Frank Fairlegh Part 25

ABOUT a week had elapsed after the events which I have just recorded, when one morning, shortly before my return to Cambridge, I received a letter from Coleman, detailing the finale of the bellringing affair. It ran as follows:--

-156--"My Dear Frank--Doubtless you are, or ought to be, very anxious to hear how I contrived to get out of the sc.r.a.pe into which you and the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common misdemeanour. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by misfortune, and, as dangers thickened around me, I bore up against them bravely, like--like--(was it Julius Caesar or Coriola.n.u.s who did that sort of thing?) but never mind--like _a_ Roman brick, we'll say; the particular brick is quite immaterial, but I must beg you to believe the likeness was something striking. To descend to particulars.--Hostilities were commenced by that old a.s.s, Mayor Dullmug, who took out a summons against me for creating a riot and disturbance in the town, and the first day the bench sat I was marched off by two policemen, and locked up in a little dirty room, to keep cool till their wors.h.i.+ps were ready to discuss me. Well, there I sat, kicking my heels, and chuckling over a heart-rending little scene I had just gone through with my mother, whose dread of the terrors of the law was greatly increased by the very vague ideas she possessed of the extent of its powers. The punishment she had settled in her own mind as likely to be awarded me was transportation, and her farewell address was as follows: 'If they should be cruel enough to order you to be transported for fourteen years, Freddy, my dear, I shall try to persuade your father (though he's just like a savage North American Indian about you) to get it changed "for life" instead, for they always die of the yellow fever for the sharks to eat them, when they've been over there three or four years; and four years are better than fourteen, though bad's the best, and I'm a miserable woman. I read all about it last week in one of Captain Marryat's books, and very shocking I thought it,'--Having ventured to hint that if I was carried off by the yellow fever at the end of a year or two, the length of my sentence would not signify much to me when I was dead, I was rebuked with 'Don't talk in that shocking way, Frederick, as if you were a heathen, in your situation, and I hearing you your collect every Sunday, besides Mrs. Hannah More, who might have been a saint if ever there was one, or anything else she liked, with her talents, only she was too good for this wicked world, and so she went to a better, and wrote that charming book _Colebs_ -157--_in Search of a Wife_'.--Oh! my poor dear mother's queer sentences! I was becoming shockingly tired of my own company, when it occurred to me that it would be the correct thing to carve my name on the Newgate stone _a la_ Jack Sheppard; and I was just putting a few finis.h.i.+ng strokes to the N of Coleman, wherewith, in characters at least six inches long, I had embellished a very conspicuous spot over the chimney-piece, when I was surprised 'with my chisel so fine, tra la,' (i.e., with a red-hot poker, which I had been obliged to put up with instead, it being the only implement attainable,) by the officials, who came to summon me, and who did not appear in the slightest degree capable of appreciating the beauties of my performance.

By them I was straightway conducted into the awful presence of sundry elderly gentlemen, rejoicing in heads all more or less bald, and faces expressing various degrees of solemn stupidity, who in their proper persons const.i.tuted 'the bench'. Before these grave and reverend signiors did Master Dullmug and his satellites

"'Then and there, Rehea.r.s.e and declare'

all my heinous crimes, offences and misdemeanours; whereupon the aforesaid signiors did solemnly shake their bald heads, and appear exceedingly shocked and particularly puzzled. Well, at last I was called upon for my defence, and, having made up my mind for some time what line I would take, I cut the matter very short, by owning to have a.s.sisted in ringing the bells, which I confessed was an act of folly, but nothing more, and that the idea of its const.i.tuting an offence punishable by law was absurd in the extreme. This sent them to book, and, after turning over sundry ponderous tomes, and consulting various statutes of all sorts and sizes, besides whispering together, and shaking their heads once and again, till I began to fear that their necks would be dislocated, they arrived at the conclusion that I was right, or thereabouts. This fact the eldest, most bald, and most stupid of the party, chosen by common consent, doubtless in virtue of these attributes, as spokesman, proceeded to communicate to me in a very prosy harangue, to which he appended a lecture--a sort of stock article, which he evidently kept constantly on hand, with blanks which could be filled up to suit any cla.s.s of offenders. In this harangue he pointed out the dangers of juvenile tricks, and the evils of dissipation, winding up with the a.s.surance that, as I seemed deeply sensible of the error of my ways, they, the -158--magistrates, would, on my making a suitable apology to that excellent public functionary, the Mayor of Hillingford, graciously deign to overlook my misconduct. During his long-winded address a new idea struck me, and when he had concluded I inquired, with all due respect, whether 'I was to understand that it was quite certain I had committed no offence punishable by law?' To this he replied, 'that I might set my mind completely at ease upon that point; that though, morally speaking, I had been guilty of a very serious misdemeanour, in the eye of the law I was perfectly innocent'. 'In that case, gentlemen,'

replied I, 'the liberty of the subject has been infringed; I have been kept in illegal confinement for some hours, and I believe I have my remedy in an action for false imprisonment against Mr. Dullmug. Does not the law bear me out in what I state?' Again they had recourse to their books, and were unwillingly forced to confess that I was right.' Then,'

continued I, 'so far from making any apology to Mr. Dullmug, unless that gentleman consents to beg _my_ pardon, and gives me a written apology for the unjust and illegal prosecution to which he has subjected me, I shall at once take the necessary steps to proceed against him.' Oh!

Frank, I would have given something to have had you there, old boy!

when I announced this determination; there was such a s.h.i.+ndy as I never before witnessed: old Dullmug was furious, and vowed he'd never apologise: I declared if he didn't, nothing should prevent me from bringing my action: the magistrates tried to persuade me, but I was inflexible; and (by Jove! I was very near forgetting the best part of it all) my governor, who was in court, the moment he found the law was on my side, turned suddenly round, swore I had been shamefully used, and that if it cost him every farthing he possessed in the world, he would see justice done me. So the end of it was that old Dullmug was forced to write the apology; it now lies in my writing-desk, and I look upon it as one of the proudest trophies man ever possessed. So, Master Frank, considering all things, I think I may reckon I got pretty well out of that sc.r.a.pe.

"Ever your affectionate,

"F. C.

"P.S.--What have you said or done to render old Vernor so bitter against you? Clara Saville tells Lucy, that, when she informed him of her having met and conversed with you alone in the park that day, he flew into -159--such a rage as she had never seen him in before, and abused you like a pickpocket; and she says she feels certain that, for some cause or other, he entertains a strong personal dislike to you. _Entre nous_, I don't think the fair Clara seems exactly to sympathise with him in this feeling. Considering that you had somewhat less than half an hour to make play in, from Lucy's account you do not seem to have wasted much time. Ah! Master Frank, you are a naughty boy; I can't help sighing when I reflect, how anxious your poor dear mother must feel about you, when she knows you're out."

"Still the same light-hearted merry fellow as ever," exclaimed I, as I closed the letter; "how long, I wonder, will those buoyant spirits of his resist the depressing effect which contact with the harsh realities of life appears always sooner or later to produce? Strange, what he says about that Mr. Vernor; I am not conscious that I ever met the man till the evening of the ball, and yet I fancied there was something which seemed not utterly unfamiliar to me in the expression of his face.

Vernor! Vernor! I don't believe I ever heard the name before--it's very odd. Of course, what he says about Miss Saville is all nonsense; and yet there was something in her manner, which made me fancy, if I had time and opportunity--pshaw! what absurdity--I shall have enough to do if I am to imagine myself in love with every nice girl who says, 'Thank you'

prettily for any trifling service I may chance to render her. i am sure she is not happy, poor thing! Seriously, I wish I were sufficiently intimate with her to be able to afford her the advice and a.s.sistance of a friend, should such be ever required by her. I should take the liberty of asking old Vernor what he meant by his extraordinary behaviour towards me, were I to see much more of him; there's nothing like a little plain speaking. But I need, not trouble my brains about the matter; I shall probably never meet either of them again, so what does it signify? She certainly is the loveliest girl I ever saw, though!

heigho!" and, with a sigh, for which I should have been somewhat puzzled rationally to account, I took up my gun, and set off for a day's shooting with Harry Oaklands. -160--

CHAPTER XX -- ALMA MATER

"He's a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree."

--_Merchant of Venice_.

TIME, that venerable and much-vituperated individual, who, if he has to answer for some acts savouring of a taste for wanton destruction--if he now and then lunches on some n.o.ble old abbey, which had remained a memorial of the deep piety and marvellous skill of our forefathers--if he crops, by way of salad, some wide-spreading beech or h.o.a.ry patriarchal oak, which had flung its shade over the tombs of countless generations, and, as it stood forming a link between the present and the past, won men's reverence by force of contrast with their own ephemeral existence--yet atones for his delinquencies by softening the bitterness of grief, blunting the sharp edge of pain, and affording to the broken-hearted the rest, and to the slave the freedom, of the grave;--old Time, I say, who should be praised at all events for his perseverance and steadiness, swept onward with his scythe, and cutting his way through the frost and snow of winter, once more beheld the dust of that "brother of the east wind," March, converted into mud by the showers of April, and the summer was again approaching. It was on a fine morning in May, that, as Oaklands and I were breakfasting together in my rooms at Trinity, we heard a tap at the door, and the redoubtable Shrimp made his appearance. This interesting youth had, under Lawless's able tuition, arrived at such a pitch of knowingness that it was utterly impossible to make him credit anything; he had not the smallest particle of confidence remaining in the integrity of man, woman, or child; and, like many another of the would-be wise in their generation, the only flaw in his scepticism was the bigoted nature of his faith in the false and hateful doctrine of the universal depravity of the human race.

He was the bearer of a missive from his master, inviting Oaklands and myself to a wine-party at his rooms that evening.

"I suppose we may as well go," said Oaklands; "I like a positive engagement somewhere--it saves one the trouble of thinking what one shall do with oneself."

-161--"You can accept it," replied I, "but it would be a waste of time which I have no right to allow myself; not only does it make one idle while it lasts, but the next day also, for I defy a man to read to any purpose the morning after one of Lawless's symposia."

"Call it supper, my dear boy," returned Oaklands, stretching himself; "why do you take the trouble to use a long word when a short one would do just as well? If I could but get you to economise your labour and take things a little more easily, it would be of the greatest advantage to you;--that everlasting reading too--I tell you what, Frank, you are reading a great deal too hard; you look quite pale and ill. I promised Mrs. Fairlegh I would not let you overwork yourself, and you shall not either. Come, you must and shall go to this party; you want relaxation and amus.e.m.e.nt, and those fellows will contrive to rouse you up a bit, and do you good."

"To say the truth," I replied, "that is one of my chief objections to going. Lawless I like, for the sake of old recollections, and because he is at bottom a well-disposed, good-hearted fellow; but I cannot approve of the set of men one meets there. It is not merely their being what is termed 'fast' that I object to; for though I do not set up for a sporting character myself, I am rather amused than otherwise to mix occasionally with that style of men; but there is a tone of recklessness in the conversation of the set we meet there, a want of reverence for everything human and divine, which, I confess, disgusts me--they seem to consider no object too high or too low to make a jest of."

"I understand the kind of thing you refer to," answered Oaklands, "but I think it's only one or two of them who offend in that way; there is one man who is my particular aversion; I declare if I thought he'd be there to-night I would not go."

"I think I know who you mean," replied I; "Stephen Wilford, is it not?

the man they call 'Butcher,' from some brutal thing he once did to a horse."

"You're right, Frank; I can scarcely sit quietly by and hear that man talk. I suppose he sees that I dislike him, for there is something in his manner to me which is almost offensive; really at times I fancy he wishes to pick a quarrel with me."

"Not unlikely," said I; "he has the reputation of being a dead shot with the pistol, and on the strength of it he presumes to bully every one."

"He had better not go too far with me," returned -162--Oaklands, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes; "men are not to be frightened like children; such a character as that is a public nuisance."

"He will not be there to-night, I am glad to say," replied I, "for I met him yesterday when I was walking with Lawless, and he said he was engaged to Wentworth this evening; but, my dear Harry, for Heaven's sake avoid any quarrel with this man; should you not do so, you will only be hazarding your life unnecessarily, and it can lead to no good result."

"My dear fellow, do I ever quarrel with anybody? there is nothing worth the trouble of quarrelling about in this world; besides, it would be an immense fatigue to be shot," observed Harry, smiling.

"I have no great faith in your pacific sensations, for they are nothing more," rejoined I; "your indolence always fails you where it might be of use in subduing (forgive me for using the term) your fiery temper; besides, in allowing a man of this kind to quarrel with you, you give him just the opportunity he wants; in fact you are completely playing his game."

"Well, I can't see that exactly; suppose the worst comes to the worst, and you are obliged to fight him, he stands nearly as good a chance of being killed as you do."

"Excuse me, he does nothing of the kind; going out with a professed duellist is like playing cards with a skilful gambler; the chances are very greatly in his favour: in the first place, nine men out of ten would lose their nerve entirely when stationed opposite the pistol of a dead shot; then again, there are a thousand apparent trifles of which the initiated are aware, and which make the greatest difference, such as securing a proper position with regard to the sun, taking care that your figure is not in a direct line with any upright object, a tree or post for instance, and lots of other things of a like nature which we know nothing about, all of which he is certain to contrive to have arranged favourably for himself, and disadvantageously for his opponent. Then, having as it were trained himself for the occasion, he is perfectly cool and collected, and ready to avail himself of every circ.u.mstance he might turn to his advantage--a moment's hesitation in pulling the trigger when the signal is given, and he fires first--many a man has received his death-wound before now ere he had discharged his own pistol."

"My dear boy," said Harry, "you really are exciting and alarming yourself very unnecessarily; I am not going to quarrel with Wilford or anybody else; I detest -163--active exertion of every kind, and consider duelling as a fas.h.i.+onable compound of iniquity, containing equal parts of murder and suicide--and we'll go to Lawless's this evening, that I'm determined upon--and--let me see--I've got James's new novel in my pocket. I shall not disturb you if I stay here, shall I? I'm not going to talk."

Then, without waiting for an answer, he stretched himself' at full length on (and beyond) the sofa, and was soon buried in the pages of that best of followers in the footsteps of the mighty Wizard of the North--Walter Scott--leaving me to the somewhat less agreeable task of reading mathematics.

CHAPTER XXI -- THE WINE-PARTY

"This night I hold an old-accustomed feast, Whereto I have invited many a guest, Such as I love."

"A fair a.s.sembly, whither should they come?

Servant.--Up-----!

Romeo.--Whither?

Servant.--To supper."

--_Shakspeare_.

"All is not false that seems at first a lie."

--_Southey_.

"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

I do bite my thumb, sir!

Do you quarrel, sir?

Quarrel, sir! No, sir!

If you do, sir, I am for you."

--_Shakspeare_.

LET the reader imagine a long table covered with the remains of an excellent dessert, interspersed with a mult.i.tude of bottles of all shapes and sizes, containing every variety of wine that money could procure, or palate desire; whilst in the centre stood a glorious old china bowl of punch, which the guests were discussing in tumblers--wine-gla.s.ses having been unanimously voted much too slow.