landlord’s a fool,” cried a third.
“Not to know an officer!” cried a fourth.
“Ah—ah!” chimed in three or four more.
“Why—why you all called turn him out,” said the discomfited landlord.
“Ah—yes,” said the man who had prepared to drink Britton’s health—“but
we meant you.”
“Yes—yes! Hear—hear!” cried everybody; “we meant turn out the landlord.”
“The deuce you did.”
“Where—where—is she? Curses on her—where is she—is it a dream?”
murmured Britton, recovering from his mixed state of insensibility,
produced by drink and a blow of his head against the floor.
“Was—it true—eh?” continued Britton; “where the devil am I now? Can’t
you speak, none of you?”
The landlord turned to the company, and placed his fingers
confidentially and knowingly against the side of his nose, in
intimation that he was about to perpetrate some piece of extreme
cleverness not quite consistent with truth. Then, turning to Britton,
he said in a commiserating tone,—
“Good luck, Master King Britton, your majesty certainly took forty
winks in a chair, and by some sudden move, it has upset your majesty.”
“Is—is—that it?” said Britton, looking around him with heavy eyes.
“Yes all these honourable gentlemen can bear me out in what I say.”
“Curse me, then, if ever I had such a dream,” said Britton.
“All dreams are very disagreeable,” said the landlord.
“Oh, very!” said the company.
“D—n you all,” muttered Britton.
The landlord now turned again to the company, and favoured them with
another bit of facetiousness, which consisted in rubbing his left elbow
and going through the motion of drinking in dumb show; and having so
bespoken their kind and considerate attention, he turned to Britton,
and added,—
“Your worship’s majesty had just ordered cans of spiced canary all
round, as you went off to sleep like a babe.”
“Had I,” growled Britton; “I suppose they all had it then?”
“No, no, no!” cried a chorus of voices.
“Quite sure?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Then I’ll be d—d if you get it!”
The landlord looked rather taken aback by this, and rubbed his chin in
an abstracted manner with his apron, while the guests looked at each
other in consternation.
“What are you staring at, all of you?” cried Britton. “You have seen a
gentleman, before, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes—yes,” said everybody.
“Then go to the devil while I go for a walk!” added Britton, staggering
to the door, and as he passed out he muttered to himself,—
“A dream! No, no—no dream. She will do me some mischief yet. I must
kill her—curses on her; and he too. What did he want here? I know—it
was Hartleton! But curse them all—I’ll be even with them yet. I should
like to cut all their throats, and treat those beasts I have just left
with cans all round of their blood! I’d make them drink—damme, I’d make
them drink it!”