‘Great Winglebury.
‘_Wednesday Morning_.
‘Sir. Immediately on discovering your intentions, I left our
counting-house, and followed you. I know the purport of your
journey;—that journey shall never be completed.
‘I have no friend here, just now, on whose secrecy I can rely. This
shall be no obstacle to my revenge. Neither shall Emily Brown be
exposed to the mercenary solicitations of a scoundrel, odious in her
eyes, and contemptible in everybody else’s: nor will I tamely submit to
the clandestine attacks of a base umbrella-maker.
‘Sir. From Great Winglebury church, a footpath leads through four
meadows to a retired spot known to the townspeople as Stiffun’s Acre.’
[Mr. Trott shuddered.] ‘I shall be waiting there alone, at twenty
minutes before six o’clock to-morrow morning. Should I be disappointed
in seeing you there, I will do myself the pleasure of calling with a
horsewhip.
‘Horace Hunter.
‘PS. There is a gunsmiths in the High-street; and they won’t sell
gunpowder after dark—you understand me.
‘PPS. You had better not order your breakfast in the morning until you
have met me. It may be an unnecessary expense.’
‘Desperate-minded villain! I knew how it would be!’ ejaculated the
terrified Trott. ‘I always told father, that once start me on this
expedition, and Hunter would pursue me like the Wandering Jew. It’s bad
enough as it is, to marry with the old people’s commands, and without
the girl’s consent; but what will Emily think of me, if I go down there
breathless with running away from this infernal salamander? What
_shall_ I do? What _can_ I do? If I go back to the city, I’m disgraced
for ever—lose the girl—and, what’s more, lose the money too. Even if I
did go on to the Browns’ by the coach, Hunter would be after me in a
post-chaise; and if I go to this place, this Stiffun’s Acre (another
shudder), I’m as good as dead. I’ve seen him hit the man at the
Pall-mall shooting-gallery, in the second button-hole of the waistcoat,
five times out of every six, and when he didn’t hit him there, he hit
him in the head.’ With this consolatory reminiscence Mr. Alexander
Trott again ejaculated, ‘What shall I do?’
Long and weary were his reflections, as, burying his face in his hand,
he sat, ruminating on the best course to be pursued. His mental
direction-post pointed to London. He thought of the ‘governor’s’ anger,
and the loss of the fortune which the paternal Brown had promised the
paternal Trott his daughter should contribute to the coffers of his
son. Then the words ‘To Brown’s’ were legibly inscribed on the said
direction-post, but Horace Hunter’s denunciation rung in his ears;—last
of all it bore, in red letters, the words, ‘To Stiffun’s Acre;’ and
then Mr. Alexander Trott decided on adopting a plan which he presently
matured.
First and foremost, he despatched the under-boots to the Blue Lion and
Stomach-warmer, with a gentlemanly note to Mr. Horace Hunter,
intimating that he thirsted for his destruction and would do himself
the pleasure of slaughtering him next morning, without fail. He then
wrote another letter, and requested the attendance of the other
boots—for they kept a pair. A modest knock at the room door was heard.
‘Come in,’ said Mr. Trott. A man thrust in a red head with one eye in
it, and being again desired to ‘come in,’ brought in the body and the
legs to which the head belonged, and a fur cap which belonged to the
head.
‘You are the upper-boots, I think?’ inquired Mr. Trott.
‘Yes, I am the upper-boots,’ replied a voice from inside a velveteen
case, with mother-of-pearl buttons—‘that is, I’m the boots as b’longs
to the house; the other man’s my man, as goes errands and does odd
jobs. Top-boots and half-boots, I calls us.’
‘You’re from London?’ inquired Mr. Trott.
‘Driv a cab once,’ was the laconic reply.
‘Why don’t you drive it now?’ asked Mr. Trott.
‘Over-driv the cab, and driv over a ’ooman,’ replied the top-boots,
with brevity.
‘Do you know the mayor’s house?’ inquired Mr. Trott.
‘Rather,’ replied the boots, significantly, as if he had some good
reason to remember it.
‘Do you think you could manage to leave a letter there?’ interrogated
Trott.
‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ responded boots.
‘But this letter,’ said Trott, holding a deformed note with a paralytic
direction in one hand, and five shillings in the other—‘this letter is
anonymous.’
‘A—what?’ interrupted the boots.
‘Anonymous—he’s not to know who it comes from.’
‘Oh! I see,’ responded the reg’lar, with a knowing wink, but without
evincing the slightest disinclination to undertake the charge—‘I
see—bit o’ Sving, eh?’ and his one eye wandered round the room, as if
in quest of a dark lantern and phosphorus-box. ‘But, I say!’ he
continued, recalling the eye from its search, and bringing it to bear
on Mr. Trott. ‘I say, he’s a lawyer, our mayor, and insured in the
County. If you’ve a spite agen him, you’d better not burn his house
down—blessed if I don’t think it would be the greatest favour you could
do him.’ And he chuckled inwardly.
If Mr. Alexander Trott had been in any other situation, his first act
would have been to kick the man down-stairs by deputy; or, in other
words, to ring the bell, and desire the landlord to take his boots off.
He contented himself, however, with doubling the fee and explaining
that the letter merely related to a breach of the peace. The top-boots
retired, solemnly pledged to secrecy; and Mr. Alexander Trott sat down
to a fried sole, maintenon cutlet, Madeira, and sundries, with greater
composure than he had experienced since the receipt of Horace Hunter’s
letter of defiance.
The lady who alighted from the London coach had no sooner been
installed in number twenty-five, and made some alteration in her
travelling-dress, than she indited a note to Joseph Overton, esquire,
solicitor, and mayor of Great Winglebury, requesting his immediate
attendance on private business of paramount importance—a summons which
that worthy functionary lost no time in obeying; for after sundry
openings of his eyes, divers ejaculations of ‘Bless me!’ and other
manifestations of surprise, he took his broad-brimmed hat from its
accustomed peg in his little front office, and walked briskly down the
High-street to the Winglebury Arms; through the hall and up the
staircase of which establishment he was ushered by the landlady, and a
crowd of officious waiters, to the door of number twenty-five.
‘Show the gentleman in,’ said the stranger lady, in reply to the
foremost waiter’s announcement. The gentleman was shown in accordingly.
The lady rose from the sofa; the mayor advanced a step from the door;
and there they both paused, for a minute or two, looking at one another
as if by mutual consent. The mayor saw before him a buxom,
richly-dressed female of about forty; the lady looked upon a sleek man,
about ten years older, in drab shorts and continuations, black coat,
neckcloth, and gloves.
‘Miss Julia Manners!’ exclaimed the mayor at length, ‘you astonish me.’
‘That’s very unfair of you, Overton,’ replied Miss Julia, ‘for I have
known you, long enough, not to be surprised at anything you do, and you
might extend equal courtesy to me.’
‘But to run away—actually run away—with a young man!’ remonstrated the
mayor.
‘You wouldn’t have me actually run away with an old one, I presume?’
was the cool rejoinder.
‘And then to ask me—me—of all people in the world—a man of my age and
appearance—mayor of the town—to promote such a scheme!’ pettishly
ejaculated Joseph Overton; throwing himself into an arm-chair, and
producing Miss Julia’s letter from his pocket, as if to corroborate the
assertion that he _had_ been asked.
‘Now, Overton,’ replied the lady, ‘I want your assistance in this
matter, and I must have it. In the lifetime of that poor old dear, Mr.
Cornberry, who—who—’
‘Who was to have married you, and didn’t, because he died first; and
who left you his property unencumbered with the addition of himself,’
suggested the mayor.
‘Well,’ replied Miss Julia, reddening slightly, ‘in the lifetime of the
poor old dear, the property had the incumbrance of your management; and
all I will say of that, is, that I only wonder it didn’t die of
consumption instead of its master. You helped yourself then:—help me
now.’
Mr. Joseph Overton was a man of the world, and an attorney; and as
certain indistinct recollections of an odd thousand pounds or two,
appropriated by mistake, passed across his mind he hemmed
deprecatingly, smiled blandly, remained silent for a few seconds; and
finally inquired, ‘What do you wish me to do?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ replied Miss Julia—‘I’ll tell you in three words. Dear
Lord Peter—’
‘That’s the young man, I suppose—’ interrupted the mayor.
‘That’s the young Nobleman,’ replied the lady, with a great stress on
the last word. ‘Dear Lord Peter is considerably afraid of the
resentment of his family; and we have therefore thought it better to
make the match a stolen one. He left town, to avoid suspicion, on a
visit to his friend, the Honourable Augustus Flair, whose seat, as you
know, is about thirty miles from this, accompanied only by his
favourite tiger. We arranged that I should come here alone in the
London coach; and that he, leaving his tiger and cab behind him, should
come on, and arrive here as soon as possible this afternoon.’
‘Very well,’ observed Joseph Overton, ‘and then he can order the
chaise, and you can go on to Gretna Green together, without requiring
the presence or interference of a third party, can’t you?’
‘No,’ replied Miss Julia. ‘We have every reason to believe—dear Lord
Peter not being considered very prudent or sagacious by his friends,
and they having discovered his attachment to me—that, immediately on
his absence being observed, pursuit will be made in this direction:—to
elude which, and to prevent our being traced, I wish it to be
understood in this house, that dear Lord Peter is slightly deranged,
though perfectly harmless; and that I am, unknown to him, awaiting his
arrival to convey him in a post-chaise to a private asylum—at Berwick,
say. If I don’t show myself much, I dare say I can manage to pass for
his mother.’
The thought occurred to the mayor’s mind that the lady might show
herself a good deal without fear of detection; seeing that she was
about double the age of her intended husband. He said nothing, however,
and the lady proceeded.
‘With the whole of this arrangement dear Lord Peter is acquainted; and
all I want you to do, is, to make the delusion more complete by giving
it the sanction of your influence in this place, and assigning this as
a reason to the people of the house for my taking the young gentleman
away. As it would not be consistent with the story that I should see
him until after he has entered the chaise, I also wish you to
communicate with him, and inform him that it is all going on well.’
‘Has he arrived?’ inquired Overton.
‘I don’t know,’ replied the lady.
‘Then how am I to know!’ inquired the mayor. ‘Of course he will not
give his own name at the bar.’
‘I begged him, immediately on his arrival, to write you a note,’
replied Miss Manners; ‘and to prevent the possibility of our project
being discovered through its means, I desired him to write anonymously,
and in mysterious terms, to acquaint you with the number of his room.’
‘Bless me!’ exclaimed the mayor, rising from his seat, and searching
his pockets—‘most extraordinary circumstance—he has arrived—mysterious
note left at my house in a most mysterious manner, just before
yours—didn’t know what to make of it before, and certainly shouldn’t
have attended to it.—Oh! here it is.’ And Joseph Overton pulled out of
an inner coat-pocket the identical letter penned by Alexander Trott.
‘Is this his lordship’s hand?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Julia; ‘good, punctual creature! I have not seen it
more than once or twice, but I know he writes very badly and very
large. These dear, wild young noblemen, you know, Overton—’
‘Ay, ay, I see,’ replied the mayor.—‘Horses and dogs, play and
wine—grooms, actresses, and cigars—the stable, the green-room, the
saloon, and the tavern; and the legislative assembly at last.’
‘Here’s what he says,’ pursued the mayor; ‘“Sir,—A young gentleman in
number nineteen at the Winglebury Arms, is bent on committing a rash
act to-morrow morning at an early hour.” (That’s good—he means
marrying.) “If you have any regard for the peace of this town, or the
preservation of one—it may be two—human lives”—What the deuce does he
mean by that?’
‘That he’s so anxious for the ceremony, he will expire if it’s put off,
and that I may possibly do the same,’ replied the lady with great
complacency.
‘Oh! I see—not much fear of that;—well—“two human lives, you will cause
him to be removed to-night.” (He wants to start at once.) “Fear not to
do this on your responsibility: for to-morrow the absolute necessity of
the proceeding will be but too apparent. Remember: number nineteen. The
name is Trott. No delay; for life and death depend upon your
promptitude.” Passionate language, certainly. Shall I see him?’
‘Do,’ replied Miss Julia; ‘and entreat him to act his part well. I am
half afraid of him. Tell him to be cautious.’
‘I will,’ said the mayor.
‘Settle all the arrangements.’
‘I will,’ said the mayor again.
‘And say I think the chaise had better be ordered for one o’clock.’
‘Very well,’ said the mayor once more; and, ruminating on the absurdity
of the situation in which fate and old acquaintance had placed him, he
desired a waiter to herald his approach to the temporary representative
of number nineteen.
The announcement, ‘Gentleman to speak with you, sir,’ induced Mr. Trott
to pause half-way in the glass of port, the contents of which he was in
the act of imbibing at the moment; to rise from his chair; and retreat
a few paces towards the window, as if to secure a retreat, in the event
of the visitor assuming the form and appearance of Horace Hunter. One
glance at Joseph Overton, however, quieted his apprehensions. He
courteously motioned the stranger to a seat. The waiter, after a little
jingling with the decanter and glasses, consented to leave the room;
and Joseph Overton, placing the broad-brimmed hat on the chair next
him, and bending his body gently forward, opened the business by saying
in a very low and cautious tone,
‘My lord—’
‘Eh?’ said Mr. Alexander Trott, in a loud key, with the vacant and
mystified stare of a chilly somnambulist.
‘Hush—hush!’ said the cautious attorney: ‘to be sure—quite right—no
titles here—my name is Overton, sir.’
‘Overton?’
‘Yes: the mayor of this place—you sent me a letter with anonymous
information, this afternoon.’
‘I, sir?’ exclaimed Trott with ill-dissembled surprise; for, coward as
he was, he would willingly have repudiated the authorship of the letter
in question. ‘I, sir?’
‘Yes, you, sir; did you not?’ responded Overton, annoyed with what he
supposed to be an extreme degree of unnecessary suspicion. ‘Either this
letter is yours, or it is not. If it be, we can converse securely upon
the subject at once. If it be not, of course I have no more to say.’
‘Stay, stay,’ said Trott, ‘it _is_ mine; I _did_ write it. What could I
do, sir? I had no friend here.’
‘To be sure, to be sure,’ said the mayor, encouragingly, ‘you could not
have managed it better. Well, sir; it will be necessary for you to
leave here to-night in a post-chaise and four. And the harder the boys
drive, the better. You are not safe from pursuit.’
‘Bless me!’ exclaimed Trott, in an agony of apprehension, ‘can such
things happen in a country like this? Such unrelenting and cold-blooded
hostility!’ He wiped off the concentrated essence of cowardice that was
oozing fast down his forehead, and looked aghast at Joseph Overton.
‘It certainly is a very hard case,’ replied the mayor with a smile,
‘that, in a free country, people can’t marry whom they like, without
being hunted down as if they were criminals. However, in the present
instance the lady is willing, you know, and that’s the main point,
after all.’
‘Lady willing,’ repeated Trott, mechanically. ‘How do you know the
lady’s willing?’
‘Come, that’s a good one,’ said the mayor, benevolently tapping Mr.
Trott on the arm with his broad-brimmed hat; ‘I have known her, well,
for a long time; and if anybody could entertain the remotest doubt on
the subject, I assure you I have none, nor need you have.’
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Trott, ruminating. ‘This is _very_ extraordinary!’
‘Well, Lord Peter,’ said the mayor, rising.
‘Lord Peter?’ repeated Mr. Trott.
‘Oh—ah, I forgot. Mr. Trott, then—Trott—very good, ha! ha!—Well, sir,
the chaise shall be ready at half-past twelve.’
‘And what is to become of me until then?’ inquired Mr. Trott,
anxiously. ‘Wouldn’t it save appearances, if I were placed under some
restraint?’
‘Ah!’ replied Overton, ‘very good thought—capital idea indeed. I’ll
send somebody up directly. And if you make a little resistance when we
put you in the chaise it wouldn’t be amiss—look as if you didn’t want
to be taken away, you know.’
‘To be sure,’ said Trott—‘to be sure.’
‘Well, my lord,’ said Overton, in a low tone, ‘until then, I wish your
lordship a good evening.’
‘Lord—lordship?’ ejaculated Trott again, falling back a step or two,
and gazing, in unutterable wonder, on the countenance of the mayor.
‘Ha-ha! I see, my lord—practising the madman?—very good indeed—very
vacant look—capital, my lord, capital—good evening, Mr.—Trott—ha! ha!
ha!’
‘That mayor’s decidedly drunk,’ soliloquised Mr. Trott, throwing
himself back in his chair, in an attitude of reflection.
‘He is a much cleverer fellow than I thought him, that young
nobleman—he carries it off uncommonly well,’ thought Overton, as he
went his way to the bar, there to complete his arrangements. This was
soon done. Every word of the story was implicitly believed, and the
one-eyed boots was immediately instructed to repair to number nineteen,
to act as custodian of the person of the supposed lunatic until
half-past twelve o’clock. In pursuance of this direction, that somewhat
eccentric gentleman armed himself with a walking-stick of gigantic
dimensions, and repaired, with his usual equanimity of manner, to Mr.
Trott’s apartment, which he entered without any ceremony, and mounted
guard in, by quietly depositing himself on a chair near the door, where
he proceeded to beguile the time by whistling a popular air with great
apparent satisfaction.
‘What do you want here, you scoundrel?’ exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott,
with a proper appearance of indignation at his detention.
The boots beat time with his head, as he looked gently round at Mr.
Trott with a smile of pity, and whistled an _adagio_ movement.
‘Do you attend in this room by Mr. Overton’s desire?’ inquired Trott,
rather astonished at the man’s demeanour.
‘Keep yourself to yourself, young feller,’ calmly responded the boots,
‘and don’t say nothing to nobody.’ And he whistled again.
‘Now mind!’ ejaculated Mr. Trott, anxious to keep up the farce of
wishing with great earnestness to fight a duel if they’d let him. ‘I
protest against being kept here. I deny that I have any intention of
fighting with anybody. But as it’s useless contending with superior
numbers, I shall sit quietly down.’
‘You’d better,’ observed the placid boots, shaking the large stick
expressively.
‘Under protest, however,’ added Alexander Trott, seating himself with
indignation in his face, but great content in his heart. ‘Under
protest.’
‘Oh, certainly!’ responded the boots; ‘anything you please. If you’re
happy, I’m transported; only don’t talk too much—it’ll make you worse.’
‘Make me worse?’ exclaimed Trott, in unfeigned astonishment: ‘the man’s
drunk!’
‘You’d better be quiet, young feller,’ remarked the boots, going
through a threatening piece of pantomime with the stick.
‘Or mad!’ said Mr. Trott, rather alarmed. ‘Leave the room, sir, and
tell them to send somebody else.’
‘Won’t do!’ replied the boots.
‘Leave the room!’ shouted Trott, ringing the bell violently: for he
began to be alarmed on a new score.
‘Leave that ’ere bell alone, you wretched loo-nattic!’ said the boots,
suddenly forcing the unfortunate Trott back into his chair, and
brandishing the stick aloft. ‘Be quiet, you miserable object, and don’t
let everybody know there’s a madman in the house.’
‘He _is_ a madman! He _is_ a madman!’ exclaimed the terrified Mr.
Trott, gazing on the one eye of the red-headed boots with a look of
abject horror.
‘Madman!’ replied the boots, ‘dam’me, I think he _is_ a madman with a
vengeance! Listen to me, you unfortunate. Ah! would you?’ [a slight tap
on the head with the large stick, as Mr. Trott made another move
towards the bell-handle] ‘I caught you there! did I?’
‘Spare my life!’ exclaimed Trott, raising his hands imploringly.
‘I don’t want your life,’ replied the boots, disdainfully, ‘though I
think it ’ud be a charity if somebody took it.’
‘No, no, it wouldn’t,’ interrupted poor Mr. Trott, hurriedly, ‘no, no,
it wouldn’t! I—I-’d rather keep it!’
‘O werry well,’ said the boots: ‘that’s a mere matter of taste—ev’ry
one to his liking. Hows’ever, all I’ve got to say is this here: You sit
quietly down in that chair, and I’ll sit hoppersite you here, and if
you keep quiet and don’t stir, I won’t damage you; but, if you move
hand or foot till half-past twelve o’clock, I shall alter the
expression of your countenance so completely, that the next time you
look in the glass you’ll ask vether you’re gone out of town, and ven
you’re likely to come back again. So sit down.’
‘I will—I will,’ responded the victim of mistakes; and down sat Mr.
Trott and down sat the boots too, exactly opposite him, with the stick
ready for immediate action in case of emergency.
Long and dreary were the hours that followed. The bell of Great
Winglebury church had just struck ten, and two hours and a half would
probably elapse before succour arrived.
For half an hour, the noise occasioned by shutting up the shops in the
street beneath, betokened something like life in the town, and rendered
Mr. Trott’s situation a little less insupportable; but, when even these
ceased, and nothing was heard beyond the occasional rattling of a
post-chaise as it drove up the yard to change horses, and then drove
away again, or the clattering of horses’ hoofs in the stables behind,
it became almost unbearable. The boots occasionally moved an inch or
two, to knock superfluous bits of wax off the candles, which were
burning low, but instantaneously resumed his former position; and as he
remembered to have heard, somewhere or other, that the human eye had an
unfailing effect in controlling mad people, he kept his solitary organ
of vision constantly fixed on Mr. Alexander Trott. That unfortunate
individual stared at his companion in his turn, until his features grew
more and more indistinct—his hair gradually less red—and the room more
misty and obscure. Mr. Alexander Trott fell into a sound sleep, from
which he was awakened by a rumbling in the street, and a cry of
‘Chaise-and-four for number twenty-five!’ A bustle on the stairs
succeeded; the room door was hastily thrown open; and Mr. Joseph
Overton entered, followed by four stout waiters, and Mrs. Williamson,
the stout landlady of the Winglebury Arms.
‘Mr. Overton!’ exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott, jumping up in a frenzy.
‘Look at this man, sir; consider the situation in which I have been
placed for three hours past—the person you sent to guard me, sir, was a
madman—a madman—a raging, ravaging, furious madman.’
‘Bravo!’ whispered Mr. Overton.
‘Poor dear!’ said the compassionate Mrs. Williamson, ‘mad people always
thinks other people’s mad.’
‘Poor dear!’ ejaculated Mr. Alexander Trott. ‘What the devil do you
mean by poor dear! Are you the landlady of this house?’
‘Yes, yes,’ replied the stout old lady, ‘don’t exert yourself, there’s
a dear! Consider your health, now; do.’
‘Exert myself!’ shouted Mr. Alexander Trott; ‘it’s a mercy, ma’am, that
I have any breath to exert myself with! I might have been assassinated
three hours ago by that one-eyed monster with the oakum head. How dare
you have a madman, ma’am—how dare you have a madman, to assault and
terrify the visitors to your house?’
‘I’ll never have another,’ said Mrs. Williamson, casting a look of
reproach at the mayor.
‘Capital, capital,’ whispered Overton again, as he enveloped Mr.
Alexander Trott in a thick travelling-cloak.
‘Capital, sir!’ exclaimed Trott, aloud; ‘it’s horrible. The very
recollection makes me shudder. I’d rather fight four duels in three
hours, if I survived the first three, than I’d sit for that time face
to face with a madman.’
‘Keep it up, my lord, as you go down-stairs,’ whispered Overton, ‘your
bill is paid, and your portmanteau in the chaise.’ And then he added
aloud, ‘Now, waiters, the gentleman’s ready.’
At this signal, the waiters crowded round Mr. Alexander Trott. One took
one arm; another, the other; a third, walked before with a candle; the
fourth, behind with another candle; the boots and Mrs. Williamson
brought up the rear; and down-stairs they went: Mr. Alexander Trott
expressing alternately at the very top of his voice either his feigned
reluctance to go, or his unfeigned indignation at being shut up with a
madman.
Mr. Overton was waiting at the chaise-door, the boys were ready
mounted, and a few ostlers and stable nondescripts were standing round
to witness the departure of ‘the mad gentleman.’ Mr. Alexander Trott’s
foot was on the step, when he observed (which the dim light had
prevented his doing before) a figure seated in the chaise, closely
muffled up in a cloak like his own.
‘Who’s that?’ he inquired of Overton, in a whisper.
‘Hush, hush,’ replied the mayor: ‘the other party of course.’
‘The other party!’ exclaimed Trott, with an effort to retreat.
‘Yes, yes; you’ll soon find that out, before you go far, I should
think—but make a noise, you’ll excite suspicion if you whisper to me so
much.’
‘I won’t go in this chaise!’ shouted Mr. Alexander Trott, all his
original fears recurring with tenfold violence. ‘I shall be
assassinated—I shall be—’
‘Bravo, bravo,’ whispered Overton. ‘I’ll push you in.’
‘But I won’t go,’ exclaimed Mr. Trott. ‘Help here, help! They’re
carrying me away against my will. This is a plot to murder me.’
‘Poor dear!’ said Mrs. Williamson again.
‘Now, boys, put ’em along,’ cried the mayor, pushing Trott in and
slamming the door. ‘Off with you, as quick as you can, and stop for
nothing till you come to the next stage—all right!’
‘Horses are paid, Tom,’ screamed Mrs. Williamson; and away went the
chaise, at the rate of fourteen miles an hour, with Mr. Alexander Trott
and Miss Julia Manners carefully shut up in the inside.
Mr. Alexander Trott remained coiled up in one corner of the chaise, and
his mysterious companion in the other, for the first two or three
miles; Mr. Trott edging more and more into his corner, as he felt his
companion gradually edging more and more from hers; and vainly
endeavouring in the darkness to catch a glimpse of the furious face of
the supposed Horace Hunter.
‘We may speak now,’ said his fellow-traveller, at length; ‘the
post-boys can neither see nor hear us.’
‘That’s not Hunter’s voice!’—thought Alexander, astonished.
‘Dear Lord Peter!’ said Miss Julia, most winningly: putting her arm on
Mr. Trott’s shoulder. ‘Dear Lord Peter. Not a word?’
‘Why, it’s a woman!’ exclaimed Mr. Trott, in a low tone of excessive
wonder.
‘Ah! Whose voice is that?’ said Julia; ‘’tis not Lord Peter’s.’
‘No,—it’s mine,’ replied Mr. Trott.
‘Yours!’ ejaculated Miss Julia Manners; ‘a strange man! Gracious
heaven! How came you here!’
‘Whoever you are, you might have known that I came against my will,
ma’am,’ replied Alexander, ‘for I made noise enough when I got in.’
‘Do you come from Lord Peter?’ inquired Miss Manners.
‘Confound Lord Peter,’ replied Trott pettishly. ‘I don’t know any Lord
Peter. I never heard of him before to-night, when I’ve been Lord
Peter’d by one and Lord Peter’d by another, till I verily believe I’m
mad, or dreaming—’
‘Whither are we going?’ inquired the lady tragically.
‘How should _I_ know, ma’am?’ replied Trott with singular coolness; for
the events of the evening had completely hardened him.
‘Stop stop!’ cried the lady, letting down the front glasses of the
chaise.
‘Stay, my dear ma’am!’ said Mr. Trott, pulling the glasses up again
with one hand, and gently squeezing Miss Julia’s waist with the other.
‘There is some mistake here; give me till the end of this stage to
explain my share of it. We must go so far; you cannot be set down here
alone, at this hour of the night.’
The lady consented; the mistake was mutually explained. Mr. Trott was a
young man, had highly promising whiskers, an undeniable tailor, and an
insinuating address—he wanted nothing but valour, and who wants that
with three thousand a-year? The lady had this, and more; she wanted a
young husband, and the only course open to Mr. Trott to retrieve his
disgrace was a rich wife. So, they came to the conclusion that it would
be a pity to have all this trouble and expense for nothing; and that as
they were so far on the road already, they had better go to Gretna
Green, and marry each other; and they did so. And the very next
preceding entry in the Blacksmith’s book, was an entry of the marriage
of Emily Brown with Horace Hunter. Mr. Hunter took his wife home, and
begged pardon, and _was_ pardoned; and Mr. Trott took _his_ wife home,
begged pardon too, and was pardoned also. And Lord Peter, who had been
detained beyond his time by drinking champagne and riding a
steeple-chase, went back to the Honourable Augustus Flair’s, and drank
more champagne, and rode another steeple-chase, and was thrown and
killed. And Horace Hunter took great credit to himself for practising
on the cowardice of Alexander Trott; and all these circumstances were
discovered in time, and carefully noted down; and if you ever stop a
week at the Winglebury Arms, they will give you just this account of
The Great Winglebury Duel.
CHAPTER IX—MRS. JOSEPH PORTER
Most extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa, Clapham Rise, in
the occupation of Mr. Gattleton (a stock-broker in especially
comfortable circumstances), and great was the anxiety of Mr.
Gattleton’s interesting family, as the day fixed for the representation
of the Private Play which had been ‘many months in preparation,’
approached. The whole family was infected with the mania for Private
Theatricals; the house, usually so clean and tidy, was, to use Mr.
Gattleton’s expressive description, ‘regularly turned out o’ windows;’
the large dining-room, dismantled of its furniture, and ornaments,
presented a strange jumble of flats, flies, wings, lamps, bridges,
clouds, thunder and lightning, festoons and flowers, daggers and foil,
and various other messes in theatrical slang included under the
comprehensive name of ‘properties.’ The bedrooms were crowded with
scenery, the kitchen was occupied by carpenters. Rehearsals took place
every other night in the drawing-room, and every sofa in the house was
more or less damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which Mr.
Sempronius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed the smothering scene
in ‘Othello’—it having been determined that that tragedy should form
the first portion of the evening’s entertainments.
‘When we’re a _leetle_ more perfect, I think it will go admirably,’
said Mr. Sempronius, addressing his _corps dramatique_, at the
conclusion of the hundred and fiftieth rehearsal. In consideration of
his sustaining the trifling inconvenience of bearing all the expenses
of the play, Mr. Sempronius had been, in the most handsome manner,
unanimously elected stage-manager. ‘Evans,’ continued Mr. Gattleton,
the younger, addressing a tall, thin, pale young gentleman, with
extensive whiskers—‘Evans, you play _Roderigo_ beautifully.’
‘Beautifully,’ echoed the three Miss Gattletons; for Mr. Evans was
pronounced by all his lady friends to be ‘quite a dear.’ He looked so
interesting, and had such lovely whiskers: to say nothing of his talent
for writing verses in albums and playing the flute! _Roderigo_ simpered
and bowed.
‘But I think,’ added the manager, ‘you are hardly perfect in
the—fall—in the fencing-scene, where you are—you understand?’
‘It’s very difficult,’ said Mr. Evans, thoughtfully; ‘I’ve fallen
about, a good deal, in our counting-house lately, for practice, only I
find it hurts one so. Being obliged to fall backward you see, it
bruises one’s head a good deal.’
‘But you must take care you don’t knock a wing down,’ said Mr.
Gattleton, the elder, who had been appointed prompter, and who took as
much interest in the play as the youngest of the company. ‘The stage is
very narrow, you know.’
‘Oh! don’t be afraid,’ said Mr. Evans, with a very self-satisfied air;
‘I shall fall with my head “off,” and then I can’t do any harm.’
‘But, egad,’ said the manager, rubbing his hands, ‘we shall make a
decided hit in “Masaniello.” Harleigh sings that music admirably.’
Everybody echoed the sentiment. Mr. Harleigh smiled, and looked
foolish—not an unusual thing with him—hummed’ Behold how brightly
breaks the morning,’ and blushed as red as the fisherman’s nightcap he
was trying on.
‘Let’s see,’ resumed the manager, telling the number on his fingers,
‘we shall have three dancing female peasants, besides _Fenella_, and
four fishermen. Then, there’s our man Tom; he can have a pair of ducks
of mine, and a check shirt of Bob’s, and a red nightcap, and he’ll do
for another—that’s five. In the choruses, of course, we can sing at the
sides; and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and things.
When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on one side and
out on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he can. The effect will be
electrical; it will look exactly as if there were an immense number of
’em. And in the eruption-scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the
tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises—and it’s sure to do.’
‘Sure! sure!’ cried all the performers _unâ voce_—and away hurried Mr.
Sempronius Gattleton to wash the burnt cork off his face, and
superintend the ‘setting up’ of some of the amateur-painted, but
never-sufficiently-to-be-admired, scenery.
Mrs. Gattleton was a kind, good-tempered, vulgar soul, exceedingly fond
of her husband and children, and entertaining only three dislikes. In
the first place, she had a natural antipathy to anybody else’s
unmarried daughters; in the second, she was in bodily fear of anything
in the shape of ridicule; lastly—almost a necessary consequence of this
feeling—she regarded, with feelings of the utmost horror, one Mrs.
Joseph Porter over the way. However, the good folks of Clapham and its
vicinity stood very much in awe of scandal and sarcasm; and thus Mrs.
Joseph Porter was courted, and flattered, and caressed, and invited,
for much the same reason that induces a poor author, without a farthing
in his pocket, to behave with extraordinary civility to a twopenny
postman.
‘Never mind, ma,’ said Miss Emma Porter, in colloquy with her respected
relative, and trying to look unconcerned; ‘if they had invited me, you
know that neither you nor pa would have allowed me to take part in such
an exhibition.’
‘Just what I should have thought from your high sense of propriety,’
returned the mother. ‘I am glad to see, Emma, you know how to designate
the proceeding.’ Miss P., by-the-bye, had only the week before made ‘an
exhibition’ of herself for four days, behind a counter at a fancy fair,
to all and every of her Majesty’s liege subjects who were disposed to
pay a shilling each for the privilege of seeing some four dozen girls
flirting with strangers, and playing at shop.
‘There!’ said Mrs. Porter, looking out of window; ‘there are two rounds
of beef and a ham going in—clearly for sandwiches; and Thomas, the
pastry-cook, says, there have been twelve dozen tarts ordered, besides
blancmange and jellies. Upon my word! think of the Miss Gattletons in
fancy dresses, too!’
‘Oh, it’s too ridiculous!’ said Miss Porter, hysterically.
‘I’ll manage to put them a little out of conceit with the business,
however,’ said Mrs. Porter; and out she went on her charitable errand.
‘Well, my dear Mrs. Gattleton,’ said Mrs. Joseph Porter, after they had
been closeted for some time, and when, by dint of indefatigable
pumping, she had managed to extract all the news about the play, ‘well,
my dear, people may say what they please; indeed we know they will, for
some folks are _so_ ill-natured. Ah, my dear Miss Lucina, how d’ye do?
I was just telling your mamma that I have heard it said, that—’
‘What?’
‘Mrs. Porter is alluding to the play, my dear,’ said Mrs. Gattleton;
‘she was, I am sorry to say, just informing me that—’
‘Oh, now pray don’t mention it,’ interrupted Mrs. Porter; ‘it’s most
absurd—quite as absurd as young What’s-his-name saying he wondered how
Miss Caroline, with such a foot and ankle, could have the vanity to
play _Fenella_.’
‘Highly impertinent, whoever said it,’ said Mrs. Gattleton, bridling
up.
‘Certainly, my dear,’ chimed in the delighted Mrs. Porter; ‘most
undoubtedly! Because, as I said, if Miss Caroline _does_ play
_Fenella_, it doesn’t follow, as a matter of course, that she should
think she has a pretty foot;—and then—such puppies as these young men
are—he had the impudence to say, that—’
How far the amiable Mrs. Porter might have succeeded in her pleasant
purpose, it is impossible to say, had not the entrance of Mr. Thomas
Balderstone, Mrs. Gattleton’s brother, familiarly called in the family
‘Uncle Tom,’ changed the course of conversation, and suggested to her
mind an excellent plan of operation on the evening of the play.
Uncle Tom was very rich, and exceedingly fond of his nephews and
nieces: as a matter of course, therefore, he was an object of great
importance in his own family. He was one of the best-hearted men in
existence: always in a good temper, and always talking. It was his
boast that he wore top-boots on all occasions, and had never worn a
black silk neckerchief; and it was his pride that he remembered all the
principal plays of Shakspeare from beginning to end—and so he did. The
result of this parrot-like accomplishment was, that he was not only
perpetually quoting himself, but that he could never sit by, and hear a
misquotation from the ‘Swan of Avon’ without setting the unfortunate
delinquent right. He was also something of a wag; never missed an
opportunity of saying what he considered a good thing, and invariably
laughed until he cried at anything that appeared to him mirth-moving or
ridiculous.
‘Well, girls!’ said Uncle Tom, after the preparatory ceremony of
kissing and how-d’ye-do-ing had been gone through—‘how d’ye get on?
Know your parts, eh?—Lucina, my dear, act II., scene I—place,
left-cue—“Unknown fate,”—What’s next, eh?—Go on—“The Heavens—”’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Lucina, ‘I recollect—
“The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow!”’
‘Make a pause here and there,’ said the old gentleman, who was a great
critic. ‘“But that our loves and comforts should increase”—emphasis on
the last syllable, “crease,”—loud “even,”—one, two, three, four; then
loud again, “as our days do grow;” emphasis on _days_. That’s the way,
my dear; trust to your uncle for emphasis. Ah! Sem, my boy, how are
you?’
‘Very well, thankee, uncle,’ returned Mr. Sempronius, who had just
appeared, looking something like a ringdove, with a small circle round
each eye: the result of his constant corking. ‘Of course we see you on
Thursday.’
‘Of course, of course, my dear boy.’
‘What a pity it is your nephew didn’t think of making you prompter, Mr.
Balderstone!’ whispered Mrs. Joseph Porter; ‘you would have been
invaluable.’
‘Well, I flatter myself, I _should_ have been tolerably up to the
thing,’ responded Uncle Tom.
‘I must bespeak sitting next you on the night,’ resumed Mrs. Porter;
‘and then, if our dear young friends here, should be at all wrong, you
will be able to enlighten me. I shall be so interested.’
‘I am sure I shall be most happy to give you any assistance in my
power’
‘Mind, it’s a bargain.’
‘Certainly.’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Mrs. Gattleton to her daughters, as they
were sitting round the fire in the evening, looking over their parts,
‘but I really very much wish Mrs. Joseph Porter wasn’t coming on
Thursday. I am sure she’s scheming something.’
‘She can’t make us ridiculous, however,’ observed Mr. Sempronius
Gattleton, haughtily.
The long-looked-for Thursday arrived in due course, and brought with
it, as Mr. Gattleton, senior, philosophically observed, ‘no
disappointments, to speak of.’ True, it was yet a matter of doubt
whether _Cassio_ would be enabled to get into the dress which had been
sent for him from the masquerade warehouse. It was equally uncertain
whether the principal female singer would be sufficiently recovered
from the influenza to make her appearance; Mr. Harleigh, the
_Masaniello_ of the night, was hoarse, and rather unwell, in
consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar-candy he had eaten
to improve his voice; and two flutes and a violoncello had pleaded
severe colds. What of that? the audience were all coming. Everybody
knew his part: the dresses were covered with tinsel and spangles; the
white plumes looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had practised falling until he
was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect; _Iago_ was sure that,
in the stabbing-scene, he should make ‘a decided hit.’ A self-taught
deaf gentleman, who had kindly offered to bring his flute, would be a
most valuable addition to the orchestra; Miss Jenkins’s talent for the
piano was too well known to be doubted for an instant; Mr. Cape had
practised the violin accompaniment with her frequently; and Mr. Brown,
who had kindly undertaken, at a few hours’ notice, to bring his
violoncello, would, no doubt, manage extremely well.
Seven o’clock came, and so did the audience; all the rank and fashion
of Clapham and its vicinity was fast filling the theatre. There were
the Smiths, the Gubbinses, the Nixons, the Dixons, the Hicksons, people
with all sorts of names, two aldermen, a sheriff in perspective, Sir
Thomas Glumper (who had been knighted in the last reign for carrying up
an address on somebody’s escaping from nothing); and last, not least,
there were Mrs. Joseph Porter and Uncle Tom, seated in the centre of
the third row from the stage; Mrs. P. amusing Uncle Tom with all sorts
of stories, and Uncle Tom amusing every one else by laughing most
immoderately.
Ting, ting, ting! went the prompter’s bell at eight o’clock precisely,
and dash went the orchestra into the overture to ‘The Men of
Prometheus.’ The pianoforte player hammered away with laudable
perseverance; and the violoncello, which struck in at intervals,
‘sounded very well, considering.’ The unfortunate individual, however,
who had undertaken to play the flute accompaniment ‘at sight,’ found,
from fatal experience, the perfect truth of the old adage, ‘ought of
sight, out of mind;’ for being very near-sighted, and being placed at a
considerable distance from his music-book, all he had an opportunity of
doing was to play a bar now and then in the wrong place, and put the
other performers out. It is, however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say
that he did this to admiration. The overture, in fact, was not unlike a
race between the different instruments; the piano came in first by
several bars, and the violoncello next, quite distancing the poor
flute; for the deaf gentleman _too-too’d_ away, quite unconscious that
he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the applause of the audience,
that the overture was concluded. A considerable bustle and shuffling of
feet was then heard upon the stage, accompanied by whispers of ‘Here’s
a pretty go!—what’s to be done?’ &c. The audience applauded again, by
way of raising the spirits of the performers; and then Mr. Sempronius
desired the prompter, in a very audible voice, to ‘clear the stage, and
ring up.’
Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. Everybody sat down; the curtain
shook; rose sufficiently high to display several pair of yellow boots
paddling about; and there remained.
Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. The curtain was violently
convulsed, but rose no higher; the audience tittered; Mrs. Porter
looked at Uncle Tom; Uncle Tom looked at everybody, rubbing his hands,
and laughing with perfect rapture. After as much ringing with the
little bell as a muffin-boy would make in going down a tolerably long
street, and a vast deal of whispering, hammering, and calling for nails
and cord, the curtain at length rose, and discovered Mr. Sempronius
Gattleton _solus_, and decked for _Othello_. After three distinct
rounds of applause, during which Mr. Sempronius applied his right hand
to his left breast, and bowed in the most approved manner, the manager
advanced and said:
‘Ladies and Gentlemen—I assure you it is with sincere regret, that I
regret to be compelled to inform you, that _Iago_ who was to have
played Mr. Wilson—I beg your pardon, Ladies and Gentlemen, but I am
naturally somewhat agitated (applause)—I mean, Mr. Wilson, who was to
have played _Iago_, is—that is, has been—or, in other words, Ladies and
Gentlemen, the fact is, that I have just received a note, in which I am
informed that _Iago_ is unavoidably detained at the Post-office this
evening. Under these circumstances, I trust—a—a—amateur
performance—a—another gentleman undertaken to read the part—request
indulgence for a short time—courtesy and kindness of a British
audience.’ Overwhelming applause. Exit Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and
curtain falls.
The audience were, of course, exceedingly good-humoured; the whole
business was a joke; and accordingly they waited for an hour with the
utmost patience, being enlivened by an interlude of rout-cakes and
lemonade. It appeared by Mr. Sempronius’s subsequent explanation, that
the delay would not have been so great, had it not so happened that
when the substitute _Iago_ had finished dressing, and just as the play
was on the point of commencing, the original _Iago_ unexpectedly
arrived. The former was therefore compelled to undress, and the latter
to dress for his part; which, as he found some difficulty in getting
into his clothes, occupied no inconsiderable time. At last, the tragedy
began in real earnest. It went off well enough, until the third scene
of the first act, in which _Othello_ addresses the Senate: the only
remarkable circumstance being, that as _Iago_ could not get on any of
the stage boots, in consequence of his feet being violently swelled
with the heat and excitement, he was under the necessity of playing the
part in a pair of Wellingtons, which contrasted rather oddly with his
richly embroidered pantaloons. When _Othello_ started with his address
to the Senate (whose dignity was represented by, the _Duke_, _a_
carpenter, two men engaged on the recommendation of the gardener, and a
boy), Mrs. Porter found the opportunity she so anxiously sought.
Mr. Sempronius proceeded:
‘“Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approv’d good masters,
That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter,
It is most true;—rude am I in my speech—”’
‘Is that right?’ whispered Mrs. Porter to Uncle Tom.
‘No.’
‘Tell him so, then.’
‘I will. Sem!’ called out Uncle Tom, ‘that’s wrong, my boy.’
‘What’s wrong, uncle?’ demanded _Othello_, quite forgetting the dignity
of his situation.
‘You’ve left out something. “True I have married—”’
‘Oh, ah!’ said Mr. Sempronius, endeavouring to hide his confusion as
much and as ineffectually as the audience attempted to conceal their
half-suppressed tittering, by coughing with extraordinary violence—
—‘“true I have married her;—
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent; no more.”
(_Aside_) Why don’t you prompt, father?’
‘Because I’ve mislaid my spectacles,’ said poor Mr. Gattleton, almost
dead with the heat and bustle.
‘There, now it’s “rude am I,”’ said Uncle Tom.
‘Yes, I know it is,’ returned the unfortunate manager, proceeding with
his part.
It would be useless and tiresome to quote the number of instances in
which Uncle Tom, now completely in his element, and instigated by the
mischievous Mrs. Porter, corrected the mistakes of the performers;
suffice it to say, that having mounted his hobby, nothing could induce
him to dismount; so, during the whole remainder of the play, he
performed a kind of running accompaniment, by muttering everybody’s
part as it was being delivered, in an under-tone. The audience were
highly amused, Mrs. Porter delighted, the performers embarrassed; Uncle
Tom never was better pleased in all his life; and Uncle Tom’s nephews
and nieces had never, although the declared heirs to his large
property, so heartily wished him gathered to his fathers as on that
memorable occasion.
Several other minor causes, too, united to damp the ardour of the
_dramatis personae_. None of the performers could walk in their tights,
or move their arms in their jackets; the pantaloons were too small, the
boots too large, and the swords of all shapes and sizes. Mr. Evans,
naturally too tall for the scenery, wore a black velvet hat with
immense white plumes, the glory of which was lost in ‘the flies;’ and
the only other inconvenience of which was, that when it was off his
head he could not put it on, and when it was on he could not take it
off. Notwithstanding all his practice, too, he fell with his head and
shoulders as neatly through one of the side scenes, as a harlequin
would jump through a panel in a Christmas pantomime. The pianoforte
player, overpowered by the extreme heat of the room, fainted away at
the commencement of the entertainments, leaving the music of
‘Masaniello’ to the flute and violoncello. The orchestra complained
that Mr. Harleigh put them out, and Mr. Harleigh declared that the
orchestra prevented his singing a note. The fishermen, who were hired
for the occasion, revolted to the very life, positively refusing to
play without an increased allowance of spirits; and, their demand being
complied with, getting drunk in the eruption-scene as naturally as
possible. The red fire, which was burnt at the conclusion of the second
act, not only nearly suffocated the audience, but nearly set the house
on fire into the bargain; and, as it was, the remainder of the piece
was acted in a thick fog.
In short, the whole affair was, as Mrs. Joseph Porter triumphantly told
everybody, ‘a complete failure.’ The audience went home at four o’clock
in the morning, exhausted with laughter, suffering from severe
headaches, and smelling terribly of brimstone and gunpowder. The
Messrs. Gattleton, senior and junior, retired to rest, with the vague
idea of emigrating to Swan River early in the ensuing week.
Rose Villa has once again resumed its wonted appearance; the
dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely
polished as formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall,
as regularly as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window
in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The
subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family,
unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes
expressing his surprise and regret at finding that his nephews and
nieces appear to have lost the relish they once possessed for the
beauties of Shakspeare, and quotations from the works of that immortal
bard.
CHAPTER X—A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE
CHAPTER THE FIRST
Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an over-weening
predilection for brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which a man
easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to
extricate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on
these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the
same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as
much comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other.
Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious
inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He
was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and
three-quarters in his socks—for he never stood in stockings at
all—plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one
of Richardson’s novels, and had a clean-cravatish formality of manner,
and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself
might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to
the individual who received it, in one respect—it was rather small. He
received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he
ran himself out, about a day after the expiration of the first week, as
regularly as an eight-day clock; and then, to make the comparison
complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular
tick.
Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as
bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think; but the idea
of matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries
on this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in
Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the suburbs; the
half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up
into three tons of the best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was
converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in the empty
chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, imagination seated a
beautiful young lady, with a very little independence or will of her
own, and a very large independence under a will of her father’s.
‘Who’s there?’ inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his
room-door disturbed these meditations one evening.
‘Tottle, my dear fellow, how _do_ you do?’ said a short elderly
gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying
to the question by asking another.
‘Told you I should drop in some evening,’ said the short gentleman, as
he delivered his hat into Tottle’s hand, after a little struggling and
dodging.
‘Delighted to see you, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing
internally that his visitor had ‘dropped in’ to the Thames at the
bottom of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour. The
fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up.
‘How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons?’ inquired Tottle.
‘Quite well, thank you,’ replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the
name the short gentleman revelled in. Here there was a pause; the short
gentleman looked at the left hob of the fireplace; Mr. Watkins Tottle
stared vacancy out of countenance.
‘Quite well,’ repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had
expired. ‘I may say remarkably well.’ And he rubbed the palms of his
hands as hard as if he were going to strike a light by friction.
‘What will you take?’ inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of
a man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave, he stood very
little chance of taking anything else.
‘Oh, I don’t know—have you any whiskey?’
‘Why,’ replied Tottle, very slowly, for all this was gaining time, ‘I
_had_ some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week; but it’s
all gone—and therefore its strength—’
‘Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impossible to be proved,’
said the short gentleman; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed
quite glad the whiskey had been drunk. Mr. Tottle smiled—but it was the
smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he
delicately insinuated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be
averse to brandy. And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very
ostentatiously; and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the
street-door, but which, for the sake of appearances, occasionally did
duty in an imaginary wine-cellar; left the room to entreat his landlady
to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The application
was successful; the spirits were speedily called—not from the vasty
deep, but the adjacent wine-vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their
grog; and then sat cosily down before the fire—a pair of shorts, airing
themselves.
‘Tottle,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ‘you know my way—off-hand, open,
say what I mean, mean what I say, hate reserve, and can’t bear
affectation. One, is a bad domino which only hides what good people
have about ’em, without making the bad look better; and the other is
much about the same thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it
look like a silk one. Now listen to what I’m going to say.’
Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his
brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the
fire, and assumed an air of profound attention.
‘It’s of no use humming and ha’ing about the matter,’ resumed the short
gentleman.—‘You want to get married.’
‘Why,’ replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively; for he trembled violently,
and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame; ‘why—I should
certainly—at least, I _think_ I should like—’
‘Won’t do,’ said the short gentleman.—‘Plain and free—or there’s an end
of the matter. Do you want money?’
‘You know I do.’
‘You admire the sex?’
‘I do.’
‘And you’d like to be married?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then you shall be. There’s an end of that.’ Thus saying, Mr. Gabriel
Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass.
‘Let me entreat you to be more explanatory,’ said Tottle. ‘Really, as
the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of,
in this way.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject,
and the brandy-and-water—‘I know a lady—she’s stopping with my wife
now—who is just the thing for you. Well educated; talks French; plays
the piano; knows a good deal about flowers, and shells, and all that
sort of thing; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power
of disposing of it, by her last will and testament.’
‘I’ll pay my addresses to her,’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle. ‘She isn’t
_very_ young—is she?’
‘Not very; just the thing for you. I’ve said that already.’
‘What coloured hair has the lady?’ inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
‘Egad, I hardly recollect,’ replied Gabriel, with coolness. ‘Perhaps I
ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front.’
‘A what?’ ejaculated Tottle.
‘One of those things with curls, along here,’ said Parsons, drawing a
straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration
of his meaning. ‘I know the front’s black; I can’t speak quite
positively about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind her,
and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it; but I
should say that it was _rather_ lighter than the front—a shade of a
greyish tinge, perhaps.’
Mr. Watkins Tottle looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind. Mr.
Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the
next attack without delay.
‘Now, were you ever in love, Tottle?’ he inquired.
Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and
exhibited a most extensive combination of colours as he confessed the
soft impeachment.
‘I suppose you popped the question, more than once, when you were a
young—I beg your pardon—a younger—man,’ said Parsons.
‘Never in my life!’ replied his friend, apparently indignant at being
suspected of such an act. ‘Never! The fact is, that I entertain, as you
know, peculiar opinions on these subjects. I am not afraid of ladies,
young or old—far from it; but, I think, that in compliance with the
custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and
manner to marriageable men. Now, the fact is, that anything like this
easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am always afraid of going
too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered formal and cold.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder if you were,’ replied Parsons, gravely; ‘I
shouldn’t wonder. However, you’ll be all right in this case; for the
strictness and delicacy of this lady’s ideas greatly exceed your own.
Lord bless you, why, when she came to our house, there was an old
portrait of some man or other, with two large, black, staring eyes,
hanging up in her bedroom; she positively refused to go to bed there,
till it was taken down, considering it decidedly wrong.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle; ‘certainly.’
‘And then, the other night—I never laughed so much in my life’—resumed
Mr. Gabriel Parsons; ‘I had driven home in an easterly wind, and caught
a devil of a face-ache. Well; as Fanny—that’s Mrs. Parsons, you
know—and this friend of hers, and I, and Frank Ross, were playing a
rubber, I said, jokingly, that when I went to bed I should wrap my head
in Fanny’s flannel petticoat. She instantly threw up her cards, and
left the room.’
‘Quite right!’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle; ‘she could not possibly have
behaved in a more dignified manner. What did you do?’
‘Do?—Frank took dummy; and I won sixpence.’
‘But, didn’t you apologise for hurting her feelings?’
‘Devil a bit. Next morning at breakfast, we talked it over. She
contended that any reference to a flannel petticoat was improper;—men
ought not to be supposed to know that such things were. I pleaded my
coverture; being a married man.’
‘And what did the lady say to that?’ inquired Tottle, deeply
interested.
‘Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a single man, its
impropriety was obvious.’
‘Noble-minded creature!’ exclaimed the enraptured Tottle.
‘Oh! both Fanny and I said, at once, that she was regularly cut out for
you.’
A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular face of Mr.
Watkins Tottle, as he heard the prophecy.
‘There’s one thing I can’t understand,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he
rose to depart; ‘I cannot, for the life and soul of me, imagine how the
deuce you’ll ever contrive to come together. The lady would certainly
go into convulsions if the subject were mentioned.’ Mr. Gabriel Parsons
sat down again, and laughed until he was weak. Tottle owed him money,
so he had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle’s expense.
Mr. Watkins Tottle feared, in his own mind, that this was another
characteristic which he had in common with this modern Lucretia. He,
however, accepted the invitation to dine with the Parsonses on the next
day but one, with great firmness: and looked forward to the
introduction, when again left alone, with tolerable composure.
The sun that rose on the next day but one, had never beheld a sprucer
personage on the outside of the Norwood stage, than Mr. Watkins Tottle;
and when the coach drew up before a cardboard-looking house with
disguised chimneys, and a lawn like a large sheet of green
letter-paper, he certainly had never lighted to his place of
destination a gentleman who felt more uncomfortable.
The coach stopped, and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped—we beg his
pardon—alighted, with great dignity. ‘All right!’ said he, and away
went the coach up the hill with that beautiful equanimity of pace for
which ‘short’ stages are generally remarkable.
Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faltering jerk to the handle of the
garden-gate bell. He essayed a more energetic tug, and his previous
nervousness was not at all diminished by hearing the bell ringing like
a fire alarum.
‘Is Mr. Parsons at home?’ inquired Tottle of the man who opened the
gate. He could hardly hear himself speak, for the bell had not yet done
tolling.
‘Here I am,’ shouted a voice on the lawn,—and there was Mr. Gabriel
Parsons in a flannel jacket, running backwards and forwards, from a
wicket to two hats piled on each other, and from the two hats to the
wicket, in the most violent manner, while another gentleman with his
coat off was getting down the area of the house, after a ball. When the
gentleman without the coat had found it—which he did in less than ten
minutes—he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up. Then,
the gentleman without the coat called out ‘play,’ very loudly, and
bowled. Then Mr. Gabriel Parsons knocked the ball several yards, and
took another run. Then, the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and
didn’t hit it; and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished running on his
own account, laid down the bat and ran after the ball, which went into
a neighbouring field. They called this cricket.
‘Tottle, will you “go in?”’ inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he
approached him, wiping the perspiration off his face.
Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of accepting which
made him even warmer than his friend.
‘Then we’ll go into the house, as it’s past four, and I shall have to
wash my hands before dinner,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. ‘Here, I hate
ceremony, you know! Timson, that’s Tottle—Tottle, that’s Timson; bred
for the church, which I fear will never be bread for him;’ and he
chuckled at the old joke. Mr. Timson bowed carelessly. Mr. Watkins
Tottle bowed stiffly. Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He
was a rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt
bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake
bluntness for sincerity.
Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most graciously on the
steps, and preceded them to the drawing-room. On the sofa, was seated a
lady of very prim appearance, and remarkably inanimate. She was one of
those persons at whose age it is impossible to make any reasonable
guess; her features might have been remarkably pretty when she was
younger, and they might always have presented the same appearance. Her
complexion—with a slight trace of powder here and there—was as clear as
that of a well-made wax doll, and her face as expressive. She was
handsomely dressed, and was winding up a gold watch.
‘Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr. Watkins Tottle; a very
old acquaintance I assure you,’ said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the
Strephon of Cecil-street, Strand. The lady rose, and made a deep
courtesy; Mr. Watkins Tottle made a bow.
‘Splendid, majestic creature!’ thought Tottle.
Mr. Timson advanced, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began to hate him. Men
generally discover a rival, instinctively, and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt
that his hate was deserved.
‘May I beg,’ said the reverend gentleman,—‘May I beg to call upon you,
Miss Lillerton, for some trifling donation to my soup, coals, and
blanket distribution society?’
‘Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you please,’ responded Miss
Lillerton.
‘You are truly charitable, madam,’ said the Reverend Mr. Timson, ‘and
we know that charity will cover a multitude of sins. Let me beg you to
understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have
many sins which require palliation; believe me when I say that I never
yet met any one who had fewer to atone for, than Miss Lillerton.’
Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted up the lady’s face,
as she acknowledged the compliment. Watkins Tottle incurred the sin of
wishing that the ashes of the Reverend Charles Timson were quietly
deposited in the churchyard of his curacy, wherever it might be.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ interrupted Parsons, who had just appeared with
clean hands, and a black coat, ‘it’s my private opinion, Timson, that
your “distribution society” is rather a humbug.’
‘You are so severe,’ replied Timson, with a Christian smile: he
disliked Parsons, but liked his dinners.
‘So positively unjust!’ said Miss Lillerton.
‘Certainly,’ observed Tottle. The lady looked up; her eyes met those of
Mr. Watkins Tottle. She withdrew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins
Tottle did the same—the confusion was mutual.
‘Why,’ urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections, ‘what on earth is
the use of giving a man coals who has nothing to cook, or giving him
blankets when he hasn’t a bed, or giving him soup when he requires
substantial food?—“like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.” Why
not give ’em a trifle of money, as I do, when I think they deserve it,
and let them purchase what they think best? Why?—because your
subscribers wouldn’t see their names flourishing in print on the
church-door—that’s the reason.’
‘Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that I wish to
see _my_ name in print, on the church-door,’ interrupted Miss
Lillerton.
‘I hope not,’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in another word, and
getting another glance.
‘Certainly not,’ replied Parsons. ‘I dare say you wouldn’t mind seeing
it in writing, though, in the church register—eh?’
‘Register! What register?’ inquired the lady gravely.
‘Why, the register of marriages, to be sure,’ replied Parsons,
chuckling at the sally, and glancing at Tottle. Mr. Watkins Tottle
thought he should have fainted for shame, and it is quite impossible to
imagine what effect the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner
had not been, at that moment, announced. Mr. Watkins Tottle, with an
unprecedented effort of gallantry, offered the tip of his little
finger; Miss Lillerton accepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty; and
they proceeded in due state to the dinner-table, where they were soon
deposited side by side. The room was very snug, the dinner very good,
and the little party in spirits. The conversation became pretty
general, and when Mr. Watkins Tottle had extracted one or two cold
observations from his neighbour, and had taken wine with her, he began
to acquire confidence rapidly. The cloth was removed; Mrs. Gabriel
Parsons drank four glasses of port on the plea of being a nurse just
then; and Miss Lillerton took about the same number of sips, on the
plea of not wanting any at all. At length, the ladies retired, to the
great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Parsons, who had been coughing and
frowning at his wife, for half-an-hour previously—signals which Mrs.
Parsons never happened to observe, until she had been pressed to take
her ordinary quantum, which, to avoid giving trouble, she generally did
at once.
‘What do you think of her?’ inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons of Mr. Watkins
Tottle, in an under-tone.
‘I dote on her with enthusiasm already!’ replied Mr. Watkins Tottle.
‘Gentlemen, pray let us drink “the ladies,”’ said the Reverend Mr.
Timson.
‘The ladies!’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his glass. In the
fulness of his confidence, he felt as if he could make love to a dozen
ladies, off-hand.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ‘I remember when I was a young man—fill
your glass, Timson.’
‘I have this moment emptied it.’
‘Then fill again.’
‘I will,’ said Timson, suiting the action to the word.
‘I remember,’ resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ‘when I was a younger man,
with what a strange compound of feelings I used to drink that toast,
and how I used to think every woman was an angel.’
‘Was that before you were married?’ mildly inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
‘Oh! certainly,’ replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons. ‘I have never thought so
since; and a precious milksop I must have been, ever to have thought so
at all. But, you know, I married Fanny under the oddest, and most
ridiculous circumstances possible.’
‘What were they, if one may inquire?’ asked Timson, who had heard the
story, on an average, twice a week for the last six months. Mr. Watkins
Tottle listened attentively, in the hope of picking up some suggestion
that might be useful to him in his new undertaking.
‘I spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chimney,’ said Parsons, by
way of a beginning.
‘In a back-kitchen chimney!’ ejaculated Watkins Tottle. ‘How dreadful!’
‘Yes, it wasn’t very pleasant,’ replied the small host. ‘The fact is,
Fanny’s father and mother liked me well enough as an individual, but
had a decided objection to my becoming a husband. You see, I hadn’t any
money in those days, and they had; and so they wanted Fanny to pick up
somebody else. However, we managed to discover the state of each
other’s affections somehow. I used to meet her, at some mutual friends’
parties; at first we danced together, and talked, and flirted, and all
that sort of thing; then, I used to like nothing so well as sitting by
her side—we didn’t talk so much then, but I remember I used to have a
great notion of looking at her out of the extreme corner of my left
eye—and then I got very miserable and sentimental, and began to write
verses, and use Macassar oil. At last I couldn’t bear it any longer,
and after I had walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-street in
tight boots for a week—and a devilish hot summer it was too—in the hope
of meeting her, I sat down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage
to see me clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision from her own
mouth. I said I had discovered, to my perfect satisfaction, that I
couldn’t live without her, and that if she didn’t have me, I had made
up my mind to take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate, so
as to take myself off in some way or other. Well, I borrowed a pound,
and bribed the housemaid to give her the note, which she did.’
‘And what was the reply?’ inquired Timson, who had found, before, that
to encourage the repetition of old stories is to get a general
invitation.
‘Oh, the usual one! Fanny expressed herself very miserable; hinted at
the possibility of an early grave; said that nothing should induce her
to swerve from the duty she owed her parents; implored me to forget
her, and find out somebody more deserving, and all that sort of thing.
She said she could, on no account, think of meeting me unknown to her
pa and ma; and entreated me, as she should be in a particular part of
Kensington Gardens at eleven o’clock next morning, not to attempt to
meet her there.’
‘You didn’t go, of course?’ said Watkins Tottle.
‘Didn’t I?—Of course I did. There she was, with the identical housemaid
in perspective, in order that there might be no interruption. We walked
about, for a couple of hours; made ourselves delightfully miserable;
and were regularly engaged. Then, we began to “correspond”—that is to
say, we used to exchange about four letters a day; what we used to say
in ’em I can’t imagine. And I used to have an interview, in the
kitchen, or the cellar, or some such place, every evening. Well, things
went on in this way for some time; and we got fonder of each other
every day. At last, as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my
salary had been raised too, shortly before, we determined on a secret
marriage. Fanny arranged to sleep at a friend’s, on the previous night;
we were to be married early in the morning; and then we were to return
to her home and be pathetic. She was to fall at the old gentleman’s
feet, and bathe his boots with her tears; and I was to hug the old lady
and call her “mother,” and use my pocket-handkerchief as much as
possible. Married we were, the next morning; two girls-friends of
Fanny’s—acting as bridesmaids; and a man, who was hired for five
shillings and a pint of porter, officiating as father. Now, the old
lady unfortunately put off her return from Ramsgate, where she had been
paying a visit, until the next morning; and as we placed great reliance
on her, we agreed to postpone our confession for four-and-twenty hours.
My newly-made wife returned home, and I spent my wedding-day in
strolling about Hampstead-heath, and execrating my father-in-law. Of
course, I went to comfort my dear little wife at night, as much as I
could, with the assurance that our troubles would soon be over. I
opened the garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was shown by the
servant to our old place of meeting—a back kitchen, with a stone-floor
and a dresser: upon which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit and
make love.’
‘Make love upon a kitchen-dresser!’ interrupted Mr. Watkins Tottle,
whose ideas of decorum were greatly outraged.
‘Ah! On a kitchen-dresser!’ replied Parsons. ‘And let me tell you, old
fellow, that, if you were really over head-and-ears in love, and had no
other place to make love in, you’d be devilish glad to avail yourself
of such an opportunity. However, let me see;—where was I?’
‘On the dresser,’ suggested Timson.
‘Oh—ah! Well, here I found poor Fanny, quite disconsolate and
uncomfortable. The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her
feel still more lonely; and she was quite out of spirits. So, I put a
good face on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should enjoy
the pleasures of a matrimonial life more by contrast; and, at length,
poor Fanny brightened up a little. I stopped there, till about eleven
o’clock, and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time,
the girl came running down the stairs, without her shoes, in a great
fright, to tell us that the old villain—Heaven forgive me for calling
him so, for he is dead and gone now!—prompted I suppose by the prince
of darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper—a thing
he had not done before, for six months, to my certain knowledge; for
the cask stood in that very back kitchen. If he discovered me there,
explanation would have been out of the question; for he was so
outrageously violent, when at all excited, that he never would have
listened to me. There was only one thing to be done. The chimney was a
very wide one; it had been originally built for an oven; went up
perpendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward and formed a
sort of small cavern. My hopes and fortune—the means of our joint
existence almost—were at stake. I scrambled in like a squirrel; coiled
myself up in this recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal
chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious
father-in-law carried in his hand. I heard him draw the beer; and I
never heard beer run so slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I
was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board
with a tremendous crash. He stopped and put down the candle and the jug
of beer on the dresser; he was a nervous old fellow, and any unexpected
noise annoyed him. He coolly observed that the fire-place was never
used, and sending the frightened servant into the next kitchen for a
hammer and nails, actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on
the outside. So, there was I, on my wedding-night, in the light
kerseymere trousers, fancy waistcoat, and blue coat, that I had been
married in in the morning, in a back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of
which was nailed up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some
fifteen feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the neighbours. And
there,’ added Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he passed the bottle, ‘there I
remained till half-past seven the next morning, when the housemaid’s
sweetheart, who was a carpenter, unshelled me. The old dog had nailed
me up so securely, that, to this very hour, I firmly believe that no
one but a carpenter could ever have got me out.’
‘And what did Mrs. Parsons’s father say, when he found you were
married?’ inquired Watkins Tottle, who, although he never saw a joke,
was not satisfied until he heard a story to the very end.
‘Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy, that he pardoned
us off-hand, and allowed us something to live on till he went the way
of all flesh. I spent the next night in his second-floor front, much
more comfortably than I had spent the preceding one; for, as you will
probably guess—’
‘Please, sir, missis has made tea,’ said a middle-aged female servant,
bobbing into the room.
‘That’s the very housemaid that figures in my story,’ said Mr. Gabriel
Parsons. ‘She went into Fanny’s service when we were first married, and
has been with us ever since; but I don’t think she has felt one atom of
respect for me since the morning she saw me released, when she went
into violent hysterics, to which she has been subject ever since. Now,
shall we join the ladies?’
‘If you please,’ said Mr. Watkins Tottle.
‘By all means,’ added the obsequious Mr. Timson; and the trio made for
the drawing-room accordingly.
Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having been duly handed,
and occasionally upset, by Mr. Watkins Tottle, a rubber was proposed.
They cut for partners—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons; and Mr. Watkins Tottle and
Miss Lillerton. Mr. Timson having conscientious scruples on the subject
of card-playing, drank brandy-and-water, and kept up a running spar
with Mr. Watkins Tottle. The evening went off well; Mr. Watkins Tottle
was in high spirits, having some reason to be gratified with his
reception by Miss Lillerton; and before he left, a small party was made
up to visit the Beulah Spa on the following Saturday.
‘It’s all right, I think,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to Mr. Watkins
Tottle as he opened the garden gate for him.
‘I hope so,’ he replied, squeezing his friend’s hand.
‘You’ll be down by the first coach on Saturday,’ said Mr. Gabriel
Parsons.
‘Certainly,’ replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. ‘Undoubtedly.’
But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle should not be down by
the first coach on Saturday. His adventures on that day, however, and
the success of his wooing, are subjects for another chapter.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
‘The first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom?’ inquired Mr.
Gabriel Parsons, as he very complacently paced up and down the fourteen
feet of gravel which bordered the ‘lawn,’ on the Saturday morning which
had been fixed upon for the Beulah Spa jaunt.
‘No, sir; I haven’t seen it,’ replied a gardener in a blue apron, who
let himself out to do the ornamental for half-a-crown a day and his
‘keep.’
‘Time Tottle was down,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ruminating—‘Oh, here
he is, no doubt,’ added Gabriel, as a cab drove rapidly up the hill;
and he buttoned his dressing-gown, and opened the gate to receive the
expected visitor. The cab stopped, and out jumped a man in a coarse
Petersham great-coat, whity-brown neckerchief, faded black suit,
gamboge-coloured top-boots, and one of those large-crowned hats,
formerly seldom met with, but now very generally patronised by
gentlemen and costermongers.
‘Mr. Parsons?’ said the man, looking at the superscription of a note he
held in his hand, and addressing Gabriel with an inquiring air.
‘_My_ name is Parsons,’ responded the sugar-baker.
‘I’ve brought this here note,’ replied the individual in the painted
tops, in a hoarse whisper: ‘I’ve brought this here note from a gen’lm’n
as come to our house this mornin’.’
‘I expected the gentleman at my house,’ said Parsons, as he broke the
seal, which bore the impression of her Majesty’s profile as it is seen
on a sixpence.
‘I’ve no doubt the gen’lm’n would ha’ been here, replied the stranger,
‘if he hadn’t happened to call at our house first; but we never trusts
no gen’lm’n furder nor we can see him—no mistake about that
there’—added the unknown, with a facetious grin; ‘beg your pardon, sir,
no offence meant, only—once in, and I wish you may—catch the idea,
sir?’
Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching anything suddenly,
but a cold. He therefore only bestowed a glance of profound
astonishment on his mysterious companion, and proceeded to unfold the
note of which he had been the bearer. Once opened and the idea was
caught with very little difficulty. Mr. Watkins Tottle had been
suddenly arrested for 33_l._ 10_s._ 4_d._, and dated his communication
from a lock-up house in the vicinity of Chancery-lane.
‘Unfortunate affair this!’ said Parsons, refolding the note.
‘Oh! nothin’ ven you’re used to it,’ coolly observed the man in the
Petersham.
‘Tom!’ exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes’ consideration, ‘just put
the horse in, will you?—Tell the gentleman that I shall be there almost
as soon as you are,’ he continued, addressing the sheriff-officer’s
Mercury.
‘Werry well,’ replied that important functionary; adding, in a
confidential manner, ‘I’d adwise the gen’lm’n’s friends to settle. You
see it’s a mere trifle; and, unless the gen’lm’n means to go up afore
the court, it’s hardly worth while waiting for detainers, you know. Our
governor’s wide awake, he is. I’ll never say nothin’ agin him, nor no
man; but he knows what’s o’clock, he does, uncommon.’ Having delivered
this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible harangue, the
meaning of which was eked out by divers nods and winks, the gentleman
in the boots reseated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off, and
was soon out of sight. Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued to pace up and
down the pathway for some minutes, apparently absorbed in deep
meditation. The result of his cogitations seemed to be perfectly
satisfactory to himself, for he ran briskly into the house; said that
business had suddenly summoned him to town; that he had desired the
messenger to inform Mr. Watkins Tottle of the fact; and that they would
return together to dinner. He then hastily equipped himself for a
drive, and mounting his gig, was soon on his way to the establishment
of Mr. Solomon Jacobs, situate (as Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him)
in Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane.
When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has a specific object
in view, the attainment of which depends on the completion of his
journey, the difficulties which interpose themselves in his way appear
not only to be innumerable, but to have been called into existence
especially for the occasion. The remark is by no means a new one, and
Mr. Gabriel Parsons had practical and painful experience of its justice
in the course of his drive. There are three classes of animated objects
which prevent your driving with any degree of comfort or celerity
through streets which are but little frequented—they are pigs,
children, and old women. On the occasion we are describing, the pigs
were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks, and the shuttlecocks fluttered from
the little deal battledores, and the children played in the road; and
women, with a basket in one hand, and the street-door key in the other,
_would_ cross just before the horse’s head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons
was perfectly savage with vexation, and quite hoarse with hoi-ing and
imprecating. Then, when he got into Fleet-street, there was ‘a
stoppage,’ in which people in vehicles have the satisfaction of
remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying the slowest
pedestrians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold of horses’
bridles, and back them into shop-windows, by way of clearing the road
and preventing confusion. At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned into
Chancery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to
Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant),
he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs.
Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who
had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the
chance of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the
road and knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was of
glass, grated like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron
bars—painted white to look comfortable.
The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who,
after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass, applied a large
key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but
which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels
were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts.
‘I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle,’ said Parsons.
‘It’s the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem,’ screamed a voice
from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who
had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor. ‘The
gentleman’s in the coffee-room.’
‘Up-stairs, sir,’ said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to
let Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment
he had made his way through the aperture—‘First floor—door on the
left.’
Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the uncarpeted and
ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the
before-mentioned ‘door on the left,’ which were rendered inaudible by
the hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on
some frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the
handle, and entered the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate
object of his visit had just gone up-stairs to write a letter, he had
leisure to sit down and observe the scene before him.
The room—which was a small, confined den—was partitioned off into
boxes, like the common-room of some inferior eating-house. The dirty
floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as
to carpet or floor-cloth: and the ceiling was completely blackened by
the flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night. The
gray ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were
plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully accounted for the
intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place; and the empty
glasses and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with
the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations
in which the individuals who honoured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary
residence in his house indulged. Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry
looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece; but
by way of counterpoise, the ashes were confined by a rusty fender about
twice as long as the hearth.
From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons
was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were
playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue,
some with green, and some with red backs—selections from decayed packs.
The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some
ingenious visitor with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a
two-pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been
made in the table at proper distances for the reception of the wooden
pegs. In another box a stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was
eating some dinner which his wife—an equally comfortable-looking
personage—had brought him in a basket: and in a third, a
genteel-looking young man was talking earnestly, and in a low tone, to
a young female, whose face was concealed by a thick veil, but whom Mr.
Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind as the debtor’s
wife. A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed in the very extreme of
the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a lighted
cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, ever and anon puffing
forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying, with much apparent
relish, to a pint pot, the contents of which were ‘chilling’ on the
hob.
‘Fourpence more, by gum!’ exclaimed one of the cribbage-players,
lighting a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game;
‘one ’ud think you’d got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when
you wanted it.’
‘Well, that a’n’t a bad un,’ replied the other, who was a horse-dealer
from Islington.
‘No; I’m blessed if it is,’ interposed the jolly-looking fellow, who,
having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his
wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful
partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the
anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a
half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy.
‘You’re a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker—will you dip your beak into
this, sir?’
‘Thank’ee, sir,’ replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to
the other to accept the proffered glass. ‘Here’s your health, sir, and
your good ’ooman’s here. Gentlemen all—yours, and better luck still.
Well, Mr. Willis,’ continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the
young man with the cigar, ‘you seem rather down to-day—floored, as one
may say. What’s the matter, sir? Never say die, you know.’
‘Oh! I’m all right,’ replied the smoker. ‘I shall be bailed out
to-morrow.’
‘Shall you, though?’ inquired the other. ‘Damme, I wish I could say the
same. I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George, and
stand about as much chance of being _bailed out_. Ha! ha! ha!’
‘Why,’ said the young man, stopping short, and speaking in a very loud
key, ‘look at me. What d’ye think I’ve stopped here two days for?’
‘’Cause you couldn’t get out, I suppose,’ interrupted Mr. Walker,
winking to the company. ‘Not that you’re exactly obliged to stop here,
only you can’t help it. No compulsion, you know, only you must—eh?’
‘A’n’t he a rum un?’ inquired the delighted individual, who had offered
the gin-and-water, of his wife.
‘Oh, he just is!’ replied the lady, who was quite overcome by these
flashes of imagination.
‘Why, my case,’ frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into
the fire, and illustrating his argument by knocking the bottom of the
pot on the table, at intervals,—‘my case is a very singular one. My
father’s a man of large property, and I am his son.’
‘That’s a very strange circumstance!’ interrupted the jocose Mr.
Walker, _en passant_.
‘—I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don’t owe no
man nothing—not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to
put my name to some bills for a friend—bills to a large amount, I may
say a very large amount, for which I didn’t receive no consideration.
What’s the consequence?’
‘Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The acceptances
weren’t taken up, and you were, eh?’ inquired Walker.
‘To be sure,’ replied the liberally educated young gentleman. ‘To be
sure; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred
pound.’
‘Why don’t you ask your old governor to stump up?’ inquired Walker,
with a somewhat sceptical air.
‘Oh! bless you, he’d never do it,’ replied the other, in a tone of
expostulation—‘Never!’
‘Well, it is very odd to—be—sure,’ interposed the owner of the flat
bottle, mixing another glass, ‘but I’ve been in difficulties, as one
may say, now for thirty year. I went to pieces when I was in a
milk-walk, thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and
kept a spring wan; and arter that again in the coal and ’tatur line—but
all that time I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this
kind, who wasn’t going out again directly, and who hadn’t been arrested
on bills which he’d given a friend and for which he’d received nothing
whatsomever—not a fraction.’
‘Oh! it’s always the cry,’ said Walker. ‘I can’t see the use on it;
that’s what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much better opinion
of an individual, if he’d say at once in an honourable and gentlemanly
manner as he’d done everybody he possibly could.’
‘Ay, to be sure,’ interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of
bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, ‘so should I.’ The
young gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, was on the
point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising
of the young man before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting
by him, to leave the room, interrupted the conversation. She had been
weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon
her excited feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her
companion necessary as they quitted it together.
There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their
appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was
observed until the _whirr—r—bang_ of the spring door announced that
they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the
ex-fruiterer.
‘Poor creetur!’ said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of
gin-and-water. ‘She’s very young.’
‘She’s a nice-looking ’ooman too,’ added the horse-dealer.
‘What’s he in for, Ikey?’ inquired Walker, of an individual who was
spreading a cloth with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of
the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in
recognising as the man who had called upon him in the morning.
‘Vy,’ responded the factotum, ‘it’s one of the rummiest rigs you ever
heard on. He come in here last Vensday, which by-the-bye he’s a-going
over the water to-night—hows’ever that’s neither here nor there. You
see I’ve been a going back’ards and for’ards about his business, and
ha’ managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them;
and so far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here
effect—’
‘Cut it short, old fellow,’ interrupted Walker, who knew from former
experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor
intelligible in his narratives.
‘Let me alone,’ replied Ikey, ‘and I’ll ha’ wound up, and made my lucky
in five seconds. This here young gen’lm’n’s father—so I’m told, mind
ye—and the father o’ the young voman, have always been on very bad,
out-and-out, rig’lar knock-me-down sort o’ terms; but somehow or
another, when he was a wisitin’ at some gentlefolk’s house, as he
knowed at college, he came into contract with the young lady. He seed
her several times, and then he up and said he’d keep company with her,
if so be as she vos agreeable. Vell, she vos as sweet upon him as he
vos upon her, and so I s’pose they made it all right; for they got
married ’bout six months arterwards, unbeknown, mind ye, to the two
fathers—leastways so I’m told. When they heard on it—my eyes, there was
such a combustion! Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to
’em. The young gen’lm’n’s father cut him off vith a bob, ’cos he’d cut
himself off vith a wife; and the young lady’s father he behaved even
worser and more unnat’ral, for he not only blow’d her up dreadful, and
swore he’d never see her again, but he employed a chap as I knows—and
as you knows, Mr. Valker, a precious sight too well—to go about and buy
up the bills and them things on which the young husband, thinking his
governor ’ud come round agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself
on vith for a time; besides vich, he made all the interest he could to
set other people agin him. Consequence vos, that he paid as long as he
could; but things he never expected to have to meet till he’d had time
to turn himself round, come fast upon him, and he vos nabbed. He vos
brought here, as I said afore, last Vensday, and I think there’s
about—ah, half-a-dozen detainers agin him down-stairs now. I have
been,’ added Ikey, ‘in the purfession these fifteen year, and I never
met vith such windictiveness afore!’
‘Poor creeturs!’ exclaimed the coal-dealer’s wife once more: again
resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the
bud. ‘Ah! when they’ve seen as much trouble as I and my old man here
have, they’ll be as comfortable under it as we are.’
‘The young lady’s a pretty creature,’ said Walker, ‘only she’s a little
too delicate for my taste—there ain’t enough of her. As to the young
cove, he may be very respectable and what not, but he’s too down in the
mouth for me—he ain’t game.’
‘Game!’ exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a
green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times, in order that he
might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do.
‘He’s game enough ven there’s anything to be fierce about; but who
could be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur
like that, hanging about him?—It’s enough to drive any man’s heart into
his boots to see ’em together—and no mistake at all about it. I never
shall forget her first comin’ here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to
come—I know he did, ’cos I took the letter. Uncommon fidgety he was all
day to be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he
says to Jacobs, says he, “Sir, can I have the loan of a private room
for a few minutes this evening, without incurring any additional
expense—just to see my wife in?” says he. Jacobs looked as much as to
say—“Strike me bountiful if you ain’t one of the modest sort!” but as
the gen’lm’n who had been in the back parlour had just gone out, and
had paid for it for that day, he says—werry grave—“Sir,” says he, “it’s
agin our rules to let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms,
but,” says he, “for a gentleman, I don’t mind breaking through them for
once.” So then he turns round to me, and says, “Ikey, put two mould
candles in the back parlour, and charge ’em to this gen’lm’n’s
account,” vich I did. Vell, by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the
door, and there, sure enough, was the young lady, wrapped up in a
hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all alone. I opened the gate that
night, so I went up when the coach come, and he vos a waitin’ at the
parlour door—and wasn’t he a trembling, neither? The poor creetur see
him, and could hardly walk to meet him. “Oh, Harry!” she says, “that it
should have come to this; and all for my sake,” says she, putting her
hand upon his shoulder. So he puts his arm round her pretty little
waist, and leading her gently a little way into the room, so that he
might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and soft-like—“Why,
Kate,” says he—’
‘Here’s the gentleman you want,’ said Ikey, abruptly breaking off in
his story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen
Watkins Tottle, who at that moment entered the room. Watkins advanced
with a wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand
which Mr. Gabriel Parsons held out.
‘I want to speak to you,’ said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive
of his dislike of the company.
‘This way,’ replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front
drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at the rate of a
couple of guineas a day.
‘Well, here I am,’ said Mr. Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa; and
placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his
friend’s countenance.
‘Yes; and here you’re likely to be,’ said Gabriel, coolly, as he
rattled the money in his unmentionable pockets, and looked out of the
window.
‘What’s the amount with the costs?’ inquired Parsons, after an awkward
pause.
‘37_l_. 3_s_ 10_d_.’
‘Have you any money?’
‘Nine and sixpence halfpenny.’
Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds,
before he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed; he
was accustomed to drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to
conceal his avarice. At length he stopped short, and said, ‘Tottle, you
owe me fifty pounds.’
‘I do.’
‘And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it to me.’
‘I fear I am.’
‘Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ‘listen: here’s my proposition. You
know my way of old. Accept it—yes or no—I will or I won’t. I’ll pay the
debt and costs, and I’ll lend you 10_l._ more (which, added to your
annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you’ll give me
your note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six
months after you are married to Miss Lillerton.’
‘My dear—’
‘Stop a minute—on one condition; and that is, that you propose to Miss
Lillerton at once.’
‘At once! My dear Parsons, consider.’
‘It’s for you to consider, not me. She knows you well from reputation,
though she did not know you personally until lately. Notwithstanding
all her maiden modesty, I think she’d be devilish glad to get married
out of hand with as little delay as possible. My wife has sounded her
on the subject, and she has confessed.’
‘What—what?’ eagerly interrupted the enamoured Watkins.
‘Why,’ replied Parsons, ‘to say exactly what she has confessed, would
be rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth;
but my wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that
what she had confessed was as good as to say that she was not
insensible of your merits—in fact, that no other man should have her.’
Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell.
‘What’s that for?’ inquired Parsons.
‘I want to send the man for the bill stamp,’ replied Mr. Watkins
Tottle.
‘Then you’ve made up your mind?’
‘I have,’—and they shook hands most cordially. The note of hand was
given—the debt and costs were paid—Ikey was satisfied for his trouble,
and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon
Jacobs’s establishment, on which most of his visitors were very happy
when they found themselves once again—to wit, the _out_side.
‘Now,’ said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to Norwood together—‘you
shall have an opportunity to make the disclosure to-night, and mind you
speak out, Tottle.’
‘I will—I will!’ replied Watkins, valorously.
‘How I should like to see you together,’ ejaculated Mr. Gabriel
Parsons.—‘What fun!’ and he laughed so long and so loudly, that he
disconcerted Mr. Watkins Tottle, and frightened the horse.
‘There’s Fanny and your intended walking about on the lawn,’ said
Gabriel, as they approached the house. ‘Mind your eye, Tottle.’
‘Never fear,’ replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made his way to the
spot where the ladies were walking.
‘Here’s Mr. Tottle, my dear,’ said Mrs. Parsons, addressing Miss
Lillerton. The lady turned quickly round, and acknowledged his
courteous salute with the same sort of confusion that Watkins had
noticed on their first interview, but with something like a slight
expression of disappointment or carelessness.
‘Did you see how glad she was to see you?’ whispered Parsons to his
friend.
‘Why, I really thought she looked as if she would rather have seen
somebody else,’ replied Tottle.
‘Pooh, nonsense!’ whispered Parsons again—‘it’s always the way with the
women, young or old. They never show how delighted they are to see
those whose presence makes their hearts beat. It’s the way with the
whole sex, and no man should have lived to your time of life without
knowing it. Fanny confessed it to me, when we were first married, over
and over again—see what it is to have a wife.’
‘Certainly,’ whispered Tottle, whose courage was vanishing fast.