supposed to reveal, the moon throwing but a short occasional glance,
as the sluggish masses of cloud were driven slowly across her face.
Thus it fell out that our two adventurers were quite unconscious of
being in company, till a sudden glimpse of moonlight showed them to
each other, only a few yards apart; both, through a natural panic, as
pale as Ghosts, and both making eagerly towards the church porch. Much
as they had just wished for this vision, they could not help quaking
and stopping on the spot, as if turned to a pair of tombstones, and in
this position the dark again threw a sudden curtain over them, and they
disappeared from each other.
It will be supposed the two came only to one conclusion, each
conceiving that St. Mark had marked the other to himself. With this
comfortable knowledge, the widow and widower elect hied home again
by the roads they came; and as their custom was to sit apart after a
quarrel, they repaired, each ignorant of the other’s excursion, to
separate chambers.
[Illustration: SECOND SIGHT.]
By-and-by, being called to supper, instead of sulking as aforetime,
they came down together, each being secretly in the best humour, though
mutually suspected of the worst: and amongst other things on the table,
there was a calf’s sweetbread, being one of those very dainties that
had often set them together by the ears. The Dame looked and longed,
but she refrained from its appropriation, thinking within herself that
she could give up sweetbreads _for one year_: and the Farmer made a
similar reflection. After pushing the dish to and fro several times,
by a common impulse they divided the treat; and then having supped,
they retired amicably to rest, whereas until then, they had never gone
to bed without falling out. The truth was, each looked upon the other
as being already in the church-yard mould, or quite “moulded to their
wish.”
On the morrow, which happened to be the Dame’s birthday, the Farmer was
the first to wake, and _knowing what he knew_, and having besides but
just roused himself out of a dream strictly confirmatory of the late
vigil, he did not scruple to salute his wife, and wish her many happy
returns of the day. The wife, _who knew as much as he_, very readily
wished him the same, having in truth but just rubbed out of her eyes
the pattern of a widow’s bonnet that had been submitted to her in her
sleep. She took care, however, to give the fowl’s liver at dinner to
the doomed man, considering that when he was dead and gone, she could
have them, if she pleased, seven days in the week; and the Farmer, on
his part, took care to help her to many tid-bits. Their feeling towards
each other was that of an impatient host with regard to an unwelcome
guest, showing scarcely a bare civility while in expectation of his
stay, but overloading him with hospitality when made certain of his
departure.
In this manner they went on for some six months, and though without
any addition of love between them, and as much selfishness as ever,
yet living in a subservience to the comforts and inclinations of each
other, sometimes not to be found even amongst couples of sincerer
affections. There were as many causes for quarrel as ever, but every
day it became less worth while to quarrel; so letting by-gones be
by-gones, they were indifferent to the present, and thought only of the
future, considering each other (to adopt a common phrase) “as _good_ as
dead.”
[Illustration: “LET BY-GONES BE BY-GONES.”]
Ten months wore away, and the Farmer’s birthday arrived in its turn.
The Dame, who had passed an uncomfortable night, having dreamt, in
truth, that she did not much like herself in mourning, saluted him as
soon as the day dawned, and with a sigh wished him many years to come.
The Farmer repaid her in kind, the sigh included; his own visions
having been of the painful sort for he had dreamt of having a headache
from wearing a black hatband, and the malady still clung to him when
awake. The whole morning was spent in silent meditation and melancholy
on both sides, and when dinner came, although the most favourite
dishes were upon the table, they could not eat. The Farmer, resting his
elbows upon the board, with his face between his hands, gazed wistfully
on his wife,--scooping her eyes, as it were, out of their sockets,
stripping the flesh off her cheeks, and in fancy converting her whole
head into a mere Caput Mortuum. The Dame, leaning back in her high
arm-chair, regarded the Yeoman quite as ruefully,--by the same process
of imagination picking his sturdy bones, and bleaching his ruddy visage
to the complexion of a plaster cast. Their minds travelling in the
same direction, and at an equal rate, arrived together at the same
reflection; but the Farmer was the first to give it utterance:
“Thee’d be missed, Dame, if thee were to die!”
The Dame started. Although she had nothing but Death at that moment
before her eyes, she was far from dreaming of her own exit, and at
this rebound of her thoughts against herself, she felt as if an extra
cold coffin-plate had been suddenly nailed on her chest; recovering,
however, from the first shock, her thoughts flowed into their old
channel, and she retorted in the same spirit.--“I wish, Master, thee
may live so long as I!”
The Farmer, in his own mind, wished to live rather longer; for, at the
utmost, he considered that his wife’s bill of mortality had but two
months to run. The calculation made him sorrowful; during the last
few months she had consulted his appetite, bent to his humour, and
dove-tailed her own inclinations into his, in a manner that could never
be supplied; and he thought of her, if not in the language, at least in
the spirit of the Lady in Lalla Rookh--
“I never taught a bright Gazelle
To watch me with its dark black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!”
His wife, from being at first useful to him, had become agreeable,
and at last dear; and as he contemplated her approaching fate, he
could not help thinking out audibly, “that he should be a lonesome
man when she was gone.” The Dame, this time, heard the survivorship
foreboded without starting; but she marveled much at what she thought
the infatuation of a doomed man. So perfect was her faith in the
infallibility of St. Mark, that she had even seen the symptoms of
mortal disease, as palpable as plague spots, on the devoted Yeoman.
Giving his body up, therefore, for lost, a strong sense of duty
persuaded her, that it was imperative on her, as a Christian, to
warn the unsuspecting Farmer of his dissolution. Accordingly, with
a solemnity adapted to the subject, a tenderness of recent growth,
and a Memento Mori face, she broached the matter in the following
question--“Master, how bee’st?”
“As hearty, Dame, as a buck,”--the Dame shook her head,--“and I wish
thee the like,”--at which he shook his head himself.
A dead silence ensued: the Farmer was as unprepared as ever. There
is a great fancy for breaking the truth by dropping it gently,--an
experiment which has never answered any more than with Ironstone China.
The Dame felt this, and thinking it better to throw the news at her
husband at once, she told him in as many words, that he was a dead man.
It was now the Yeoman’s turn to be staggered. By a parallel course of
reasoning, he had just wrought himself up to a similar disclosure,
and the Dame’s death-warrant was just ready upon his tongue, when he
met with his own despatch, signed, sealed and delivered. Conscience
instantly pointed out the oracle from which she had derived the
omen, and he turned as pale as “the pale of society”--the colourless
complexion of late hours.
St. Martin had numbered his years; and the remainder days seemed
discounted by St. Thomas. Like a criminal cast to die, he doubted if
the die was cast, and appealed to his wife:--
“Thee hast watched, Dame, at the church porch, then?”
“Ay, Master.”
“And thee didst see me spirituously?”
“In the brown wrap, with the boot hose. Thee were coming to the
church, by Fairthorn Gap; in the while I were coming by the Holly
Hedge”--For a minute the Farmer paused--but the next, he burst into a
fit of uncontrollable laughter; peal after peal--and each higher than
the last,--according to the hysterical gamut of the hyæna. The poor
woman had but one explanation for this phenomenon--she thought it a
delirium--a lightening before death, and was beginning to wring her
hands, and lament, when she was checked by the merry Yeoman:--
“Dame, thee bee’st a fool. It was I myself thee seed at the church
porch. I seed thee too,--with a notice to quit upon thy face--but,
thanks to God, thee bee’st a-living, and that is more than I cared to
say of thee this day ten-month!”
The Dame made no answer. Her heart was too full to speak, but throwing
her arms round her husband, she showed that she shared in his
sentiment. And from that hour, by practising a careful abstinence from
offence, or a temperate sufferance of its appearance, they became the
most united couple in the county,--but it must be said, that their
comfort was not complete till they had seen each other, in safety, over
the perilous anniversary of St. Mark’s Eve.
[Illustration: BEAR AND FOR-BEAR.]
I’M NOT A SINGLE MAN.
“Double, single, and the rub.”--HOYLE.
“This, this is Solitude.”--BYRON.
I.
Well, I confess, I did not guess
A simple marriage vow
Would make me find all womenkind
Such unkind women now!
They need not, sure, as _distant_ be
As Java or Japan,--
Yet every Miss reminds me this--
I’m not a single man!
II.
Once they made choice of my bass voice
To share in each duett;
So well I danced, I somehow chanced
To stand in every set:
They now declare I cannot sing,
And dance on Bruin’s plan;
Me draw!--me paint!--me anything!--
I’m not a single man!
III.
Once I was asked advice, and tasked
What works to buy or not,
And “would I read that passage out
I so admired in Scott?”
They then could bear to hear one read;
But if I now began,
How they would snub “My pretty page!”
I’m not a single man!
IV.
One used to stitch a collar then,
Another hemmed a frill;
I had more purses netted then
Than I could hope to fill.
I once could get a button on,
But now I never can--
My buttons then were Bachelor’s,--
I’m not a single man!
V.
Oh how they hated politics
Thrust on me by papa:
But now my chat--they all leave that
To entertain mamma.
Mamma, who praises her own self,
Instead of Jane or Ann,
And lays “her girls” upon the shelf--
I’m not a single man!
VI.
Ah me, how strange it is the change,
In parlour and in hall!
They treat me so, if I but go
To make a morning call.
If they had hair in papers once,
Bolt up the stairs they ran;
They now sit still in dishabille--
I’m not a single man!
VII.
Miss Mary Bond was once so fond
Of Romans and of Greeks,
She daily sought my cabinet,
To study my antiques.
Well, now she doesn’t care a dump
For ancient pot or pan,
Her taste at once is modernised--
I’m not a single man!
VIII.
My spouse is fond of homely life,
And all that sort of thing;
I go to balls without my wife,
And never wear a ring:
And yet each Miss to whom I come,
As strange as Genghis Khan,
Knows by some sign, I can’t divine,--
I’m not a single man!
IX.
Go where I will, I but intrude;
I’m left in crowded rooms,
Like Zimmerman on Solitude,
Or Hervey at his Tombs.
From head to heel, they make me feel
Of quite another clan;
Compelled to own, though left alone,
I’m not a single man!
X.
Miss Towne the toast, though she can boast
A nose of Roman line,
Will turn up even that in scorn
Of compliments of mine:
She should have seen that I have been
Her sex’s partisan,
And really married all I could--
I’m not a single man!
XI.
’Tis hard to see how others fare,
Whilst I rejected stand,--
Will no one take my arm because
They cannot have my hand?
Miss Parry, that for some would go
A trip to Hindostan,
With me don’t care to mount a stair--
I’m not a single man!
XII.
Some change, of course, should be in force,
But, surely, not so much--
There may be hands I may not squeeze,
But must I never touch?--
Must I forbear to hand a chair
And not pick up a fan?
But I have been myself picked up--
I’m not a single man!
XIII.
Others may hint a lady’s tint
Is purest red and white--
May say her eyes are like the skies,
So very blue and bright,--
_I_ must not say that she _has eyes_;
Or, if I so began,
I have my fears about my ears,--
I’m not a single man!
XIV.
I must confess I did not guess
A simple marriage vow,
Would make me find all womenkind
Such unkind women now;--
I might be hashed to death, or smashed
By Mr. Pickford’s van,
Without, I fear, a single tear.
I’m not a single man!
[Illustration: A BACHELOR OF HEARTS.]
A GREENWICH PENSIONER
Is a sort of stranded marine animal, that the receding tide of life has
left high and dry on the shore. He pines for his element like a Sea
Bear, and misses his briny washings and wettings. What the ocean could
not do, the land does, for it makes him sick: he cannot digest properly
unless his body is rolled and tumbled about like a barrel-churn. Terra
firma is good enough he thinks to touch at for wood and water, but
nothing more. There is no wind, he swears, ashore--every day of his
life is a dead calm,--a thing above all others he detests--he would
like it better for an occasional earthquake. Walk he cannot, the ground
being so still and steady that he is puzzled to keep his legs; and ride
he will not, for he disdains a craft whose rudder is forward and not
astern.
Inland scenery is his especial aversion. He despises a tree “before
the mast,” and would give all the singing birds of Creation for a
Boatswain’s whistle. He hates prospects, but enjoys retrospects.
An old boat, a stray anchor, or decayed mooring ring, will set him
dreaming for hours. He splices sea and land ideas together. He reads
of “shooting off a tie at Battersea,” and it reminds him of a ball
carrying away his own pigtail. “Canvassing for a situation,” recalls
running with all sails set for a station at Aboukir. He has the
advantage of our Economists as to the “Standard of Value,” knowing it
to be the British ensign. The announcement of “an arrival of foreign
vessels, with our ports open,” claps him into a Paradise of prize
money, with Poll of the _Pint_. He wonders sometimes at “petitions
to be discharged from the Fleet,” but sympathises with those in the
Marshalsea Court, as subject to a Sea Court Martial. Finally, try
him even in the learned languages, by asking him for the meaning of
“Georgius Rex,” and he will answer, without hesitation, “The wrecks of
the Royal George.”
[Illustration: A GREENWICH PENSIONER.]
[Illustration: ENJOYING THE “TAILS OF MY LANDLORD.”]
THE BURNING OF THE LOVE LETTER.
“Sometimes they were put to the proof, by what was called the Fiery
Ordeal.”--HIST. ENG.
No morning ever seemed so long!--
I tried to read with all my might:
In my left hand “My Landlord’s Tales,”
And threepence ready in my right.
’Twas twelve at last--my heart beat high!--
The Postman rattled at the door!--
And just upon her road to church,
I dropt the “Bride of Lammermoor!”
I seized the note--I flew up stairs--
Flung-to the door, and locked me in--
With panting haste I tore the seal--
And kissed the B in Benjamin!
’Twas full of love--to rhyme with dove--
And all that tender sort of thing--
Of sweet and meet--and heart and dart--
But not a word about a ring!
In doubt I cast it in the flame,
And stood to watch the latest spark--
And saw the love all end in smoke--
Without a Parson and a Clerk!
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE DILEMMA
“Read! it’s very easy to say read.”--THE BURGOMASTER.
“I have trusted to a reed.”--OLD PROVERB.
“Hoy!--Cotch!--Co-ach!--Coachy!--Coachee--hullo!--holloo!--woh!--wo-hoay!--wough-hoaeiouy!”--for
the last cry was a waterman’s, and went all through the vowels.
The Portsmouth Rocket pulled up, and a middle-aged, domestic-looking
woman, just handsome enough for a plain cook at an ordinary, was
deposited on the dicky; two trunks, three bandboxes, a bundle, and a
hand-basket, were stowed in the hind boot. “This is where I’m to go
to,” she said to the guard, putting into his hand a slip of paper. The
guard took the paper, looked hard at it, right side upwards, then
upside down, and then he looked at the back; he in the mean time seemed
to examine the consistency of the fabric between his finger and thumb;
he approached it to his nose as if to smell out its meaning; I even
thought that he was going to try the sense of it by tasting, when by
a sudden jerk, he gave the label with its direction to the winds, and
snatching up his key-bugle began to play “Oh where, and oh where,” with
all his breath.
I defy the metaphysicians to explain by what vehicle I travelled to the
conclusion that the guard could not read, but I felt as morally sure
of it as if I had examined him in his a--b--ab. It was a prejudice not
very liberal; but yet it clung to me, and fancy persisted in sticking a
dunce’s cap on his head. Shakspeare says that “he who runs may read,”
and I had seen him run a good shilling’s worth after an umbrella that
dropped from the coach; it was a presumptuous opinion therefore to
form, but I formed it notwithstanding--that he was a perfect stranger
to all those booking-offices where the clerks are schoolmasters.
Morally speaking, I had no earthly right to clap an ideal Saracen’s
Head on his shoulders; but, for the life of me, I could not persuade
myself that he had more to do with literature than the Blue Boar.
Women are naturally communicative: after a little while the female
in the dicky brought up, as a military man would say, her reserve,
and entered into recitative with the guard during the pauses of the
key-bugle. She informed him in the course of conversation, or rather
dicky gossip, that she was an invaluable servant, and, as such,
had been bequeathed by a deceased master to the care of one of his
relatives at Putney, to exert her vigilance as a housekeeper, and
to overlook everything for fifty pounds a year. “Such places,” she
remarked, “is not to be found every day in the year.”
The last sentence was prophetic!
“If it’s Putney,” said the guard, “it’s the very place we’re going
through. Hold hard, Tom, the young woman wants to get down.” Tom
immediately pulled up; the young woman did get down, and her two
trunks, three bandboxes, her bundle, and her hand-basket, were
ranged round her. “I’ve had a very pleasant ride,” she said, giving
the fare with a smirk and a courtesy to the coachman, “and am very
much obliged,”--dropping a second courtesy to the guard,--“for other
civilities. The boxes and things is quite correct, and won’t give
further trouble, Mr. Guard, except to be as good as pint out the house
I’m going to.” The guard thus appealed to, for a moment stood all
aghast; but at last his wits came to his aid, and he gave the following
lesson in geography.
“You’re all right--ourn a’n’t a short stage, and can’t go round setting
people down at their own doors; but you’re safe enough at Putney--don’t
be alarmed, my dear--you can’t go out of it. It’s all Putney, from the
bridge we’ve just come over, to that windmill you almost can’t see
t’other side of the common.”
“But, Mr. Guard, I’ve never been in Putney before, and it seems a
scrambling sort of a place. If the coach can’t go round with me to the
house, can’t you stretch a pint and set me down in sight of it?”
“It’s impossible--that’s the sum total; this coach is timed to a
minute, and can’t do more for outsides if they was all kings of
England.”
“I see how it is,” said the female, bridling up, while the coachman,
out of patience, prepared to do quite the reverse; “some people are
very civil, while some people are setting beside ’em in dickies; but
give me the paper again, and I’ll find my own ways.”
“It’s chucked away,” said the guard as the coach got into motion; “but
just ask the first man you meet--anybody will tell you.”
“But I don’t know who or where to ask for,” screamed the lost woman
after the flying Rocket; “I can’t read; but it was all down in the
paper as is chucked away.”
A loud flourish of the bugle to the tune of “My Lodging is on the Cold
Ground” was the only reply: and as long as the road remained straight,
I could see “the Bewildered Maid” standing in the midst of her baggage,
as forlorn as Eve, when, according to Milton,
“The world was all before her, where to choose
Her _place_--”
[Illustration: THE OPENING OF MILTON’S PARADISE LOST.]
[Illustration: THE MOON IS ON THE WAIN.]
THE APPARITION.
In the dead of the night, when from beds that are turfy,
The spirits rise up on old cronies to call,
Came a shade from the shades on a visit to Murphy,
Who had not foreseen such a visit at all.
“Don’t shiver and shake,” said the mild Apparition,
“I’m come to your bed with no evil design;
I’m the Spirit of Moore, Francis Moore the Physician,
Once great like yourself in the Almanack line.”
Like you I was once a great prophet on weather,
And deemed to possess a more prescient knack
Than dogs, frogs, pigs, cattle, or cats, all together,
The donkeys that bray, and the dillies that quack.
With joy, then, as ashes retain former passion,
I saw my old mantle lugg’d out from the shelf,
Turn’d, trimmed, and brushed up, and again brought in fashion,
I seem’d to be almost reviving myself!
But, oh! from my joys there was soon a sad cantle--
As too many cooks make a mull of the broth--
To find that two Prophets were under my mantle,
And pulling two ways at the risk of the cloth.
Unless you would meet with an awkwardish tumble,
Oh! join like the Siamese twins in your jumps;
Just fancy if Faith on her Prophets should stumble,
The one in his clogs, and the other in pumps!
But think how the people would worship and wonder,
To find you “hail fellows, well met,” in your hail,
In one tune with your rain, and your wind and your thunder,
“’Fore God,” they would cry, “they are both in a tale!”
Consider the hint.
[Illustration: RATHER OUT IN THE WEATHER.]
THE DISCOVERY.
“It’s a nasty evening,” said Mr. Dornton, the stockbroker, as he
settled himself in the last inside place of the last Fulham coach,
driven by our old friend Mat--an especial friend in need, be it
remembered, to the fair sex.
“I wouldn’t be outside,” said Mr. Jones, another stockbroker, “for a
trifle.”
“Nor I, as a speculation in options,” said Mr. Parsons, another
frequenter of the Alley.
“I wonder what Mat is waiting for,” said Mr. Tidwell, “for we are full
inside and out.”
Mr. Tidwell’s doubt was soon solved,--the coach-door opened and Mat
somewhat ostentatiously enquired, what indeed he very well knew--“I
believe every place is took up inside?”
“We’re all here,” answered Mr. Jones, on behalf of the usual complement
of old stagers.
“I told you so, Ma’am,” said Mat, to a female who stood beside him,
but still leaving the door open to an invitation from within. However,
nobody spoke--on the contrary, I felt Mr. Hindmarsh, my next neighbour,
dilating himself like the frog in the fable.
“I don’t know what I shall do,” exclaimed the woman; “I’ve nowhere to
go to, and it’s raining cats and dogs!”
“You’d better not hang about, anyhow,” said Mat, “for you may ketch your
death,--and I’m the last coach,--aint I, Mr. Jones?”
“To be sure you are,” said Mr. Jones, rather impatiently; “shut the
door.”
“I told the lady the gentlemen couldn’t make room for her,” answered
Mat, in a tone of apology,--“I’m very sorry, my dear” (turning towards
the female), “you should have _my_ seat, if you could hold the
ribbons--but such a pretty one as you ought to have a coach of her own.”
He began slowly closing the door.
“Stop, Mat, stop!” cried Mr. Dornton, and the door quickly unclosed
again; “I can’t give up my place for I’m expected home to dinner; but
if the lady wouldn’t object to sit on my knees----”
“Not the least in the world,” answered Mat, eagerly; “you won’t object,
will you, Ma’am, for once in a way, with a married gentleman, and a wet
night, and the last coach on the road?”
“If I thought I shouldn’t uncommode,” said the lady, precipitately
furling her wet umbrella, which she handed in to one gentleman, whilst
she favoured another with her muddy pattens. She then followed herself,
Mat shutting the door behind her, in such a manner as to help her in.
“I’m sure I’m obliged for the favour,” she said, looking round; “but
which gentleman was so kind?”