_The “Yorkshire House.”--Its company.--And an adventure._
In the course of some subsequent conversation, Colin's friend the
coachman ascertained that his “green” passenger came from some place in
the county of York, and instantaneously concluded, by a peculiar process
of reasoning, that our hero ought of necessity to put up at a “Yorkshire
House.” He forthwith recommended him to a tavern of some notoriety in
the city, backing his recommendation with the assurance that, as he
was but raw in London, it would be better for him to be amongst his own
countrymen.
In the “Yorkshire House,” then, we will suppose him. His first business,
after having refreshed himself, was to call for ink and paper, and
indite an epistle to Squire Lupton, giving him not only an explicit
statement of the cause of his precipitate retreat from Bram-leigh, and
his consequent inability to attend at the Hall on the appointed day, but
also detailing the horrible scene of the lawyer's confession respecting
the situation of James Woodruff, which had led to his recent attempt,
and compelled that retreat. This being done, and duly despatched, he
hastily prepared himself, fevered and confused in brain as he was by the
long night-journey, to take a turn in the streets. He longed, as every
stranger does who first enters this mighty city, to wander among its
endless maze of houses, and witness the vastness of its resources.
He passed down one of the by-streets into Cheapside; wondered at the
numbers of caravans and carts, the coaches and cabs, which blocked
themselves to a temporary stand-still in the streets branching from
either side; marvelled what all the vehicles that shot along could be
employed for; where the contrary and cross currents of human beings
could all possibly be setting in; or how the enormous evidences of
almost inconceivable wealth, displayed on all sides, could ever have
been thus accumulated. As he ruminated, the crowd every now and then
half spun him round, now one way, now another, in the endeavour to pass
or to outstrip him. Some belated clerk, hurrying to his duty, put a
forcible but inoffensive hand upon his shoulder, and pushed him aside;
the butcher's boy (and butchers' boys are _always_ in a hurry) perhaps
poked the projecting corner of his wooden tray or the shank of a leg of
mutton into his ear; the baker drove a loaf into his ribs; the porter
knocked his hat off with a box on his knot, accompanying the action with
the polite expression of “By your leave;” the merchant pushed it into
the gutter in order to avoid treading upon it, and the policeman,
standing by the lamp-post, smiled as sedately as a wooden doll, whose
lower jaw is pulled down with a string, and, when advice was useless,
kindly told him to “take care of his hat.”
By the time he had passed through Fleet Street, and had returned along
Oxford Street and Holborn, his head was in a whirl. In the course of
a few short hours his senses had received more numerous and striking
impressions than had been made upon them probably during the whole
course of his previous life. London seemed to him a Babel, and himself
one of those who were lost utterly in the confusion of tongues,--tongues
not of men merely, but of iron and adamant, rattling together their
horrible jargon, until his ears sounded and reverberated like two shells
beside his head, and his brain became bewildered as if with (that which
he had happily never yet experienced) a night's excess.
About seven o'clock in the evening he returned to his inn. Having placed
himself quietly in a retired corner of the parlour of the “Yorkshire
House,” and immediately beneath a sloping skylight extending the whole
breadth of the room,--a position which very strongly suggested the idea
that he was sitting under a cucumber frame,--Colin amused himself
by making silent remarks upon the scene before him. Sundry very
miscellaneous-looking personages formed the principal figures of the
picture, and were relieved by numerous accessaries of mutton-chops,
biscuits, broiled kidneys, pints of stout, and glasses of gin-punch; the
whole being enveloped in an atmosphere of such dense smoke, as gave a
very shadowy and mysterious character to every object seen through it.
“There's a fly on your nose, Mr. Prince,” remarked a lean hungry-looking
fellow; “a blue-bottle, sir, just on the end there.”
The individual thus addressed was a sinister-looking man, who, it
afterwards appeared was a native of Leeds, in which he had formerly
carried on business, and contrived to scrape together a large fortune.
In mercantile phraseology, he was a “thirty thousand pound man” and,
though an ignorant and surly fellow, on account of his property he was
looked up to by everybody as ignorant as himself. On hearing his friend
Hobson's remark, Mr. Prince suddenly seized the end of his own nose, and
grasped it in his hand, as he was in the regular habit of doing
whenever the fly was mentioned, while with a very shallow assumption of
facetiousness he replied, “Then I 've got him to-night, by Go'!”
Every individual in the company who knew his business properly now
forced a laugh at the great man's witty method of doing things, while
Hobson replied, “I think not, Mr. Prince. He's too 'fly' for you again.”
“Look in your hand, Mr. Prince,” suggested a thick-headed fellow from
the East-Riding, not unlike a bullock in top-boots. Mr. Prince thanked
him for the hint; but declined adopting it, on the score that if he
opened his hand he should lose him.
“Put him in Hobson's glass,” said another.
“Well,” replied Hobson, “as we all know Mr. Prince is very poor, I 'll
give him sixpence if he will.”
This hint at Mr. Prince's poverty was exceedingly relished both by the
Prince himself and all the toadeaters about him. Its ingenuity seemed
to delight them, as did also the reply made by the great man himself. “I
doubt whether you ever had a sixpence to spare in your life.”
Another mechanical laugh was here put in at Hobson's expense, which
that gentleman not relishing quite so well as he would have done had the
insinuation been made at the expense of any other person, he repelled it
by challenging Mr. Prince to produce, there and then, as many sovereigns
upon the table as any other man in the company. This touched Mr. Prince
in a delicate place, and he growled out with a horrible oath, that he
could buy Hobson and all his family up with only the simple interest of
his capital. At the same time he put his hand in his breeches-pocket,
and drew forth a broad-bellied greasy black pocket-book, which he
slapped heavily on the table, as he swore there was more money in it
than Hobson had ever even so much as seen together before. Hobson flatly
denied it, and offered to bet glasses round that it did not contain
twenty pounds more than his own.
“Done!” roared Mr. Prince, as his clenched fist fell on the table, with
a weight which made all the pipes and glasses upon it dance a momentary
hornpipe. A comparison of pocket-books was immediately instituted. Mr.
Prince's was declared to contain one hundred and seventy bank-notes more
than Hobson's, and Hobson was called upon for the grog. This being
more than he expected, he endeavoured to evade the bet altogether, by
insinuating that he should not believe Mr. Prince's notes were good,
unless he looked at them himself. Several voices cried together “No,
no!” and the rest vented their opinions in loud exclamations of “Shame,
shame!--Too bad!” and the like.
Mr. Prince felt the indignity offered to his pocket-book most keenly.
He looked unutterable things at Hobson, and bellowed loud enough to
have been heard as far as Lad Lane, that he would not trust a single
farthing of his money in the hands of such a needy, starving, penniless
bankrupt as he was. Many of those present felt that this language was
not exactly warrantable; but there were no cries of shame in favour of
Mr. Hobson.
At this interesting period of the discussion, Colin's eyes chanced to
be fixed very earnestly on the countenance of Mr. Prince, which that
gentleman remarking, he forthwith turned suddenly on the young man with
this abrupt demand:--
“What are _you_ staring at, eh? Did you never see a man's face before.”
“Yes,” very quietly replied Colin; “I have seen many _men's_ faces
before.”
“What do you mean by that, eh?” cried Prince. “What does he mean?”
addressing the company. “Come, come, young man, I 'll soon teach you how
to know your betters.” And he strode towards Colin, with the apparent
intention of practically illustrating the system he maintained. The
latter instantly rose on his feet to meet him. All eyes were now turned
towards these two, while the squabble with Hobson appeared for the time
to be wholly forgotten.
“Beg my pardon, sir!” bellowed Prince.
“I shall beg no man's pardon whom I have neither injured nor insulted,”
coolly answered Colin.
“I say, beg my pardon, sir!” repeated Prince. “Do you mean to take the
law of me if I strike you? Say no, and I 'll knock you down.”
“No!” replied Colin, “I shall appeal to no law except that of my own
force. If you strike me, I shall probably strike you again, old as you
are.”
Smash went Mr. Prince's fist at Colin's face; but the latter parried
the blow adroitly, and by a cool “counter” succeeded in pressing Mr.
Prince's nose very much closer to his face than nature herself had
intended it to be. Cries of “Shame!” again arose against Colin, and
some attempts were made to seize and turn him out. These, however, were
prevented by other portions of the company, who exclaimed loudly in
favour of fair play, and against any interference. In the mean time
Mr. Prince grew furious, and raised his stick to strike Colin with the
determination of a butcher about to knock a bull on the head. The
youth again parried the intended blow, and turned the weapon aside by
receiving it in a slanting direction on his right arm. In order to close
with him on the opposite side, Prince now jumped on the table; but this
manouvre the young man avoided, and at the same instant a shower of
broken glass fell upon him. Colin's enraged assailant's stick had
gone through the lid of the “city cucumber-frame,” and some half dozen
fractured squares attested his powers of mischief. A loud laugh echoed
from every part of the room, which put Mr. Prince in a perfect whirlwind
of passion. He plunged at his young opponent as though he meditated
crushing him by the mere weight of his body; but as the coolness of the
latter enabled him to take advantage of the slightest circumstance
in his favour, he slipped aside at the critical moment, and his
antagonist's head went with the power of a paviour's rammer against
the wall. This terminated the fight. Mr. Prince lay on the floor, and
groaned with pain and vexation, until he was picked up, and placed,
almost as inanimate as a sack of potatoes, in his chair.
In an instant afterwards a gentleman, dressed in a dark-blue great-coat,
and who, as Colin thought, was so very rich in that particular article
of clothing as to lay himself under the necessity of having them
numbered on the collar, made his appearance in the room; and at the
instance of the landlord stepped forwards, and collared our hero,
with the intention of conveying him to the station-house. Against this
proceeding several friendly individuals protested, and joined vehemently
in the opinions expressed by a stout young Welshman, who sat with a pipe
in his mouth, that “Py cot! it was too bad to meddle with him instead of
the old one.” This timely interference saved Colin for the present, and
the policeman was obliged to retire.
Deeply fatigued as our hero was from previous want of rest, he early
retired to his apartment, and soon fell into a slumber of many hours'
duration. On rising in the morning, what was his astonishment to find a
roll of paper like bank-notes lying near him, for the presence of which
he knew not how to account?
After some hesitation he dressed, and rang for the servant.
“That roll of paper,” said he, when she appeared, “lay on my chair when
I woke. It was not there last night, and it does not belong to me. How
it came there I know not. The papers appear to be bank-notes. You had
better take them to your master, and inquire whether any person in the
house has lost them.”
The girl looked surprised; but took them up, and followed his advice.
Very soon after Colin heard a hue and cry raised below-stairs; and after
a few minutes, a rush of people towards his room.
“Is this him?” demanded a man, with a belt round his body, and a glazed
rim on the edge of his hat-crown.
[Illustration: 168]
“That's him!” replied the servant-girl. “He gave them to me.”
“Come, young man, I want you,” said the policeman, seizing Colin
roughly. “Come along with me.” And, in spite of all his entreaties and
protestations, he was harried away. It appeared that Mr. Prince,
who occupied a room on the same floor as his young antagonist, had
identified the notes as his own, and declared that Colin must have
robbed him.
After the lapse of a very short period, Colin stood before the grave
magisterial authorities sitting at Guildhall, with Mr. Prince as his
accuser. The charge having been heard, Colin replied to it with all the
fearlessness, determination, and indignation, which the consciousness of
innocence is sure to inspire. He related the occurrences of the previous
evening, and concluded by expressing his firm belief that the money
had been placed upon his chair in order to bring him into trouble. When
searched, ten sovereigns and some silver had been found upon him. He was
asked to account for the possession of so much money? To this question
he flatly refused to answer, as well as those bearing upon his own
character and employment; who he was; where he came from; and what place
he had left when he arrived at the Yorkshire House.
In this dilemma an idea struck the subtle brain of Mr. Prince. He felt
now perfectly secure of his victim. He owned the sovereigns also, and
declared they were part of the money which had been abstracted during
the night from his pocket-book. Here, however, he overstepped the
mark. Colin instantly requested that the landlord of the inn might be
called to witness that the money was in his possession at the time he
arrived there, and many hours before it could even be pretended that he
saw the individual who now stood forwards as his accuser. To this fact
the landlord honestly bore testimony,--a piece of evidence which caused
the face of Colin's accuser to assume the tint of a thundercloud with
the sunshine on it--he looked black and white at the same time. Boots
also declared that on going up-stairs to leave the gentlemen's boots at
their doors, he saw some person come out of the young man's room, who
certainly bore very little resemblance to the occupant of that room
himself. After some further investigation Mr. Prince was accommodated
with a reprimand from the bench, and the case was dismissed.