Part 37

“If your observations are addressed to me,” said the attorney, “they are unwelcome. Restrict your discourse to plain answers to such questions as I shall put to you. Now attend did you deliver this letter last night to Miss Plympton?”

“Why does the gentleman ask?”

“I suspect you did.”

“Avow or deny it, sirrah! at once,” exclaimed the Doctor.

“Oh, pardon me, there,” replied Devallé; “we are all men: the cat expects to be used after its kind; and if a man is to be treated like a dog, he may as well bark, and wear a tail at once. I can bear a blow as well as most people, from a blackguard; but, with gentlemen, I expect a certain behaviour. Resentment is found in the breast of a camel; and there is no doubt but that man is endowed with feelings:--if not, why do we marry?”

“Well, my good friend,” said the attorney, changing his manner entirely from that which he had adopted in his first category, “perhaps you may be right: we will not dispute the points you have raised; but you must allow that Doctor Plympton has some excuse for being warm. Appearances are strong; but I doubt not you will, as an honest man, unequivocally answer us, and clear them up.”

“Oh, sir,” replied Devallé, “I am yours devotedly: ask me no questions; for I do not like to have what I know tugged out of my conscience by an attorney, like jaw-teeth with nippers, or corks from a bottle by a twisting screw; for I have a large family, and am more than fifty years old. I will tell you frankly, that I did give Miss that letter: I was sent on a special mission with it to her from Demerara. I went out in the same ship with Mr. Godfrey Fairfax: on landing, we found that his father had just died, and left him heir to all; then, as flesh is grass, he sent me back at once with orders--if Miss was not married--to give her his _billet-doux_. That's the truth: I confess it freely, for it's useless to deny it; and our heads will lie low enough a hundred years hence. Perhaps you will not take it uncivil in me to say, that you would have found all that I have said, and more, in fewer words, if, instead of calling me sirrah, and so forth, you had perused Mr. Godfrey's letter. Excuse me, but the philosopher could not read the stars until somebody told him to buy a telescope. I am for civility, mutual improvement, and freedom all over the world. And now, gentlemen, I hope you will permit me to retire. I must find my wife and family: I have not made a single inquiry for them yet; though they occupy all my waking thoughts, and are the dramatis personae of my little dreams. I humbly withdraw, but shall soon be in the neighbourhood again,--for locomotion is salubrious; and, if this present match with Miss be not strangled, I hope to have the honour of seeing you in church, in order, humble as I am, to forbid the banns. You would not smile, perhaps, if it occurred to your recollection, as it does to mine, that lions have been emancipated by mice, and more than one hero has been choked by a horsebean. It is for these reasons, I apprehend, judging from analogy,--a doctrine I reverence,--that cattle pasturing on a common or warren, abhor rabbit-burrows, and we, ourselves, detest and exterminate scorpions and wasps.--Gentlemen, your most humble and very devoted servant, Cæsar Devallé.”

With his usual multitude of obeisances, the Little Black Porter now left Doctor Plympton and the attorney to peruse the love-letter of Godfrey Fairfax to Isabel. It abounded with professions of the most passionate attachment; the deepest regret was expressed at the writer's present inability to return to England; but he vowed to fly to Isabel, on the wings of love, early in the ensuing summer, if she still considered his hand worthy of her acceptance. He stated, that he was unable to solve the mystery of her escape from the trunk: he feared that something unpleasant had happened, but clearly exonerated his fond, confiding Isabel from having borne any share in the base plot which had evidently been played off against him.

These allusions to the affair of the trunk, were beyond Doctor Plympton's comprehension; Burdock, however, obtained a tolerably dear insight to the circumstances from Isabel, Patty, George Wharton, and Cæsar Devallé, at an interview which he subsequently had with the Little Black Porter in Fumival's Inn. When he communicated the result of his investigations on the subject to the Doctor, that worthy personage protested that he should pass the residue of his life in mere amazement.

George Wharton quitted Doctor Plympton's house, without seeing Isabel again, on the eventful morning when the pen was placed in her hand to execute the marriage settlement; and, with the full approbation of his father's attorney, he sailed, by the first ship, to his native land. Isabel prevailed upon the Doctor to write to Godfrey Fairfax, inviting him to fulfil his promise of paying them a visit. She also wrote to Godfrey herself, by the same packet: but the fickle young man had changed his mind before the letters reached him; and six years after the departure of George Wharton from England, Adam Burdock was employed to draw a marriage settlement between the still blooming coquette, Isabel Plympton, and her early admirer, Charles Perry, who for the preceding fifteen months had been a widower. The Little Black Porter did not think proper to return to Demerara again; and he was seen in a very decent wig, by the side of the gallery clock, when Mr. Wilberforce last spoke against slavery, in the House of Commons.

THE DESSERT.

INTRODUCTION.

At a table of three courses, the guests have a right to expect some sort of a dessert; it is the necessary consequence of a certain order of dinners; and, if the host be unable to bedeck the board with choice rarities, he must, at any rate, be provided with a nut, an olive, and, for late sitters, a devilled gizzard. No man is permitted to offend form, or to infringe upon the privileges of diners-out, in this particular. If he cannot furnish what he fain would, he must offer what he can;--it being, properly enough no doubt, conventionally voted sheer cruelty, to give a man nothing to eat after he has had his fill of the best of everything. If no pineapple be present, an apology is peremptorily expected, and something must be selected to take the important character which it usually sustains in the festal afterpiece, “for that night only.” Mrs. Dousterbattle, my late much lamented friend, considered the tragedy train of Mrs. Siddons, as the _bonne bouche_ of her Queen Katherine; and there are many estimable people, who regard the range of dishes at a dinner-table, as merely composing a dull vista, through which they can look forward to the fine prospect of fruit and ices at its termination. However good the by-gone courses may have been,--whatever may be the disposition of the host, whether “civil as an orange,” or sourer than a lemon, they sturdily maintain,--and, it must be confessed, with some propriety,--that every man should be treated according to his _dessert_. It occasionally happens, that, notwithstanding his zeal, the founder of the feast caters so unluckily, that some of his friends travel from Dan to Beersheba, among his dishes, and find all barren. A guest so situated, is justified in supposing that there will be, at least, one oasis in the _desert_, to afford him refreshment.

Impressed with the force of his own arguments, the purveyor of the preceding courses has attempted an epilogue to his entertainment; in which, he trusts that he has not presumed too much on the usual leniency of after-dinner criticism; and that none of his guests are of the delightful class of censors, who flourish a flail to demolish a cobweb,--who indulge in proving, by very elaborate and profound arguments, that there is but little substance in “trifles light as air;” or who occasionally go so far, in fits of ultra fastidiousness, as to cross an author's _t,_ and dot an _i_ for him.

THE DEAF POSTILION.

In the month of January, 1804, Joey Duddle, a well-known postilion on the North Road, caught a cold, through sleeping without his night-cap; deafness was, eventually, the consequence; and, as it will presently appear, a young fortune-hunter lost twenty thousand pounds, and a handsome wife, through Joey Duddle's indiscretion, in omitting, on one fatal occasion, to wear his sixpenny woollen night-cap.

Joey did not discontinue driving, after his misfortune; his eyes and his spurs were, generally speaking, of more utility in his monotonous avocation, than his ears. His stage was, invariably, nine miles up the road, or “a short fifteen” down towards Gretna; and he had repeated his two rides so often, that he could have gone over the ground blindfold. People in chaises are rarely given to talking with their postilions: Joey knew, by experience, what were the two or three important questions in posting, and the usual times and places when and where they were asked; and he was always prepared with the proper answers. At those parts of the road, where objects of interest to strangers occurred, Joey faced about on his saddle, and if he perceived the eyes of his passengers fixed upon him, their lips in motion, and their fingers pointing towards a gentleman's seat, a fertile valley, a beautiful stream, or a fine wood, he naturally enough presumed that they were in the act of inquiring what the seat, the valley, the stream, or the wood was called; and he replied according to the fact. The noise of the wheels was a very good excuse for such trifling blunders as Joey occasionally made; and whenever he found himself progressing towards a dilemma, he very dexterously contrived, by means of a sly poke with his spur, to make his hand-horse evidently require the whole of his attention. At the journey's end, when the gentleman he had driven produced a purse, Joey, without looking at his lips, knew that he was asking a question, to which it was his duty to reply “Thirteen and sixpence,” or “Two-and-twenty shillings,” according as the job had been, “the short up,” or “the long down.” If any more questions were asked, Joey suddenly recollected something that demanded his immediate attention; begged pardon, promised to be back in a moment, and disappeared, never to return. The natural expression of his features indicated a remarkably taciturn disposition; almost every one with whom he came in contact, was deterred, by his physiognomy, from asking him any but necessary questions; and as he was experienced enough to answer, or cunning enough to evade these, when he thought fit, but few travellers ever discovered that Joey Duddle was deaf. So blind is man in some cases, even to his bodily defects, that Joey, judging from his general success in giving correct replies to the queries propounded to him, almost doubted his own infirmity; and never would admit that he was above one point beyond “a little hard of hearing.”

On the first of June, in the year 1806, about nine o'clock in the morning, a chaise and four was perceived approaching towards the inn kept by Joey's master, at a first-rate Gretna-green gallop. As it dashed up to the door, the post-boys vociferated the usual call for two pair of horses in a hurry: but, unfortunately, the innkeeper had only Joey and his tits at home; and as the four horses which brought the chaise from the last posting-house, had already done a double job that day, the lads would not ride them on, through so heavy a stage as “the long down.”

“How excessively provoking!” exclaimed one of the passengers; “I am certain that our pursuers are not far behind us. The idea of having the cup of bliss dashed from my very lips,--of such beauty and affluence being snatched from me, for want of a second pair of paltry posters, drives me frantic!”

“A Gretna-Green affair, I presume, sir,” observed the inquisitive landlord.

The gentleman made no scruple of admitting that he had run away with the fair young creature who accompanied him, and that she was entitled to a fortune of twenty thousand pounds:--“one half of which,” continued the gentleman, “I would freely give,--if I had it,--to be, at this instant, behind four horses, scampering away, due north, at full speed.”

“I can assure you, sir,” said the landlord, “that a fresh pair of such animals as I offer you, will carry you over the ground as quick as if you had ten dozen of the regular road-hacks. No man keeps better cattle than I do, and this pair beats all the others in my stables by two miles an hour. But in ten minutes, perhaps, and certainly within half an hour--”

“Half an hour! half a minute's delay might ruin me,” replied the gentleman; “I hope I shall find the character you have given your cattle a correct one;--dash on, postilion.”

Before this short conversation between the gentleman and the innkeeper was concluded, Joey Duddle had put-to his horses,--which were, of course, kept harnessed,--and taken his seat, prepared to start at a moment's notice. He kept his eye upon the innkeeper, who gave the usual signal of a rapid wave of the hand, as soon as the gentleman ceased speaking; and Joey Duddle's cattle, in obedience to the whip and spur, hobbled off at that awkward and evidently painful pace, which is, perforce, adopted by the most praiseworthy post-horses for the first ten minutes or so of their journey. But the pair, over which Joey presided, were, as the innkeeper had asserted, very speedy; and the gentleman soon felt satisfied, that it would take an extraordinary quadruple team to overtake them. His hopes rose at the sight of each succeeding mile-stone; he ceased to put his head out of the window every five minutes, and gaze anxiously up the road; he already anticipated a triumph,--when a crack, a crush, a shriek from the lady, a jolt, an instant change of position, and a positive pause occurred, in the order in which they are stated, with such suddenness and relative rapidity, that the gentleman was, for a moment or two, utterly deprived of his presence of mind by alarm and astonishment. The bolt which connects the fore-wheels, splinter-bar, springs, fore-bed, axle-tree, et cetera, with the perch, that passes under the body of the chaise, to the hind wheel-springs and carriage, had snapped asunder: the whole of the fore parts were instantly dragged onward by the horses; the braces by which the body was attached to the fore-springs, gave way; the chaise fell forward, and, of course, remained stationary with its contents, in the middle of the road; while the Deaf Postilion rode on, with his eyes intently fixed on vacuity before him, as though nothing whatever had happened.

Alarmed, and indignant in the highest degree, at the postilion's conduct, the gentleman shouted with all his might such exclamations as any man would naturally use on such an occasion; but Joey, although still but at a little distance, took no notice of what had occurred behind his back, and very complacently trotted his horses on at the rate of eleven or twelve miles an hour. He thought the cattle went better than ever; his mind was occupied with the prospect of a speedy termination to his journey; he felt elated at the idea of outstripping the pursuers,--for Joey had discrimination enough to perceive, at a glance, that his passengers were runaway lovers,--and he went on very much to his own satisfaction. As he approached the inn, which terminated “the long down,” Joey, as usual, put his horses upon their mettle, and they, having nothing but a fore-carriage and a young lady's trunk behind them, rattled up to the door at a rate unexampled in the annals of posting, with all the little boys and girls of the neighbourhood hallooing in their rear.

It was not until he drew up to the inn-door, and alighted from his saddle, that Joey discovered his disaster; and nothing could equal the utter astonishment which his features then displayed. He gazed at the place where the body of his chaise, his passengers, and hind-wheels ought to have been, for above a minute: and then suddenly started down the road on foot, under an idea that he must very recently have dropped them. On reaching a little elevation, which commanded above two miles of the ground over which he had come, he found, to his utter dismay, that no traces of the main body of his chaise were perceptible; nor could he discover his passengers, who had, as it appeared in the sequel, been overtaken by the young lady's friends. Poor Joey immediately ran into a neighbouring hay-loft, where he hid himself, in despair, for three days; and when discovered, he was, with great difficulty, persuaded by his master, who highly esteemed him, to resume his whip and return to his saddle.

CONJUGATING A VERB.

Dick Orrod and his brother Giles were fine specimens of the bumpkin boys of the West of England: their father, who was a flourishing farmer, sent them to pick up a little learning at an expensive academy, in a large town about twenty miles from the village where he lived. The master had but recently purchased the school from his predecessor; and, stranger as he was to the dialect of that part of the country, he could scarcely understand above one half of what Dick and Giles Orrod and a few more of his pupils meant when they spoke. “I _knowed_, I _rinned_, and I _hut”._ were barbarisms, to which his ear had never been accustomed; and it was only by degrees he discovered that they were translations, into the rural tongue, of “I knew, I ran, and I hit.” But there were few so rude of speech as Dick and Giles Orrod.

Fraternal affection was a virtue that did not flourish in the bosoms of either of these young gentlemen. Dick's greatest enemy on earth was Giles; and if honest Giles hated any human being except the master, it was Dick. They were excellent spies on each other's conduct; Giles never missed an opportunity of procuring Dick a castigation; and Dick was equally active in making the master acquainted with every punishable peccadillo that his brother committed.

One day an accusation was preferred against Master Richard, by one of the monitors, of having cut down a small tree in the shrubbery; but there was not sufficient evidence to bring the offence home to the supposed culprit.

“Does no young gentleman happen to know any thing more of this matter?” inquired the master.

Giles immediately walked from his seat, and, taking a place by the side of his brother, looked as though he had something relevant to communicate.

“Well, sir;” said the master, “what do you know about the tree?”

“If you plaze, sir,” growled Giles, “if you plaze, sir, I sawed un.”

“Oh! you 'sawed un,' did you?”

“Iss, I did:--Dick seed I saw un.”

“Is this true, master Richard?”

“Iss,” said Dick; and Giles, much to his astonishment, was immediately flogged.

At the termination of the ceremony, it occurred to the master to ask Giles, how he had obtained the saw. “About your saw, young gentleman;” said he, “where do you get a saw when you want one?”

Giles had some faint notions of grammar floating in his brain, and thinking that the master meant the verb, and not the substantive, blubbered out--“From _see_.”

“_Sea!_--so you go on board the vessels in the dock, do you, out of school hours, and expend your pocket money, in purchasing implements to cut down my shrubbery?”

“Noa, sir,” said Giles; “I doant goa aboard no ships, nor cut down noa shrubberies.”

“What, sirrah! did you not confess it?”

“Noa, sir; I said I sawed brother Dick cut down the tree, and he seed I sawed un, and a couldn't deny it.”

“I didn't deny it,” said Dick.

“Then possibly you are the real delinquent, after all, Master Richard,” exclaimed the master.

Dick confessed that he was, but he hoped the master would not beat him, after having flogged his brother for the same offence: in his way, he humbly submitted that one punishment, no matter who received it,--but especially as it had been bestowed on one of the same family as the delinquent,--was, to all intents and purposes, enough for one crime.

The master, however, did not coincide with Dick on this grave point, and the young gentleman was duly horsed.

“As for Master Giles,” said the master, as he laid down the birch, “he well merited a flogging for his astonishing--his wilful stupidity. If boys positively will not profit by my instructions, I am bound, in duty to their parents, to try the effect of castigation. No man grieves more sincerely than I do, at the necessity which exists for using the birch and cane as instruments of liberal education; and yet, unfortunately, no man, I verily believe, is compelled to use them more frequently than myself. I was occupied for full half an hour, in drumming this identical verb into Giles Orrod, only yesterday morning: and you, sir,” added he, turning to Dick, “you, I suppose, are quite as great a blockhead as your brother. Now attend to me, both of you:--what's the past of _see?_”

Neither of the young gentlemen replied.

“I thought as much!” quoth the master. “The perfect of _see_ is the present of _saw_,--See, Saw.”

“See, Saw,” shouted the boys; but that unfortunate verb was the stumbling-block to their advancement. They never could comprehend how the perfect of _see_ could be the present of _saw_; and days, weeks, months,--nay, years after,--they were still at their endless, and, to them, incomprehensible game of _see-saw_.

POSTHUMOUS PRAISE.