I dined with my old friend and schoolfellow, Jack Withers, one day last
September. On the previous morning, on my way to the India House, I had
run up against a stout individual on Cornhill, and on looking in his face
as I stopped for a moment to apologise, an abrupt "This is surely Jack
Withers," burst from my lips, followed by--"God bless me! Will Bayfield!"
from his. After a hurried question or two, we shook hands warmly and
parted, with the understanding that I was to cut my mutton with him next
day.
Seventeen years had elapsed since Withers and I had seen or heard of each
other. Having a good mercantile connexion, he had pitched upon commerce as
his calling, and entered a counting-house in Idollane in the same year
that I, a raw young surgeon, embarked for India to seek my fortune in the
medical service of the East India Company.
Things had gone well with honest Jack; from a long, thin, weazel of a
youngster, he had become a burly ruddy-faced gentleman, with an aldermanic
rotundity of paunch, which gave the world assurance that his ordinary fare
by no means consisted of deaf nuts; he had already, as he told me,
accumulated a very pretty independence, which was yearly increasing, and
was, moreover, a snug bachelor, with a well-arranged residence in
Finsbury-square; in short, it was evident that Jack was "a fellow with two
coats and everything handsome about him."
As for me, I was a verification of the adage about the rolling stone;
having gathered a very small quantity of "moss," in the shape of worldly
goods. I had spent sixteen years in marching and countermarching over the
thirsty plains of the Carnatic, in medical charge of a native
regiment--salivating Sepoys and blowing out with blue pills the
officers--until the effects of a stiff jungle-fever, that nearly made me
proprietor of a landed property measuring six feet by two, sent me back to
England almost as poor as I had left it, and with an atrabilarious visage
which took a two-months' course of Cheltenham water to scour into anything
like a decent colour.
Withers' dinner was in the best taste: viands excellent--wine superb;
never did I sip racier Madeira, and the Champagne trickled down one's
throat with the same facility that man is inclined to sin.
The cloth drawn, we fell to discoursing about old times, things, persons,
and places. Jack then told me how from junior clerk he had risen to become
second partner in the firm to which he belonged; and I, in my turn,
enlightened his mind with respect to Asiatic Cholera, Runjeet Sing,
Ghuzni, tiger-shooting, and Shah Soojah.
In this manner the evening slid pleasantly on. An array of six bottles,
that before dinner had contained the juice of Oporto, stood empty on the
sideboard. Jack wanted to draw another cork, which, however, I positively
forbad, as I have through life made it a rule to avoid the slightest
approach towards excess in tippling; so, after a modest brace of glasses
of brandy-and-water, I shook hands with and left my friend about half-past
nine, for I am an old-fashioned fellow, and love early hours, my usual
time for turning in being ten.
When I got into the street an unaccustomed spirit of gaiety at once took
possession of me; my general feelings of benevolence and goodwill towards
all mankind appeared to have received a sudden and marvellous increase. I
seemed to tread on eider-down, and, cigar in mouth, strolled along
Fleet-street and the Strand, towards my domicile in Half-Moon
street--"nescio quid meditans nugarum"--sometimes humming the fag end of
an Irish melody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then I
would trudge on, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy as I conned
over the various ups and downs that had chequered my life since Jack
Withers and I were thoughtless lads together "a long time ago."
In this mood I found myself standing before the New Strand Theatre, my
attention having been arrested by the word PUNCH blazoned in large letters
on a play-bill.
"What can this mean?" quoth I to myself. "I know a publication called
Punch very well, but I never heard of a performance so named. I'll go in
and see it. Who knows but it may be an avatar[1] of the Editor of that
illustrious periodical, who condescends to discard his dread incognito for
the nonce, in order to exhibit himself, for one night only, to the eyes
and understandings of admiring London."
[1] The Avatar we do not allow--the illustrious periodical we
do.--ED. OF PUNCH.
In another minute I was seated in the boxes, and found a crowded audience
in full enjoyment of the quiet waggery of Keeley, who was fooling them to
the top of their bent, accoutred from top to toe as Mynheer Punch the
Great, while his clever little wife--who, by the way, possesses, I think,
more of the "vis comica" than any actress of the day--caused sides to
shake and eyes to water by her naïve and humorous delineation of Mrs.
Snozzle.
The curtain had hardly fallen more than a couple of minutes, when a door
behind me opened hastily, and a box-keeper thrusting in his head, called
out--"Is there a medical man here?" "I am one," said I, getting up;
"anything the matter?" "Come with me then, sir, if you please," said he;
"a severe accident has just happened to Mrs. Keeley; a falling scene has
struck her head, sir, and hurt her dreadfully."
"Good heavens!" said I, much shocked; "I will come immediately."
I followed the man to the stage door, and was ushered into a dressing-room
with several people in it, where, extended on a sofa, lay the unfortunate
lady, whom I had but a few minutes before seen full of life and spirits,
delighting hundreds with her unrivalled humour and _espièglerie_,--there
she lay, in the same fantastic dress she had worn on the stage, pale as
death--a quantity of blood flowing from a fearful wound on her head, and
uttering those low quick moans which are indicative of extreme suffering.
Poor little Keeley stood beside the couch, holding her hand; he was still
in full fig as _Polichinel_; and the grotesqueness of his attire
contrasted strangely with the anguish depicted on his countenance. As I
came forward, he slowly made way for me--looked in my face imploringly, as
if to gather from its expression some gleam of hope, and then stood aside,
in an attitude of profound dejection.
Having felt the sufferer's pulse, I was about to turn her head gently, in
order to examine the nature of the wound, when a hustling noise behind me
causing me to turn round, to my infinite dismay, I perceived Mr. Keeley,
having pushed the bystanders on one side, in the act of performing a kind
of Punchean dance upon the floor, accompanying himself with the vigorous
chuckling and crowing peculiar to the hero whose habiliments he wore. I
was horror-stricken--conceiving that grief had suddenly turned his brain.
All at once, he made a spring towards me, and, seizing my arm, thrust me
into a corner of the room, where he held me fast, exclaiming--
"Wretch! villain! restore me my wife--that talented woman your infernal
arts have destroyed! You did for her!"
"Mr. Keeley," said I, struggling to release myself from his grasp--"my
dear sir, pray compose yourself."
"Unhappy traitor!" he shouted, giving me an unmerciful tweak by the nose;
"Look at her silver skin laced with her golden blood!--see, see! Oh, see!"
This was rather too much, even from a man whose wits were astray. I began
to lose patience, and was preparing to rid myself somewhat roughly of the
madman's grasp, when a new phenomenon occurred.
The patient on the sofa, whom I had judged well nigh moribund, and
consequently incapable of any effort whatever, all at once sat up with a
sudden jerk, and gave vent to a series of the most ear-piercing shrieks
that ever assailed human tympanum.
_"Oh! oh! Mon Dieu! je suis étouffée! levez-vous donc,
monsieur--n'avez-vous pas honte!"_
I started up--O misery!--I had fallen asleep, and my head, resting against
a pillar, had slipped down, depositing itself upon the expansive bosom of
a portly French dame in the next box, who seemed, by her vehement
exclamations, to be quite shaken from the balance of her propriety by the
unlooked-for burthen I had imposed upon her; whilst a _petit monsieur_
poured forth a string of _sacres_ and _sapristies_ upon my devoted head
with a volubility of utterance truly astonishing.
I gazed about me with troubled and lack-lustre eye. Every lorgnette in the
boxes was levelled at my miserable countenance; a sea of upturned and
derisive faces grinned at me from the pit, and the gods in Olympus
thundered from on high--"Turn him out; he's drunk!"
This was the unkindest cut of all--thus publicly to be accused of
intoxication, a vice of all others I have ever detested and eschewed.
I cast one indignant glance around me, and left the theatre, lamenting the
depravity of our nature, which is, alas! always ready to put the worst
construction upon actions in themselves most innocent; for if I had gone
to sleep in my own arm-chair, pray who would have accused me of inebriety?
How I got home I know not. As I hurried through the streets, a legion of
voices, in every variety of intonation, yelled in my ears--"Turn him
out--he's drunk!" and when I woke in the middle of the night, tormented by
a raging thirst (produced, I suppose, by the flurry of spirits I had
undergone), I seemed to hear screams, groans, and hisses, above all which
predominated loud and clear the malignant denunciation--"Turn him
out--he's drunk!"
Upon my subsequently mentioning the above adventure to Jack Withers, it
will hardly be credited that this villain without shame at once roundly
asserted that, when I left him on the afore-mentioned night, I was at
least three sheets and three quarters in the wind; adding with
praiseworthy candour, that he himself was so far gone as to be obliged, to
the infinite scandal of his staid old housekeeper, to creep up stairs _à
quatre pieds_, in order to gain his bedroom.
Now this latter may be true enough, for it is probable that friend Jack
freshened his nip a trifle after my departure, seeing that he was always
something of a drunken knave. As for his calumnious and scandalous
declaration, that _I_ was in the least degree tipsy, it is too ridiculous
to be noticed. I scorn it with my heels--I was sober--sober, cool, and
steady as the north star; and he that is inclined to question this solemn
asseveration, let him send me his card; and if I don't drill a hole in his
doublet before he's forty-eight hours older, then, as honest Slender has
it, "I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else."
* * * * *
"ARE YE SURE THE NEWS IS TRUE?"
We learn from good authority that Lord TAMBOFF STANLEY, in answer to a
deputation from Scotland, assured the gentlemen who waited upon him that
"the subject of _emigration_ was under the serious consideration of Her
Majesty's Ministers." We hope that those respectable gentlemen may soon
resolve upon their departure--we care not "what clime they wander to, so
not again to _this_;" or, as Shakspeare says, let them "stand not upon the
order of their going, but GO." The country, we take it upon ourselves to
say, will remember them when they are gone; they have left the nation too
many weighty proofs of their regard to be forgotten in a
hurry--Corruption, Starvation, and Taxation, and the National Debt by way
of
[Illustration: A HANDSOME LEG--I SEE (LEGACY).]
* * * * *