A Day's Ride Part 12

"Rascally print; a vile, low, radical, mill-owning organ. Pitch it away!"

"Certainly not, sir. Being for _me_ and _my_ edification, I will beg to exercise my own judgment as to how I deal with it."

"It's deuced low, that's what it is, and that's exactly the fault of all our daily papers. Their tone is vulgar; they reflect nothing of the opinions one hears in society. Don't you agree with me?"

I gave a sort of muttering dissent, and he broke in quickly,--"Perhaps not; it's just as likely _you_ would not think them low, but take _my_ word for it, _I'm_ right."

I shook my head negatively, without speaking.

"Well, now," cried he, "let us put the thing to the test Read out one of those leaders. I don't care which, or on what subject Read it out, and I pledge myself to show you at least one vulgarism, one flagrant outrage on good breeding, in every third sentence."

"I protest, sir," said I, haughtily, "I shall do no such thing. I have come here neither to read aloud nor take up the defence of the public press."

"I say, look out!" cried he; "you 'll smash something in that bag you 're kicking there. If I don't mistake, it's Bohemian gla.s.s. No, no; all right," said he, examining the number, "it's only Yarmouth bloaters."

"I imagined these contained despatches, sir," said I, with a look of what he ought to have understood as withering scorn.

"You did, did you?" cried he, with a quick laugh. "Well, I 'll bet you a sovereign I make a better guess about _your_ pack than you 've done about _mine_."

"Done, sir; I take you," said I, quickly.

"Well; you 're in cutlery, or hardware, or lace goods, or ribbons, or alpaca cloth, or drugs, ain't you?"

"I am not, sir," was my stern reply.

"Not a bagman?"

"Not a bagman, sir."

"Well, you 're an usher in a commercial academy, or 'our own correspondent,' or a telegraph clerk?"

"I 'm none of these, sir. And I now beg to remind you, that instead of one guess, you have made about a dozen."

"Well, you 've won, there's no denying it," said he, taking a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket and handing it to me. "It's deuced odd how I should be mistaken. I 'd have sworn you were a bagman!" But for the impertinence of these last words I should have declined to accept his lost bet, but I took it now as a sort of vindication of my wounded feelings. "Now it's all over and ended," said he, calmly, "what are you? I don't ask out of any impertinent curiosity, but that I hate being foiled in a thing of this kind. What are you?"

"I 'll tell you what I am, sir," said I, indignantly, for now I was outraged beyond endurance,--"I 'll tell you, sir, what I am, and what I feel myself,--one singularly unlucky in a travelling-companion."

"Bet you a five-pound note you're not," broke he in. "Give you six to five on it, in anything you like."

"It would be a wager almost impossible to decide, sir."

"Nothing of the kind. Let us leave it to the first pretty woman we see at the station, the guard of the train, the fellow in the pay-office, the stoker if you like."

"I must own, sir, that you express a very confident opinion of your case."

"Will you bet?"

"No, sir, certainly not"

"Well, then, shut up, and say no more about it. If a man won't back his opinion, the less he says the better."

I lay back in my place at this, determined that no provocation should induce me to exchange another word with him. Apparently, he had not made a like resolve, for he went on: "It's all bosh about appearances being deceptive, and so forth. They say 'not all gold that glitters;' my notion is that with a fellow who really knows life, no disguise that was ever invented will be successful: the way a man wears his hair,"--here he looked at mine,--"the sort of gloves he has, if there be anything peculiar in his waistcoat, and, above all, his boots. I don't believe the devil was ever more revealed in his hoof than a sn.o.b by his shoes."

A most condemnatory glance at my extremities accompanied this speech.

"Must I endure this sort of persecution all the way to Dover?" was the question I asked of my misery.

"Look out, you're on fire!" said he, with a dry laugh. And sure enough, a spark from his cigarette had fallen on my trousers, and burned a round hole in them.

"Really, sir," cried I, in pa.s.sionate warmth, "your conduct becomes intolerable."

"Well, if I knew you preferred being singed, I'd have said-nothing about it. What's this station here? Where's your 'Bradshaw'?"

"I have got no 'Bradshaw,' sir," said I, with dignity.

"No 'Bradshaw '! A bagman without 'Bradshaw'! Oh, I forgot, you ain't a bagman. Why are we stopping here? Something smashed, I suspect. Eh!

what! isn't that she? Yes, it is! Open the door!--let me out, I say!

Confound the lock!--let me out!" While he uttered these words, in an accent of the wildest impatience, I had but time to see a lady, in deep mourning, pa.s.s on to a carriage in front, just as, with a preliminary snort, the train shook, then backed, and at last set out on its thundering course again. "Such a stunning fine girl!" said he, as he lighted a fresh cigar; "saw her just as we started, and thought I 'd run her to earth in this carriage. Precious mistake I made, eh, was n't it?

All in black--deep black--and quite alone!"

I had to turn towards the window not to let him perceive how his words agitated me, for I felt certain it was Miss Herbert he was describing, and I felt a sort of revulsion to think of the poor girl being subjected to the impertinence of this intolerable puppy.

"Too much style about her for a governess; and yet, somehow, she was n't, so to say--you know what I mean--she was n't altogether _that_; looked frightened, and people of real cla.s.s never look frightened."

"The daughter of a clergyman, probably," said I, with a tone of such reproof as I hoped must check all levity.

"Or a flash maid! some of them, nowadays, are wonderful swells; they 've got an art of dressing and making-up that is really surprising."

"I have no experience of the order, sir," said I, gravely.

"Well, so I should say. _Your_ beat is in the haberdashery or hosiery line, eh?"

"Has it not yet occurred to you, sir," asked I, sternly, "that an acquaintanceship brief as ours should exclude personalities, not to say--" I wanted to add "impertinences;" but his gray eyes were turned full on me, with an expression so peculiar that I faltered, and could not get the word out.

"Well, go on,--out with it: not to say what?" said he, calmly.

I turned my shoulder towards him, and nestled down into my place.

"There's a thing, now," said he, in a tone of the coolest reflection,--"there's a thing, now, that I never could understand, and I have never met the man to explain it. Our nation, as a nation, is just as plucky as the French,--no one disputes it; and yet take a Frenchman of _your_ cla.s.s,--the _commis-voyageur_, or anything that way,--and you 'll just find him as prompt on the point of honor as the best n.o.ble in the land. He never utters an insolent speech without being ready to back it."

I felt as if I were choking, but I never uttered a word.

"I remember meeting one of those fellows--traveller for some house in the wine trade--at Avignon. It was at _table d'hote_, and I said something slighting about Communism, and he replied, '_Monsieur, je suis Fourieriste_, and you insult me.' Thereupon he sent me his card by the waiter,--'Paul Deloge, for the house of Gougon, _pere et fils_.' I tore it, and threw it away, saying, 'I never drink Bordeaux wines.' 'What do you say to a gla.s.s of Hermitage, then?' said he, and flung the contents of his own in my face. Wasn't that very ready? _I_ call it as neat a thing as could be."

"And you bore that outrage," said I, in triumphant delight; "you submitted to a flagrant insult like that at a public table?"

"I don't know what you call 'bearing it,'" said he; "the thing was done, and I had only to wipe my face with my napkin."

"Nothing more?" said I, sneeringly.