The wandering inclinations of nomad tribes not to be accounted for on the principles of action peculiar to civilized men, who are accustomed to live in good houses and able to pay the income tax.— When the money that once belonged to a man civilized vanishes into the pockets of a nomad, neither lawful art nor occult science can, with certainty, discover what he will do with it.—Mr. Vance narrowly escapes well-merited punishment from the nails of the British Fair—Lionel Haughton, in the temerity of youth, braves the dangers of a British Railway.
The morning was dull and overcast, rain gathering in the air, when Vance and Lionel walked to Waife’s lodging. As Lionel placed his hand on the knocker of the private door, the Cobbler, at his place by the window in the stall beside, glanced towards him, and shook his head.
“No use knocking, gentlemen. Will you kindly step in?—this way.”
“Do you mean that your lodgers are out?” asked Vance.
“Gone!” said the Cobbler, thrusting his awl with great vehemence through the leather destined to the repair of a ploughman’s boot.
“Gone—for good!” cried Lionel; “you cannot mean it. I call by appointment.”
“Sorry, sir, for your trouble. Stop a bit; I have a letter here for you.” The Cobbler dived into a drawer, and from a medley of nails and thongs drew forth a letter addressed to L. Haughton, Esq.
“Is this from Waife? How on earth did he know my surname? you never mentioned it, Vance?”
“Not that I remember. But you said you found him at the inn, and they knew it there. It is on the brass-plate of your knapsack. No matter,—what does he say?” and Vance looked over his friend’s shoulder and read.
SIR,—I most respectfully thank you for your condescending kindness
to me and my grandchild; and your friend, for his timely and
generous aid. You will pardon me that the necessity which knows no
law obliges me to leave this place some hours before the time of
your proposed visit. My grandchild says you intended to ask her
sometimes to write to you. Excuse me, sir—on reflection, you will
perceive how different your ways of life are from those which she
must tread with me. You see before you a man who—but I forget; you
see him no more, and probably never will.
Your most humble and most obliged, obedient servant,
W. W.
VANCE.—“Who never more may trouble you—trouble you! Where have they gone?”
COBBLER.—“Don’t know; would you like to take a peep in the crystal—perhaps you’ve the gift, unbeknown?”
VANCE.—“Not I—bah! Come away, Lionel.”
“Did not Sophy even leave any message for me?” asked the boy, sorrowfully.
“To be sure she did; I forgot-no, not exactly a message, but this—I was to be sure to give it to you.” And out of his miscellaneous receptacle the Cobbler extracted a little book. Vance looked and laughed,—“The Butterflies’ Ball and the Grasshoppers’ Feast.”
Lionel did not share the laugh. He plucked the book to himself, and read on the fly-leaf, in a child’s irregular scrawl, blistered, too, with the unmistakable trace of fallen tears, these words:—
Do not Scorn it. I have nothing else I can think of which is All Mine. Miss Jane Burton gave it me for being Goode. Grandfather says you are too high for us, and that I shall not see you More; but I shall never forget how kind you were, never—never. Sophy.
Said the Cobbler, his awl upright in the hand which rested on his knee, “What a plague did the ‘Stronomers discover Herschel for? You see, sir,” addressing Vance, “things odd and strange all come along o’ Herschel.”
“What!—Sir John?”
“No, the star he poked out. He’s a awful star for females! hates ‘em like poison! I suspect he’s been worriting hisself into her nativity, for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the Third and Ninth House,—Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters, and such like. But it will all come right after he’s transited. Her Jupiter must be good. But I only hope,” added the Cobbler, solemnly, “that they won’t go a-discovering any more stars. The world did a deal better without the new one, and they do talk of a Neptune—as bad as Saturn!”
“And this is the last of her!” said Lionel, sadly, putting the book into his breast-pocket. “Heaven shield her wherever she goes!”
VANCE.—“Don’t you think Waife and the poor little girl will come back again?”
COBBLER.—“P’raps; I know he was looking hard into the county map at the stationer’s over the way; that seems as if he did not mean to go very far. P’raps he may come back.”
VANCE.—“Did he take all his goods with him?”
COBBLER.—“Barrin’ an old box,—nothing in it, I expect, but theatre rubbish,—play-books, paints, an old wig, and sick like. He has good clothes,—always had; and so has she, but they don’t make more than a bundle.”
VANCE. “But surely you must know what the old fellow’s project is. He has got from me a great sum: what will he do with it?”
COBBLER.—“Just what has been a-bothering me. What will he do with it? I cast a figure to know; could not make it out. Strange signs in Twelfth House. Enemies and Big Animals. Well, well, he’s a marbellous man, and if he warn’t a misbeliever in the crystal, I should say he was under Herschel; for you see, sir” (laying hold of Vance’s button, as he saw that gentleman turning to escape),—“you see Herschel, though he be a sinister chap eno’, specially in affairs connected with t’ other sex, disposes the native to dive into the mysteries of natur’. I’m a Herschel man, out and outer; born in March, and—”
“As mad as its hares,” muttered Vance, wrenching his button from the Cobbler’s grasp, and impatiently striding off. But he did not effect his escape so easily, for, close at hand, just at the corner of the lane, a female group, headed by Merle’s gaunt housekeeper, had been silently collecting from the moment the two friends had paused at the Cobbler’s door. And this petticoated divan suddenly closing round the painter, one pulled him by the sleeve, another by the jacket, and a third, with a nose upon which somebody had sat in early infancy, whispered, “Please, sir, take my picter fust.”
Vance stared aghast,—“Your picture, you drab!” Here another model of rustic charms, who might have furnished an ideal for the fat scullion in “Tristram Shandy,” bobbing a courtesy put in her rival claim.
“Sir, if you don’t objex to coming into the kitching after the family has gone to bed, I don’t care if I lets you make a minnytur of me for two pounds.”
“Miniature of you, porpoise!”
“Polly, sir, not Porpus,—ax pardon. I shall clean myself, and I have a butyful new cap,—Honeytun, and—”
“Let the gentleman go, will you?” said a third; “I am surprised at ye, Polly. The kitching, unbeknown! Sir, I’m in the nussery; yes, sir; and Alissus says you may take me any time, purvided you’ll take the babby, in the back parlour; yes, sir, No. 5 in the High Street. Mrs. Spratt,—yes, sir. Babby has had the small-pox; in case you’re a married gentleman with a family; quite safe there; yes, sir.”
Vance could endure no more, and, forgetful of that gallantry which should never desert the male sex, burst through the phalanx with an anathema, blackening alike the beauty and the virtue of those on whom it fell, that would have justified a cry of shame from every manly bosom, and which at once changed into shrill wrath the supplicatory tones with which he had been hitherto addressed. Down the street he hurried and down the street followed the insulted fair. “Hiss—hiss—no gentleman, no gentleman! Aha-skulk off—do—low blaggurd!” shrieked Polly. From their counters shop-folks rushed to their doors. Stray dogs, excited by the clamour, ran wildly after the fugitive man, yelping “in madding bray”! Vance, fearing to be clawed by the females if he merely walked, sure to be bitten by the dogs if he ran, ambled on, strove to look composed, and carry his nose high in its native air, till, clearing the street, he saw a hedgerow to the right; leaped it with an agility which no stimulus less preternatural than that of self-preservation could have given to his limbs, and then shot off like an arrow, and did not stop, till, out of breath, he dropped upon the bench in the sheltering honeysuckle arbour. Here he was still fanning himself with his cap, and muttering unmentionable expletives, when he was joined by Lionel, who had tarried behind to talk more about Sophy to the Cobbler, and who, unconscious that the din which smote his ear was caused by his ill-starred friend, had been enticed to go upstairs and look after Sophy in the crystal,—vainly. When Vance had recited his misadventures, and Lionel had sufficiently condoled with him, it became time for the latter to pay his share of the bill, pack up his knapsack, and start for the train. Now, the station could only be reached by penetrating the heart of the village, and Vance swore that he had had enough of that. “Peste!” said he; “I should pass right before No. 5 in the High Street, and the nuss and the babby will be there on the threshold, like Virgil’s picture of the infernal regions,
“‘Infantumque anima; flentes in limine primo.’
We will take leave of each other here. I shall go by the boat to Chertsey whenever I shall have sufficiently recovered my shaken nerves. There are one or two picturesque spots to be seen in that neighbourhood. In a few days I shall be in town! write to me there, and tell me how you get on. Shake hands, and Heaven speed you. But, ah! now you have paid your moiety of the bill, have you enough left for the train?”
“Oh, yes, the fare is but a few shillings; but, to be sure, a fly to Fawley? I ought not to go on foot” (proudly); “and, too, supposing he affronts me, and I have to leave his house suddenly? May I borrow a sovereign? My mother will call and repay it.”
VANCE (magnificently).—“There it is, and not much more left in my purse,—that cursed Star and Garter! and those three pounds!”
LIONEL (sighing).—“Which were so well spent! Before you sell that picture, do let me make a copy.”
VANCE.—“Better take a model of your own. Village full of them; you could bargain with a porpoise for half the money which I was duped into squandering away on a chit! But don’t look so grave; you may copy me if you can!”
“Time to start, and must walk brisk, sir,” said the jolly landlord, looking in.
“Good-by, good-by.”
And so departed Lionel Haughton upon an emprise as momentous to that youth-errant as Perilous Bridge or Dragon’s Cave could have been to knight-errant of old.
“Before we decide on having done with each other, a short visit,”—so ran the challenge from him who had everything to give unto him who had everything to gain. And how did Lionel Haughton, the ambitious and aspiring, contemplate the venture in which success would admit him within the gates of the golden Carduel an equal in the lists with the sons of paladins, or throw him back to the arms of the widow who let a first floor in the back streets of Pimlico? Truth to say, as he strode musingly towards the station for starting, where the smoke-cloud now curled from the wheel-track of iron, truth to say, the anxious doubt which disturbed him was not that which his friends might have felt on his behalf. In words, it would have shaped itself thus,—“Where is that poor little Sophy! and what will become of her—what?” But when, launched on the journey, hurried on to its goal, the thought of the ordeal before him forced itself on his mind, he muttered inly to himself, “Done with each other; let it be as he pleases, so that I do not fawn on his pleasure. Better a million times enter life as a penniless gentleman, who must work his way up like a man, than as one who creeps on his knees into fortune, shaming birthright of gentleman or soiling honour of man.” Therefore taking into account the poor cousin’s vigilant pride on the qui vive for offence, and the rich cousin’s temper (as judged by his letters) rude enough to resent it, we must own that if Lionel Haughton has at this moment what is commonly called “a chance,” the question as yet is not, What is that chance? but, What will he do with it? And as the reader advances in this history, he will acknowledge that there are few questions in this world so frequently agitated, to which the solution is more important to each puzzled mortal than that upon which starts every sage’s discovery, every novelist’s plot,—that which applies to MAN’S LIFE, from its first sleep in the cradle, “WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?”
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