Part 13

“Oh! pray let me run away,” sobbed the child; “and then perhaps they'll be friends;--do let me go!”

“Stay, darling,” quoth Doherty; “rather than frighten the child, I'll consent to apologize:--the heat of the argument made me singe the whiskers of my friend the tinker's honour;--but if the child wasn't where she is, and we were after breakfast, just now, right or wrong, tinker, we'd quarrel.”

“But not fight, it strikes me,” muttered the pedlar.

Calm was again restored, and the trio sat down to their breakfast. The tinker's loaf was divided; each man devoured his herring, and the soup was dipped out of the crock, and drank from a little second-hand saucepan, which alternately served each of the party. Darby's bottle, which was suspended from the branch above, before the meal was half concluded, had neatly proved an apple of discord between the tinker and the pedlar. Darby began, by taking a tolerably good sup of the contents; he then swung the bottle to the pedlar, who held it so long to his lips, that the honest tinker became alarmed lest he should not obtain his share. The pedlar did not withdraw the bottle from his mouth; and when he raised it to an angle of nearly forty-five degrees with the horizon, the tinker could no longer sit easy on the turf. He started up, rushed across the crock, which he upset in his transit, seized the pedlar by the throat with one hand, and clutched the bottle with the other.

“Hold hard!” said he; “not a drop more goeth down thy gullet! Quit thy hold o' the bottle, or I'll choke thee I--I will, faith!--it's natural:--thou hast had my bread, let me share in the whiskey.”

The residue of the broth made the fire hiss and send forth fumes, the odour of which was truly disgusting. The little girl screamed again, and Darby Doherty was in high hopes that the brawny pedlar would have resented the tinker's attack on his person: but he was disappointed.

“You'll excuse me,” said the tinker, bowing as he succeeded in obtaining possession of the bottle. “You'll excuse me, but, truly--”

“Dinna mention it, friend,” quoth the pedlar. “I was wrong--I forgot mysel';--it was vara well of ye to look to your ain:--I forgot mysel', and should have taken it down to the ultimate drop; it glides away like a joyful dream. It's Farintosh, I doubt: and vara excellent gude as I've tasted for mony a day.”

The child was much amazed to see storm and calm succeed each other so rapidly; she felt alarmed at those whom chance had made her associates and would-be protectors; but appetite mastered fear, and she soon dried her eyes, and ate the remainder of a piece of the herring which the pedlar had broiled for her while his companions were debating, and the biscuit he had discovered in his pack.

After breakfast, the question as to who should take the child to the revel, was again started. Each of the men spoke resolutely; and a third quarrel was already budding, when the little girl stood up between the brawlers, and proposed that, as all three of them were so kind as to wish to take her, and neither of them would let her go with either of the others, she should walk on alone; or, that all of them should go with her together.

An immediate assent was given to this proposal; the motion, as Darby said, was carried by acclamation; and preparations were immediately made for starting. While the pedlar was buckling on his pack, the poney neighed; and the tinker exclaimed, “Who comes hither, I wonder, a-horseback?”

“Faith, no one that I see or hear, a-horseback or a-foot,” replied the Irishman.

“Ay, but there do, though, sure as death,” said the tinker; “my poney yean't no false prophet I'll lay pints round, a horse is coming: I won't swear for a man,--mind me;--but a horse I be sure of:--and, look--dang me if 'tean't Parson Hackle!”

“And who's he, then?” inquired the Irishman, as a tall, thin, middle-aged man, in a black coat, with long leathern leggings, reaching from his toes to his hips, and mounted on a fat, ambling, old coach-horse, turned from the high-road, into the lane. “I'll just make my obedience and compliments to him as he goes by.”

“Thee'st better not,” said the tinker.

“Why not, then?--May be he'd drop me a keenogue and be civil.”

“Not he, friend; he's a magistrate, and though a good man in the main, mortally hates beggars.”

“Beggars!” exclaimed the Irishman; “sir, I'm a wandering minstrel--one of the tribe of Orpheus of ould; who, as the song says, the stones followed; and who, moreover, could move stocks themselves with his music:--maning, I suppose, that he often got pelted by bad boys, and whistled himself out of the stocks, with no thanks to the beadle.--Musha! that I mightn't, then!”

“Well! I can only tell thee, lad,” said the tinker, “Parson Hackle looks as black at a ballad-singer, as his brother, the 'squire, do at a man who happens to be misfortunate wi' a maiden.”

“Bad luck to the pair o' them then!”

“So say I,” quoth the tinker; “I ha' been in their clutches afore now, and I'll warrant the person you spoke of couldn't ha' bought his liberty wi' an old song, if he got into their wooden gaiters.”

“Oh! sir, sir! pray--dear sir!” said the little girl, who had several times in vain attempted to make herself heard, during the preceding dialogue between Darby and the tinker, “did you say the gentleman's name was Hackle?”

“Yea, I did, troth!” replied the tinker; “Parson Hackle.”

“Parson Hackle!” repeated the little girl; “where is he going?”

“Down to the revel, I reckon,” said the tinker, “like we be; only he goeth a-horseback, and we poor folks a-foot; and he goeth to help to keep the peace, and we, mayhap, to help to break it. I can't answer for myself, much more for my friends, after one o'clock.”

The tinker was right in his supposition that the reverend gentleman was on his way to the scene of the revel, and necessity compels us to accompany him; leaving the little girl and her three friends, to follow us at their leisure. The Reverend Reginald Hackle rode on at a quicker pace than his steed was accustomed to: Reginald partook, in some degree, of the hereditary impatience of the Hackles; the humour broke out but rarely, for Reginald's life was as seldom ruffled, as the gentle stream which glode along by the garden-hedge of his quiet abode: but he was now on his way to pass a few hours with his brother Archibald, whom he had not seen for a number of years; and the old horse, unused to such exertions as those to which his reverend rider, on this occasion, urged him, smoked like a dumpling recently lifted from a crock, by the time he reached the village.

Hackle Hall, the ancient and odd-looking edifice, toward which Reginald turned his horse's head, on emerging from the lane, was the residence of his elder brother, Sir Waldron; a man noted, as the tinker had stated in other words, for being harsh and unforgiving to those rural rakes, from whom scarcely any village in the kingdom is free. Neither Sir Waldron nor Reginald was married; their younger brother, Archibald, had a wife and a large family. Reginald, in addition to his duties as the pastor of a neighbouring parish, educated six or eight youths of the first families in the county, and Archibald had agreed to place his only boy, Waldron, under Reginald's care, for three or four years, in compliance with the reverend gentleman's affectionate and frequent invitations. He had stolen away from London, leaving business, as he said, to take care of itself for a few days, and brought young Waldron down with him. Reginald was absent on his arrival, at a considerable distance, relative to certain affairs, the arrangement of which he would have postponed, had he been made acquainted with Archibald's intended visit; but the latter had determined, very suddenly, on the journey. On taking a mental glance at his affairs one morning, while he was discussing a glass of sherry and a sandwich, at Garraway's, he discovered that there was nothing remarkably pressing, in the way of business, for some days forward: the funds were closed; two or three holidays at the public offices occurred in the ensuing week; he had not been out of town, except to fetch his family from a watering-place, for years past; he yearned to see his brothers,--and sent a ticket-porter to book places by the Exeter mail of the same evening. Young Waldron had scarcely time to take leave of his mother and sisters; and as to packing up his clothes, Mrs. Hackle declared such an exploit to be impossible. “Then what the devil is there in these, my love?” said Archibald, pointing to two trunks, a portmanteau, a carpet-bag, a bundle, and a hat-box, which lay before him. Mrs. Hackle replied, that they merely contained a change of linen, _or so_, and a few immediate necessaries for himself and his son. “Then, I suppose,” said he, “Waldron may expect the main body of his baggage by the broad-wheeled waggon.”

Partings and meetings between relatives are seldom of any interest except to those immediately concerned in them: we shall not, therefore, indulge in a description of what took place at the departure of Archibald and his son from Mrs. and the six Misses Hackle, nor of what Reginald said to Archibald, or Archibald said to Reginald, during the first ten minutes of their interview at Hackle Hall. We rather prefer relating the conversation of the three brothers after they had made a tolerable lunch on a cold pigeon-pie and two quarts of very respectable ale.

“Well, brother Archibald,” said the reverend gentleman as soon as the tray was removed, “and, pray, what aspect does your native place wear to your eye, since your long absence from it?--But you were so young when you quitted it, for a dismal, smoky, London-merchant's 'counting-house, that I suppose all recollection of it must have escaped your memory.”

“That's the positive truth,” replied Archibald; “if I had remembered the place and its people; if the least remnant of a sample had cleaved to me, not even the pleasure of seeing you and Waldron, would have induced me to have quitted the metropolis to pay it a visit.”

“You amaze me!” exclaimed Reginald; “the hospitality--”

“Oh! I've had enough of hospitality, believe me; and so had Gulliver, in the arms of the Brobdignag monkey, who ran away with him, and poked pounds of nauseous chewed food out of its own jaws into his; people are sometimes offensively, cruelly hospitable. Here, now, for instance, was I taken yesterday, by my brother, for a treat--mark me--to dine with one Jehoshaphat Higgs--”

“Almost the sole remaining specimen,” interrupted Sir Waldron, “of the fine, old-English, West-country yeomen;--a race, alas! now nearly extinct I honour the man: he farms his own land; sends his sons to the plough; his daughters to the spinning-wheel, and his wife to the chum. He keeps up all the good old customs of the country; raises the mistletoe on his beam at Christmas, and dances round the May-pole, with his buxom dame, at seventy, as gay at heart, though not as light of limb, as he did at twenty: I repeat, that I honour such men.”

“Honour them as much as you please, Waldron,” replied Archibald; “honour them, and welcome; but, I beseech you, do not entrap me to honour another of them,--if, indeed, there be such another blade as old Jehoshaphat, hereabouts,--with any more visits. First, brother Reginald, conceive the misery, if you can, of dining in a room, falsely designated a parlour, with a sanded floor! My teeth were set on edge every time I moved a foot.”

“Ay, but, brother, provided the table be well covered,” observed Reginald, “one might, methinks, even put up with a clean, dry, sanded floor.”

“Ay, ay, keep him to that, Reginald,” said Sir Waldron; “the table was, indeed, well covered. I have not dined so well these three weeks. We had a full course of downright thoroughbred old-English dishes;--Devonshire dainties of the first water; such as that transcendant lyrist, Robert Herrick, himself, when he dwelt in this country, doubtless, occasionally feasted on; compared with which, your modern kickshaws, your town messes, and hashes, and fricassees, and starved turtle, brother Archibald, are as chaff, compared with its own grain. You shall judge, Reginald: among other things, there was a remarkably fine-flavoured muggot-pie;--a dish, of which, I find, by an old manuscript, in our library, that the talented and virtuous Raleigh, was remarkably fond, and moreover partook, three days previously to his execution.”

“In my opinion,” said Archibald, “a man who would be fool enough to prefer muggot-pie to--”

“It's fine eating, Archibald,” quoth Sir Waldron; “would that you had tasted it!--and Sir Walter was a great man;--fine eating, on the honour of a gentleman.”

“What! calves' tripe baked in a pie, fine eating!” said Archibald; “if this be the result of your dwelling in Devonshire--”

“I never was out of it but thrice in my life,” said Sir Waldron; “and each time I had cause to repent of my folly.--But, to waive the muggot--had we not, also, parsley-pie?--”

“Made, as its name implies, of the herb that's used for garnish!”

“Squab-pie--”

“A horrible mixture of mutton-chops, apples, onions, and fat bacon!--Most abominable!--the stench was enough to have defeated an army of civilized beings. In fact, the dinner given by Peregrine Pickle's friend, the physician, in imitation of the ancients--”

“The ancients fed well,” observed Reginald; “Heliogabalus--”

“Was a nincompoop to Queen Elizabeth's cook,” added Sir Waldron, rather warmly; “whose mistress was served with fine natural meat and drink--”

“Such as muggot, squab, and parsley-pies, I suppose,” quoth Archibald.

“The appetites of the Romans,” continued Sir Waldron, “were, in latter times, depraved; and so is my brother Archibald's. Smollett very justly ridicules the feasts of the ancients, in that passage of Peregrine Pickle, where--”

“Really, brother Waldron,” interrupted Reginald, while a slight blush tinged his cheek, “I must entreat of you to pass on to some other subject; you know we never agree on this: if I have a failing--_if_, said I?--I meant, that, among my numerous failings, that of being slightly irritable, when the glorious masters of the world are attacked, by one who cannot appreciate them, is, I am sorry to say, very conspicuous.”

“Exceedingly so, Reginald,” replied Sir Waldron; “and if I have a virtue in the world--I beg pardon--among my numerous virtues, that of standing forth, manfully, for the customs of old England, and defending its literature against any man who presumes to set up the cold, classical, marbly stuff of the Greeks or Romans, in preference, is, certainly, I am proud to say, most paramount.”

“_Pindarum quisquis studet emulari_, brother Waldron,” exclaimed Reginald; but he was cut short, in his intended quotation, by Archibald, who said, “And if I plume myself on any merit of mine,--except, from my boyhood, always having balanced to a fraction,--it is on that of preferring a good carpet to a sanded floor; a Hoby's boot to a hob-shoe; a tooth by Ruspini, to fill up a gap made by time, to no tooth at all; a calf by Sheldrake, to make my left match with my right, to an odd pair of legs; a good dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, at Guff's, or the Albion, or in my own dining-room, to muggot, parsley, or squab pies, in Devonshire; a glass of claret to poor pinch-throat cider; punch to such filthy messes as buttered ale (hot ale with sugar, butter and rum!) or _meaty-drinky_ (ale made thick with flour!); and the company of two or three intelligent men over a bottle or a bowl, to all the famous authors, from Homer downwards, Greek, Roman, and English; not one of whose works I ever found half so useful as the Tables of Interest, Patterson's Roads, or the London Directory.”

This speech by no means raised Archibald in the estimation of either of his brothers. Sir Waldron thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and began whistling “Lillibullero.” Reginald sighed, and said to the man of business, in rather a doleful tone, “But, surely, brother, you have not forgotten your Horace; we were class-fellows together; you cannot be blind to the beauties of those illustrious names--”

“Chaucer, Sidney, Spencer,”--said Sir Waldron.

“Euripides, Sophocles,”--quoth Reginald.

“Ford, Decker, Marlow,” thus the baronet proceeded; “Fletcher, Jonson,--”

“Ha, ha!” exclaimed Archibald; “a list of very good people in their day, no doubt;--indeed, they were clever, for I know it;--but there's not one of the names you have mentioned would make a bill five farthings the better in Lombard Street.”

“But don't you ever read, brother Archibald?” asked the reverend gentleman, very earnestly.

“Ay,” said Sir Waldron; “don't you sometimes take down a book to amuse yourself?”

“Oh! yes; very often,” was the reply.

“Greek or Roman?”--

“Shakespeare, Donne, Randolph,--or what book, brother Archy?”

“My ledger, or bill-book, brother Waldron,” replied Archibald. His two brothers, on hearing this, immediately rose from their chairs, and walked to different ends of the room. “You may talk of interest, and pathos, and so forth,” continued Archibald, “as much as you please, but, egad! I find more pathos in that folio of my ledger, where Crumpton, Brothers, and Cross are debited items, to the tune of seven thousand pounds (speaking roundly), and their assignees credited with a dividend of seven-pence-halfpenny in the pound, than ever I did in all the works you have mentioned. The account of Crumpton, Brothers, and Cross is real; invoices and delivery-receipts may be produced to establish all the items: but the tales of your poets are generally altogether, and always in part fictitious, like the begging letters which the Mendicity people expose. Now, I can't see, for the soul of me, why men in their senses can ever be such asses as to invent and write tales of sorrow; as if there wasn't enough of _bonà fide_ grief in the world already:--or how-, to go further, people can read, and suffer themselves to be affected by such woeful stories, when they have troubles enough of their own to cry over; and, moreover, when they know that what they are perusing with aching hearts, is a farrago of lies:--and, egad! the greater the lie, it seems, the greater the merit;--lying, in this way, is called imagination. Why, sir, if any given author of eminence, were to tell half as many falsehoods in person as he does in print, upon my honour and credit, if he wasn't reckoned a fool, he'd certainly get kicked out of every house in the metropolis,--at least all those I visit.”

“Brother, brother!” exclaimed Sir Waldron, “I cannot listen to this folly.”

“Nor I; indeed, I cannot,” said Reginald. “But, perhaps, my brother Archy preferreth the authors of modern days, and they delight him to the exclusion of the fine old spirits of past ages.”

“Not so--not so, indeed,” replied Archibald; “they are all the same to Archibald Hackle. I would rather have a good dinner than the finest feast of reason that ever enthusiast described. I prefer a roasting pig to Bacon; a Colchester oyster to Milton; a cut of the pope's-eye to Pope's Homer; an apple-tart to-Crabbe; Birch's real turtle to Ovid's Art of Love; and a roasted potato to Murphy. While others embark in man-of-war, frigate, merchantman, heavy Dutch lugger, hoy, yacht, bum-boat, gondola, canoe, funny, or other craft, for the wide ocean of literature--let me enjoy myself in port. 1 would, any day, barter a volume of Sheri_dan_ for a bottle of Dan sherry;--a second quarto for the first pottle of strawberries, or a book by--”

“Brother Archibald, pr'ythee do not run on at this rate,” interrupted Sir Waldron; “you, surely, are not so lost to all intellectual delights as you pretend; you cannot be always employed at your business or your bottle;--to say the least, you must have some time to kill.”

“Kill! kill time!--Oh, dear! no,” replied Archibald; “you know nothing about the matter. Time travels too fast by half to please me;--I should like to clip the old scoundrel's pinions. The complaints which 1 have heard, occasionally, of time passing away so slowly, _ennui_, and what not, are to me miraculous. Time seems to travel at such a deuce of a rate, that there's no keeping pace with him. The days are too short by half so are the nights; so are the weeks, the months, and the years. I can scarcely get to bed before it's time to get up; and I haven't been up but a little time, apparently, before it's time to go to bed. I can but barely peep at the Gazette, or any matter of similar interest in the papers, and swallow an anchovy-sandwich, and a couple of cups of coffee, when it's time to be at the'counting-house. By the time I have read the letters and given a few directions, it's time to be in a hundred places;--before 1 can reach the last of, them, it's time to be on 'Change;--I don't speak to half the people there, to whom I have something to say, before it's time to reply to correspondents; and my letters are scarcely written before it's post and dinner time. Farewell business!--but then there's no time for enjoyment: dinner, wine, coffee, supper, and punch, follow in such rapid succession,--actually treading on each other's heels,--that there's no time to be comfortable at either of them. It's the same in bed;--a man must sleep fast, or time will get the start of him, and business be behind-hand an hour or two, and everything in disorder next morning.--If I accept a bill for a couple of months, it's due before I can well whistle: my warehouse rents are enormous; and, upon my conscience, Lady-day and her three sisters introduce themselves to my notice, at intervals so barely perceptible, that the skirt of one of the old harridans' garments has scarcely disappeared, before in flounces another. It's just as bad with the fire-insurances, and a thousand other things,--little matters as well as great: a man can scarcely pick his teeth before he's hungry again. The seasons are drawn by race-horses; my family has barely settled at home after a trip to Buxton, Brussels, or elsewhere, before summer comes round, and Mrs. H. pines for fresh air and an excursion checque again. I can scarcely recover the drain made on my current capital, by portioning one daughter, before another shoots up from a child to a woman; and Jack This or Tom T'other's father wants to know if I mean to give her the same as her sister. It's wonderful how a man gets through so much in the short space of life; he must be prepared for everything, when, egad! there's no time for anything.”

“Can this really be the fact?” inquired Reginald, incredulously.

“I give you my word and honour it is.”

“But,” said Sir Waldron, “you have actually complained to me, this morning, how the past week has 'dragged its slow length along' with you.”

“To be sure it has,” replied Archibald; “because I'm here--where I've nothing to do--and nothing to eat.”

“Nothing to eat, Archibald Hackle!” exclaimed Sir Waldron, drawing himself up with an expression of offended dignity; “Hackle Hall, sir, is almost an open house, even to the wayfarer;--you are one of its sons. I trust I have supported the honour of our ancestors while it has been in my keeping;--if you think otherwise, brother Archibald, and can shew that I have not deported myself as becometh the head of the family, although you are my younger brother, I lie open to your most severe censure.”

“My dear fellow,” said Archibald, in a familiar manner, that Sir Waldron deemed altogether unsuitable to the circumstances of the moment, “my dear fellow, I don't care a pepper-pod about the honour of our ancestors.”

“Not for the honour of our ancestors, brother Archibald!” exclaimed Reginald, raising his eye-brows, and laying considerable emphasis on every word, so as to make himself clearly understood.

“Ay, sir!” said Sir Waldron sternly; “not for the honour of our house, eh?”