"_Per Bacco!_" said Dr Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's
shoulder, and bending down to look into his face--"_Per Bacco!_ my
young friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had
hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer
to his question, "that, though the situation is charming, you did
not select it yourself. What is this?"--and the irony of the tone
vanished--"what is this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see
that those tears which you try to cheek come from a deep well. Tell me,
_povero fanciullo mio_, (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not
understand them, sounded softly and soothingly,)--tell me, my child,
how all this happened. Perhaps I can help you--we have all erred; we
should all help each other."
Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself
a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but
he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,--
"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault--and 'tis that which kills
me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
"You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out
his pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the
ground--"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over
sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their
general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the
Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief,
"I have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been
afflicted in my day: yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.'
_Cospetto!_" (and here the Dr seated himself deliberately, resting
one arm on the side column of the Stocks, in familiar contact with
the captive's shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene
around)--"_Cospetto!_ my prison, if they had caught me, would not have
had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one: there
are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons!"
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native
Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations
to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in
the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the
foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives
which had induced Mr Stirn to incarcerate his agent, (barring only that
of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clue.) That a
man high in office should make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an
unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the
wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the
task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by
reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances
of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred
to his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when
in slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his
leg, which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse
than the Stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant
countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's
celebrated witticism, "_En Angleterre on tue un amiral pour encourager
les autres_." ("In England they execute one admiral in order to
encourage the others.") Many more illustrations, still more pertinent
to the case in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of
history. But on seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree
consoled by these memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and,
reducing his logic to the strict _argumentum ad rem_, began to prove,
1st, that there was no disgrace at all in Lenny's present position,
that every equitable person would recognise the tyranny of Stirn and
the innocence of its victim; 2dly, that if even here he were mistaken,
for public opinion was not always righteous, what was public opinion
after all?--"A breath--a puff," cried Dr Riccabocca--"a thing without
matter--without length, breadth, or substance--a shadow--a goblin of
our own creating. A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he
should care no more for that phantom 'opinion' than he should fear
meeting a ghost if he cross the churchyard at dark."
Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his
head very mournfully. Dr Riccabocca was about to enter into a third
course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have
settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the Stocks till
doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and
calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation
in a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary
hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite
all the excellence of his spectacles--heard phantasmal rustlings and
murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical
experience in plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made
the Italian's ear as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And, with
another violent but vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed,--
"Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out--let me out.
O, kind sir, have pity--let me out!"
"_Diavolo!_" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that never
occurred to me before. After all, I believe he has hit the right
nail on the head;" and, looking close, he perceived that though the
partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which
defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked, (for,
indeed, the padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the
Squire, who never dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally
and summarily as to dispense with all formal appeal to himself.) As
soon as Dr Riccabocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that
all the wisdom of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile
man or boy to a bad position, the moment there is a fair opportunity
of letting him out of it. Accordingly, without more ado, he lifted up
the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield darted forth like a bird from
a cage--halted a moment as if for breath, or in joy; and then, taking
at once to his heels, fled, fast as a hare to its form--fast to his
mother's home.
Dr Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up
his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some
curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which
had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim.
"Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage,
soliloquising, "and is frightened by strange bugaboos! 'Tis but a piece
of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are
but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this
green bank to sit upon--under the shade of the elm-tree--verily the
position must be more pleasant than otherwise! I've a great mind--"
Here the Doctor looked around, and, seeing the coast still clear,
the oddest notion imaginable took possession of him; yet not indeed
a notion so odd, considered philosophically--for all philosophy is
based on practical experiment--and Dr Riccabocca felt an irresistible
desire practically to experience what manner of thing that punishment
of the Stocks really was. "I can but try!--only for a moment," said
he apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. "I have
time to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the partition again:
but Stocks are built on the true principle of English law, and don't
easily allow a man to criminate himself--it was hard to get into them
without the help of a friend. However, as we before noticed, obstacles
only whetted Dr Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a
withered bit of stick under the tree--this he inserted in the division
of the Stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick under
a sieve for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows: the fatal wood thus
propped, Dr Riccabocca sate gravely down on the bank, and thrust his
feet through the apertures.
"Nothing in it!" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation.
"The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With
that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from
their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and
the partition fell back into its clasp. Doctor Riccabocca was fairly
caught--"_Facilis descensus--sed revocare gradum!_" True, his hands
were at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they
kept the hands from the rescue; and as Dr Riccabocca's form was by no
means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that
firmness of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after
some vain twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not
without a stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding
the clasp and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash
experiment resigned himself to his fate. Dr Riccabocca was one of those
men who never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I
mean not only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position
was not quite so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he
resolved to make himself as comfortable as he could. And first, as
is natural in all troubles to men who have grown familiar with that
odoriferous comforter which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have
bestowed upon the Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to
extract from his pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After
a few whiffs he would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but
for the discovery that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens,
and was no longer shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The Doctor
again looked round, and perceived that his red silk umbrella, which
he had laid aside when he had seated himself by Lenny, was within
arm's reach. Possessing himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its
friendly folds. And thus doubly fortified within and without, under
shade of the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr
Riccabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native
proverbs, "'possesses all things!'--if one despises freedom, one is
free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed,
soliloquising, after a pause--"I am not sure that there is not
something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national
proverb of mine which I quoted to the _fanciullo_, that there are
no handsome prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman,
surnamed _Bras de Fer_, write a book not only to prove that adversities
are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities
a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?[7] But is not this
condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type
of my life? Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a
hobble?--and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame
the gods?"
Upon this Dr Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time
and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in
the Parish Stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser
that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.--Dr
Riccabocca was in the clouds.