“NOW, young sir,” said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but peremptory,--“now we
are in the town, where am I to take you? and wherever it be, there to
say good-by.”
“No, not good-by. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to feel frightened,
and I am so friendless;” and the boy, who had before resented the
slightest nudge on the part of Kenelm, now wound his arm into Kenelm’s,
and clung to him caressingly.
I don’t know what my readers have hitherto thought of Kenelm Chillingly:
but, amid all the curves and windings of his whimsical humour, there was
one way that went straight to his heart; you had only to be weaker than
himself and ask his protection.
He turned round abruptly; he forgot all the strangeness of his position,
and replied: “Little brute that you are, I’ll be shot if I forsake you
if in trouble. But some compassion is also due to the cob: for his sake
say where we are to stop.”
“I am sure I can’t say: I never was here before. Let us go to a nice
quiet inn. Drive slowly: we’ll look out for one.”
Tor-Hadham was a large town, not nominally the capital of the county,
but, in point of trade and bustle and life, virtually the capital. The
straight street, through which the cob went as slowly as if he had
been drawing a Triumphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated
appearance. The shops had handsome facades and plate-glass windows;
the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evidently not merely of
business, but of pleasure, for a large proportion of the passers-by was
composed of the fair sex, smartly dressed, many of them young and some
pretty. In fact a regiment of her Majesty’s -----th Hussars had been
sent into the town two days before; and, between the officers of that
fortunate regiment and the fair sex in that hospitable town, there was
a natural emulation which should make the greater number of slain and
wounded. The advent of these heroes, professional subtracters from
hostile and multipliers of friendly populations, gave a stimulus to
the caterers for those amusements which bring young folks
together,--archery-meetings, rifle-shootings, concerts, balls, announced
in bills attached to boards and walls and exposed at shop-windows.
The boy looked eagerly forth from the gig, scanning especially these
advertisements, till at length he uttered an excited exclamation, “Ah, I
was right: there it is!”
“There what is?” asked Kenelm,--“the inn?” His companion did not answer,
but Kenelm following the boy’s eye perceived an immense hand-bill.
“TO-MORROW NIGHT THEATRE OPENS.
“RICHARD III. Mr. COMPTON.”
“Do just ask where the theatre is,” said the boy, in a whisper, turning
away his head.
Kenelm stopped the cob, made the inquiry, and was directed to take the
next turning to the right. In a few minutes the compo portico of an ugly
dilapidated building, dedicated to the Dramatic Muses, presented itself
at the angle of a dreary, deserted lane. The walls were placarded with
play-bills, in which the name of Compton stood forth as gigantic as
capitals could make it. The boy drew a sigh. “Now,” said he, “let us
look out for an inn near here,--the nearest.”
No inn, however, beyond the rank of a small and questionable looking
public-house was apparent, until at a distance somewhat remote from the
theatre, and in a quaint, old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat,
newly whitewashed house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large black
letters of funereal aspect, “Temperance Hotel.”
“Stop,” said the boy; “don’t you think that would suit us? it looks
quiet.”
“Could not look more quiet if it were a tombstone,” replied Kenelm.
The boy put his hand upon the reins and stopped the cob. The cob was in
that condition that the slightest touch sufficed to stop him, though he
turned his head somewhat ruefully as if in doubt whether hay and corn
would be within the regulations of a Temperance Hotel. Kenelm descended
and entered the house. A tidy woman emerged from a sort of glass
cupboard which constituted the bar, minus the comforting drinks
associated with the _beau ideal_ of a bar, but which displayed instead
two large decanters of cold water with tumblers _a discretion_, and
sundry plates of thin biscuits and sponge-cakes. This tidy woman
politely inquired what was his “pleasure.”
“Pleasure,” answered Kenelm, with his usual gravity, “is not the word I
should myself have chosen. But could you oblige my horse--I mean _that_
horse--with a stall and a feed of oats, and that young gentleman and
myself with a private room and a dinner?”
“Dinner!” echoed the hostess,--“dinner!”
“A thousand pardons, ma’am. But if the word ‘dinner’ shock you I retract
it, and would say instead something to eat and drink.’”
“Drink! This is strictly a Temperance Hotel, sir.”
“Oh, if you don’t eat and drink here,” exclaimed Kenelm, fiercely, for
he was famished, “I wish you good morning.”
“Stay a bit, sir. We do eat and drink here. But we are very simple
folks. We allow no fermented liquors.”
“Not even a glass of beer?”
“Only ginger-beer. Alcohols are strictly forbidden. We have tea and
coffee and milk. But most of our customers prefer the pure liquid. As
for eating, sir,--anything you order, in reason.”
Kenelm shook his head and was retreating, when the boy, who had sprung
from the gig and overheard the conversation, cried petulantly, “What
does it signify? Who wants fermented liquors? Water will do very well.
And as for dinner,--anything convenient. Please, ma’am, show us into a
private room: I am so tired.” The last words were said in a caressing
manner, and so prettily, that the hostess at once changed her tone,
and muttering, “Poor boy!” and, in a still more subdued mutter, “What
a pretty face he has!” nodded, and led the way up a very clean
old-fashioned staircase.
“But the horse and gig, where are they to go?” said Kenelm, with a pang
of conscience on reflecting how ill treated hitherto had been both horse
and owner.
“Oh, as for the horse and gig, sir, you will find Jukes’s livery-stables
a few yards farther down. We don’t take in horses ourselves; our
customers seldom keep them: but you will find the best of accommodation
at Jukes’s.”
Kenelm conducted the cob to the livery-stables thus indicated, and
waited to see him walked about to cool, well rubbed down, and made
comfortable over half a peck of oats,--for Kenelm Chillingly was a
humane man to the brute creation,--and then, in a state of ravenous
appetite, returned to the Temperance Hotel, and was ushered into a small
drawing-room, with a small bit of carpet in the centre, six small chairs
with cane seats, prints on the walls descriptive of the various
effects of intoxicating liquors upon sundry specimens of mankind,--some
resembling ghosts, others fiends, and all with a general aspect of
beggary and perdition; contrasted by Happy-Family pictures,--smiling
wives, portly husbands, rosy infants, emblematic of the beatified
condition of members of the Temperance Society.
A table with a spotless cloth, and knives and forks for two, chiefly,
however, attracted Kenelm’s attention.
The boy was standing by the window, seemingly gazing on a small aquarium
which was there placed, and contained the usual variety of small fishes,
reptiles, and insects, enjoying the pleasures of Temperance in its
native element, including, of course, an occasional meal upon each
other.
“What are they going to give us to eat?” inquired Kenelm. “It must be
ready by this time I should think.”
Here he gave a brisk tug at the bell-pull. The boy advanced from
the window, and as he did so Kenelm was struck with the grace of his
bearing, and the improvement in his looks, now that he was without his
hat, and rest and ablution had refreshed from heat and dust the delicate
bloom of his complexion. There was no doubt about it that he was an
exceedingly pretty boy, and if he lived to be a man would make many a
lady’s heart ache. It was with a certain air of gracious superiority
such as is seldom warranted by superior rank if it be less than royal,
and chiefly becomes a marked seniority in years, that this young
gentleman, approaching the solemn heir of the Chillinglys, held out his
hand and said,--
“Sir, you have behaved extremely well, and I thank you very much.”
“Your Royal Highness is condescending to say so,” replied Kenelm
Chillingly, bowing low, “but have you ordered dinner? and what are
they going to give us? No one seems to answer the bell here. As it is a
Temperance Hotel, probably all the servants are drunk.”
“Why should they be drunk at a Temperance Hotel?”
“Why! because, as a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to
anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets
up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a
sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship
about him which is enough to make him a humbug. Masculine honesty,
whether it be saint-like or sinner-like, does not label itself either
saint or sinner. Fancy Saint Augustine labelling himself saint, or
Robert Burns sinner; and therefore, though, little boy, you have
probably not read the poems of Robert Burns, and have certainly not read
the ‘Confessions’ of Saint Augustine, take my word for it, that both
those personages were very good fellows; and with a little difference of
training and experience, Burns might have written the ‘Confessions’ and
Augustine the poems. Powers above! I am starving. What did you order for
dinner, and when is it to appear?”
The boy, who had opened to an enormous width a naturally large pair of
hazel eyes, while his tall companion in fustian trousers and Belcher
neckcloth spoke thus patronizingly of Robert Burns and Saint Augustine,
now replied, with rather a deprecatory and shamefaced aspect, “I am
sorry I was not thinking of dinner. I was not so mindful of you as I
ought to have been. The landlady asked me what we would have. I said,
‘What you like;’ and the landlady muttered something about--” here the
boy hesitated.
“Yes. About what? Mutton-chops?”
“No. Cauliflowers and rice-pudding.”
Kenelm Chillingly never swore, never raged. Where ruder beings of
human mould swore or raged, he vented displeasure in an expression of
countenance so pathetically melancholic and lugubrious that it would
have melted the heart of an Hyrcanian tiger. He turned his countenance
now on the boy, and murmuring “Cauliflower!--Starvation!” sank into
one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and added quietly, “so much for human
gratitude.”
The boy was evidently smitten to the heart by the bitter sweetness
of this reproach. There were almost tears in his voice, as he said
falteringly, “Pray forgive me, I _was_ ungrateful. I’ll run down and see
what there is;” and, suiting the action to the word, he disappeared.
Kenelm remained motionless; in fact he was plunged into one of those
reveries, or rather absorptions of inward and spiritual being, into
which it is said that the consciousness of the Indian dervish can be by
prolonged fasting preternaturally resolved. The appetite of all men
of powerful muscular development is of a nature far exceeding the
properties of any reasonable number of cauliflowers and rice-puddings
to satisfy. Witness Hercules himself, whose cravings for substantial
nourishment were the standing joke of the classic poets. I don’t know
that Kenelm Chillingly would have beaten the Theban Hercules either in
fighting or in eating; but, when he wanted to fight or when he wanted
to eat, Hercules would have had to put forth all his strength not to be
beaten.
After ten minutes’ absence, the boy came back radiant. He tapped Kenelm
on the shoulder, and said playfully, “I made them cut a whole loin into
chops, besides the cauliflower; and such a big rice-pudding, and eggs
and bacon too! Cheer up! it will be served in a minute.”
“A-h!” said Kenelm.
“They are good people; they did not mean to stint you: but most of their
customers, it seems, live upon vegetables and farinaceous food. There
is a society here formed upon that principle; the landlady says they are
philosophers!”
At the word “philosophers” Kenelm’s crest rose as that of a practised
hunter at the cry of “Yoiks! Tally-ho!” “Philosophers!” said he,
“philosophers indeed! O ignoramuses, who do not even know the structure
of the human tooth! Look you, little boy, if nothing were left on this
earth of the present race of man, as we are assured upon great authority
will be the case one of these days,--and a mighty good riddance it will
be,--if nothing, I say, of man were left except fossils of his teeth and
his thumbs, a philosopher of that superior race which will succeed to
man would at once see in those relics all his characteristics and all
his history; would say, comparing his thumb with the talons of an eagle,
the claws of a tiger, the hoof of a horse, the owner of that thumb must
have been lord over creatures with talons and claws and hoofs. You may
say the monkey tribe has thumbs. True; but compare an ape’s thumb with
a man’s: could the biggest ape’s thumb have built Westminster Abbey? But
even thumbs are trivial evidence of man as compared with his teeth.
Look at his teeth!”--here Kenelm expanded his jaws from ear to ear
and displayed semicircles of ivory, so perfect for the purposes of
mastication that the most artistic dentist might have despaired of
his power to imitate them,--“look, I say, at his teeth!” The
boy involuntarily recoiled. “Are the teeth those of a miserable
cauliflower-eater? or is it purely by farinaceous food that the
proprietor of teeth like man’s obtains the rank of the sovereign
destroyer of creation? No, little boy, no,” continued Kenelm, closing
his jaws, but advancing upon the infant, who at each stride receded
towards the aquarium,--“no; man is the master of the world, because
of all created beings he devours the greatest variety and the greatest
number of created things. His teeth evince that man can live upon every
soil from the torrid to the frozen zone, because man can eat everything
that other creatures cannot eat. And the formation of his teeth proves
it. A tiger can eat a deer; so can man: but a tiger can’t eat an eel;
man can. An elephant can eat cauliflowers and rice-pudding; so can man!
but an elephant can’t eat a beefsteak; man can. In sum, man can
live everywhere, because he can eat anything, thanks to his dental
formation!” concluded Kenelm, making a prodigious stride towards the
boy. “Man, when everything else fails him, eats his own species.”
“Don’t; you frighten me,” said the boy. “Aha!” clapping his hands with a
sensation of gleeful relief, “here come the mutton-chops!”
A wonderfully clean, well-washed, indeed well-washed-out, middle-aged
parlour-maid now appeared, dish in hand. Putting the dish on the table
and taking off the cover, the handmaiden said civilly, though frigidly,
like one who lived upon salad and cold water, “Mistress is sorry to have
kept you waiting, but she thought you were Vegetarians.”
After helping his young friend to a mutton-chop, Kenelm helped himself,
and replied gravely, “Tell your mistress that if she had only given
us vegetables, I should have eaten you. Tell her that though man is
partially graminivorous, he is principally carnivorous. Tell her that
though a swine eats cabbages and such like, yet where a swine can get
a baby, it eats the baby. Tell her,” continued Kenelm (now at his third
chop), “that there is no animal that in digestive organs more resembles
man than a swine. Ask her if there is any baby in the house; if so, it
would be safe for the baby to send up some more chops.”
As the acutest observer could rarely be quite sure when Kenelm
Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlour-maid paused a moment
and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably sad
and profound, and said mournfully, “I should be so sorry for the baby.
Bring the chops!” The parlour-maid vanished. The boy laid down his
knife and fork, and looked fixedly and inquisitively on Kenelm. Kenelm,
unheeding the look, placed the last chop on the boy’s plate.
“No more,” cried the boy, impulsively, and returned the chop to the
dish. “I have dined: I have had enough.”
“Little boy, you lie,” said Kenelm; “you have not had enough to keep
body and soul together. Eat that chop or I shall thrash you: whatever I
say I do.”
Somehow or other the boy felt quelled; he ate the chop in silence, again
looked at Kenelm’s face, and said to himself, “I am afraid.”
The parlour-maid here entered with a fresh supply of chops and a dish of
bacon and eggs, soon followed by a rice-pudding baked in a tin dish, and
of size sufficient to have nourished a charity school. When the repast
was finished, Kenelm seemed to forget the dangerous properties of the
carnivorous animal; and stretching himself indolently out, appeared
to be as innocently ruminative as the most domestic of animals
graminivorous.
Then said the boy, rather timidly, “May I ask you another favour?”
“Is it to knock down another uncle, or to steal another gig and cob?”
“No, it is very simple: it is merely to find out the address of a friend
here; and when found to give him a note from me.”
“Does the commission press? ‘After dinner, rest a while,’ saith the
proverb; and proverbs are so wise that no one can guess the author
of them. They are supposed to be fragments of the philosophy of the
antediluvians: came to us packed up in the ark.”
“Really, indeed,” said the boy, seriously. “How interesting! No, my
commission does not press for an hour or so. Do you think, sir, they had
any drama before the Deluge?”
“Drama! not a doubt of it. Men who lived one or two thousand years had
time to invent and improve everything; and a play could have had its
natural length then. It would not have been necessary to crowd the
whole history of Macbeth, from his youth to his old age, into an absurd
epitome of three hours. One cannot trace a touch of real human nature in
any actor’s delineation of that very interesting Scotchman, because
the actor always comes on the stage as if he were the same age when he
murdered Duncan, and when, in his sear and yellow leaf, he was lopped
off by Macduff.”
“Do you think Macbeth was young when he murdered Duncan?”
“Certainly. No man ever commits a first crime of violent nature, such as
murder, after thirty; if he begins before, he may go on up to any age.
But youth is the season for commencing those wrong calculations which
belong to irrational hope and the sense of physical power. You thus
read in the newspapers that the persons who murder their sweethearts are
generally from two to six and twenty; and persons who murder from other
motives than love--that is, from revenge, avarice, or ambition--are
generally about twenty-eight,--Iago’s age. Twenty-eight is the usual
close of the active season for getting rid of one’s fellow-creatures; a
prize-fighter falls off after that age. I take it that Macbeth was about
twenty-eight when he murdered Duncan, and from about fifty-four to sixty
when he began to whine about missing the comforts of old age. But
can any audience understand that difference of years in seeing a
three-hours’ play? or does any actor ever pretend to impress it on the
audience, and appear as twenty-eight in the first act and a sexagenarian
in the fifth?”
“I never thought of that,” said the boy, evidently interested. “But I
never saw ‘Macbeth.’ I have seen ‘Richard III.:’ is not that nice? Don’t
you dote on the play? I do. What a glorious life an actor’s must be!”
Kenelm, who had been hitherto rather talking to himself than to his
youthful companion, here roused his attention, looked on the boy
intently, and said,--
“I see you are stage-stricken. You have run away from home in order to
turn player, and I should not wonder if this note you want me to give is
for the manager of the theatre or one of his company.”
The young face that encountered Kenelm’s dark eye became very flushed,
but set and defiant in its expression.
“And what if it were? would not you give it?”
“What! help a child of your age run away from his home, to go upon the
stage against the consent of his relations? Certainly not.”
“I am not a child; but that has nothing to do with it. I don’t want to
go on the stage, at all events without the consent of the person who
has a right to dictate my actions. My note is not to the manager of
the theatre, nor to one of his company; but it is to a gentleman who
condescends to act here for a few nights; a thorough gentleman,--a great
actor,--my friend, the only friend I have in the world. I say frankly I
have run away from home so that he may have that note, and if you will
not give it some one else will!”
The boy had risen while he spoke, and he stood erect beside the
recumbent Kenelm, his lips quivering, his eyes suffused with suppressed
tears, but his whole aspect resolute and determined. Evidently, if he
did not get his own way in this world, it would not be for want of will.
“I will take your note,” said Kenelm.
“There it is; give it into the hands of the person it is addressed
to,--Mr. Herbert Compton.”