Tales from Blackwood Volume Vi Part 11

"Mr Strachan," said the judge mildly, "I am always sorry to interrupt a young counsel, but I really cannot see the relevancy of these questions.

The court can have nothing to do with your communications with the witness. I presume I need not take a note of these latter answers."

"Very well, my lord," said Tom, rather discomfited at being cut out of his revenge on the bagman, "I shall ask him something else;" and he commenced his examination in right earnest. Grobey, however, stood steadfast to the letter of his previous testimony.

Another witness was called; and to my surprise the Scottish Vidocq appeared. He spoke to the apprehension and the search, and also to the character of the prisoner. In his eyes she had long been chronicled as habit and repute a thief.

"You know the prisoner, then?" said Strachan rising.

"I do. Any time these three years."

"Under what name is she known to you?"

"Betsy Brown is her real name, but she has gone by twenty others."

"By twenty, do you say?"

"There, or thereabouts. She always flies at high game; and, being a remarkably clever woman, she pa.s.ses herself off for a lady."

"Have you ever seen her elsewhere than in Glasgow?"

"I have."

"Where?"

"At Jedburgh."

I cannot tell what impulse it was that made me twitch Strachan's gown at this moment. It was not altogether a suspicion, but rather a presentiment of coming danger. Strachan took the hint and changed his line.

"Can you specify any of her other names?"

"I can. There are half-a-dozen of them here on the p.a.w.n-tickets. Shall I read them?"

"If you please."

"One diamond ring, pledged in name of Lady Emily Delaroche. A garnet brooch and chain--Miss Maria Mortimer. Three gold seals--Mrs Markham Vere. A watch and three emerald studs--the Honourable Dorothea Percy----"

There was a loud shriek from the bar, and a bustle--the prisoner had fainted.

I looked at Strachan. He was absolutely as white as a corpse.

"My dear Tom," said I, "hadn't you better go out into the open air?"

"No!" was the firm reply; "I am here to do my duty, and I'll do it."

And in effect, the Spartan boy with the fox gnawing into his side did not acquit himself more heroically than my friend. The case was a clear one, no doubt, but Tom made a n.o.ble speech, and was highly complimented by the Judge upon his ability. No sooner, however, had he finished it than he left the Court.

I saw him two hours afterwards.

"Tom," said I, "about these emerald studs--I think I could get them back from the Fiscal."

"Keep them to yourself. I'm off to India."

"Bah!--go down to the Highlands for a month."

Tom did so; purveyed himself a kilt; met an heiress at the Inverness Meeting, and married her. He is now the happy father of half-a-dozen children, and a good many of us would give a trifle for his practice.

But to this day he is as mad as a March hare if an allusion is made in his presence to any kind of studs whatsoever.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

No. III.

MR W. WELLINGTON HURST.

[_MAGA._ JANUARY 1846.]

It would probably puzzle Mr William Wellington Hurst, as much as any man, to find out on what grounds I placed him on the list of my College friends; for certainly our intimacy was hardly sufficient to warrant such a liberty; and he was one of those happy individuals who would never have suspected that it could be out of grat.i.tude for much amus.e.m.e.nt afforded me by sundry of his sayings and doings. But so it is; and it happens, that while the images of many others of my companions--very worthy good sort of fellows, whom I saw more or less of nearly every day--have vanished from my memory, or only flit across occasionally, like shadows, the full-length figure of Mr W. Wellington Hurst, exactly as he turned out, after a satisfactory toilet, in the patent boots and scarf of many colours, stands fixed there like a daguerreotype--more faithful than flattering.

My first introduction to him was by running him down in a skiff, when I was steering the College eight--not less to his astonishment than our own gratification. It is (or used to be) perfectly allowable, by the laws of the river, if, after due notice, these small craft fail to get out of your way; but it is not very easy to effect. However, in this instance, we went clean over him, very neatly indeed. The men helped him into our boat, just as his own sunk from under him; and he accepted a seat by my side in the stern-sheets, with many apologies for being so wet, appearing considerably impressed with a sense of my importance, and still more of my politeness. When we reached Sandford, I prescribed a stiff tumbler of hot brandy and water, and advised him to run all the way home, to warm himself, and avoid catching cold; and, from that time, I believe he always looked upon me as a benefactor. The claim, on my part, certainly rested on a very small foundation originally; it was strengthened afterwards by a less questionable act of patronage. Like many other under-graduates of every man's acquaintance in those days, Hurst laboured under the delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the proctor, was an _opus operatum_ of the highest possible merit. To do him justice, he laboured diligently in the only exercise which he seemed to consider strictly academical--he spent an hour every morning, standing upon a chair, "catching flies," as he called it, and occasionally flicking his scout, with a tandem whip; and practised incessantly upon tin horns of all lengths, with more zeal than melody, until he got the erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors. Yet he was more ambitious than successful.

His reputation on the road grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the bottom of a hill, pretty much in the Olympic fashion--all four abreast--men got rather shy of any expeditions of the kind in his company. There was little credit in it, and a good deal of danger. First, he was reduced to soliciting the company of freshmen, who were flattered by any proposal that sounded _fast_. But they, too, grew shy, after one or two ventures; and poor Hurst soon found a difficulty in getting a companion at all. He was a liberal fellow enough, and not pushed for a guinea when his darling science was concerned: so he used to offer to "sport the team"

himself; but even when he condescended to the additional self-devotion of "standing a dinner and champagne," he found that the closest calculators among his sporting acquaintance had as much regard for their necks as their pockets.

To this inglorious position was his fame as a charioteer reduced, when Horace Leicester and myself, early in his third term, had determined somewhat suddenly to go to see a steeple-chase about twelve miles off, where Leicester had some attraction besides the horses, in the shape of a pretty cousin; (_two_, he told me, and bribed me with the promise of an introduction to "the other," but she did not answer to sample at all.) We had engaged a very nice mare and stanhope, which we knew we could depend upon, when, the day before the race, the chestnut was declared lame, and not a presentable four-legged animal was to be hired in Oxford. Hurst had engaged his favourite pair of greys (which would really go very well with any other driver) a week beforehand, but had been canva.s.sing the last batch of freshmen in vain for an occupant of the vacant seat. A huge red-headed north-country man, who had never seen a tandem in his life, but who, as far as pluck went, would have ridden postilion to Medea's dragons, was listening with some apparent indecision to Hurst's eloquence upon the delights of driving, just as we came up after a last unsuccessful search through the livery stables; and the pair were proceeding out of college arm in arm, probably to look at the greys, when Leicester, to my amus.e.m.e.nt, stepped up with--"Hurst, who's going with you to B----?"

"I--why, I hardly know yet; I think Sands here will, if"----

"I'll go with you then, if you like; and if you've got a cart,[1]

Hawthorne can come too, and it will be very jolly."

[1] "_Carts_" of that day held three.

If the university had announced their intention of creating him a B.A.

by diploma, without examination, Hurst could hardly have looked more surprised and delighted. Leicester, it should be borne in mind, was one of the most popular men in the college--a sort of _arbiter elegantiarum_ in the best set. Hurst knew very little of him, but was no doubt highly flattered by his proposal. From coaxing freshmen to come out by the bribe of paying all expenses, to driving to B---- steeple-chase side by side with Horace (my modesty forbids me to include myself), was a step at once from the ridiculous to the sublime of tandemizing. For this advancement in life, he always, I fancy, considered himself indebted to me, as I had originally introduced him to Leicester's acquaintance; and when we both accepted an invitation, which he delivered himself of with some hesitation, to breakfast in his rooms on the morning of the expedition, his joy and grat.i.tude appeared to know no bounds. It is not usual, be it remembered, for a junior man in college to ask a senior to a party from whom he has never received an invitation himself; but hunting and tandem-driving are apt occasionally to set ordinary etiquette at defiance. "Don't ask a lot of men, that's all--there's a good fellow," said Horace, whose good-natured smile, and off-hand and really winning manner, enabled him to carry off, occasionally, a degree of impudence which would not have been tolerated from others--"I hate a large formal breakfast party of all things; it disgusts me to see a score of men jostling each other over tough beefsteaks."

"I asked Sands yesterday," apologised Hurst. "I thought perhaps he would come out with me; but I daresay I can put him off, if"----

"Oh! on no account whatever; you mean the carroty freshman I saw you with just now? Have him by all means; it will be quite refreshing to meet any man so regularly green. So there will be just four of us; eight o'clock, I suppose? it won't do to be much later."

And Horace walked off, having thus arranged matters to his own satisfaction and his host's. I was an interested party in the business, however, and had my own terms to make. "You've disposed of me rather coolly," said I; "you don't surely imagine that at my time of life I'm going to trust my neck to that fellow's abominable driving?"

"Make your mind easy, Frank; William Wellington sha'n't finger a riband."

"Nonsense, Leicester; you can't treat a man in that kind of way--not to let him drive his own team. Hurst _is_ a bit of an a.s.s, certainly; but you can't with any decency first ask a man for a seat, and then refuse to give him up the reins."

"Am I in the habit, sir, of doing things in the very rude and ungentlemanly style you insinuate?" And Horace looked at me with mock dignity for a second or two, and then burst into a laugh. "Leave it to me, Hawthorne, and I'll manage it to the satisfaction of all parties: I'll promise you that Hurst shall have a capital day's fun, and your valuable neck shall be as safe as if you were tried by a Welsh jury."