CHAPTER XIX.

THE INGENIOUS DEVICES WITH WHICH SHEPPARD LEE PREPARED THE WAY FOR THE ELOPEMENT.

I had scarce brought my friend Tickle upon the stage, and introduced him into my uncle's family, before my mind began to misgive me. I suspected that, instead of being content to play the stalking-horse for my sole advantage, he would take the opportunity to advance his own interest, and gain, if he could, my cousin Pattie for himself.

To remove all temptation, and bind him more closely to be faithful, I told him of my adventure with Alicia (taking care, however, to conceal her name, for I did not wish to forego my advantages in that quarter until convinced I could do so without loss), described her claim to the sixty thousand dollars (for, of course, I trebled her inheritance), and concluded by engaging to make her over to him the moment I was myself secure of Pattie, which would be the moment Pattie was secure of an independence.

Upon this promise Tickle made me a thousand protestations of friendship and disinterestedness, and I felt my mind more easy.

He acted his part, assisted by Pattie, who at my suggestion feigned suddenly to be violently in love with him, and besieged her father to the same end as myself: the old gentleman at last com plied, and actually executed the deed of gift which I mentioned before; by which he secured to her the revenue accruing upon a sum of forty thousand dollars, the principal, which he retained in his own hands in trust, to revert to her at his death; and to this deed I was myself made a witness.

With these terms, as it seemed there were no better to be had, I allowed myself to be satisfied; and trusting to a final reconciliation with my uncle Wilkins to augment the dowry, I ran to my cousin Pattie and informed her of her good fortune.

She was filled with repture, and began fairly to dance with joy; she told me I was the best and sweetest of cousins, and vowed she would love me to her dying day. Her joyous spirits fired my own, and I answered in terms equally ecstatic. In short, we agreed to elope that very night, and arranged our plan accordingly. It was agreed I should have a carriage in waiting at the corner of the street during the evening, and that Pattie, who was to feign herself unwell, as an excuse for not going to Mrs. Pickup's first ball, which was to take place that evening, should find some means to get her father out of the way; immediately after which I, having disposed of the redoubtable Sammy, by depositing him in the aforesaid Mrs. Pickup's drawing-room, was to make my appearance, and bear her in triumph to a reverend divine, previously secured for the ceremony.

Having settled all these things, and sealed our engagement with a kiss, my adorable cousin admitted me to a secret which nearly froze my blood with horror.

She informed me that my friend Tickle, disregarding all his vows of fidelity, had been busy ever since I brought him into the house besieging her on his own account; that he had taken every occasion to undermine me in her affections, by disparaging my good qualities both of soul and mind, and especially by assuring her I was a "great ass and fortune-hunter" (those were his very words); and, finally, that he had so used the power his knowledge of our secret had given him, by occasional threats of betraying it to her father, that she had been compelled to accept his addresses, and make him the same promise she had just made me--that is, to elope with him. The perfidious fellow had by some means got wind of the deed of gift; and while I was engaged in signing it, he had paid my cousin a visit with the same object as myself, and she had promised to decamp with him. Nay, at this moment the villain was engaged in securing his carriage and his parson, with the prospect of chousing me out of my wife and fortune!

My horror was, however, soon dissipated. My cousin Pattie had made the engagement only in self-defence, and she looked upon the whole affair as the best joke in the world. "How we will cheat him," said she; "the base fellow!" and she danced about, smiling, and laughing, and crying together, so that it was a delight to see her. "Yes," said she, with uncommon vivacity, "we will cheat him, for I'm sure he deserves no better; for I'm sure he's just as much of a goose and fortune-hunter as he said _you_ were; and I'm sure I despise a goose and fortune-hunter above all things; and I'm sure I know how to treat a goose and fortune-hunter as well as anybody. How we'll laugh at him to-morrow! How he'll stare when he finds I'm gone! how papa will stare too! How Sammy will stare, and how he'll whistle! Oh dear! I _do_ love to cheat people of all things; I do, cousin Ikey; and, ods fishes, I'm almost half minded to cheat you too!"

And with that she flung her arms round my neck, gave me a kiss, and ran laughing away to prepare for the hour of elopement.

There was an extraordinary coincidence between the situation of my cousin Pattie and myself. She had agreed to run away with two different people at the same moment; and so had I. The day before my uncle proved unusually crusty and self-willed, and I began to think I should never effect my point with him; and, what was equally dispiriting, I fell among duns, who persecuted me with astonishing rancour; my uncle's appearance, as it seemed, serving rather to sharpen than to allay their appetites for payment. Being thus goaded on by doubt and dunning, I resolved to make sure of Goldfist's daughter; which I did by visiting her as soon as night came, and proposing an elopement on the following evening; and this it was the more easy to put into execution, since her father, as she told me, was fast in bed with a sciatica, or some such vulgar disorder.

No one could be more willing and delighted than the fair Alicia; and it appeared that, in anticipation of the happy event, she had already made all her preparations, having, as she assured me, arranged with a friend of hers, at whose house she designed the ceremony to be performed, ordered secretly a whole trunk full of bride's clothes, and notified an old schoolmate whom she had engaged to wait upon her.

I thought, upon my soul, she was taking matters pretty easily, and acting somewhat independently; but she was ignorant of the world, as I said before, and knew no better. I was still more disgusted with the thought of being shown off among her friends, and told her a bridemaid was wholly superfluous; but she had made her mind up as to what was right on such an occasion, and I judged it proper to submit. It was agreed I should meet her at her friend's house, at nine o'clock in the evening; and "she hoped," very modestly, I thought, "that I would bring some nice pretty fellow to wait on me, that would make a good match with her dear Julia, who was the nicest dear soul in the world."

This "nice dear soul," as I afterward discovered, and as I think proper to inform the reader now, that he may understand into what a slough of democracy I was rushing, was no less a personage than a cousin-german of Mr. Snip, my tailor; and her appointment to the honour of waiting upon the bride of the distinguished I. D. Dawkins was productive of a casualty expected neither by herself nor by my adored Alicia.

I laughed in my sleeve at that hint of my Alicia; and yet I did, after all, provide myself with an attendant, and one who was perhaps better suited than any other person I could have lighted on, as an offset and pendent to the "fair Julia." This was my cousin, Sammy Wilkins; and the reason of my appointing him was this. He was, although the stupidest creature on earth, of a meddling and prying nature, and had an extraordinary fancy to go sneaking after me whithersoever I went--from admiration and affection, perhaps; but of that I was not certain; and, at all events, he was a great burden to me. He discovered my repeated visits to Skinner's house, and was seized with a stupid curiosity to know the reason; and, what was still worse, he made so many observations on my attentions to, and secret conferences with, his sister Pattie, that it was clear he suspected there was something in the wind there too. Being kept in eternal torment lest he should discover more than I liked, or, by his indiscreet tattling, awake the suspicions of others, I saw no better means of averting the mischief, and turning his eyes from his sister, than by taking him aside, and telling him, with many injunctions to secrecy, that I was courting old Skinner's rich daughter, and wished to have him wait upon me at the wedding.

Such confidence, coupled with the intention to do him so much honour, entirely overcame his rustic imaginations. He swore he approved of marrying rich wives, and was looking out for one himself, and hoped I would put him on the track of one; which I promised, and the clownish juvenile was content. He looked forward to the great event with a measure of glee I had never seen him roused to before, and he ordered a new coat of Snip, that he might do honour to his service.

It is quite true, I never really intended he should trouble himself in the matter; but when the fated evening came, when the loving Alicia, arrayed in satin and white roses, was awaiting her lover, who was preparing to run away with her rival, I thought it better to despatch him to my charmer than to leave him at Mrs. Pickup's, whence he might stray at a moment's warning, and, indeed, with no warning at all. It was quite necessary to have him out of the way; for which reason I sent him to the house where Alicia was in waiting, with a special message to the lady, to make his introduction the more easy, and a thousand instructions in relation to nothing.

It was fortunate that my cousin Sammy, though as great a rustic as ever lived, was, as little troubled with bashfulness as wisdom. Hence I found no difficulty in despatching him to my inamorata, whom he had never laid eyes on, and to her friends, with regard to whom I was in the same predicament. I promised to follow him in a short time, and thus, to my great joy, succeeded in getting him out of the way.