Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 18

"Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!" screamed the female voice.

"Ah, you 've caught it too!" cried the other, in glee; "did you think you saw a little blue flame before you when your shin was barked?"

"You're a monster!" said the lady, in a tone of pa.s.sionate indignation.

"Here it is,--I have it," replied the other, not paying the slightest attention to the endearing epithet last bestowed; "and d.a.m.n me, if it 's not burned down to the socket. Halloo there, Peter Dodd! You scoundrel, where are you?"

"Call him Saladin," said the lady, with a sneer, "and perhaps he 'll answer."

"Imp of darkness, where are you gone to? Peter--Dodd--Dodd--Peter! Ah, you young blackguard! where were you all this time?"

"Asleep, sir; sure you know well, sir, it 's little rest I get," said a thin, childish voice in answer. "Wasn't it five o'clock this morning when I devilled the two kidneys ye had for supper for the four officers, and had to borrey the kian pepper over the way?"

"I'll bore a gimlet hole through your pineal gland, and stuff it with bra.s.s-headed nails, if you reply to me. Anna Maria, that was a fine thought, eh? glorious, by Jove! There, put the candle there, hand your mistress a chair; give me my robe-de'chambre. Confound me, if it's not getting like the kingdom of Prussia on the map, full of very straggling dependencies. Supper, Saladin!"

"The sorrow taste--"

"What, thou piece of human ebony! what do you say?"

"Me hab no--a--ting in de larder," cried the child, in a broken voice.

"Isn't there a back of a duck and two slices of cold bacon?" asked the lady, in the tone of a cross-examining barrister.

"I poisoned the bacon for the rats, Miss; and for the duck--"

"Let me strangle him with my own hands," shouted the man; "let me tear him up into merrythoughts. Look here, sirrah," said he, in a voice like John Kemble's; "there may be nothing which man eats within these walls; there may not be wherewithal to regale a sickly fly,--no, not enough for one poor spider to lunch upon; but if you ever dare to reply to me, save in Oriental phrase, I 'll throw you in a sack, call my mutes, and hurl you into the Bosphorus."

"Where, sir?"

"The Dodder, you son of a burned father! My hookah."

"My slippers," repeated the lady.

"My lute, and the sherbet," added the gentleman.

By the stir in the chamber, these arrangements, or something equivalent to them, seemed to have taken place; when again I heard,--"Dance a lively measure, Saladin; my soul is heavy."

Here a most vile tinkling of a guitar was heard, to which, by the sounds of the feet, I could perceive Saladin was moving in a species of dance.

"Let the child go to bed, and don't be making a fool of yourself," said the lady, in a voice of bursting pa.s.sion.

"Thank Heaven," said I, half aloud, "she isn't mad."

"Tink, tink, a - tink - a - tink, tink - a - tink - a - dido!" thrummed out her companion. "I say, Saladin, heat me a little porter, with an egg and some sugar."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Saldin Danceth a Lively Measure 127]

The door closed as the imp made his exit, and there was silence for some seconds, during which my uppermost thought was, "What infernal mischance has thrown me into a lunatic asylum?" At length the man spoke,--

"I say, Anna Maria, Cradock has this run of luck a long time."

"He plays better than you," responded the lady, sharply.

"I deny it," rejoined he, angrily. "I play whist better than any man that ever lived, except the Begum of Soutancantantarahad, who beat my father. They played for lacs of rupees on the points, and a territory on the rub; five to two, first game against the loser, in white elephants."

"How you do talk!" said Anna Maria. "Do you forget that all this rubbish does n't go down with me?"

"Well, I mean old Hickory, that had the snuffshop in Bath, used only to give me one point in the rub, and we played for sixpence; damme, I 'll not forget it,--he cleaned me out in no time. Tink, tink, a-tink-a-tink, tink-a-tinka-dido! Here, Saladin! bear me the spicy cup, ambrosial boy!"

"Ahem!" said the lady, in a tone that didn't sound exactly like concurrence.

"Eat a few dates, and then repose," said the deep voice.

"I wish I had them, av they were eatable," said Saladin, as he turned away.

"Wretch, you have forgotten to salaam; exit slowly. Tink, tink, a-tink-a-tink! Anna Maria, he's devilish good now for black parts; I think I'll make Jones bring him out. Wouldn't it be original to make Oth.e.l.lo talk broken English? 'Farewell de camp!' Eh, by Jove! that 's a fine thought. 'De spirit stir a drum, de piercy pipe.' By Jove! I like that notion."

Here the gentleman rose in a glorious burst of enthusiasm, and began repeating s.n.a.t.c.hes from Shakspeare, in the pleasant travesty he had hit upon.

"Cradock revoked, and you never saw him," said the lady, dryly, interrupting the monologue.

"I did see it clearly enough, but I had done so twice the same game,"

said he, gayly; "and if the grave were to give up its dead, I, too, should be a murderer. Fine thought that, is n't it?"

"He won seventeen and sixpence from you," rejoined she, pettishly.

"Two bad half-crowns,--dowlas, filthy dowlas," was the answer.

"And the hopeful young gentleman in the next room,--what profitable intentions, may I ask you, have you with respect to him?"

"Burke! Tom Burke! Bless your heart, he 's only son and heir to Burke of Mount Blazes, in the county Galway. His father keeps three packs of harriers, one of fox, and another of staghounds,--a kind of brindled devils, three feet eight in height; he won't take them under. His father and mine were schoolfellows at Dundunderamud, in the Himalaya, and he--that is, old Burke--saved my father's life in a tiger hunt. And am I to forget the heritage of grat.i.tude my father left me?"

"You ought not, perhaps, since it was the only one he bequeathed," quoth the lady.

"What! is the territory of Shamdoonah and Bunfunterabad nothing? are the great suits of red emeralds and blue opal, that were once the crown jewels of Saidh Sing Doolah, nothing? is the scymitar of Hafiz, with verses of the Koran in letters of pure brilliants, nothing?"

"You'll drive me distracted with your insane folly," rejoined the lady, rising and pushing back her chair with violence. "To talk this way when you know you have n't got a five pound note in the world."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed out the jolly voice of the other; "that's good, faith. If I only consented to dip my Irish property, I could raise fourteen hundred and seventy thousand pounds,--so Mahony tells me. But I 'll never give up the royalties,--never! There, you have my last word on the matter: rather than surrender my tin mine, I'd consent to starve on twelve thousand a year, and resign my claim to the t.i.tle which, I believe, the next session will give me; and when you are Lady Machinery--something or other--maybe they won't bite, eh? Ramskins versus wrinkles."

A violent bang of the door announced at this moment the exit of the lady in a rage, to which her companion paid no attention, as he continued to mumble to himself, "Surrender the royalties,--never! Oh, she 's gone.

Well, she's not far wrong, after all. I dare not draw a cheque on my own exchequer at this moment for a larger sum than--let me see--twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-eight and tenpence; with twenty-nine shillings, the grand firm of Bubbleton and Co. must shut up and suspend their payments." So saying, he walked from the room in stately fashion, and closed the door after him.

My first thought, as I listened to this speech, was one of gratefulness that I had fallen into the friendly hands of my old coach companion, whose kindness still lived fresh in my memory; my next was, what peculiar form of madness could account for the strange outpouring I had just overheard, in which my own name was so absurdly introduced, coupled with family circ.u.mstances I knew never had occurred. Sleep was now out of the question with me; for whole hours long I could do nothing but revolve in my mind all the extraordinary odds and ends of my friend Bubbleton's conversation, which I remembered to have been so struck by at my first meeting with him. The miraculous adventures of his career, his hairbreadth 'scapes, his enormous wealth, the voluptuous ease of his daily life, and his habits of luxury and expenditure with which he then astounded me, had now received some solution; while, at the same time, there was something in his own common-sense observations to himself that puzzled me much, and gave a great difficulty to all my calculations concerning him.

To all these conflicting doubts and difficulties sleep at last succeeded. But better far for me it had not; for with it came dreams such as sick men only experience: all the distorted images that rose before my wandering faculties, mingling with the strange fragments of Bubbleton's conversation, made a phantasmagoria the most perplexing and incomprehensible; and which, even on waking, I could not banish, so completely had Saladin and his pas seul, the guitar, the hookah, and the suit of red emeralds taken hold of my erring intellect.

Candid, though not fair reader, have you ever been tipsy? Have you ever gone so far over the boundaryline that separates the land of mere sobriety from its neighboring territory, the country of irresponsible impulses, that you actually doubted which was the way back,--that you thought you saw as much good sense and good judgment on the one side of the frontier as the other, with only a strong balance of good-fellowship to induce a preference? If you know this state,--if you have taken the precise quantum of champagne or moselle mousseux that induces it, and yet goes no farther,--then do you perfectly understand all the trials and difficulties of my waking moments, and you can appreciate the arduous task I undertook in my effort to separate the real from the imaginary, the true types from their counterfeits; in a word, the wanderings of my own brain from those of Captain Bubbleton's.