in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result.
When company called on Mrs. Villiers, Mrs. Ransom would peer from behind
her curtains and audibly exclaim—
“Who’s that fright, I wonder?”
And when Mrs. Ransom was favoured with a call, it was Mrs. Villiers’s
blessed privilege to be at the window and audibly observe—
“Where was that clod dug up from?”
Mrs. Ransom has a little boy named Tommy, and Mrs. Villiers has a
similar sized son, who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Morgan;
and it will happen, because these two children are too young to grasp
fully the grave responsibilities of life—it will happen, I repeat, that
they will come together in various respects. If Mrs. Ransom is so
fortunate as to first observe one of these cohesions, she promptly steps
to the door, and, covertly waiting until Mrs. Villiers’s door opens, she
shrilly observes—“Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this
minute! How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers
brat?”
“_Villiers brat!_” What a stab that is! What subtle poison it is
saturated with! Poor Mrs. Villiers’s breath comes thick and hard; her
face burns like fire, and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has
to press her hand to her heart as if to keep that organ from bursting;
there is no relief from the dreadful throbbing and the dreadful pain.
The slamming of Mrs. Ransom’s door shuts out all hope of succour. But it
quickens Mrs. Villiers’s faculties, and makes her so alert, that when
the two children come together again, which they very soon do, she is
first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the
head of Mrs. Ransom. She heaps them.
“Wickliffe Morgan! what are you doing out there with that Ransom imp? Do
you want to catch some disease? Come in here before I skin you.” And the
door slams shut, and poor Mrs. Ransom, with trembling form and bated
breath and flashing eyes, clinches her fingers, and glares with
tremendous wrath over the landscape.
And in the absence of any real, tangible information as to the loss of
that hoop, this is perhaps the very best that can be done on either
side.
_J. M. Bailey._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE STOUT GENTLEMAN._
A TALE OF MYSTERY.
[Illustration: “IT WAS A RAINY SUNDAY.” “I’ll cross it, though it blast
me!”—_Hamlet._]
IT was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November. I had been
detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from
which I was recovering, but I was still feverish, and was obliged to
keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet
Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to experience one can
alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements;
the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the
window in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had
been placed completely out of reach of all amusement. The windows of my
bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys; while those
of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of
nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a
stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that
had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys; in one corner was a
stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several
half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a
miserable, crestfallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his
drooping tail matted as it were into a single feather, along which the
water trickled from his back. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow,
chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of
vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the
loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window,
with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to
a dog-house hard by uttering something every now and then between a bark
and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards
through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself;
everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of
hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and
making a riotous noise over their liquor.
I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became
insupportable. I abandoned it and sought what is technically called the
traveller’s room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for the
accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers or riders; a
kind of commercial knights-errant who are incessantly scouring the
kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only
successors, that I know of at the present day, to the knights-errant of
yore. They lead the same kind of roving, adventurous life, only changing
the lance for a whip, the buckler for a pattern-card, and the coat of
mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of
peerless beauty, they rove about spreading the fame and standing of some
substantial tradesman or manufacturer, and are ready at any time to
bargain in his name; it being the fashion nowadays to trade instead of
fight with one another. As the room of the Hostel, in the good old
fighting times, would be hung round at night with the armour of wayworn
warriors, such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning helmets; so the
traveller’s room is garnished with the harnessing of their successors;
with box-coats, whips of all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oilcloth-covered
hats.
I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk with, but was
disappointed, there were, indeed, two or three in the room, but I could
make nothing of them. One was just finishing his breakfast, quarrelling
with his bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned on a
pair of gaiters, with many execrations at “Boots” for not having cleaned
his shoes well; a third sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and
looking at the rain as it streamed down the window-glass; they all
appeared infected by the weather, and disappeared, one after the other,
without exchanging a word.
I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their
way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping
umbrellas. The bell ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I
then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite;
who, being confined to the house, for fear of wetting their Sunday
finery, played off their charms at the front windows to fascinate the
chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a
vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to
amuse me.
What was I to do to pass away the long-lived day? I was sadly nervous
and lonely; and everything about an inn seemed calculated to make a dull
day ten times duller. Old newspapers smelling of beer and tobacco smoke,
and which I had already read half-a-dozen times. Good-for-nothing books,
that were worse than the rainy weather. I bored myself to death with an
old volume of the _Lady’s Magazine_. I read all the commonplace names of
ambitious travellers scrawled on the panes of glass; the eternal
families of the Smiths, and the Browns, and the Jacksons, and the
Johnsons, and all the other sons; and I deciphered several scraps of
fatiguing inn-window poetry that I have met with in all parts of the
world.
The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy
clouds drifted heavily along in the air; there was no variety even in
the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter;
excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk
shower, from the rattlings of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was
quite _refreshing_ (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day)
when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled
through the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering
under cotton umbrellas; and seethed together, and reeking with the
steams of wet box-coats and upper Benjamins.
The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond
boys and vagabond dogs, with the carroty-headed hostler and the
nondescript animal ycleped Boots, and all the other vagabond race that
infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach
again whirled on its way; the boy, and dog, and hostler, and Boots,
all slunk back again to their holes; and the street again became
silent, and the rain continued to rain on. In fact there was no hope
of its clearing up; the barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine
hostess’s tortoise-shell cat sat by the fire washing her face and
rubbing her paws over her ears; and on referring to the almanac, I
found a direful prediction from the top of the page to the bottom
through the whole month, “expect—much—rain—about—this—time.”
I was dreadfully hipped. The hours seemed as if they would never creep
by. The very ticking of the clock became irksome. At length the
stillness of the house was interrupted by the ringing of a bell. Shortly
after I heard the voice of a waiter at the bar, “The Stout Gentleman in
No. 13 wants his breakfast. Tea and bread and butter, with ham and eggs;
the eggs not to be too much done.”
In such a situation as mine every incident is of importance. Here was a
subject of speculation presented to my mind, and ample exercise for my
imagination. I am prone to paint pictures to myself, and on this
occasion I had some material to work upon. Had the guest upstairs been
mentioned as Mr. Smith, or Mr. Brown, or Jackson, or Mr. Johnson, or
merely as the gentleman in No. 13, it would have been a perfect blank to
me. I should have thought nothing of it. But “the Stout Gentleman!”—the
very name had something in it of the picturesque. It at once gave the
size, it embodied the personage to my mind’s eye, and my fancy did the
rest. “He was stout, or, as some term it, lusty; in all probability
therefore he was advanced in life; some people expanding as they grow
old. By his breakfasting rather late, and in his own room, he must be a
man accustomed to live at his ease, and above the necessity of early
rising; no doubt a round, rosy, lusty old gentleman.”
[Illustration: “THE STOUT GENTLEMAN HAD BEEN RUDE TO HER.”]
There was another violent ringing; the Stout Gentleman was impatient for
his breakfast. He was evidently a man of importance, “well-to-do in the
world,” accustomed to be promptly waited upon, of a keen appetite, and a
little cross when hungry. “Perhaps,” thought I, “he may be some London
alderman; or who knows but he may be a member of Parliament?”
The breakfast was sent up, and there was a short interval of silence; he
was doubtless making the tea. Presently there was a violent ringing, and
before it could be answered, another ringing, still more violent. “Bless
me! what a choleric old gentleman!” The waiter came down in a huff. The
butter was rancid, the eggs were overdone, the ham was too salt. The
Stout Gentleman was evidently nice in his eating. One of those who eat
and growl and keep the waiter on the trot, and live in a state militant
with the household.
The hostess got into a fume. I should observe that she was a brisk,
coquettish woman; a little of a shrew, and something of a slammerkin,
but very pretty withal; with a nincompoop for a husband, as shrews are
apt to have. She rated the servants roundly for their negligence in
sending up so bad a breakfast; but said not a word against the Stout
Gentleman; by which I clearly perceived he must be a man of consequence;
entitled to make a noise and to give trouble at a country inn. Other
eggs and ham and bread and butter were sent. They appeared to be more
graciously received; at last there was no further complaint, and I had
not made many turns about the traveller’s room when there was another
ringing. Shortly afterwards there was a stir, and an inquest about the
house. “The Stout Gentleman wanted the _Times_ or the _Chronicle_
newspaper.” I set him down, therefore, for a whig; or rather, from his
being so absolute and lordly where he had a chance, I suspected him of
being a radical. Hunt, I had heard, was a large man. “Who knows,”
thought I, “but it is Hunt himself?”
My curiosity began to be awakened. I inquired of the waiter who was this
Stout Gentleman that was making all this stir, but I could get no
information. Nobody seemed to know his name. The landlords of bustling
inns seldom trouble their heads about the names of their transient
guests. The colour of a coat, the shape or size of the person, is enough
to suggest a travelling name. It is either the tall gentleman, or the
short gentleman; or the gentleman in black, or the gentleman in snuff
colour; or, as in the present instance, the Stout Gentleman; a
designation of the kind once hit on answers every purpose, and saves all
further inquiry.
Rain—rain—rain! pitiless, ceaseless rain! no such thing as putting a
foot out of doors, and no occupation or amusement within. By-and-by I
heard some one walking overhead. It was in the Stout Gentleman’s room.
He evidently was a large man by the heaviness of his tread; and an old
man from his wearing such creaking soles. “He is doubtless,” thought I,
“some rich old square-toes, of regular habits, and is now taking
exercise after breakfast.”
I now read all the advertisements of coaches and hotels that were stuck
about the mantelpiece. The _Lady’s Magazine_ had become an abomination
to me; it was as tedious as the day itself. I wandered out, not knowing
what to do, and ascended again to my room. I had not been there long
when there was a squall from a neighbouring bedroom. A door opened and
slammed violently; a chambermaid that I had remarked for a ruddy,
good-humoured face, went downstairs in a violent flurry. The Stout
Gentleman had been rude to her.
This sent a whole host of my deductions to the deuce in a moment. This
unknown personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are
not apt to be so obstreperous to chambermaids. He could not be a young
gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation.
He must be a middle-aged man, and confoundedly ugly into the bargain, or
the girl would not have taken the matter in such terrible dudgeon. I
confess I was sorely puzzled. In a few minutes I heard the voice of my
landlady. I caught a glance of her as she came tramping upstairs, her
face glowing, her cap flaring, her tongue wagging the whole way.
“She’d have no such doings in her house, she’d warrant. If gentlemen did
spend their money freely, it was no rule. She’d have no servant-maids of
hers treated in that way, when they were about their work, that’s what
she wouldn’t.”
As I hate squabbles, particularly with women, and above all with pretty
women, I slunk back into my room, and partly closed the door; but my
curiosity was too much excited not to listen. The landlady marched
intrepidly to the enemy’s citadel and entered it with a storm. The door
closed after her. I heard her voice in high windy clamour for a moment
or two. Then it gradually subsided, like a gust of wind in a garret.
Then there was a laugh; then I heard nothing more. After a little while
my landlady came out with an odd smile on her face, adjusting her cap,
which was a little on one side. As she went downstairs I heard the
landlord ask her what was the matter; she said, “Nothing at all—only the
girl’s a fool!” I was more than ever perplexed what to make of this
unaccountable personage, who could put a good-natured chambermaid in a
passion, and send away a termagant landlady in smiles. He could not be
so old, nor cross, nor ugly either.
I had to go to work at his picture again, and to paint him entirely
different. I now set him down for one of those Stout Gentlemen that are
frequently met with swaggering about the doors of country inns. Moist,
merry fellows, in Belcher handkerchiefs, whose bulk is a little assisted
by malt liquors. Men who have seen the world, and been sworn at
Highgate. Who are used to tavern life; up to all the tricks of tapsters,
and knowing in the ways of sinful publicans. Free livers on a small
scale, who call all the waiters by name, tousle the maids, gossip with
the landlady at the bar, and prose over a pint of port or a glass of
negus after dinner.
The morning wore away in forming these and similar surmises. As fast as
I wove one system of belief, some movement of the unknown would
completely overturn it, and throw all my thoughts again into confusion.
Such are the solitary operations of a feverish mind. I was, as I have
said, extremely nervous, and the continual meditation on the concerns of
this invisible personage began to have its effects—I was getting a fit
of fidgets.
Dinner-time came. I hoped the Stout Gentleman might dine in the
traveller’s room, and that I might at length get a view of his person;
but no—he had dinner served in his own room. What could be the meaning
of this solitude and mystery? He could not be a radical; there was
something too aristocratical in thus keeping himself apart from the rest
of the world, and condemning himself to his own dull company throughout
a rainy day. And then too he lived too well for a discontented
politician. He seemed to expatiate on a variety of dishes, and to sit
over his wine like a jolly friend of good living.
Indeed, my doubts on this head were soon at an end, for he could not
have finished his first bottle before I could faintly hear him humming a
tune, and on listening I found it to be “God Save the King.” ’Twas plain
then he was no radical, but a faithful subject; one that grew loyal over
his bottle, and was ready to stand by his king and constitution when he
could stand by nothing else. But who could he be? My conjectures began
to run wild. Was he not some personage of distinction travelling
_incog._? “God knows!” said I, at my wit’s end; “it maybe one of the
royal family for aught I know, for they are all Stout Gentlemen!”
The weather continued rainy. The mysterious person kept his room, and,
as far as I could judge, his chair; for I did not hear him move. In the
meantime, as the day advanced, the traveller’s room began to be
frequented. Some who had just arrived came in buttoned up in box coats;
others came home who had been dispersed about the town. Some took their
dinners, and some their tea. Had I been in a different mood, I should
have found entertainment in studying this peculiar class of men. There
were two, especially, who were regular wags of the road, and up to all
the standing jokes of travellers. They had a thousand sly things to say
to the waiting-maid, whom they called Louisa, and Ethelinda, and a dozen
other fine names, changing the name every time, and chuckling amazingly
at their own waggery. My mind, however, had become completely engrossed
by the Stout Gentleman. He had kept my fancy in chase during a long day,
and it was not now to be diverted from the scent.
The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or
three times over. Some drew around the fire, and told long stories about
their horses, about their adventures, their over-turns, and
breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and
different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty
chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly
taking what they called their “nightcaps,”—that is to say, strong
glasses of brandy and water with sugar, or some other mixture of the
kind; after which they one after another rang for “boots” and the
chambermaids, and walked up to bed in old shoes, cut down into
marvellously uncomfortable slippers.
There was only one man left; a short-legged, long-bodied, plethoric
fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself, with a glass of
port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring until nothing was left
but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep, bolt upright in his chair, with
the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall
asleep too, for the wick grew long and black and cabbaged at the end,
and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber.
The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless
and almost spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since buried
in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the
deep-drawn breathing of the sleeping toper, and the dripping of the
rain, drop—drop—drop, from the eaves of the house.
The church bells chimed midnight. All at once the Stout Gentleman began
to walk overhead, pacing slowly backwards and forwards. There was
something extremely awful in all this—especially to me in my state of
nerves. These ghastly great-coats, these guttural breathings, and the
creaking footsteps of the mysterious being. His steps grew fainter and
fainter, and at length died away. I could bear it no longer; I was wound
up to the desperation of a hero of romance. “Be he who or what he may,”
said I to myself, “I’ll have a sight of him!” I seized a chamber candle
and hurried up to No. 13. The door stood ajar. I hesitated—I entered—the
room was deserted. There stood a large, broad-bottomed elbow-chair at a
table, on which was an empty tumbler and a _Times_ newspaper, and the
room smelt powerfully of Stilton cheese.
The mysterious stranger had evidently but just retired. I turned off to
my room sorely disappointed. As I went along the corridor I saw a large
pair of boots, with dirty, waxed tops, standing at the door of a
bed-chamber. They doubtless belonged to the unknown; but it would not do
to disturb so redoubtable a personage in his den; he might discharge a
pistol or something worse at my head. I went to bed therefore, and lay
awake half the night in a terribly nervous state; and even when I fell
asleep I was still haunted in my dreams by the idea of the Stout
Gentleman and his wax-topped boots.
I slept rather late the next morning, and was awakened by some stir and
bustle in the house, which I could not at first comprehend; until
getting more awake, I found there was a mail coach starting from the
door. Suddenly there was a cry from below: “The gentleman has forgot his
umbrella; look for the gentleman’s umbrella in No. 13.”
I heard an immediate scamper of a chambermaid along the passage, and a
shrill reply, as she ran, “Here it is! here’s the gentleman’s umbrella!”
[Illustration: “THAT WAS ALL I EVER SAW OF THE STOUT GENTLEMAN.”]
The mysterious stranger then was on the point of setting off. This was
the only chance I should ever have of knowing him. I sprang out of bed,
scrambled to the window, snatched aside the curtains, and just caught a
glimpse of the rear of a person getting in at the coach-door. The skirts
of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of the broad disc
of a pair of drab breeches. The door closed. “All right,” was the word;
the coach whirled off—and that was all I ever saw of the Stout
Gentleman.
_Washington Irving._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN._
SECOND WEEK.
NEXT to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter
is, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order for
dinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a lump
an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless your garden is a
boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I hoe it on hot
days), you must make a selection, from the great variety of vegetables,
of those you will raise in it; and you feel rather bound to supply your
own table from your own garden, and to eat only as you have sown.