Paul Clifford Part 43

Clifford disconcerted the pug; and crossing the threshold, cried in aloud tone, "Janseen!"

"Here!" answered a gruff voice; and Clifford, pa.s.sing on, came to a small parlour adjoining the tap. There, seated by a round oak table, he found mine host,--a red, fierce, weather-beaten, but bloated-looking personage, like d.i.c.k Hatteraick in a dropsy.

"How now, Captain!" cried he, in a gutteral accent, and interlarding his discourse with certain Dutch graces, which with our reader's leave we will omit, as being unable to spell them; "how now!--not gone yet!"

"No! I start for the coast to-morrow; business keeps me to-day. I came to ask if Mellon may be fully depended on?"

"Ay, honest to the back-bone."

"And you are sure that in spite of my late delays he will not have left the village?"

"Sure! What else can I be? Don't I know Jack Mellon these twenty years!

He would lie like a log in a calm for ten months together, without moving a hair's-breadth, if he was under orders."

"And his vessel is swift and well manned, in case of an officer's chase?"

"The 'Black Molly' swift? Ask your grandmother. The 'Black Molly' would outstrip a shark."

"Then good-by, Janseen; there is something to keep your pipe alight. We shall not meet within the three seas again, I think. England is as much too hot for me as Holland for you!"

"You are a capital fellow!" cried mine host, shaking Clifford by the hand; "and when the lads come to know their loss, they will know they have lost the bravest and truest gill that ever took to the toby; so good-by, and be d---d to you!"

With this valedictory benediction mine host released Clifford; and the robber hastened to his appointment at the Three Feathers.

He found all prepared. He hastily put on his disguise; and his follower led out his horse,--a n.o.ble animal of the grand Irish breed, of remarkable strength and bone, and save only that it was somewhat sharp in the quarters (a fault which they who look for speed as well as grace will easily forgive), of most unequalled beauty in its symmetry and proportions.

Well did the courser know, and proudly did it render obeisance to, its master; snorting impatiently and rearing from the hand of the attendant robber, the sagacious animal freed itself of the rein, and as it tossed its long mane in the breeze of the fresh air, came trotting to the place where Clifford stood.

"So ho, Robin! so ho! What, thou chafest that I have left thy fellow behind at the Red Cave! Him we may never see more. But while I have life, I will not leave thee, Robin!" With these words the robber fondly stroked the shining neck of his favourite steed; and as the animal returned the caress by rubbing its head against the hands and the athletic breast of its master, Clifford felt at his heart somewhat of that old racy stir of the blood which had been once to him the chief charm of his criminal profession, and which in the late change of his feelings he had almost forgotten.

"Well, Robin, well," he renewed, as he kissed the face of his steed,--"well, we will have some days like our old ones yet; thou shalt say, Ha! ha! to the trumpet, and bear thy master along on more glorious enterprises than he has yet thanked thee for sharing. Thou wilt now be my only familiar, my only friend, Robin; we two shall be strangers in a foreign land. But thou wilt make thyself welcome easier than thy lord, Robin; and thou wilt forget the old days and thine old comrades and thine old loves, when--Ha!" and Clifford turned abruptly to his attendant, who addressed him; "It is late, you say. True! Look you, it will be unwise for us both to quit London together. You know the sixth milestone; join me there, and we can proceed in company!"

Not unwilling to linger for a parting cup, the comrade a.s.sented to the prudence of the plan proposed; and after one or two additional words of caution and advice, Clifford mounted and rode from the yard of the inn. As he pa.s.sed through the tall wooden gates into the street, the imperfect gleam of the wintry sun falling over himself and his steed, it was scarcely possible, even in spite of his disguise and rude garb, to conceive a more gallant and striking specimen of the lawless and daring tribe to which he belonged; the height, strength, beauty, and exquisite grooming visible in the steed; the sparkling eye, the bold profile, the sinewy chest, the graceful limbs, and the careless and practised horsemanship of the rider.

Looking after his chief with a long and an admiring gaze, the robber said to the hostler of the inn, an aged and withered man, who had seen nine generations of highwaymen rise and vanish,--

"There, Joe, when did you ever look on a hero like that? The bravest heart, the frankest hand, the best judge of a horse, and the handsomest man that ever did honour to Hounslow!"

"For all that," returned the hostler, shaking his palsied head, and turning back to the tap-room,--"for all that, master, his time be up.

Mark my whids, Captain Lovett will not be over the year,--no, nor mayhap the month!"

"Why, you old rascal, what makes you so wise? You will not peach, I suppose!"

"I peach! Devil a bit! But there never was the gemman of the road, great or small, knowing or stupid, as outlived his seventh year. And this will be the captain's seventh, come the 21st of next month; but he be a fine chap, and I'll go to his hanging!"

"Fish!" said the robber, peevishly,--he himself was verging towards the end of his sixth year,--"pish!"

"Mind, I tells it you, master; and somehow or other I thinks--and I has experience in these things--by the fey, of his eye and the drop of his lip, that the captain's time will be up to-day!"

[Fey--A word difficult to translate; but the closest interpretation of which is, perhaps, "the ill omen."]

Here the robber lost all patience, and pushing the h.o.a.ry boder of evil against the wall, he turned on his heel, and sought some more agreeable companion to share his stirrup-cup.

It was in the morning of the day following that in which the above conversations occurred, that the sagacious Augustus Tomlinson and the valorous Edward Pepper, handcuffed and fettered, were jogging along the road in a postchaise, with Mr. Nabbem squeezed in by the side of the former, and two other gentlemen in Mr. Nabbem's confidence mounted on the box of the chaise, and interfering sadly, as Long Ned growlingly remarked, with "the beauty of the prospect."

"Ah, well!" quoth Nabbem, unavoidably thrusting his elbow into Tomlinson's side, while he drew out his snuffbox, and helped himself largely to the intoxicating dust; "you had best prepare yourself, Mr.

Pepper, for a change of prospects. I believes as how there is little to please you in guod [prison]."

"Nothing makes men so facetious as misfortune to others!" said Augustus, moralizing, and turning himself, as well as he was able, in order to deliver his body from the pointed elbow of Mr. Nabbem. "When a man is down in the world, all the bystanders, very dull fellows before, suddenly become wits!"

"You reflects on I," said Mr. Nabbem. "Well, it does not sinnify a pin; for directly we does our duty, you chaps become howdaciously ungrateful!"

"Ungrateful!" said Pepper; "what a plague have we got to be grateful for? I suppose you think we ought to tell you you are the best friend we have, because you have scrouged us, neck and crop, into this horrible hole, like turkeys fatted for Christmas. 'Sdeath! one's hair is flatted down like a pancake; and as for one's legs, you had better cut them off at once than tuck them up in a place a foot square,--to say nothing of these blackguardly irons!"

"The only irons pardonable in your eyes, Ned," said Tomlinson, "are the curling-irons, eh?"

"Now, if this is not too much!" cried Nabbem, crossly; "you objects to go in a cart like the rest of your profession; and when I puts myself out of the way to obleedgie you with a shay, you slangs I for it!"

"Peace, good Nabbem!" said Augustus, with a sage's dignity; "you must allow a little bad humour in men so unhappily situated as we are."

The soft answer turneth away wrath. Tomlinson's answer softened Nabbem; and by way of conciliation, he held his snuff-box to the nose of his unfortunate prisoner. Shutting his eyes, Tomlinson long and earnestly sniffed up the luxury, and as soon as, with his own kerchief of spotted yellow, the officer had wiped from the proboscis some lingering grains, Tomlinson thus spoke:

"You see us now, Mr. Nabbem, in a state of broken-down opposition; but our spirits are not broken too. In our time we have had something to do with the administration; and our comfort at present is the comfort of fallen ministers!"

"Oho! you were in the Methodist line before you took to the road?" said Nabbem.

"Not so!" answered Augustus, gravely. "We were the Methodists of politics, not of the church; namely, we lived upon our flock without a legal authority to do so, and that which the law withheld from us our wits gave. But tell me, Mr. Nabbem, are you addicted to politics?"

"Why, they says I be," said Mr. Nabbem, with a grin; "and for my part, I thinks all who sarves the king should stand up for him, and take care of their little families!"

"You speak what others think!" answered Tomlinson, smiling also. "And I will now, since you like politics, point out to you what I dare say you have not observed before."

"What be that?" said Nabbem.

"A wonderful likeness between the life of the gentlemen adorning his Majesty's senate and the life of the gentlemen whom you are conducting to his Majesty's jail."

THE LIBELLOUS PARALLEL OF AUGUSTUS TOMLINSON.

"We enter our career, Mr. Nabbem, as your embryo ministers enter parliament,--by bribery and corruption. There is this difference, indeed, between the two cases: we are enticed to enter by the bribery and corruptions of others; they enter spontaneously by dint of their own. At first, deluded by romantic visions, we like the glory of our career better than the profit, and in our youthful generosity we profess to attack the rich solely from consideration for the poor! By and by, as we grow more hardened, we laugh at these boyish dreams,--peasant or prince fares equally at our impartial hands; we grasp at the bucket, but we scorn not the thimbleful; we use the word 'glory' only as a trap for proselytes and apprentices; our fingers, like an office-door, are open for all that can possibly come into them; we consider the wealthy as our salary, the poor as our perquisites. What is this, but a picture of your member of parliament ripening into a minister, your patriot mellowing into your placeman? And mark me, Mr. Nabbem! is not the very language of both as similar as the deeds? What is the phrase either of us loves to employ? 'To deliver.' What? 'The Public.'

And do not both invariably deliver it of the same thing,--namely, its purse? Do we want an excuse for sharing the gold of our neighbours, or abusing them if they resist? Is not our mutual, our pithiest plea, 'Distress'? True, your patriot calls it 'distress of the country;' but does he ever, a whit more than we do, mean any distress but his own? When we are brought low, and our coats are shabby, do we not both shake our heads and talk of 'reform'? And when, oh! when we are up in the world, do we not both kick 'reform'

to the devil? How often your parliament man 'vacates his seat,'

only for the purpose of resuming it with a weightier purse! How often, dear Ned, have our seats been vacated for the same end!

Sometimes, indeed, he really finishes his career by accepting the Hundreds,--it is by 'accepting the hundreds' that ours may be finished too! [Ned drew a long sigh.] Note us now, Mr. Nabbem, in the zenith of our prosperity,--we have filled our pockets, we have become great in the mouths of our party. Our pals admire us, and our blowens adore. What do we in this short-lived summer? Save and be thrifty? Ah, no! we must give our dinners, and make light of our lush. We sport horses on the race-course, and look big at the mult.i.tude we have bubbled. Is not this your minister come into office? Does not this remind you of his equipage, his palace, his plate? In both cases lightly won, lavishly wasted; and the public, whose cash we have fingered, may at least have the pleasure of gaping at the figure we make with it! This, then, is our harvest of happiness; our foes, our friends, are ready to eat us with envy,-- yet what is so little enviable as our station? Have we not both our common vexations and our mutual disquietudes? Do we not both bribe [Nabbem shook his head and b.u.t.toned his waistcoat] our enemies, cajole our partisans, bully our dependants, and quarrel with our only friends,--namely, ourselves? Is not the secret question with each, 'It is all confoundedly fine; but how long will it last?'

Now, Mr. Nabbem, note me,--reverse the portrait: we are fallen, our career is over,--the road is shut to us, and new plunderers are robbing the carriages that once we robbed. Is not this the lot of-- No, no! I deceive myself! Your ministers, your jobmen, for the most part milk the popular cow while there's a drop in the udder.

Your chancellor declines on a pension; your minister attenuates on a grant; the feet of your great rogues may be gone from the treasury benches, but they have their little fingers in the treasury. Their past services are remembered by his Majesty; ours only noted by the Recorder. They save themselves, for they hang by one another; we go to the devil, for we hang by ourselves. We have our little day of the public, and all is over; but it is never over with them. We both hunt the same fox; but we are your fair riders, they are your knowing ones,--we take the leap, and our necks are broken; they sneak through the gates, and keep it up to the last!"

As he concluded, Tomlinson's head dropped on his bosom, and it was easy to see that painful comparisons, mingled perhaps with secret murmurs at the injustice of fortune, were rankling in his breast. Long Ned sat in gloomy silence; and even the hard heart of the severe Mr. Nabbem was softened by the affecting parallel to which he had listened. They had proceeded without speaking for two or three miles, when Long Ned, fixing his eyes on Tomlinson, exclaimed,--