“Nay, ’tis too much!”
(_Old Play._)
Night, solemn night.
On the present occasion the solemnity of night’s approach was rendered
far more striking than it is to dwellers in ordinary towns, by that
time-honoured custom observed by the people of Whitby, of leaving
their streets wholly unlighted: in thus making a stand against the
deplorably swift advance of the tide of progress and civilisation, they
displayed no small share of moral courage and independent judgement.
Was it for a people of sense to adopt every new-fangled invention of
the age, merely because their neighbours did? It might have been urged,
in disparagement of their conduct, that they only injured themselves
by it, and the remark would have been undeniably true; but it would
only have served to exalt, in the eyes of an admiring nation, their
well-earned character of heroic self-denial and uncompromising fixity
of purpose.
Headlong and desperate, the lovelorn Poet plunged through the night;
now tumbling up against a doorstep, and now half down in a gutter, but
ever onward, onward, reckless where he went.
In the darkest spot of one of those dark streets (the nearest lighted
shop window being about fifty yards off), chance threw into his way the
very man he fled from, the man whom he hated as a successful rival,
and who had driven him to this pitch of frenzy. The waiter, not knowing
what was the matter, had followed him to see that he came to no harm,
and to bring him back, little dreaming of the shock that awaited him.
The instant the Poet perceived who it was, all his pent-up fury broke
forth: to rush upon him, to grasp him by the throat with both hands, to
dash him to the ground, and there to reduce him to the extreme verge of
suffocation--all this was the work of a moment.
“Traitor! villain! malcontent! regicide!” he hissed through his closed
teeth, taking any abusive epithet that came into his head, without
stopping to consider its suitability. “Is it thou? Now shalt thou
feel my wrath!” And doubtless the waiter did experience that singular
sensation, whatever it may have been, for he struggled violently with
his assailant, and bellowed “murder” the instant he recovered his
breath.
“Say not so,” the Poet sternly answered, as he released him; “it is
thou that murderest me.” The waiter gathered himself up, and began in
great surprise, “Why, I never----” “’Tis a lie!” the Poet screamed;
“she loves thee not! Me, me alone.” “Who ever said she did?” the other
asked, beginning to perceive how matters stood. “Thou! thou saidst
it,” was the wild reply, “what, villain? acquire her heart? thou never
shalt.”
The waiter calmly explained himself: “My ’ope were, Sir, to hacquire
her Hart of waiting at table, which she do perdigious well, sure-ly:
seeing that I were thinking of happlying for to be ’ead-waiter at the
’otel.” The Poet’s wrath instantly abated, indeed, he looked rather
crestfallen than otherwise; “Excuse my violence,” he gently said, “and
let us take a friendly glass together.” “I agree,” was the waiter’s
generous answer, “but man halive, you’ve ruinated my coat!”
“Courage,” cried our hero gaily, “thou shalt have a new one anon:
aye, and of the best cashmere.” “H’m,” said the other, hesitatingly,
“wouldn’t hany other stuff----” “I will not buy thee one of any other
stuff,” returned the Poet, gently but decidedly, and the waiter gave up
the point.
Arrived once more at the friendly tavern, the Poet briskly ordered a
jorum of Punch, and, on its being furnished, called on his friend for a
toast. “I’ll give you,” said the waiter, who was of a sentimental turn,
however little he looked like it, “I’ll give you--Woman! She doubles
our sorrows and ’alves our joy.” The Poet drained his glass, not caring
to correct his companion’s mistake, and at intervals during the evening
the same inspiring sentiment was repeated. And so the night wore away,
and another jorum of Punch was ordered, and another.
* * * * *
“And now hallow me,” said the waiter, attempting for about the
tenth time to rise on his feet and make a speech, and failing even
more signally than he had yet done, “to give a toast for this ’appy
hoccasion. Woman! she doubles----” but at this moment, probably in
illustration of his favourite theory, he “doubled” himself up, and so
effectually, that he instantly vanished under the table.
Occupying that limited sphere of observation, it is conjectured that
he fell to moralising on human ills in general, and their remedies,
for a solemn voice was presently heard to issue from his retreat,
proclaiming feelingly though rather indistinctly, that “when the ’art
of man is hopressed with care----,” here came a pause, as if he wished
to leave the question open to discussion, but as no one present seemed
competent to suggest the proper course to be taken in that melancholy
contingency, he attempted to supply the deficiency himself with the
remarkable statement “she’s hall my fancy painted ’er.”
Meanwhile the Poet was sitting, smiling quietly to himself, as he
sipped his punch: the only notice he took of his companion’s abrupt
disappearance was to help himself to a fresh glass, and say, “your
health!” in a cordial tone, nodding to where the waiter ought to have
been. He then cried, “hear, hear!” encouragingly, and made an attempt
to thump the table with his fist, but missed it. He seemed interested
in the question regarding the heart oppressed with care, and winked
sagaciously with one eye two or three times, as if there were a
good deal he could say on that subject, if he chose; but the second
quotation roused him to speech, and he at once broke into the waiter’s
subterranean soliloquy with an ecstatic fragment from the poem he had
been just composing:
“What though the world be cross and crooky?
Of Life’s fair flowers the fairest bouquet
I plucked, when I chose _thee_, my Sukie!
“Say, could’st thou grasp at nothing greater
Than to be wedded to a waiter?
And did’st thou deem thy Schmitz a traitor?
“Nay! the fond waiter was rejected,
And thou, alone, with flower-bedecked head,
Sitting, did’st sing of one expected.
“And while the waiter, crazed and silly,
Dreamed he had won that precious lily,
At length he came, thy wished-for Willie.
“And then thy music took a new key,
For whether Schmitz be boor or duke, he
Is all in all to faithful Sukie!”
He paused for a reply, but a heavy snoring from beneath the table was
the only one he got.