Rattlin the Reefer Part 7

"Take him for all in all, I ne'er shall look upon his like again."

He was very tall, stout, of a pompous carriage, _un homme magnifique_.

He wore a green coat, false hair, a black patch over his left eye, and was fifty, or rather, fifty-five. His face was large, round, and the least in the world bloated. This Adonis of matured ushers, after school-hours, would hang a guitar from his broad neck, by means of a pale pink riband, and walk up and down on the green before the house, thrum, thrum, thrumming, the admiration of all the little boys, and the coveted of all the old tabbies in the village. Oh, he was the _beau-ideal_ of a _vieux garcon_. We recommend all school-a.s.sistants to learn the guitar and grow fat--if they can; and then, perhaps, they may prosper, like Mr Sigismund Pontifex. He contrived to elope with a maiden lady, of good property, just ten years older than himself: the sweet, innocent, indiscreet ones went off by stealth one morning before daylight, in a chaise-and-four, and returned a week after, Mr and Mrs Pontifex.

The gentleman hung up his guitar, and for ever; and every fine day he was found, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, presiding at the bowling-green of the Black Lion, the acknowledged and revered umpire-- cherished by mine host, and referred to by the players. I write this life for instruction. Gentlemen ushers, look to it--be ambitious--learn the guitar, and make your mouths water with ideas of prospective tankards of ale, and odoriferous pipes.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

RALPH GROWETH EGREGIOUSLY MODEST, AND BOASTETH IMMODERATELY, UNTIL HE IS BEATEN BY ONE WITH ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE; WITH SOMETHING TOUCHING THE FEATS OF THE MAN WITHOUT FEET.

I find myself in a dilemma. My modesty (?) is at variance with my love of verity. Oh, the inconvenience of that little p.r.o.noun, I! Would that I had in the first instance imitated the wily conduct of the bald-pated invader of Britain. How complacently might I not then have vaunted in the beginning, have caracoled through the middle, and glorified myself at the conclusion of this my autobiography! What a monstrous piece of braggadocio would not Caesar's Commentaries have been, had he used the first instead of the third person singular! How intolerable would have been the presumption of his Thrasonical, "I thrashed the Helvetians--I subjugated the Germans--I utterly routed the Gauls--I defeated the painted Britons!" And, on the contrary--for I like to place heroes side by side--how decorously and ingeniously might I not have written, "Ralph Rattlin blackened Master Simpkin's left eye--Ralph Rattlin led on the attack upon Farmer Russel's orchard, and Ralph Rattlin fought three rounds, with no considerable disadvantage, with the long-legged pieman."

Alas! I cannot even shelter myself under the mistiness of the peremptory _we_. I have made a great mistake. But I have this consolation, in common with other great men, that, for our mistake, the public will a.s.suredly suffer more than ourselves. Many a choice adventure, of which I was the hero, must be suppressed. _I_ should blush myself black in the face to say what _he_ would relate with a very quiet smile of self-satisfaction. However, as regrets are quite unavailing, unless, like the undertaker's, they are paid for, I shall exclaim, with the French soldier, who found his long military queue in the hands of a pursuing English sailor, "Chivalry of the world, _toujours en avant_!"

I now began to commit the sin of much verse, and, consequently, acquired in the neighbouring village much notice. No chastising blow, or even word of reproof fell upon me. My mind was fed upon praise, and my heart nourished with caresses. In the school I had no equal, and my vanity whispered that such was the case without. However, this vanity I did not show, for I was humble from excessive pride.

There are two animals that are almost certain to be spoiled--a very handsome young man, and the "c.o.c.k of the school." Being certainly in the latter predicament, I was only saved from becoming an utter and egregious a.s.s by the advent of one, the cleverest, most impudent, rascally, agreeable scoundrel that ever swindled man or deceived woman, in the shape of a wooden-legged usher. He succeeded my worthy friend of the guitar, Mr Sigismund Pontifex. His name was Riprapton, and he only wanted the slight requisite of common honesty to have made himself the first man of any society in which fate might happen to cast him--and fate had been pleased to cast him into a great many. He was a short, compactly-made, symmetrically-formed man, with a countenance deeply indented with the small-pox, and in every hole there was visibly ensconced a little imp of audaciousness. His eyes were such intrepid and quenchless lights of impudence, that they could look even Irish _sang froid_ out of countenance. And then that inimitable wooden leg!

It was a perfect grace. As he managed it, it was irresistible. He did not progress with a miserable, vulgar, dot-and-go-one kind of gait; he neither hopped, nor halted, nor limped; and though he was wood from the middle of his right thigh downwards, his walk might almost have been called the poetry of motion. He never stumped, but he stole along with a glissade that was the envy and admiration, not exactly of surrounding nations, but of the dancing-master. It was a beautiful study to see him walk, and I made myself master of it. The left leg was inimitably formed; the calf was perhaps a little too round and Hibernian--a fault gracious in the eyes of the fair s.e.x; his ankle and foot were exquisitely small and delicately turned; of course he always wore shorts with immaculate white cotton or silk stockings.

I shall not distinguish the two legs by the terms, the living and the dead one--it would be as great an injustice to the carved as to the calfed one--for the former had a graceful life, _sui generis_, of its own. I shall call them the pulsating and the gyrating leg, and now proceed to describe how they bare along, in a manner so fascinating, the living tabernacle of Mr Riprapton. The pulsator, with pointed toe and gently turned calf, would make a progress in a direct line, but as the sole touched the ground, the heel would slightly rise and then fall, and whilst you were admiring the undulating grace of the pulsator, un.o.bserved and silently you would find the gyrator had stolen a march upon you, and actually taken the _pas_ of its five-toed brother. One leg marched and the other swam, in the prettiest semicircle imaginable.

When he stopped, the flourish of the gyrator was ineffable. The drumstick in the hand of the big black drummer of the first regiment of foot-guards was nothing to it. Whenever Riprapton bowed--and he was always bowing--this flourish preluded and concluded the salutary bend.

It was making a leg indeed.

Many a time, both by ladies and gentlemen, he has been offered a cork leg--but he knew better; had he accepted the treacherous gift he would have appeared but as a lame man with two legs, now he was a perfect Adonis with one. I do believe, in my conscience, that Cupid often made use of this wooden appendage when he wished to befriend him, instead of one of his own arrows, for he was really a marvellous favourite with the ladies.

Well, no sooner had my friend with the peg made himself a fixture in the school, than he took me down, not a peg or two, but a good half-dozen.

He ridiculed my poetry--he undervalued my drawing--he hit me through my most approved guards at my fencing--he beat me hollow at hopping, though it must be confessed that I had the advantage with two legs; but he was again my master at "all-fours." He out-talked me immeasurably, he out-bragged me most heroically, and out-lied me most inconceivably.

Knowing nothing either of Latin or Greek, they were beneath a gentleman's notice, fit only for parsons and pedants; and he was too patriotic to cast a thought away upon French. As he was engaged for the arithmetical and mathematical departments, it would have been perhaps as well if he had known a little of algebra and Euclid; but, as from the first day he honoured me with a strict though patronising friendship, he made me soon understand that we were to share this department of knowledge in common. It was quite enough if one of the two knew anything about the matter; besides, he thought that it improved me so much to look over the problems and algebraical calculations of my schoolfellows.

With this man I was continually measuring my strength; and as I conceived that I found, myself woefully wanting, he proved an excellent moral sedative to my else too rampant vanity. Few, indeed, were the persons who could feel themselves at ease under the withering sarcasms of his intolerable insolence. Much more to their astonishment than to their instruction, he would very coolly, and the more especially when ladies were present, correct the divinity of the parson, the pharmacy of the doctor, and the law of the attorney; and with that placid air of infallibility that carried conviction to all but his opponents.

Once, at a very large evening party, I heard him arguing strenuously, and very triumphantly, against a veteran captain of a merchant-ship, who had circ.u.mnavigated the world with Cook, that the degrees of longitude were equal in length all over the world, be they more or less--for he never descended to details--and that the further south you sailed the hotter it grew, though the worthy old seaman pointed to what remained of his nose, the end of which had been nipped off by cold, and consequent mortification, in the anti-arctic regions. As Riprapton flourished his wooden index, in the midst of his brilliant peroration, he told the honest seaman that he had not a _leg_ to stand upon; and all the ladies, and some of the gentlemen, too, cried out with one accord, "O fie, Captain Headman, now don't be so obstinate--surely you are quite mistaken." And the arch-master of impudence looked round with modest suavity, and, in an audible whisper, a.s.sured the gentleman that sat next to him, that Captain Headman's argument of the demolished proboscis went for nothing, for that there were other causes equally efficacious as cold and frost, for destroying gentlemen's noses.

In the sequel, this very learned tutor had to instruct me in navigation.

Nothing was too high or too low for him. Had any persons wished to have taken lessons in judicial astrology, Mr Riprapton would not have refused the pupil. Plausible ignorance will always beat awkward knowledge, when the ignorant, which is generally the case, make up the ma.s.s of the audience.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

TREATETH OF THE AMATIVENESS OF WOODEN MEMBERS, AND THE FOLLY OF VIRGIN FRIGHTS--RALPH PUTTETH HIS THREAT OF VERSIFYING INTO ACTUAL EXECUTION, FOR WHICH HE MAY BE THOUGHT WORTHY OF BEING EXECUTED.

Notwithstanding the superciliousness of my friendly a.s.sistant, I still wrote verse, which was handed about the village as something wonderful.

As Riprapton doubted, or rather denied my rhyming prowess, at length I was determined to try it upon himself, and he shortly gave me an excellent opportunity for so doing. Writers who pride themselves on going deeply into the mysteries of causes and effects will tell you that, in cold weather, people are apt to congregate about the fire. Our usher, and a circle of admiring pupils, were one day establishing the truth of this profound theory. The timbered man was standing in the apex of the semicircle, his back to the fireplace, and his coat-tails tucked up under his arms. He was enjoying himself, and we were enjoying him. He was the hero of the tale he was telling us--indeed, he never had any other hero than himself--and this tale was wonderful. In the energy of delivery, now the leg of wood would start up with an egotistical flourish, and describe, with the leg of flesh, a right-angled triangle, and then down would go the peg, and up the leg, with the toe well pointed, whilst he greeted the buckle on his foot with an admiring glance.

Whilst this was proceeding in the school-room, in the back-kitchen, or rather breakfast-parlour, immediately below, in a very brown study, there sate a very fair lady, pondering deeply over the virtues of brimstone and treacle, and the most efficacious antidote to chilblains.

She was the second in command over the domestic economy of the school.

Unmarried, of course. And ever and anon, as she plied the industrious needle over the heel of the too fragmental stocking, the low melody would burst unconsciously forth of, "Is there n.o.body coming to marry me?

n.o.body coming to woo-oo-oo?" Lady, not in vain was the burden of that votive song. There _was_ somebody coming.

Let us walk upstairs--Mr Rip is in the midst of his narrative--speaking thus:--"And, young gentlemen, as I hate presumption, and can never tolerate a c.o.xcomb, perceiving that his lordship was going to be insolent, up went thus my foot to chastise him, and down--" A crash! a cry of alarm, and behold the chastiser of insolence, or at least, that part of him that was built of wood, through the floor!

Monsieur Cherfeuil opening the door at this moment, and hearing a great noise, and not perceiving him who ought to have repressed it, for the boys standing round _what remained of him_ with us, it was concealed from the worthy pedagogue, who exclaimed, "Vat a noise be here! Vere ist Mr Reepraaptong?"

"Just _stepped_ down _below_, to Miss Brocade, in the breakfast-parlour," I replied.

"Ah, bah! _c'est un veritable chevalier aux dames_" said Monsieur Cherfeuil, and slamming to the door, he hurried downstairs to reclaim his too gallant representative. We allowed Mr Riprapton to inhabit for some time two floors at once, for he was, in his position, perfectly helpless; that admired living leg of his stretched out at its length upon the floor. We soon, however, recovered him; but so much I cannot say of his composure; for he never lost it. I do not believe that he was ever discountenanced in his life.

"n.o.body coming to woo-oo-oo," sang Miss Brocade, below--down into her lap come mortar, rubbish, and clouds of dust! And, when the mist clears away, there pointed down from above an inexplicable index. Her senses were bewildered; and being quite at a loss to comprehend the miracle, she had nothing else to do but faint away. When Monsieur Cherfeuil entered, the simple and good-natured Gaul found his beloved manageress apparently lifeless at his feet, covered with the _debris_ of his ceiling, and the wooden leg of his usher slightly tremulous above him.

The fright, of course, was succeeded by a laugh, and the fracture by repairs; and the whole by the following school-boy attempt at a copy of verses, upon the never-to-be forgotten occasion:

Ambitious usher! there are few Beyond you that can go, In double character, to woo The lovely nymph below.

At once both G.o.d and man you ape To expedite your flame; And yet you find in either shape The failure just the same.

Jove fell in fair Danae's lap In showers of glittering gold; By Jove! his Joveship was no sap; How could _you_ be so bold, To hope to have a like success, Most sapient ciphering master, And think a lady's lap to bless With show'rs of _lath_ and _plaster_?

That you should fail, when you essay'd To act the G.o.d of thunder, In striving to enchant the maid, Was really no great wonder; But when as _man_ you wooing go, Pray let me ask you whether You had no better leg to show Than one of wood and leather?

These verses are exactly as I wrote them, and I trust the reader will not think that I could now be guilty of such a line, as "To _expedite_ your flame," or of the pedantic school-boyism of calling a housekeeper "nymph." In fact, it is by the merest accident that I am now enabled to give them in their genuine shape. An old school-fellow, whom I have not seen since the days of syntax, and whose name I had utterly forgotten, enclosed them to me very lately.

However, such as they are, they were thought in a secluded village as something extraordinary. The usher himself affected to enjoy them extremely. They added greatly to my reputation, and what was of more consequence to me, my invitations to dinner and to tea. Truly, my half-holidays were no longer my own. I had become an object of curiosity, and I hope and believe, in many instances, of affection. I was quite cured of my mendacious propensities, by the pain, the horror, and the disgust that they had inflicted upon me at my last school. I invented no more mysteries and improbabilities for myself but my good-natured friends did it amply for me.

Mrs Cherfeuil a.s.serted she knew scarcely anything about me--indeed, before I came to her school, she had hardly seen me four times during the whole s.p.a.ce of my existence. She only knew that I was the child of a lady that accident had thrown in her way, a lady whom she knew but shortly, but for whom she acquired a friendship as strong as it proved short; that, from mere sympathy she had been induced to stand G.o.dmother to me; that she had never felt authorised, nor did she inquire into the particulars of my birth. Of course, there was a mystery attached to it, but to which she had no clue; however, she knew, that at least on one side, I came of good, nay, very distinguished parentage. But this, her departed friend a.s.sured her, and that most solemnly, that whoever should stigmatise me as illegitimate, would do me a grievous wrong.

Here was a subject to be canva.s.sed in a gossiping village! Conjecture was at its busy work. I was quite satisfied with the place that the imaginations of my hospitable patrons had given me in the social scale.

Nor in the country only did I experience this friendly feeling; most of my vacations were spent in town, at the houses of the parents of some of my schoolfellows. I was now made acquainted with the scenic glories of the stage. I fought my way through crowds of fools, to see a child perform the heroic _Coriola.n.u.s_, the philosophical _Hamlet_, and the venerable and magnificent _Lear_. Master Betty was at the height of his reputation; and the dignified and cla.s.sical Kemble had, for a time, to veil his majestic countenance from the play-going eye. Deeply infatuated, indeed, were the Mollycoddles with their Betty.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

RALPH DESCRIBETH A RARE CHARACTER, A n.o.bLE AND A GOOD MAN--HE GOETH TO FISH WITHOUT A ROD, AND SUFFERETH MORE THAN FIFTY RODS COULD INFLICT, AND IS NOT RECONCILED TO THE HONOUR OF THE SUN RIDING HIM A PICK-A-BACK.

It is now my duty, as well as my greatest pleasure, to put on record the true kindness, the considerate generosity, and the well-directed munificence of a family, a parallel to which can only be found in our soil--a superior nowhere. By the heads of this family I was honoured with particular notice. Perhaps they never gave a thought about my poetical talent, or the wonderful progress that my master said that I had made in my cla.s.sics, and my wooden-legged tutor in my mathematics.

Their kind patronage sprang from higher motives,--from benevolence; they had heard that I had been forsaken--their own hearts told them that the sunshine of kindness must be doubly grateful to the neglected, and, indeed, to me they were very kind.

Perhaps it may be thought that I had a quick eye to the failings and the ridiculous points of those with whom chance threw me in contact. I am sure that I was equally susceptible to the elevation of character that was offered to me in the person of Mr ---, the respected father of the family of which I have just made mention. As the n.o.ble cla.s.s to which he belonged, and of which he was the first ornament, are fast degenerating, I will endeavour to make a feeble portrait of a man, that, at present, finds but too few imitators, and that could never have found a superior. He was one of those few merchant princes, who are really, in all things, princely. Whilst his comprehensive mind directed the commerce of half a navy, and sustained in competence and happiness hundreds at home, and thousands abroad, the circle immediately around him felt all the fostering influence of his well-directed liberality, as if all the energies of his powerful genius had been concentrated in the object of making those, only about him, prosperous. He was born for the good of the many, as much as for the elevation of the individual.

Society had need of him, and it confessed it. When its interests were invaded by a short-sighted policy, it called upon his name to advocate its violated rights, and splendidly did he obey the call. He understood England's power and greatness, for he had a.s.sisted in increasing it; he knew in what consisted her strength, and in that strength he was strong, and in his own.

As a senator, he was heard in the a.s.sembled councils of his nation, and those who presided over her mighty resources and influenced her destinies, that involved those of the world, listened to his warning counsel, were convinced that his words were the dictates of wisdom, and obeyed. This is neither fiction nor fulsome panegyric. The facts that I narrate have become part of our history; and I would narrate them more explicitly, did I not fear to wound the susceptibilities of his still existing and distinguished family. How well he knew his own station, and preserved, with the blandest manners, the true dignity of it!

Though renowned in parliament for his eloquence, at the palace for his patriotic loyalty, and in the city for his immense wealth, in the blessed circle, that he truly made social, there was a pleasing simplicity and joyousness of manner, that told at once the fascinated guest, that though he might earn honours and distinction abroad, it was at home that he looked for happiness--and, uncommon as such things are in this repining world--there, I verily believe, he found it. His was a happy lot: he possessed a lady in his wife, who at once shared his virtues and adorned them. The glory he won was reflected sweetly upon her, and she wore with dignity, and enhanced those honours, that his probity, his talents, and his eloquence had acquired. At the time of which I am speaking, he was blessed with daughters, that even in their childhood had made themselves conspicuous by their accomplishments, amiability of disposition, and gracefulness of manners, and plagued with sons who were full of wildness, waggishness, and worth.

It is too seldom the case that the person accords with the high qualification of the mind. Mr --- was a singular and felicitous exception to this mortifying rule. His deportment was truly dignified, his frame well-knit and robust, and his features were almost cla.s.sically regular. His complexion was florid, and the expression of his countenance serene, yet highly intelligent. No doubt but that his features were capable of a vast range of expression; but, as I never saw them otherwise than beaming with benevolence, or sparkling with wit, I must refer to Master James, or Master Frank, for the description of the austerity of his frown, or the awfulness of his rebuke.

This gentleman's two elder sons, at the time to which I allude, had already made their first step in the world. James was making a tour of the West Indies, the Continent being closed against him; and Frank had already begun his harvest of laurels in the navy under a distinguished officer. The younger sons, my juniors, were my school-fellows. Master Frank was two or three years my senior, and before he went to sea, not going to the same school as myself, we got together only during the vacations; when, notwithstanding my prowess, he would f.a.g me desperately at cricket, outswim me on the lake and out-cap me at making Latin verses. However, I consoled myself by saying, "As I grow older all this superiority will cease." But when he returned, after his first cruise, glittering in his graceful uniform, my hopes and my ambition sank below zero. He was already a man, and an officer--I a schoolboy, and nothing else.

Of course, he had me home to spend the day with him--and a day we had of it. It was in the middle of summer, and grapes were ripe only in such well-regulated hothouses as were Mr ---'s. We did not enact the well-known fable as it is written--the grapes were not _too_ sour--nor did we repeat the fox's ill-natured and sarcastic observation, "That they were only fit for blackguards." We found them very good for gentlemen--though, I fear, Mr ---'s dessert some time after owed more to Pomona than to Bacchus for its embellishments. And the fine mulberry-tree on the lawn--we were told that it must be shaken, and we shook it: if it still exist, I'll answer for it, it has never been so shaken since.