THE MAGISTRATE IN THE LUGGAGE VAN
The city of Winchester is famed for a cathedral, a bishop--but he was
unfortunately killed some years ago while riding--a public school, a
considerable assortment of the military, and the deliberate passage of
the trains of the London and South-Western line. These and many similar
associations would have doubtless crowded on the mind of Joseph
Finsbury; but his spirit had at that time flitted from the railway
compartment to a heaven of populous lecture-halls and endless oratory.
His body, in the meanwhile, lay doubled on the cushions, the forage-cap
rakishly tilted back after the fashion of those that lie in wait for
nursery-maids, the poor old face quiescent, one arm clutching to his
heart _Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper_.
To him, thus unconscious, enter and exeunt again a pair of voyagers.
These two had saved the train and no more. A tandem urged to its last
speed, an act of something closely bordering on brigandage at the ticket
office, and a spasm of running, had brought them on the platform just as
the engine uttered its departing snort. There was but one carriage
easily within their reach; and they had sprung into it, and the leader
and elder already had his feet upon the floor, when he observed Mr.
Finsbury.
"Good God!" he cried. "Uncle Joseph! This'll never do."
And he backed out, almost upsetting his companion, and once more closed
the door upon the sleeping patriarch.
The next moment the pair had jumped into the baggage van.
"What's the row about your Uncle Joseph?" inquired the younger
traveller, mopping his brow. "Does he object to smoking?"
"I don't know that there's anything the row with him," returned the
other. "He's by no means the first comer, my Uncle Joseph, I can tell
you! Very respectable old gentleman; interested in leather; been to Asia
Minor; no family, no assets--and a tongue, my dear Wickham, sharper than
a serpent's tooth."
"Cantankerous old party, eh?" suggested Wickham.
"Not in the least," cried the other; "only a man with a solid talent for
being a bore; rather cheery I dare say, on a desert island, but on a
railway journey insupportable. You should hear him on Tonti, the ass
that started tontines. He's incredible on Tonti."
"By Jove!" cried Wickham, "then you're one of these Finsbury tontine
fellows. I hadn't a guess of that."
"Ah!" said the other, "do you know that old boy in the carriage is worth
a hundred thousand pounds to me? There he was asleep, and nobody there
but you! But I spared him, because I'm a Conservative in politics."
Mr. Wickham, pleased to be in a luggage van, was flitting to and fro
like a gentlemanly butterfly.
"By Jingo!" he cried, "here's something for you! 'M. Finsbury, 16 John
Street, Bloomsbury, London.' M. stands for Michael, you sly dog; you
keep two establishments, do you?"
"O, that's Morris," responded Michael from the other end of the van,
where he had found a comfortable seat upon some sacks. "He's a little
cousin of mine. I like him myself, because he's afraid of me. He's one
of the ornaments of Bloomsbury, and has a collection of some
kind--birds' eggs or something that's supposed to be curious. I bet it's
nothing to my clients!"
"What a lark it would be to play billy with the labels!" chuckled Mr.
Wickham. "By George, here's a tack-hammer! We might send all these
things skipping about the premises like what's-his-name!"
At this moment, the guard, surprised by the sound of voices, opened the
door of his little cabin.
"You had best step in here, gentlemen," said he, when he had heard their
story.
"Won't you come, Wickham?" asked Michael.
"Catch me--I want to travel in a van," replied the youth.
And so the door of communication was closed; and for the rest of the run
Mr. Wickham was left alone over his diversions on the one side, and on
the other Michael and the guard were closeted together in familiar talk.
"I can get you a compartment here, sir," observed the official, as the
train began to slacken speed before Bishopstoke station. "You had best
get out at my door, and I can bring your friend."
Mr. Wickham, whom we left (as the reader has shrewdly suspected)
beginning to "play billy" with the labels in the van, was a young
gentleman of much wealth, a pleasing but sandy exterior, and a highly
vacant mind. Not many months before, he had contrived to get himself
blackmailed by the family of a Wallachian Hospodar, resident for
political reasons in the gay city of Paris. A common friend (to whom he
had confided his distress) recommended him to Michael; and the lawyer
was no sooner in possession of the facts than he instantly assumed the
offensive, fell on the flank of the Wallachian forces, and, in the
inside of three days, had the satisfaction to behold them routed and
fleeing for the Danube. It is no business of ours to follow them on this
retreat, over which the police were so obliging as to preside
paternally. Thus relieved from what he loved to refer to as the
Bulgarian Atrocity, Mr. Wickham returned to London with the most
unbounded and embarrassing gratitude and admiration for his saviour.
These sentiments were not repaid either in kind or degree; indeed,
Michael was a trifle ashamed of his new client's friendship; it had
taken many invitations to get him to Winchester and Wickham Manor; but
he had gone at last, and was now returning. It has been remarked by some
judicious thinker (possibly J.F. Smith) that Providence despises to
employ no instrument, however humble; and it is now plain to the dullest
that both Mr. Wickham and the Wallachian Hospodar were liquid lead and
wedges in the hand of Destiny.
Smitten with the desire to shine in Michael's eyes and show himself a
person of original humour and resources, the young gentleman (who was a
magistrate, more by token, in his native county) was no sooner alone in
the van than he fell upon the labels with all the zeal of a reformer;
and, when he rejoined the lawyer at Bishopstoke, his face was flushed
with his exertions, and his cigar, which he had suffered to go out was
almost bitten in two.
"By George, but this has been a lark!" he cried. "I've sent the wrong
thing to everybody in England. These cousins of yours have a
packing-case as big as a house. I've muddled the whole business up to
that extent, Finsbury, that if it were to get out it's my belief we
should get lynched."
It was useless to be serious with Mr. Wickham. "Take care," said
Michael. "I am getting tired of your perpetual scrapes; my reputation is
beginning to suffer."
"Your reputation will be all gone before you finish with me," replied
his companion with a grin. "Clap it in the bill, my boy. 'For total loss
of reputation, six and eightpence.' But," continued Mr. Wickham with
more seriousness, "could I be bowled out of the Commission for this
little jest? I know it's small, but I like to be a J.P. Speaking as a
professional man, do you think there's any risk?"
"What does it matter?" responded Michael, "they'll chuck you out sooner
or later. Somehow you don't give the effect of being a good magistrate."
"I only wish I was a solicitor," retorted his companion, "instead of a
poor devil of a country gentleman. Suppose we start one of those tontine
affairs ourselves; I to pay five hundred a year, and you to guarantee me
against every misfortune except illness or marriage."
"It strikes me," remarked the lawyer with a meditative laugh, as he
lighted a cigar, "it strikes me that you must be a cursed nuisance in
this world of ours."
"Do you really think so, Finsbury?" responded the magistrate, leaning
back in his cushions, delighted with the compliment. "Yes, I suppose I
am a nuisance. But, mind you, I have a stake in the country: don't
forget that, dear boy."