CHAPTER XXIII.
“True friendship leyfe’s deleyte still pruives,Nor ever flings mankeyn’ to woe,The gud whea still their brethren luivesWhat leads to virtue ay will shew.“True friendship that can neer cause streyfe,But e’en keep frae distress and pain,An’ shew what bliss it gie’s thro’ leyfeIn every bwosom still s’ud reign.”“To Friendship,” by Anderson.
“True friendship leyfe’s deleyte still pruives,Nor ever flings mankeyn’ to woe,The gud whea still their brethren luivesWhat leads to virtue ay will shew.“True friendship that can neer cause streyfe,But e’en keep frae distress and pain,An’ shew what bliss it gie’s thro’ leyfeIn every bwosom still s’ud reign.”“To Friendship,” by Anderson.
“True friendship leyfe’s deleyte still pruives,Nor ever flings mankeyn’ to woe,The gud whea still their brethren luivesWhat leads to virtue ay will shew.
“True friendship leyfe’s deleyte still pruives,
Nor ever flings mankeyn’ to woe,
The gud whea still their brethren luives
What leads to virtue ay will shew.
“True friendship that can neer cause streyfe,But e’en keep frae distress and pain,An’ shew what bliss it gie’s thro’ leyfeIn every bwosom still s’ud reign.”“To Friendship,” by Anderson.
“True friendship that can neer cause streyfe,
But e’en keep frae distress and pain,
An’ shew what bliss it gie’s thro’ leyfe
In every bwosom still s’ud reign.”
“To Friendship,” by Anderson.
Inless than an hour after the incident above recorded, Major Oldschool was seated in the parlour, at the head of the table, entertaining “Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, their son and daughter,” to a “quiet cup of tea;” while Mrs. Coddle kept continually fidgeting in and out of the room—bobbing in now with a plate of muffins—and now with a pot of marmalade; and each time she did so, whispering in the Major’s ear, as she placed “the delicacy” on the table, some fresh instructions as to the mode of conducting the ceremonies on such important occasions. At one time she would nudge his elbow, as she leant over the table, and say, aside, to him, “There you are again draining the teapot down to the very dregs!” and at another, she would exclaim, in an under-tone, “What ever are you about, filling up the cups without emptying the slops!”—until the poor Major grew so confused as to the formalities of the tea-table, that he emptied the entire contents of the cream jug into the slop-basin; and in his anxiety to hand the tea-cake to Mrs. Sandboys, and prevail upon her to take “just one small piece more,” left the tap of the urn running, and was not aware of his neglect until Cursty suddenly jumped up from his chair, startled by a stream of boiling-hot pouring on to his knees.
The Sandboys, however, were all too well pleased with their recent good fortune to do other than laugh at the little mishaps of the tea-table; and Mr. Sandboys himself had been so often in hot water of late, that after the first smart of that from the urn, he could afford to chuckle over the accident almost as heartily as his son Jobby, who no sooner saw his father start up, and wildly drag the front of his trousers from his knee, than guessing what had happened, the lad was seized with a comic convulsion while in the act of drinking his fourth cup, and spurted the entire contents of it over the clean cap of Mrs. Coddle as she rushed frantically to the urn to stay the scalding torrent that was pouring from the tap.
When the tea-things had been removed, and the party had settled themselves down for a friendly chat, Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys recounted to the Major all the adventures they had gone through since their departure from Buttermere; and the Major, in his turn, when he had sympathized and laughed with them at their many troubles, ran over the several feats of arms performed by himself and their mutual friend, the Colonel, in India. He told them how they had gouged a diamond worth several lacs of rupees out of the eye of one of the idols they had taken;—and the Sandboys, on the other hand, informed him how they had been defrauded of their season ticket for the Great Exhibition by a scoundrelly Frenchman styling himself the Count de Sangshimmy. And thus they continued, each narrating to the other the several scenes in which they had figured as principal actors, till Mr. Sandboys, in summing up the long list of mishaps he had experienced in his endeavours to get a sight of the contents of the Great Exhibition, was irresistibly led to the conclusion that the whole series of events was the work of a stony-hearted Fate, and that it formed part of the records of Destiny, as kept by the Registrar-General of Calamities-to-come, that neither he nor any member of his family should ever set foot in the interior of the Crystal Palace. He began to regard himself as the hero in some Greek tragedy, which he had a faint remembrance of reading in his college days at St. Bees. Accordingly, he communicated to his dear Aggy the resolution which the recapitulation of his many trials had induced in his mind—namely, that it was sheer pig-headedness on their part to attempt to swim against the current of events, or to play the Canute of 1851, and seek to drive back the tide in their affairs.
Mrs. Sandboys did not require much persuasion to bring her to the same opinion. She was sick and tired of t’wretched place, she said, and would gladly send, “t’first thing” on t’morrow to Mrs. Wewitz for their boxes, so that they might start for Cockermouth by that evening’s train. Major Oldschool did all he could to laugh the Cumberland couple out of their fatalistic fancies, but his gibes and jests were of no avail. Mr. Sandboys assured him he was as immoveable as the Great Pyramid, and that Archimedes himself, even with his huge lever and the required fulcrum, would find that something more than a straw was needed to stir him. And thus the evening passed, the Major striving by every means to induce them to prolong their visit, telling them of the many wonders of the “Great Show”—at one moment describing to them the splendour of the glass fountain—and the next, picturing the beauty of the Veiled Vestal;—now speaking in hyperbolical raptures to Mrs. Sandboys of the magnificence of the silks and velvets from Lyons, and the ribbons from Coventry,—then turning to Elcy, and descanting on the size and value and brilliance of the far-famed Koh-i-noor, and the admired jewels of the Queen of Spain,—and afterwards trying to excite the curiosity of Mr. Sandboys with a glowing detail of the marvels of machinery in motion—the self-acting mules, and the Jacquard lace machinery, and the centrifugal pumps, and the steam printing-press, and the envelope machine—but despite the enthusiasm of his friend, Cursty remained fixed in his determination; and so as not to allow the Major even the chance of shaking it, the resolute Mountaineer took his chamber candlestick, and retired with his family to the apartments that the Major had directed Mrs. Coddle to have prepared for them.
In the morning, Mr. Sandboys, having slept upon his determination of the previous evening, and being several hours nearer to the time which he had fixed for his return to Buttermere, began to think what his neighbours down there would say, when they heard that he and his whole family had been up to London to see the Great Exhibition, and had come away again without ever setting foot in the place. He would be the laughing-stock of the country for miles round; there wouldn’t be a keeping-room far or near but what would have some cock-and-a-bull story or other to tell about them. Besides, why should he deprive the children of the sight? If Fate had decreedhewas never to witness it, that was no reason why Elcy and Jobby should be kept away; and after all that dear girl had gone through for him, he was sure she deserved some little return for her goodness. Then again, he knew Jobby, poor boy, was mad to have a peep at the machinery room, which he had heard and read so much about; and it would be something for him to talk about when he got to be an old man, that he had seen the first Exhibition of Industry in this country: besides, the lad was naturally of a mechanical turn of mind; he had spoilt no less than three Dutch clocks out of the kitchen in trying to clean them; and then at making bird-traps and artificial flies for fishing, there wasn’t a boy in the village could come near him. Who could say what effect the Great Exhibition might have on such a mind? And thus Mr. Sandboys continued inwardly framing excuses to himself why they should delay their departure to Buttermere for four-and-twenty hours longer at least.
While the preceding train of thoughts had been passing through the mind of the wavering Cursty, a like chain of reasoning had been going on in Mrs. Sandboys’ brain, unknown to her husband. She, too, had been asking herself “how it would look,” when the neighbours came to know that they had never so much as put their heads inside the doors of the very place they had come hundreds of miles to see; and she, like her lord and master, had been persuading herself, that at least, if she chose to keep away, it was her bounden duty to let the “dear” children see the grand sight.
Neither, however, ventured to give the least hint to the other as to the nature of their morning’s reflections; and it was only when Mr. Sandboys sat in front of the looking-glass, rubbing the lather over his chin previously to shaving, till he looked like a twelfth-cake, that he communicated to his darling Aggy, while she was in the act of hunting after the grey hairs among her front curls, his doubts as to the propriety of their quitting London for Buttermere that evening. After he had exhausted the arguments in favour of the children—to all of which Mrs. Sandboys, as she poked the top part of her head close against the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, the better to find the stray silver threads she was searching for, gave her most cordial assent—the Cumberland gentleman touched upon the point which constituted, as it were, the fulcrum upon which his moral lever turned, and confessed that he did not like to be beaten in the object he had undertaken. If they had tried to gain admittance to the Exhibition only once, he urged, and had been prevented by some unforeseen accident, it would not have mattered so much, and they might have returned then with even a good grace; but now that they had made so many attempts, and failed so repeatedly, they would naturally look ridiculous in every person’s eyes, provided they left London without succeeding in their purpose, after all the pains they had taken, and the sufferings they had endured to accomplish it. Of course, all the neighbours would say, “Well, hang it! I wud ha’seen t’ pleace, if I’d died for it!” and only laugh at them for their weakness.
Aggy, who seemed to have excellent sport that morning, and kept twitching out the grey hairs like a Thames angler does gudgeons, fully concurred with all the sapient Cursty uttered, and expressed her approbation with each fresh jerk, though with greater warmth, perhaps, than she otherwise might have done, owing to the sharp twinge which accompanied the delicate operation in which she was engaged.
But Mr. Christopher Sandboys had yet to tackle the moral part of his subject; and as, in the process of shaving, he laid hold of himself by the nose the better to accomplish the razorial fancy-work round the corners, he frankly acknowledged, that to run away from the metropolis, after what they had experienced, would betray a deficiency of moral courage on their parts, which would be utterly unworthy of the sturdy mountain race to which they belonged. Besides, it was the sure criterion of a weak mind to give way to the force of circumstances; and he asked himself and his wife, what was nobler than to see an honest man driving his head, like a moral battering-ram, against a thick wall of difficulties, and ultimately overthrowing it. Then, as he called to mind the fortitude of the Grecian and Roman heroes of his college days, he added—“Did not moral greatness consist merely in bearing and subduing the misfortunes that beset us, and certainly not in packing up our boxes and running from them by the first express train.” And as Mr. Sandboys delivered himself of this heroic sentiment, he, in the ardour of his enthusiasm, gave his head so self-satisfied a jerk, that, forgetting the perilous act in which he was engaged, he inflicted a gash that put his powers of endurance severely to the test, and immediately dissipated the whole of the stock of courage upon which he was priding himself.
The upshot of the above conjugal consultation was, that there was passed that morning at the breakfast-table a resolution, proposed by Mr. Sandboys, seconded by his darling Aggy, and carried with acclamations by the Major and the entire family, declaring that one more attempt should be made to visit the Great Exhibition, and expressive of the opinion of the meeting, that the sooner such attempt was made the better. Accordingly, it was finally arranged, as the weather at that time looked particularly promising, that the whole family should “slip on their things” immediately after breakfast, and start for the Crystal Palace by the first omnibus.
Again the Sandboys were, one and all, in high glee at the prospect of witnessing the “World’s Show” at last, and Elcy and Jobby immediately lost their appetite in expectation of the coming treat.
The morning meal finished, the boy flew up the stairs four at a time, dragging his laughing sister after him, and kept bobbing in and out of her room all the while she was dressing, intent upon playing her some monkey trick or other. Now, to his sister’s horror, he would seize her white drawn-bonnet, and putting it on the crown of his head like an apple-woman’s, scamper off with it, sliding down the banisters; then he would bounce suddenly into her room again, and dab down a cup of sour milk on her dressing-table, telling her she would find that a plummy thing to bathe her freckles with.
Mrs. Sandboys was perhaps more fidgety than ever over the toilet of herself and Cursty. Shewouldinsist upon arranging his neckcloth, and tying his waistcoat in for him; nor did she spare any pains to set herself off to the best possible advantage.
And when they were all ready, they assembled in the parlour to receive the instructions of the Major as to the precautions they should take against losing one another in the monster building. The old soldier was in the course of impressing upon the family the necessity of keeping together, and arranging to meet at the glass fountain in the transept at a stated hour, in case they should get parted from one another in the crowd—or else, as he said jokingly, they might be all the day hunting after each other through the several countries of the globe—first bobbing into China, and then scampering through Russia, and after that scouring round America, while perhaps the missing one was wandering quietly among the Channel Islands, or taking a five minutes’ lounge through India; and he had scarcely completed his many injunctions as to how they were always to keep an eye upon “the party” who carried the sandwiches—for they must remember that he was the most important member of the whole body, and that if he were lost, their dinner was lost too—when—
There was a faint tap at the parlour door, and the moment after Mrs. Fokesell, popping her head into the room, requested to speak with Mr. Sandboys.
A cold shiver passed through Cursty’s frame at the mysterious nature of the summons. After so many slips ’twixt the (crystal) cup and his lip, he could not help having a presentiment that something dreadful was about to happen; and as a means of acquiring additional courage to bear up against the calamity, whatever it might be, he begged Mrs. Fokesell to step in and communicate what she had to say in the presence of the company.
The landlady coughed hesitatingly, and nodded, and beckoned to Mr. Sandboys, so as to indicate to him, in the most expressive pantomime she was mistress of, that she wished to speak with him alone.
Cursty, who was now more alarmed than ever, hurried over to Mrs. Sandboys, who had been intently watching the landlady’s gestures, and requested her to see what it was the woman wanted.
Aggy stepped across to the door, and in a whisper begged to be made acquainted with the nature of Mrs. Fokesell’s business; but the landlady still hesitated, saying, “in a nasty insinuating way, that Mrs. Sandboys didn’t half like,” that “she had rayther tell what she had to tell to the gentleman hisself.” When Mrs, Sandboys, whose curiosity was now piqued almost to a painful degree, found that it was useless trying to get out of the woman the purport of the tidings she had to communicate, she returned and intimated as much to her husband, who, though pretending to be deep in conversation with the Major, had been listening the while to what was passing at the door.
Cursty felt his heart sink heavily into his boots, like a stone in a well, and solemnly summoning Mrs. Fokesell into the room, bade her, in as firm a voice as he could manage under the circumstances, tell him then and there what it was all about.
Mrs. Fokesell, who grew angry on finding that her regard for delicacy was in no way appreciated, bounced boldly into the room, and, looking Mr. Sandboys full in the face, said, as she shook her head rapidly at him—
“Well, then, if youwillhave it! there’s the beadle from the work’us has come after you.”
Mr. Sandboys stood aghast;—his jaw fell like a French toy nut-cracker’s, and his hair stood on end till it looked almost like a grenadier’s cap.
The Major, to conceal the smiles which he could not suppress, turned a halfpirouetteon his wooden leg, as if he were a pair of animated compasses describing the arc of a circle.
Mrs. Sandboys looked a whole library, or several hundred volumes, of doubt and fears at her wretched partner. Whatcouldit all mean? she mentally inquired, as she untied her bonnet strings, and began fanning herself violently with her pocket-handkerchief.
A solemn silence reigned for a minute or two after Mrs. Fokesell’s announcement—a silence like that which succeeds a violent peal of thunder.
“T’ beadle from t’ workhouse!” exclaimed the amazed north countryman. “What in t’ warld can t’ man want wi’ me?”
“Want!” echoed the indignant landlady, with a jerk of her head that made the grubby artificial flowers in her cap shake again. “Well, if your own conscience wont tell you, there’s the beadle hisself in the passage, and you’d better step out and ask him; for it ain’t my place to breed words in a family.”
Here the shoulders of the Major, who was pretending to be looking out of the window, were seen to shake violently, while Mrs. Sandboys cried, “Breed words! Whatcant’ mean?”
Cursty, who began to perceive that matters were assuming a very serious complexion, summoned all his little philosophy to his aid, and making the greatest possible show of it in his countenance, like a tradesman with a small stock of goods dressing his shop-window to the best advantage, directed Mrs. Fokesell to desire the parish functionary to step in.
The next moment the Terror of boys at church, and the Leader of parish engines to chimneys on fire, marched into the room in all the imposing pomp of gold lace, cocked hat, and capes, and the countenance, which was all austerity to the children in the free seats, relaxed into a pleasing benignity immediately the possessor of it discovered that the “party” of whom he had come in quest belonged to the “respectable classes.”
Mr. Sandboys, in the best style of injured innocence, inquired briskly of the officer what was the nature of his business with him.
The discreet functionary looked cautiously round the apartment, and then winking the eye that was nearest to Mrs. Sandboys, as much as to remind the gentleman that ladies were present, began fiddling with the gold lace round his cocked hat, and replied that he had been sent on to him by the Board.
“T’ Board!—what Board?” shouted Christopher.
“The Board of Guardians,” was the reply. And then the beadle proceeded to ask the gentleman whether his name was not Christopher Sandboys; and receiving an answer in the affirmative, he begged further to be informed whether the gentleman did not reside in Buttermere, in the county of Cumberland. Mr. Sandboys having assented, the functionary then inquired whether he had not been married at Lanthwaite Green Church: and on learning that such was the case, he told the horror-stricken Cursty that he regretted to say he must go with him on to Marrowbone workhouse, where the Board was a-sitting.
“But what for?” shrieked Cursty, as he stamped rapidly up and down the room, in positive bewilderment at the extraordinary character of the occurrence. There could be no mistake this time as to his being the person who was wanted, for the man had got his name and place of residence, and evidently knew all about him.
The only reply the parish officer made to the inquiry was to wink his eye a second time in a more marked manner than before, and to jerk his elbow two or three times in the direction of Mrs. Sandboys.
“Don’t stand there, man!” shouted the infuriated mountaineer, “winking your d——d eye at me! But tell me what you want here!”
The parish functionary, who was anxious for the sake of the prospective perquisite, to break the matter as mildly as possible to the gentleman, replied that he had a hunpleasant hoffice to preform, and that he was hanxious to preform it in as delikit a manner as he could—and hoping no offence, if the gen’elman would step into the passage with him, he’d give him all the particlers: but it wasn’t hexactly a case to speak on afore ladies. And here the official winked his eye again, and nudged his elbow in the direction of Mrs. Sandboys.
“Ladies!” echoed the almost maddened Christopher—“that lady is my wife, and I’ve no secrets from her, man;” and so saying, he drew forth his handkerchief, and wiped away the perspiration that now stood upon his brow like the moisture on the inside of the windows of a hackney-coach on a frosty day.
“In coorse she is!” responded the beadle, with a knowing air; “every party I wisits says the very hidentical same thing; but it ain’t no business of mine, and I’m not the kerackter to take a pleasure in ruining the peace of families; so, if you’ll just step outside here for a minute, I’ll tell you about it, and I’ve no doubt but what the whole sore can be heasily ’ealed with a little palm-oil, you know.” And here the functionary described a small circle inside his hand, and winked once more at the wonder-stricken Mr. Sandboys.
Mr. Cursty, on second thoughts, began to imagine that perhaps it might end the affair more quietly if he did as the man urged, and though Mrs. Sandboys was for having the whole matter explained in her presence, Cursty deemed it more prudent to retire in company with the beadle, and accordingly stepped into the passage to ascertain what on earth could be the nature of the present charge against him.
There the parish official explained to the gentleman, in as low a tone as possible, that he was wanted at the work’us on a case of desertion.
“Desertion of what?—of whom?—shouted out the innocent Mr. Sandboys, in the height of his indignation. “I never was in t’army in all my life.”
But the beadle mildly insinuated that he was afeard the matter didn’t consarn the harmy, though p’raps it might have summat to do with the hinfant-ry; but whether it were a child or a wife what Mr. Sandboys had left chargeable to the parish, he couldn’t say; all he knowed was, that he had horders to take the gen’elman back with him, on a charge of that naytur, and then he hoped no offence, and he axed the gen’elman’s pardon, but he’d a delikit dooty to preform, and he always struv to preform it with every regard to the feelings of the ladies and gen’elmen consarned; whereupon, having looked cautiously round, and whispered in Cursty’s ear that if he’d leave it all to him, it shouldn’t stand him in no more than 3s.6d.a week, and what was more, he’d take care the papers didn’t get hold on it, the officer kept touching his hair and nodding his head in a manner that plainly indicated he expected some small gratuity for the discretion he had used, and the services he had proffered in connexion with the “delikit” dooty he had to preform.
“I thought I’d keep it dark, you know, sir, from your old ’ooman,” he added, as Mr. Sandboys seemed disposed to pay no attention to his hints. “Females takes these little tender matters to heart, so that many gen’elmen’s told me it’s been worth scores of pounds to ’em my minding my p’s and q’s in the presence of their good ladies. Bless you, if I was to out with all I knows, I should ruin the peace of half the families in our parish. Gen’elmen will be gen’elmen, you know, sir;” and then making that peculiar noise out of the corner of his mouth, in which the drivers of horses delight, he nudged the astounded Cursty familiarly in the ribs, while he added, “but ladies can’t, for the lives on ’em, make no allowance for the secrethammersof the lawful partners of their buzzems.” And “the authority” having delivered himself of these sentiments, went through the same insinuating pantomime as before.
But Mr. Sandboys being wholly unaccustomed to hints of such a nature, hurried quickly past the obsequious functionary, and telling his bewildered Aggy that some other misunderstanding had occurred, though what it was, and what it referred to, was more than he could make out just then, seized his hat, and without waiting to listen to her remonstrances, suddenly left the house in company with the parochial officer.
On reaching the workhouse, the mystery concerning which the bewildered Cursty had been puzzling his brains for the last hour, was quickly explained. The Flower Hawker, who had become possessed of Mr. Sandboys’ inexpressibles, had retired into the country on the “tramp,” leaving his “pardner” behind to take up her abode in the workhouse until his return. On entering that establishment, however, and undergoing the change of dress customary on such occasions, the “marriage lines” belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, which the woman had appropriated (owing to the total absence of any similar document appertaining to herself) were discovered secreted in her bosom, and the name Christopher Sandboys being recognised by the authorities as that of the pickpocket who had been arrested at the Crystal Palace, the parish officers had made it their business to track out the whereabouts of the said Christopher; and learning at the police-office that he had recently been discharged from custody, and had afterwards retired in company with his witness, a gentleman from Craven-street in the Strand, they had directed their constable to bring “the man” before them, so that he might be made responsible for the maintenance of his wife.
Mr. Sandboys had no little difficulty in making “the Board” comprehend and believe the facts of the case; for though the woman denied that he was her husband, as stoutly as Cursty did that she was his wife, the ever suspicious authorities could not help fancying but what there was some trick in the affair, and that the woman persisted in her statement of having picked up the paper in the street, merely from a desire to keep “her pardner” out of trouble, so that it was not until Mr. Sandboys had sent for Major Oldschool to speak once more to his respectability, that he was allowed to return to the bosom of his family.
Mrs. Sandboys was too delighted at obtaining possession of her marriage certificate once more to do other than laugh heartily at what had occurred, and though Cursty felt inclined to trace the finger of Destiny in the whole affair, Aggy, from the pleasant termination of the occurrence, could not consent to look upon the circumstance as a disappointment, and made up her mind to go the very next shilling-day to the Exhibition. Cursty, however, was fully persuaded that they should never set foot within the Crystal Palace, and was for going home by the first train in the morning; and it was not until Major Oldschool consented, provided Mr. Sandboys would remain his guest till the Monday following, that he himself would accompany them and see them safe through the entire expedition.
This offer was more than Mr. Sandboys could withstand; and accordingly, on the condition that, come what may, the family should leave town for Buttermere the day after their visit to the Exhibition, he at length consented to make one more trial under the guidance of his excellent friend, Major Oldschool. In this frame of mind we must now leave the family for awhile, to revert to another member of the same establishment.
Mrs. Quinine, whose health had in no way improved since we left her, lay still stretched upon the sofa of Mrs. Fokesell’s second floor, enacting the part of the interesting invalid as usual. For the last three months, however, her hand had been removed from her cheek, and her fingers busily engaged in inserting tiny embroidered crowns into tiny muslin caps—little things that seemed fit only to serve for the head-dress to an apple-dumpling. Dr. Twaddles had called daily at the house for eight weeks past to inquire “how we were getting on,” and had held himself in readiness, for the same lengthened space of time, to answer the lady’s summons with the least possible delay. Mrs. Pilchers had arrived with her bundle, and had been sleeping on chairs in the studio for the last six weeks. The white satin pincushion ornamented with the well-known infantine greeting of
WELCOMELITTLE STRANGER.
WELCOMELITTLE STRANGER.
WELCOMELITTLE STRANGER.
WELCOME
LITTLE STRANGER.
inscribed in pins, had been forwarded by one of the lady’s “dearest” schoolfellows, so long since that it had lost much of the original delicacy of its complexion. “The basket” had been prepared for many weeks, and stood on the toilet-table in the lady’s bed-room with its powder-box and puff, and its little soft goat’s-hair brush stuck in the side-pockets, and the bassinet remained done up in silver paper in the corner of the room; but though all these extensive preparations had been made for the “little stranger,” and its welcome had beenpinnedby a friendly hand, the lady and all her female friends were kept in a state of the most tantalizing suspense; for no “little stranger” came.
Each day some new article was added to the infantine wardrobe or furniture, in anticipation of the arrival of the long-looked-for little guest. To-day, Mrs. Pilchers was despatched for the newly-invented “artificial mother” that the lady had seen advertised, and thought it best to be prepared with; to-morrow, the same accommodating dame was hurried off after a half-guinea bottle of the immortal Mrs. Johnson’s Soothing Syrup. Then Mr. Quinine would signalize himself as a “dear man,” by one day presenting his wife with a “sweet pretty” coral and bells, and another, sending her home a “love” of a baby-jumper. All the preliminary arrangements were on the most extensive scale; quarts of dill-water, pound packets of “soujie,” cashmere cloaks and hoods, india-rubber rings, wicker rattles, nursing-aprons, pap-warming nightlamps—each and every of the several puerperal properties had been got ready, even down to the white glove for the knocker, (indicative of a “little kid,”) together with the small five-shilling advertisement in the morning papers concerning “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.” Indeed, the entiremise en sceneof the forthcoming spectacle had been “got up,” as the theatrical managers say, “utterly regardless of expense.”
Suddenly, however, it struck “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.,” that one thing was still wanting to complete her stock of infantine furniture. She had forgotten that time-honoured preserver of the peace of families—a nurse’s chair; and felt convinced that, without the aid of the popular soporific seat, her “tiddy ickle sing” would never close its eyes; for Mrs. Quinine, enlightened by the profound experiences of Pilchers, was assured that that kind of wabbly, waggly, bobby motion which is peculiar to steam-boats, and the horror of children of a larger growth, was the delight of all those of a tender age, as if the homuncule was specially pleased in having a taste of “the ups and downs” of life at the earliest possible period in its existence.
And certainly Mesdames Pilchers and Quinine were fully borne out in their opinions by the prevailing pacific treatment adopted by mothers and nurses in general. The fashionable theory among those entrusted with the care of infants seems to be, that babies, like physic, “when taken should be well shaken;” and, accordingly, the early existence of the poor little things is made to consist of a series of agitations in every possible direction. In the arms they are bobbed up and down—in the rocking chair they are waggled backwards and forwards—in the cradle they wabble from side to side—on the knee they are joggled till they shake again, like lumps ofblanc-mange—and if allowed to remain quiet for a few minutes in that position, they are continually thumped on the back, as if they had swallowed a fish bone in their pap.
“The lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.,” was sufficiently impressed with the correctness of what may be styled “the undulating theory” of nursing, that she no sooner discovered she had overlooked what, as newspaper critics say, “should be in every nursery,” than the lady began to think how she could remedy the defect.
A domestic consultation was held with the sagacious Pilchers, when it was arranged that it would be useless purchasing a new chair for the express purpose of wabbling the little stranger about, when “any old thing could be cut down, and have the rockers put to it, at a quarter the expense; whereupon Mrs. Quinine suddenly remembered that they had a spare arm-chair in the studio, which would be the very thing.” Mrs. Pilchers having retired to try the quality of the article, returned in a few moments, saying that the legs would want cutting down about one-half, and then “it would do capital.” It was accordingly arranged that “Nurse” should learn the address of Mrs. Fokesell’s jobbing carpenter, and get him to come in for an hour or two, and make such alterations as were wanted.
While Mrs. Pilchers is thus engaged, we will avail ourselves of the uninteresting circumstance to return to “Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, their son and daughter.”
The day appointed for the family’s visit to the Great Exhibition, under the escort of the gallant Major Oldschool, had at length arrived; and the old soldier and his friends having partaken of an early breakfast, the Sandboys retired to their rooms, to prepare once more for the eventful occasion, confident that at length their long-pent-up curiosity was about to be gratified.
Mrs. Sandboys had not only to arrange her own toilet, but to look after that of her boy Jobby, and his father Cursty as well. She had to tie the neckcloth and the waistcoat-strings of the elder Sandboys, and to sew fresh strap buttons on to the trousers of the younger male member of the family, as well as to take in a large sippet in the back of one of his father’s “white vests,” beforethatboy could be made to look, as his mother said, in any way decent; adding that, really he did grow so fast, that it was as much as she could do to keep his trousers strapped down below the top of his socks.
Elcy’s toilet, too, was not a matter of a moment to arrange. There was her front hair to take out of the “crackers,” which she had concealed during breakfast behind her bandeaus, and there was her “back hair” to plait, and this, even with a young lady from the mountains of Cumberland, was a good half-hour’s occupation.
During the unusually long toilet of the Sandboys family, Major Oldschool fidgeted about his room for a few minutes, and then it struck him that as he should have to “beau” the ladies about, he really ought to treat himself to a pair of new gloves for the occasion; for really, as he said, he had carried his black kid about with him screwed up in his hands so long during the hot weather, that they were as stiff and crinkly as French plums. Accordingly he put on his hat, and, lest he should detain the ladies, hurried as fast as his wooden leg would carry him into the Strand, there to purchase, for the “first time these thirty years,” a pair of “yellow kids.”
In the meantime, the jobbing carpenter had stepped round “first thing in the morning,” as he had been ordered, to cut down the arm-chair, and fix on the rockers which he had brought with him. Mrs. Quinine was no sooner informed of his arrival than she directed Mrs. Pilchers to take the chair to the man, and let him do it down stairs, for that to have him sawing in the next room to her would be more than her nerves could bear.
Accordingly, “Nurse” having called the carpenter to fetch the chair, followed him with it into the passage: there she happened to catch sight of the open door and unoccupied state of Major Oldschool’s apartments, and having heard on the previous evening in the kitchen that the “parlours” were going to spend the day at the Great Exhibition, she immediately concluded that the Major had left with his friends for the Crystal Palace: so Mrs. Pilchers, being a discreet woman, and averse to “noises” and “breeding words,” as she called it, in strange places, thought it would be better, since Mrs. Fokesell was a very odd person and had very odd ways with her, if the man just stepped into Major Oldschool’s room, while the old gentleman was out, and did what little he had to do to the chair in that place, without asking any favours of the landlady. Then having strictly enjoined the man to be careful and make no dirt, she told him he might go into the parlour, and there alter the chair.
The carpenter accordingly carried the arm-chair into the Major’s apartment, while Mrs. Pilchers returned to “her lady.” The workman, to obtain as much light as possible, proceeded with the chair to the window, and placed it down on its side, the better to shorten the legs. He was in the act of opening his basket of tools, when hearing Mrs. Fokesell’s voice calling him from above stairs, he hastened away to learn what she desired. On reaching the drawing-room, the landlady requested the carpenter to bring his tools with him, saying that she wanted him to look to the lock of the cheffonier in the first floor, for that Baron de Boltzoff, the foreign gentleman who had her drawing-rooms, and was as mean as a Scotch pawnbroker, complained that the thing wouldn’t fasten properly, and had even lowered hisself to that degree to accuse her and the poor girl of pilfering his trumpery tea and sugar, confessing that he actually counted the lumps, and marked where the gunpowder stood in the caddy in black-lead pencil. Mrs. Fokesell then told the man she should like him to cobble the lock up somehow, but not to put her to any expense about it, as it was only an old rickety affair that she had picked up in Brokers’-row cheap, and to make it lock at all fast it must have a new bolt put to it, she knew, but that was more than she could afford to have done to the thing. All she wanted was just to keep the gentleman quiet by letting him see she had had it attended to.
The carpenter having hastened down stairs again for his basket of tools, hurried off, as requested, to the drawing-rooms for a short while, leaving Mrs. Quinine’s arm-chair lying on its side in front of the parlour window, as he had placed it.
The man had scarcely quitted the parlour of Major Oldschool, when that gentleman returned, admiring the unusually delicate appearance of his hands, as he entered the room. The first thing that struck his attention, after having taken off his gloves, and placed them carefully on the brim of his hat, in readiness against the coming of the Sandboys family, was the “strange chair” lying on its side by the front window of his apartment.
“Bless my soul!—how extraordinary! Who on earth could have brought this thing here?—and whatever could they have been doing, for it to get thrown down on its side in this manner? It’s very odd,—very odd, indeed!” exclaimed the Major, as he stood for a minute or two, eyeing it suspiciously behind his glasses.
But, nothing resulting from his profound reflections, Major Oldschool lifted up the chair from its recumbent position, and having placed it on its legs, sat himself down in it to try what kind of accommodation it might afford a gentleman of his “build.”
“‘Pon my soul!” he inwardly ejaculated, as he wriggled himself into the seat, and rested his shoulders against the back; “it’s deuced comfortable—just suits me, for all the world, as if it was made to measure! Precious deal better than those d—d “confessionals” that they have now, and that keep you as upright as a ramrod, and shove your knees almost into your mouth; or those cursed Yankee things, that keep you on the wabble like a rocking-horse, and make you look as rickety and short-legged as one of those Italian ‘tombelas.’”
“A-ah!” he exclaimed, with great gusto, as he stretched himself far back in his new seat, “there’s nothing like your good old-fashioned arm-chair, after all, with double the regulation allowance of horse-hair.” Then stretching his arms above his head as he yawned, he added, “‘Pon my word, if it wasn’t for the swarms of flies at my bald head, Idothink I should drop off to sleep in the chair, for really it issoprecious comfortable and I got upsoplaguey early, that it’s as much as I can do to keep my eyelids apart. Well, bless me, those Sandboys are long enough pipe-claying their facings; if I’d known only as much, I might have managed to have treated myself to forty winks more this morning, instead of being up with the milk.”
“‘Pon my life!” he cried, as he shook himself after the first drowsy nod, “if the ladies are not down soon, they’ll find me driving my pigs to market when theydocome;” then, suddenly giving a violent pat on his forehead, that ‘went off’ like a percussion cap, he exclaimed, “D—n the flies, how they do bite;—and I was just dropping off so nicely;—there is no resting for the sharp, needle-like things,—one would fancy my head was a small sugar-cask, from the way in which they dig their proboscises into it. D—n the flies!” he roared again, giving his cranium another and a harder slap; “they’ll pick me to the bone if they go on in this way.” Then, to screen himself from the flies, he seized the red moreen curtain that hung close beside the chair in which he was seated, and withdrawing it from the brass sunflower-like pin, threw it over him, so that his whole body was concealed behind its drapery, and there was no trace of him to be seen, beyond his wooden leg, which struck straight out from the side of the curtain, and had very much the appearance of the handle of the cinder-sifter, as it projects half out of the dust-bin.
In a few minutes, what with the warmth of the day, the early rising, and the relief from the fangs of his tiny tormentors, the flies, the Major was dead asleep.
It was at this critical point that Mrs. Pilchers descended the stairs to see how the carpenter was proceeding with the transmogrification of the arm-chair, into a nurse’sditto—and as she bobbed her head in at the parlour door, she discovered, to her great surprise, that the room was apparently empty.
With that due regard to the interest of “her lady” which distinguishes every “monthly nuss,” when in no way benefited by the defrauding of her, Mrs. Pilchers proceeded to search the house in a state of high excitement for the truant journeyman, and learning from Mrs. Fokesell that the man was engaged in the drawing-room, at an odd job for her, the consciousness that this same odd job was being performed at “her lady’s” expense, caused Mrs. Pilchers, in the height of her indignation, to give a jerk of her christening cap, that made its ultramarine geraniums bob backwards and forwards on their wire stalks like the ship in the paper sea of the clock-work pictures. The “nuss” then bounced out of the kitchen as if she were a baby’s india-rubber ball, inflated with anger, mentally dilating on the “unheerd on imperence” of the act, and made the best of her way to the first floor in quest of her carpenter.
Having called the man out of the room, Mrs. Pilchers communicated to him “just a bit of her mind” on the heinousness of his allowing “any one” to take an hour of his time out of “her lady’s half day;” and having lectured the carpenter in her most moral style, she desired him to take his tools down that minute and do the chair, or she would have in “somebody what would.”
The poor man, who, like the rest of the “jobbing operatives,” was of rather an obsequious, if not servile turn, stammered out an apology, and returned in a state of considerable flurry to the drawing-room to fetch the saw required for the operation.
For fear of giving offence to Mrs. Fokesell, the carpenter descended the stairs as softly as he could, but he had scarcely reached the passage before the drawing-room bell was rung violently, and Mrs. Fokesell, suspecting that “nuss” had been and taken the man off the job she had set him, hurried up from the kitchen.
The carpenter, who shrewdly imagined that the bell was rung to inquire into the cause of his leaving his work in the drawing-room before it was finished, and being anxious, above all things, not to give offence to the landlady, who was one of his best customers, hastened into the parlour to get Mrs. Quinine’s job over as quickly as possible. With scarcely a thought as to what he was doing, the nervous man rushed saw in hand to the window, where he had left the arm-chair, and perceiving the wooden leg of Major Oldschool protruding from behind the window curtain, he, in the flurry of the moment, mistook it for the upper fore-leg of the chair that he had left lying on its side, and immediately set to work to reduce it one half.
At this moment, the united voices of Fokesell and Pilchers were heard wrangling as the ladies descended the stairs, and the carpenter, in his trepidation, sawed quicker than ever. He had nearly severed the Major’s wooden limb in two, when, to his horror, he felt the leg suddenly withdrawn from his hold, and immediately he saw the curtains thrown on one side, and the face of the angry Major Oldschool glaring fiercely at him.
The man stood for a moment spell-bound, as it suddenly flashed across his mind that he had mistaken a human wooden leg for one of the lower limbs of a chair, and that he had been caught in the act of curtailing it of its proper proportions; and the old Major no sooner discovered the nature of the attack that had been made upon his artificial limb, than he remained transfixed with astonishment at the outrageous audacity of the deed.
The two stared wildly at each other, utterly tongue-tied for the instant; and before the Major could proceed to wreak his vengeance on the man, the carpenter had rushed madly from the room.
The Major, furious at the outrage, jumped from his seat, and was about to give chase to the workman, but no sooner did he place the half-divided limb on the ground, than snap went the wooden member, breaking under his weight, and he was thrown heavily on his side upon the floor; while, at the same time, the carpenter, on turning the corner of the door, ran, in his hurry, full butt against the contending Fokesell and Pilchers, who, being utterly unprepared for so sudden a concussion, were precipitated forcibly to the ground, the carpenter falling with his whole weight upon them; and as he did so, the ladies gave vent to the peculiar sound made by paviours on the descent of their heavy rammers.
It was at this alarming crisis that the family of the Sandboys came down from their respective bed-rooms, all smiles and ribbons, and on the tiptoe of expectation for the long-looked-for peep at the Great Exhibition. The first thing that met their eyes on reaching the passage were the forms of the wretched landlady and nurse buried beneath the heavy body of the jobbing carpenter.
It was no time to stand still and inquire what it all could possibly mean, so the Cimbrians at once proceeded to clear a way to the Major’s room by exhuming the bodies of the ladies from beneath the superficial stratum of the bewildered journeyman; while Jobby, having stepped over the heap, and entered the parlour, shrieked to his terrified parents that the Major was lying prostrate there on the carpet, with his wooden leg broken off sharp at the calf.
Then followed the explanation, with all its disheartening results. Of course it would be impossible for the Major to accompany them to the Exhibition shorn of half his leg, while to get it mended in sufficient time was an equal impossibility. Though Jobby hinted that the glue-pot was on the fire below, the Major felt in no way inclined to trust the maintenance of his perpendicular to so weak a foundation; nor did the several parts admit of being spliced, seeing that the limb would be reduced several inches by the operation; and as there was no such thing as borrowing a wooden leg at a moment’s notice in a neighbourhood that was some miles distant from either Chelsea or Greenwich Hospital, why it was evident that the Major must remain at home until such time as he could get his injuries repaired; for to proceed without him was more than Mr. Sandboys would consent to do.
Accordingly, amid much disappointment and sorrow, the family of the Sandboysoncemore made up their minds to abandon all hope of seeing the interior of the Crystal Palace, and to return to their native mountains at the earliest possible opportunity.
It was quite evident, Mr.Sandboys again repeated, that Fate had set her face against their ever enjoying the treat, and, for his part, he was not going to thrust his head any longer against the wall that Destiny had run up between them and the building.