The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 82

The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 82

Then came all the worry and confusion about carriages--the little

alley was crowded with people seeking for conveyances--it had just

begun to rain. Hull looked at _me_, and inquired what vehicle I

had?--I had none--I was annihilated--when, judge my delight and

surprise at finding the illustrious Hicks himself at my side,

offering Hull and myself places in his coach. I could scarcely

believe it; however, so it was, and an advantage was derivable from

it for which I was scarcely prepared.

 

"Come down with _me_," said Hicks, "directly:--this way--they

are preparing a deputation to light me through the alley to the

carriage--I want to avoid it. My boy tells me it is all ready--if

we can but get round the corner, we shall be off without being

observed--they _will_ do these things, but _incog._ for me--I hate

state and finery--eh, Mr. Hull?"

 

"Pooh, pooh!" said Hull, "_you_ need no new honours--to be sure--what

a day--eh--never was any thing so splendid!"

 

And so Hicks's boy, or, as Hull called him, "b'y," preceding, we

made our escape into the patriot's carriage; and never did I more

rejoice in my life. The quiet of the calm which aeronauts experience

when they rise in a few minutes from the tumultuous shoutings of the

populace into the dead stillness of the vast expanse above, cannot be

more surprising than was the tranquillity of the coach compared with

the boisterousness of the company.

 

Mr. Hicks carried us as far as he could, without inconveniencing

himself, and set us down at the corner of a small street in

Cheapside, having, just before we parted, mentioned to me that if at

any time I should be in need of any article in the hardware line, I

should find every thing he had at wholesale prices and of the very

best quality.

 

Hull and I walked westward, but whether it arose from the length of

the way or its width, I cannot exactly state, I was uncommonly tired

when I reached home. When I fell asleep, which I did as soon as I got

into bed, I dreamed of the extraordinary infatuation which possesses

men in all classes of life to believe themselves eminently important,

and their affairs seriously interesting to all the rest of the world;

and became perfectly satisfied that every sphere and circle of

society possesses its Hicks, and that my friend the hardwareman was

not one bit a greater fool than his neighbours.

 

 

THE MANSERVANT'S LETTER.[64]

 

Murrel Green, Thursday.

 

"DEAR SARAH,--I should not wonder if you wasn't a little surprised

at neither seeing nor hearing from me before this, as I calculate

you also will be at reading the date of this hepistol. The truth is,

that the Captain, whose stay in England will be very short, says

to me, just as I was coming off to you the night after I wrote,

'Lazenby,' says he, 'where do you go when you leave me?' So I

contumaciously expressed myself in these identical words, 'Why, sir,'

says I in a masculine manner, 'I am going to Blissford.' Whereupon

he observed to me that he supposed I had got what the French calls

a _chair ah me_ there, and that I was likely to settle myself in

the neighbourhood--so then I expostulated with him and mentioned my

notion of setting up in the general line, and he laughed and said

that he hoped to do that himself some day, and was quite factious

upon the toepick, which after his manner the night before, rather

constaminated me, as Goldfinch says in Ben Jonson's 'Beggars' Opera;'

whereupon he; says, looking at me in his droll way, 'Tom,' says he,

'I shan't be long in London; hadn't you better go up with me and Mrs.

M. when we are married, and stop with us till we go?'--for, mind

you, he is going to take her out with him to share the toils of the

champaign; and this was the very first of his directly insinuating

that the thing was all settled: so I hesitates a little; and thinking

of you, my dear Sarah, I says, says I, 'Sir, will you give me an

hour to preponderate?'--'To be sure I will,' says the Captain. Well,

I begins to think; and I calculated I might make a few pounds by

stopping and paying his bills and managing his luggage, and all

_that_, before he went. So I says to Susan--she as I wrote about

in my last--'If you was _me_,' says I, 'what would you do in this

conundrum?'--'Why,' says Susan, 'if you ask me _my_ advice, if I was

_you_ I'd stay and go with the Captain.' So I considers a bit more;

and I says to her, 'I don't much like missus as is to be.'--'Nor I,'

said Susan, 'although I have knowed her longer than you; but for all

_that_, I'm going as her maid; only to stay till they leave England

for good.'--'Why,' says I, having heard her opinion of the future

Mrs. Merman, and how Mrs. Gibson had gone away entirely excavated by

the levity of her mistresse's behaviour, 'I had no notion you would

do such a thing.'

 

"So Susan says to me, 'Lazenby,' says she--she calls me Lazenby, for

we are quite like brother and sister now--'my old missus wishes it;

and she hints something about remembering me hereafter; and so what

is it?' says Susan; 'in these days, folks don't stick at trifles; and

sure if Miss Millicent is good enough to be Captain Merman's wife,

she is good enough to be my missus.' That seemed remarkably judicial

to my comprension; and so, thinking what was good for Susan could not

be interogatory to me, up I goes to the Captain, and agrees to stay

with him, as I tell you, till he bids a Jew to his native land, at

which perriod, dear Sarah, I hope to return to you, like the good bee

who, as Pope says in 'The Deserted Village'--

 

'Behaves in bee-hives as behoves him,'

 

and bring you an affectionate art, and I should say upwards of seven

pounds fourteen shillings in hard cash by way of hunney. Susan says

she should like to know you, she is so much indisposed towards you

by my inscription of you; and I should like you to be friends, which

perhaps may be some of these days, if she comes back to that part

of the country. She would be uncommon nice company for both of us,

she is so candied and filantropical, and it is a great thing for a

married couple to have such a friend.

 

"I don't know whether you have ever been in this quarter of the

world, although, as I don't think you could well have got to

Blissford by any other road from London, pr'aps you have; it is very

wild and romantic, with a bit of a green before the door, upon which

there are geese, ducks, enseterar; and Susan and I am going to take

a walk, and we shall carry this letter ourselves to Artley Row,

where is the Post-office, because, as I have promised the Captain

not to say anything one way or the other, I thought if he saw a

letter redressed to the Passonage, he might inspect something; so

Susan and I agreed it would be better to go out in the dusk as if

miscellaneously, and slip it in unbeknown to any body, while master

and missus is enjoying their _teat a teat_ after dinner. We go on

to the meterpolis in the morning, and Susan and I go outside in

the rumble-tumble, for Miss Pennefather has lent us the charriot,

which I suppose I shall have to bring back, which, as I cannot do

without horses, will be a very pretty incursion. I don't in course

know how long the Captain will be before he goes, so do not fret. I

have got your wach, which does not keep tim well, but I never look

at it without thinking of you. Susan says it wants to have new hands

put to it, and I shall give it to a watchmaker in town to riggle at

it spontaneously on my arrival. The Captain and his mate seem very

happy, which also makes me think of you, Sarah dear; she certainly

is no beauty to my taste; she is a good deal in the Ottomy line, and

I should say not easily pleased; but in course as yet it all goes

uncommon comfortable; for, as O'Keefe says in his comical farce of

'Love for Love:'--

 

To fools a curse, to those a lasting boon,

What wisely spends the hunney moon.

 

"I hope poor Miss Fanny don't take on about the loss of master;

I'm sure if I was she, and knew that he left me for the sake of

Malooney's money, I should care no more about him than nothing at

all--true love loves for itself a loan--don't it, dear Sarah? Oh,

Sarah! Susan and I had some hot sassages and mashed potatoes for

dinner to-day, and I did so think of you, and I said so; and Susan

says to me, says she, 'Does your Sarah love sassages?' so I said,

says I, 'Yes, where's the girl of taste as doesn't?'--and so she says

again, 'Then I wish she was here'--and we both laughed like bogies.

So _that_ shows we don't forget you.

 

"As to Miss Fanny, there is one thing--which, if you have an

opportunity upon the sly, you may incoherently hint--which may be

p'rhaps a considerable revelation of her despondency, if she still

cares for master; which is this--the officer which is to have the

recruiting party in place of him, as Rattan told me before I came

away, is taller and better-looking than master, and quite the

gentleman: p'raps, if you tell Miss Fanny that, it will controvert

her regret, and make her easy--I know enough of the seck, Sarah, to

know that it is with females as it is with fighters--to use the words

of Young in his 'Abelard and Eloisa,'--

 

One down, t'other come on.

 

"And so perhaps Miss Fanny may make up her mind to the gentleman

which will relieve my master--I am sure I hope she may, for she is I

am sure constipated to make any man happy in that way. Well, Sarah

dear, I must now say good-bye--or else, Tim flies so fast, Susan and

I may be mist. I haven't room to tell you all about Master's wedding,

which was all done with as little ceremony as possible, and as Susan

says there was not a minnit to be lost, but I will explain all

particulars when I come back to you, which will not be long first. So

squeeze my keeping you in expence for these few days, for I was so

busy I could not write before, but Susan says she is sure you will

forgive me, and so I think you will.

 

"I say, dear Sarah, in exclusion, I hope that you have not been

speaking to William Waggle, the baker's young youth, because, as I

am absent, it might give some grounds for calomel--Mrs. Hodgson and

those two Spinkeses her sisters is always a-watching--I'm not a bit

jellies myself--no, I scorn the 'green hided malster,' as Morton

says in his 'New Way to pay old Debts'--but I know the world--I know

what the old Tabbies say, and how they skirtinize every individil

thing which relates to us--as I says to Susan--the eyes of the hole

world is on us two--you and me--and therefore, Sarah dear, mind

what you do, and do not encourage any of them to walk with you in

an evening--specially Bill, inasmuch as the whiteness of his jacket

would make the round-counter the more evident to the Hargooses of the

place.

 

"A jew Sarah--the next you will hear from me will be in London--most

probably at the Whiteoss Cellar in Pickadilly, or the Golden Cross,

Charing Cross, which the Captain thinks the quietest spots to fix

upon--rely upon my righting you the minute I have time--I told Rattan

that I was going back to Blissford, so he will have had no message

for you; besides, I don't want you to have any miliary connexions

during my abstinence--therefore please to remember me in your art, as

I do you in mine, and if you will, do me the fever to pay Mrs. Jukes

three and ninepence which I owe her for washing my things, which I

will repay you when we meet--best love, in which Susan, though she

does not know you, joins with equal sincerity--take care of yourself, dear Sarah, and mind about the baker.