CHAPTER CXXII.

TWO OF THE READER’S OLD FRIENDS.

Bucklersbury--a tortuous street, leading from Cheapside to Walbrook--abounds in dining-rooms, where for fifteen pence the “City man” can procure a meal somewhat on the “cheap and nasty” principle. There’s ten-pence for a plate of meat, cut off a joint--two-pence, a pint of porter--a penny, potatoes--a penny, bread--and a penny the waiter.

The moment a person enters one of these establishments and seats himself at a table, a waiter with a dirty apron to his waist, and a ditto napkin over his arm, rushes up, and gabbles through the bill-of-fare, just in the same rapid and unintelligible manner as an oath is administered to a juryman or a witness in a court of justice.

It was while the preceding scenes were taking place at the West End of London, that two gentlemen lounged into a dining-room in Bucklersbury, and took their places, facing each other, at one of the numerous little tables that were spread with dirty cloths and strewn in a random fashion with knives, forks, salt-sellars, pepper-boxes, and vinegar-cruets,--all in preparation for the afternoon’s process of “feeding.”

Scarcely had the two gentlemen thus brought themselves to an anchor, when the waiter darted up to them as if the necessity of speed were a matter of life or death;--and, heedless whether the visitors were attending to him or not, the domestic functionary hurried over the list of delicacies at that moment in readiness in the kitchen.

“Roast beef--biled beef--roast leg of pork--biled leg of pork and pease pudding--fillet of veal and ’am--beef steak pie--biled leg of mutton and caper sarse--greens--colliflowers--and taturs. Give your orders, gentle-_men_.”

But were the rapidity of the waiter’s utterance properly represented in print, his repetition of the bill-of-fare would more properly stand thus:--

“Roast beef biled beef roast leg of pork biled leg of pork and pease pudding fillet of veal and ’am beefsteak pie biled leg of mutton and caper sarse greens colliflowers and taturs give your orders gentle-_men_!”

“Well--what shall we have, old fellow?” said the younger gentleman of the two to his companion.

“Be Jasus! ’an it’s afther boiled leg of por-r-rk and paze pudding that I am, my frind!” was the emphatic reply, delivered with a ferocious look at the waiter as much as to let that individual know that he had better not have any of his nonsense--although nothing was farther from the poor devil’s thoughts at the moment.

“Very good, sir!” cried the waiter. “Biled pork and pease pudding!” he shouted out for the behoof of the young lady within the bar at the remote end of the room.

“And the same for me,” said the Irishman’s companion.

“Same for gentle-_man_!” bawled the waiter, again addressing himself to the young lady just alluded to. “Ale or stout, gentle-_men_?”

“Porther--a pint!” exclaimed the ferocious Hibernian.

“Pale ale for me,” intimated his friend.

“Pint of porter and pint palale for gentle-_men_!” vociferated the waiter. “Weggitubles--bread?” he next demanded.

“No bread--greens!” ejaculated the Irishman.

“Bread and potatoes for me,” said his companion.

“One bread--one greens--one taturs--for gentle-_men_!” cried the waiter, thus conveying his last instructions to the young lady who officiated at the bar; and the said young lady sent each fresh order down a pipe communicating with the kitchen--her own voice being as affected and her manner as lackadaisical as the waiter was natural, rapid, and bustling.

But before the various luxuries thus commanded were hoisted from the kitchen to the bar by means of the moveable dumb-waiter that worked up and down between the two places just mentioned,--we must pause to inform our readers--if indeed they have not already suspected the fact--that the two visitors to the dining-establishment in Bucklersbury, were our old friends Captain O’Blunderbuss and Mr. Francis Curtis!

The gallant Irishman had now numbered sixty-four years; and although the lapse of time had rendered his head completely bald, and turned his whiskers and moustachios to a bright silver, the ferocity of his aspect remained unaltered, and his fiery disposition was unsubdued. He was still the terrible Captain O’Blunderbuss--ready to exchange shots with any one and on all occasions--and more devoted to poteen than ever. His form was as erect as when in the prime of life; and his military coat, all frogged and braided, was buttoned over an ample chest that no stoop had contracted. The captain had grown somewhat stouter than when we took leave of him nineteen years previously to our present date; but his physical strength seemed to have remained unimpaired.

Frank Curtis was now forty-three. He also had “filled out,” as the phrase is; but his countenance, in fattening, had lost nothing of its ignoble expression of self-sufficiency and impudent conceit; and his manner was as flippant as ever. Neither had he laid aside any portion of his mendacious habits, but had rather added thereto by varying the style of his boastings and the nature of his lies. He continued to dress in a flashy way--delighting in a hat of strange appearance, and in a waistcoat concentrating in a yard of stuff all the colours which have existence and name upon earth.

We must however admit--for the truth cannot be blinked in this respect--that there was a certain air of seediness about both the captain and Mr. Frank Curtis, which neither the bullying insolence of the former nor the impertinent self-sufficiency of the latter could altogether throw into the shade. It was evident that they had lost the confidence of their tailors and hatters--and even of their washerwomen;--for their garments might have been less thread-bare, and their wristbands a trifle cleaner. We say “wristbands,” because those were the only portions of their shirts which met the eye--the captain’s frogged coat and Mr. Curtis’s faded double-breasted waistcoat being each buttoned up to its owner’s throat.

“Waiter-r!” vociferated the gallant officer, when about a minute and a half had elapsed from the time that the orders had been given for the repast.

“Yes, sir--coming, sir,” cried the functionary thus addressed, as he hurried away in quite another direction.

“Be Jasus!” ejaculated the captain, thumping his fist so vigorously down upon the table that the pepper box danced the polka with the mustard-pot, and the knives and forks performed a _pas de quatre_. “Is that boiled por-r-rk and paze pudding afther coming to-day at all, at all?”

“Just coming, sir!” said the waiter, under no excitement whatever, though in an immense bustle--for waiters always remain cool and imperturbable when most in a hurry.

“If it don’t come in sivin seconds, ye villain,” thundered the captain, “I’ll skin ye alive!”

“Very good, sir,” said the waiter, as he hastened to attend upon some new-comers.

“The beauty of the French eating-houses is that the moment you order things they appear on the table by magic,” observed Frank Curtis, in a tone loud enough to let every one present know that he had been in France. “When I was in Paris--on that secret mission from the English Government, you know, captain-----”

“Be Jasus! and I remimber quite well,” exclaimed the gallant officer. “’Twas at the same time that I wint to offer my swor-r-d and services to the Imperor of the Tur-r-rks--the Sulthan, I mane.”

“Just so,” said Frank. “Well--as I was going to tell you----”

“Two biled pork--two pease pudding--for gentle-_men_,” cried the waiter at this juncture, as he set the plates upon the table. “One--bread--one greens--one taturs--for gentle-_men_.”

The captain and Mr. Curtis fell to work upon the delicacies thus placed before them; and after an interval of silence, during which the boiled pork and _et ceteras_ disappeared with astonishing rapidity, the latter leaning across the table, said in a low whisper, “It was a deuced lucky thing that I met my friend Styles just now; for if he hadn’t lent me this sovereign, we might have gone without dinner as well as without breakfast.”

“Be Jasus! and that’s thrue enough, Frank!” returned the gallant officer, likewise in _sotto voce_. “Where did ye appint to mate Misther Styles again this afternoon?”

“At a nice quiet little public that I know of--where there’s a good parlour and capital spirits,” answered Mr. Curtis.

“Ah! the thrue potheen--the rale cratur!” said the captain. “Well that’s a blissing, at all evints! And, be Jasus! I hope your frind Misther Styles will be after putting us up to do a something, as he suggisted--for, be the power-r-rs! Frank, it’s hard work looking about for the sinews of war-r-r!”

“Styles is a splendid fellow, captain,” replied Mr. Curtis, smacking his lips after his last glass of pale ale--or “palale,” as the waiter denominated it. “Why, God bless you! It was him who got up the London and Paris Balloon Conveyance Company, with Parachute Branches to Dover and Calais.”

“And how came it to fail?” demanded the gallant officer.

“Simply because it was never meant to succeed,” answered Frank, in a matter-of-fact way. “The object was to make money by showing the balloons and parachutes that were to be used in the business; and the press took up the affair quite seriously. As long as curiosity was kept alive, Styles cleared upwards of five guineas a-day by the admissions at a shilling a head. Ah! he’s a clever fellow--a deuced clever fellow, I can tell you. But it’s pretty near time we went to meet him: for, though he hasn’t any thing particular to do at present, he always pretends to be in a hurry, and never waits one minute over the hour for an appointment:--that’s the way he has got himself the character of a man of punctuality and business-habits.”

“Waiter-r!” vociferated Captain O’Blunderbuss.

“Coming, sir!” cried the functionary thus adjured: then, rushing up to the table, he said interrogatively, “Cheese, gentle-_men_?”

“No. What’s to pay?” demanded Curtis.

The waiter enumerated the items in a rapid manner and mentioned the amount, which was forthwith discharged by Frank, who ostentatiously threw down a sovereign as if he had plenty more of the same kind of coin in his pocket. On receiving his change, he gave the waiter sixpence--a specimen of liberality which induced that discriminating personage to disregard all the other demands made at the moment upon his services, until he had duly escorted the two gentlemen to the door.

Upon quitting the dining-rooms, Captain O’Blunderbuss and Mr. Frank Curtis proceeded arm-in-arm into Cheapside; and, on catching a glimpse of the clock of Bow Church, the latter gentleman said, “We are in lots of time. It’s only half-past two--and we’re to meet Styles at three at a public in Fleet Street. So we needn’t gallop along as if a troop of sheriffs’ officers were at our heels.”

“Be Jasus! d’ye remember what fine fun we had with the snaking scoundrels up in Baker Street?” cried the gallant officer. “Why--it must be upwards of twenty years ago--or nineteen at the laste!”

“Yes--and do you remember what larks we had in the Bench too, during the time that the sleepy old Commissioners remanded me for?” said Curtis.

“Be the holy poker-r! and I’ve forgotten nothing of all that same!” ejaculated the captain. “But it was a sad blow to ye, my frind, when Sir Christopher-r died without laving ye a single sixpence!”

“I can’t bear to think of it, captain--although a dozen years or more have passed since then. But who do you think I saw the other day, riding in her carriage just as if she had been a lady all her life?”

“Be Jasus! and ye mane Sir Christopher’s wife that was!” exclaimed the gallant officer. “Had she got the fine stout livery-servant standing up behind as usual?”

“Yes--and young Blunt was inside,” added Curtis. “He’s as like the stout footman as ever a lad was to a middle-aged man in this world--the same pudding face--sandy hair--stupid-looking eyes----”

“Now be the power-rs! I think you’re too hard upon the footman, Frank!” interrupted the captain. “He’s not such an ugly fellow as you would be afther making him out. I don’t say, for insthance, that he’s so handsome as you, my dear frind--or yet so well made as me, Frank----”

“Very far from it, captain,” cried Mr. Curtis. “I don’t think that we’re the worst looking chaps in Cheapside at this moment. That’s exactly what Styles said to us this morning. ‘_I want a couple of genteel fellows like you_,’ says he, ‘_to join me in something that I have in hand._’”

“We’re the very boys to co-operate with him, Frank!” exclaimed the captain: “and what’s more, you and me can play into ache-other’s hands. ’Tisn’t for nothing that we’ve been frinds for the last twinty years.”

“In which time we’ve seen many ups and downs, captain,” observed Frank,--“had many a good dinner, and gone many a time without one--spent many a guinea, and seen many a day when we didn’t know where the devil to get a shilling----”

“Be the power-rs! and had many a rar-r lar-r-rk into the bargin!” said Captain O’Blunderbuss. “D’ye renumber our gitting into the station-house the night afther your dear wife left ye to jine the old gintleman that fell in love with her, and----”

“And who was kind enough to take her off my hands, children and all!” exclaimed Frank, laughing heartily. “Ah! that was a glorious business--that was--I mean, old Shipley relieving me of my dear spouse and the five responsibilities.”

“And didn’t I conduct the bargin for ye?” demanded the captain. “Didn’t I make him pony down a thousand pounds to prevint an action of _crim. con._? Be the potheen of ould Ireland--I did that same business as nate and clane as iver such a thing was setthled in this wor-r-rld!”

“True enough, captain,” said Frank. “But it’s just on the stroke of three, I declare!” he exclaimed, glancing up at Saint Bride’s, which they were now passing. “How we must have dawdled along! I wish you wouldn’t loiter to stare at the gals so, captain,” he added, laughing.

“Be Jasus! and it’s yourself, Frank, that ogles all the lasses that we mate,” cried the captain, throwing back an insinuation that was intended as a friendly compliment. “But which is the place, me boy?”

“Here,” said Curtis, turning into a public-house in Fleet Street just as the clock struck three.