Colin prepares for his undertaking, and exhibits great stubbornness of temper in withstanding many difficulties.
FROM the time at which James Woodruff had received the little packet, up to the eventful night when the attempt to extricate him from confinement was to be made, Colin had busily employed all his spare hours in manufacturing in secret such articles for his purpose as he conceived he should require. This he was the better enabled to do, from having accompanied Fanny on a visit of inspection to the place, when, by the top of the old yew-tree being visible above the high wall, she was enabled to point out to him the exact spot in which her father was confined, and where his attempt must necessarily be made.
On the afternoon preceding the appointed night, Colin asked for leave to go to Bramleigh on particular business; and at the same time stated, that, as it might detain him rather late, he should very probably have to remain there all night. Much to his surprise, Miss Sowersoft immediately granted his request with a more than ordinary grace; at the same time remarking very pleasantly, “that if his business there was but honest and good, she hoped he would succeed in it, as everybody ought to do; but if people went about unprincipled jobs of any kind, it was very right and just that the evil spirit they served should betray them in the end.”
At any other time Colin might not have noticed these remarks; but, under present circumstances, they sunk deep into his mind. He feared that his design had, by some means or other, become, if not wholly known, at least suspected; and during the next half hour, instead of setting out, he sat down upon the step of the open house-door, considering what course he ought to pursue. The doubts which then arose in his mind were not so much the result of fear as of cautious forecast, touching the probable result of his enterprise. If by any means it had been found out, his wisest course would be to abandon it for the present, and either wait some more favourable opportunity, or leave the whole matter in abeyance until his visit to the Hall, on the Squire's return, afforded him a chance of explaining the circumstances to that gentleman, and of gaining, if possible, his assistance. Yet, if he did so, what would Mr. Woodruff think? He would wait in horrible anxiety hour after hour, still depending upon the word of him, who said that nothing short of death should prevent his coming. These reflections decided the question. Colin rose up, and within ten minutes was some distance on his road.
Another circumstance disturbed him. Before leaving the house, he saw Mr. Palethorpe, with his best inexpressibles on, preparing himself apparently for a short journey; and, on Colin's putting the question to him, he observed, with a malicious grin, thathealso was going to Bramleigh. The youth turned pale, and red, and pale again, as shame and fear alternately predominated, though he pursued his way with undiminished resolution, conscious that he had engaged in a good cause, and resolved rather to fail in it than to commit himself in falsehood, through the foolish dread of some undefined and perhaps imaginary danger.
Colin arrived at his mother's house about six o'clock in the evening, and, by previous appointment, met there with his friend Fanny. Together they put everything into a state of preparation; while Colin, as a precautionary measure, in case anything unfortunate should happen, obliged the young woman to take three guineas of the fifteen which Mr. Lupton had sent him, and the whole of which he had brought in his pocket, in case it should be required for the service of Mr. Woodruff when he had got out of the mad-house.
As hour after hour passed by, the young couple grew indescribably anxious and restless. Fanny dreaded that some unforeseen evil would befall Colin, and with tears in her eyes now begged him to give up the design, and wait until the Squire's return enabled them to do so much more securely. To this he replied in few words, that what he had promised to do he would do, happen what might.
“Then,” said Fanny, “let us tell your mother all about it. I dare say she means the best for both of us, after all; and then, perhaps, she may think of something to help you in the attempt.”
Mrs. Clink was accordingly informed, very much to her amazement, of the principal heads of this affair, so far as already known to the reader, and also of the business which, in consequence, Colin now had upon his hands. This last she considered highly chimerical and dangerous; she prophesied it would lead to nothing but trouble to himself; declared positively that twenty better methods could readily be devised; and concluded by assuring her son, that if he did not relinquish it at once and for ever, he would surely live to repent it before another week was over his head. Colin's reply again was, that no representations whatever could induce him to alter his purpose; and he began to get ready, and tie up his simple apparatus for climbing the wall.
At half-past nine o'clock he was ready to set out. Somehow, he knew not why, Colin felt that he must bid his mother and Fanny a more serious adieu than usual. His mother kissed him, and Fanny,—she, when in the shadow of the door, kissed him too, and asked a thousand blessings on his head. He promised, in case he succeeded, to be back with Mr. Woodruff in the course of an hour and a half; and, having again shaken hands with Fanny, he passed out into the street.
That hour and a half passed heavily by, during which Mrs. Clink and Fanny talked the matter over again, reflected, speculated, hoped, and feared. Colin did not come.
Eleven o'clock struck—he was not there; they looked out, but could see nothing; listened, but could hear nothing.
Twelve came—midnight—he did not return. Fanny could not be restrained by Mrs. Clink any longer, and she went up alone to the scene of his enterprise, trusting there at least to ascertain something. All was silent as the grave. One solitary light alone, as of some one retiring to quiet rest, was visible in the mad-house, and that was all. But while she stood, she heard a horseman enter the stony yard, as though he had come from the Whin-moor road. The light of a lantern glanced along the walls above, and then vanished in the stables. She hastened, terrified, back again—Colin was not there. The whole night passed—morning broke—the world grew light and gay—but he did not come again.
Colin's attempt to liberate Fanny's father from the madhouse, with the adventures that befell him thereupon.
WHEN Colin had taken leave of his friends, and passed out of his mother's house, he found the night, as he thought, peculiarly adapted for his purpose. The air was dark and troubled, vexed with contending winds, which blew, as it seemed, now from one quarter of the heavens, and then again from its opposite, while drops of rain occasionally came on the blast, succeeded by momentary showers of hail. Though summer-time, the weather felt as though it had suddenly changed to that of March, so cold and ungenial was the blast.
He pursued his way for some distance along a dark lane, fenced high with thick hawthorn on each side, and traversed by deep ruts, here and there containing puddles of water, which reflected some little light as they caught the sky, and deceived him with the idea that something white was lying in his road. From this lane he crossed a stile and several fields, as offering the most direct route to the back part of the grounds around the doctor's house. When arrived there, he stopped outside the plantation, in order to assure himself that no person was about. Nothing living stirred at that hour. He forced his way through a thorny gap in the fence, and soon found himself at that north-east corner of the yard-wall which he had particularly specified. He now uncoiled his rope, and cautiously threw up that end of it to which a grappling-hook was attached. After a few efforts it caught firm hold, and, as the distant clock struck ten, he ascended to the top of the wall; though, as he fancied this elevation would bring him in relief against the sky, he crouched as closely as possible, in order to avoid being seen, should it unluckily so chance that any individual of the establishment was about.
“Are you there?” asked Colin, in a low but earnest voice, as he peeped down into the yard.
“Yes,'” answered one from below, in a similar tone. “All right. Make haste!”
Colin's heart leaped within him for joy. Now was he well rewarded for all his pain and trouble:—to think that he had succeeded at last, notwithstanding all his mother's and Fanny's fears! Hastily he drew up the hempen ladder after him, and, sitting upon the top of the wall, fixed it on the other side, in order to enable James Woodruff to ascend.
“Put your feet in, and hold by the sides,” said Colin, as he saw dimly that the figure was coming up.
“Yes, yes,” replied he. “Stop there till I get safe to the top.”
And in the next minute, when the body was half above the wall, Colin received a heavy blow on the head from a short bludgeon, accompanied by a fierce exclamation and an oath, that if he did not surrender that instant his brains should be blown out! Regardless of the height of the wall, he instantly dropped, and, though half stunned, and sprained in the leg besides, he endeavoured to make off. The fellow who, it was now evident, had been stationed in the yard on purpose to draw him into this trap,—poor Woodruff had been kept in his cell,—was afraid to risk his limbs or his neck by following Colin's example; but, instead of so doing, he began to bawl lustily for assistance. Colin heard two blunderbusses fired, and afterwards the crash of pursuers through the plantations behind him. Conscious that the injury he had received from the fall would prevent him from escaping them by flight, he raised himself up against a gate-post, with his arms close against his sides. In this situation he had the pleasure, two minutes afterwards, of both hearing and seeing a couple of stout fellows rush past within a yard of him, one of whom, by his voice and language, Colin recognised to be Mr. Palethorpe. Within a short period, having “lost scent,” they returned, and lingered a few moments about the gate, as though irresolute which way to take. During this brief interval he plainly overheard the following conversation.
“Dang him, I wish we'd hit him! It would have saved us all this trouble.”
“Ay, ay, and hit him I will,” replied Palethorpe, “if I can once get sight of him. Meesis was quite right, you see, in what she overheard him say—a young vagabone! She told me afore I came out, if Ididget a shot at him, to pepper him well; and so I will. If we kill him in trespass and burglary, I think the law will stand at our backs. Dang him!—we lost sound of him somewhere here about, and I should not wonder if he 's crept under some of these bushes. I'll fire in, and chance it.”
No sooner said than done. Off went the blunderbuss into the thick underwood, for the moment making the spot whereon they stood as light as day, and illuminating Colin's figure as brilliantly as though he had stood beneath the flaring light of a gas-burner. Luckily the two men stood with their backs towards him, or he must inevitably have been detected. The report over, they listened; but a few frightened birds, blindly flapping their wings amongst the trees, were all that could be heard. Palethorpe loaded again, and then made a proposal, which was agreed to by his companion, that they should take a circuit of the plantation, and then get on to the road.
The opportunity thus afforded to Colin was made the best use of by him, and he endeavoured to steal off in the direction of his mother's house. But, when he had cleared the plantation fence, he again heard his pursuers beating about in the road between him and that place, so that he deemed it most advisable to take the direction of Whinmoor. In that direction the coast seemed clear; and, accordingly, keeping closely under the darkness of the hedge-side, he set off at his best speed. For the period of three quarters of an hour or more he pursued his way unobstructed; and as at the expiration of that time he had reached the Leeds and York highway, about a mile beyond which the old farm was situated, he began to congratulate himself upon his escape. Here he slackened his pace in order to recover breath and strength, both of which were well-nigh exhausted by his previous exertion.
As he rose to the top of a gentle hill, which the highway crossed, the sound of a horse's hoofs upon the hard road, though at a considerable distance, struck his ear. It came from the direction in which he had come, and seemed to be getting nearer. Was it any one pursuing him? His fears told him it must be so. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the road any farther, he leapt the fence, and hurried by a shorter cut over the fields in the direction of Miss Sowersoft's house. As he advanced the gusty wind again and again brought along with it the sound of violent galloping. It was gaining rapidly upon him; but he was now nearer the house, and the horseman, if destined to the same place, would, he knew, be obliged to keep the beaten road, which would take him nearly a mile farther than that which Colin himself had taken. As he crept quietly into the farm-yard he perceived a light in one of the lofts. The door was open, and a waggon stood beneath. Abel and old George were loading it with hay, for the purpose of sending it during the night to York; in order to be in that city sufficiently early on the following morning. There was no time to lose; and to stay at the farm to be taken prisoner would be quite as bad as though he had allowed himself to be taken at first. He therefore walked boldly up, and briefly told them that while he was at Bramleigh a plot had been laid by Palethorpe to entrap him; that he had threatened to shoot him if he could catch him; that it was with the greatest difficulty he had escaped; and that even now he believed they had sent some one on horseback to pursue him.
All this being to their own knowledge pretty characteristic of the aforesaid Palethorpe, they did not hesitate in agreeing to Colin's proposal that he should get into the waggon, have the hay-trusses piled around and over him, so as not to exclude the air, and in this manner to convey him to York. In order to bind them the more strongly to their promises of strict silence and secrecy, Colin gave Abel one of his guineas, to be afterwards divided between the two. He then jumped into the waggon, and in a few minutes was very effectually put out of sight. In a few minutes afterwards a horseman dashed into the yard, and demanded of them whether Colin had come home. Abel denied that he was under any roof there; and, after undergoing a strong test of his powers of equivocation, contrived, very much to Colin's satisfaction, to persuade the pursuer to go home again.
Some time afterwards the horses were tackled on, the waggon began to move, and a tedious journey of more than six hours' duration brought them within the old walled city of York, at about seven o'clock in the morning.
Having deposited his waggon in the marketplace, Abel now invited Colin, who had made his way out of the vehicle when some two miles off the city, to accompany him to a public-house. This request the lad complied with; and, while making his breakfast obtained ink and paper from the landlord, and wrote a short letter to his mother, and another to Fanny, explaining the circumstances which had led to his absence and flight, and promising to write again as soon as he had resolved in what place he should settle for the present, as he did not consider it safe to remain permanently, even at the distance he then was. These he gave in charge to Abel, who vowed to deliver them both safe and speedily. He then inquired of Colin whether he did not intend to go back again?
“Not till I know that everything is safe,” replied the youth, “or else it would have been useless to come here.”
“Then what do you intend to do? or where does 't mean going?” again asked the man.
“I am quite undecided yet,” remarked Colin; “but I shall find out a place somewhere, depend upon it.”
“Well, lad,” said Abel, “if I could do aught for thee, I would; but I mean leaving our missis's myself as soon as I can. I 'll either list, or go to Lunnun very soon, for it's beggarly work here.”
The thought struck Colin,—shouldhego to London? He had money, very luckily sufficient to keep him awhile; and, so far off, he would be safe enough. When there, as he dared not return to Bramleigh to pay his promised visit to Kiddal Hall, he could write to the Squire, and tell him what had happened, which would do quite as well; and doubtless enable him, with Mr. Lupton's assistance, not only very shortly to triumph over his persecutors, but give him sufficient power to effect successfully that great object, the attempt to achieve which had so unexpectedly led to his present unpleasant situation.
He finally took his leave of Abel in the market-place, and then rambled alone and thoughtfully about the town, until within an hour or two of mid-day.
Country notions of London.—A night-journey to the Metropolis, and Colin's arrival there.
THE good people of the Great City possess but a slight idea of the light in which they and the modern Babylon are regarded by the remote and rustic natives of the provinces. Colin partook largely of the general sentiment respecting that wonderful place, and its, in many respects, scarcely less marvellous people. To him, in common with every other child of village or hamlet, however remote, the name of London had been familiar almost from the cradle. He knew not the time when he knew it first; and the idea presented by it was that of some great, undefined, and unknown place, which had no equal in the world, nor resemblance—(save in that it was composed of buildings and endless streets)—to anything he had ever seen. It was a vast spectre, without shape, and measureless, looming in the misty atmosphere of a doubtful mind, like the ideal pictures of cities and the wonderful palaces of gnomes and genii, after reading some marvellous Arabian tale. Then, with the rustic inhabitants of every remote place, anything uncommon or superior is always presumed to have come from London, and to say that it came thence, is at once to confer upon it a higher ideal value. Many a worthless trinket brought by some wandering pedlar is purchased, and afterwards miraculously preserved from juvenile spoliation amidst the wreck of all other toys, merely because it came from London. The very appearance in a village of an individual of more than usual gentility, startling the bumpkins with a “sight” on some fine summer's morning, is of itself taken as presumptive evidence that he very probably came from London. Any innovation or improvement in dress or manners is promptly and naturally supposed to have had its origin in London. London is the place, in short, where everything is great,—where everything of the best is made,—where all the first people of the world do congregate,—where it is very needful to look sharp about you lest your very eyes get picked out without your knowing it until they are gone,—where the most cunning thieves are always at your elbow,—where everything worth seeing is to be seen, and worth hearing to be heard,—where anybody may chance to succeed, though he could succeed nowhere else,—and where, finally, for some one or other or all of these causes, every man, woman, girl, and boy express a wish to go to before they die.
Thus is London generally regarded by the rural people of the provinces; and thus was it in degree that Colin thought, as he paced about the quiet streets of York. What to do when he should get there he did not know; but go somewhere he must. There was still room left for many more in London than himself. Accordingly he walked into a coach-office, and, after making some inquiries, took his place by a coach which, though it travelled an indirect route, had the advantage of being about to start in half an hour. That interval he employed in writing another letter home, expressive of the intention he had just formed, and stating that he should write again as soon as he arrived in London.
The public vehicle being now nearly ready, Colin climbed awkwardly up and took his seat; and, after all the important preparations incident to such an occasion had been duly made, an expert ostler ingeniously twitched off the horses' coverings as they were starting, and within a short time Colin was whirled away on this his first day of foreign travel.
Never having been on a public stage before, Colin felt delighted. The pleasant and rapid motion, and the continual change of scenery, almost made him wonder why those people who could afford it did not ride on the top of a public coach every day of their lives. Village, town, and then long spaces of cultivated fields, alternately came on the horizon, and were left behind; foot-passengers by the road-side appeared to him almost at a standstill, and the speed of such irritable curs as barked and ran after the horses, little greater than that of a mole. Towards evening, however, these things lost much of their attraction, and he began to grow weary. With weariness came despondency, and he almost felt as though he was lost.
The sun went down somewhere in the direction of the home he had left last night. What were his mother and Fanny doing now? What doubt were they not in, and what misery enduring through his (to them) unaccountable absence! It was evident enough, too, that Palethorpe knew him,—and that his design had been found out. What evil reports would they not spread concerning him, to the dismay and shame of Fanny and his mother! Mr. Lupton, also, might hear them, and perhaps refuse to take any notice of his letters; though he himself, were he there, could explain all this to everybody's satisfaction. Tears both of sorrow and vexation swam in his eyes, and he wished it was but possible the coachman could drive him back again. Night came on, and at a great town (Leicester, I believe) two flaring lamps were put up, which cast upon the ground a sharp light on either side, as though they flew with a pair of fiery wings. Passers-by, tree-trunks, and mile-stones shot out of the darkness before, and into that behind, almost before they could be seen; while occasionally might be observed other bright rayless lights, glancing through the hedges, or staring boldly down the road before them, like the eyes of a monstrous dragon. Then came the rattle of another coach, a shout of recognition between the coachmen, a tip upwards of the whip, and all was dark again. The passengers were silent, and Colin grew doubly melancholy. The coachman now and then looked round at his fares, as much as to say he very much doubted whether he was driving a hearse or not; yet all sat as quiet as corpses. He asked “the box” if he were cold? The box said “No,” and then turned up his coat-collar, and pretended to go to sleep. The coachman sung himself a song, and beat his whip-hand upon his left shoulder to keep the blood stirring. The guard shouted to him, and he shouted back again—“The bag of corn was to be left at So-and-so, and old Joe was to see and send that harness back in the morning.”
Colin took no interest in all this, so he shut his eyes, and, after awhile, fell asleep. The horn blowing for a change of horses awoke him again. Again he went to sleep, and the same pleasing tune was played in his vexed ears, and on the same occasion, repeatedly during the night. When morning broke, he was chilled almost to death: his feet felt as though undergoing amputation: he could never have believed it was so cold in summer at any part of the twenty-four hours as he now found it. The night had been fine and dry, and daylight began with only a few thin clouds. He longed for a ray of the sun, and watched his increasing light with desire unfelt before. As he rose, however, the mists gathered, thicker and thicker as it grew lighter. Then they swept like a storm over the hills in front, and filled the valleys with a damp fog as thick as any in November. At two or three hours after sunrise, all was clear again; and he basked delightfully in the burning heat. They now began to pass droves of sheep, and herds of cattle, hundreds together, and often recurring, yet all bent the same way as themselves: they were going to London to be devoured. None seemed to come back again. They ascended a steep hill; and to the right Colin saw the longest-bodied church, with the shortest tower he had ever seen in his life: it was St. Alban's. Here a man of business, escaped from the metropolis the night before, and now fresh from sleep and breakfast, and with a “shining morning face,” gave the coachman a familiar nod and word, and jumped up, to return to his ledger. The stable-boys looked at Colin, and regarding him as a “green 'un,” winked at each other, and smiled. The coachman took no notice of him, as being considerably beneath his observation. But Colin, without troubling himself concerning other people's thoughts of him, looked at the long signs about posting at so much per mile, and at those which advertised Messrs. Mangel Wurzel and Co's Entire, and wondered what in the world they meant. Another hour or two passed, and the road seemed to our hero to be alive with all kinds of vehicles describable and nondescript. Dog-horses drawing lumbering old coaches, and dog-carts filled with country-baked bread, intermingled with spring vehicles, carrying soda-water, and carriers' carts laden with crockery, were jumbled together in all the glorious confusion and dust of a dry summer morning. Occasionally some butcher's boy, without his hat, would drive from amongst them, as though his very life depended on his speed, and shoot a-head, until, in character with all of his fraternity, he outstripped everybody, and, after the fashion of the good deities of the Heathen mythology, vanished in a cloud of his own raising.
The coach approached a high archway in the road. Through it Colin saw what he took to be a mass of horizontal cloud; and, peering above it in solitary grandeur, like one lone rock above a wilderness of ocean, the dome of a great cathedral. To the left, on descending the hill, stood what he took to be a palace; and still farther on, in Holloway and Islington, so many things of a totally new character presented themselves to him, that he scarcely believed himself in the same world as he was yesterday. The turnpikes, and the Angel Inn, the coaches and cabs, the rabble and noise, the screaming of hawkers, the causeways lined with apple-women and flower-girls, the running and scrambling of men carrying bundles of newspapers, as they bawled to the passengers of outward-bound stages, “Times, sir!—Chronicle!—Morning Post!” the swearing of coachmen, the thrashing of drovers, the barking of dogs, and the running of frightened sheep and over-goaded cattle, formed altogether such a Babel as made him for the time utterly forget himself.
“City, young man, or get down here?” demanded the coachman..
“Where are we?” asked Colin.
“Islington. Where are you going to?”
“London,” replied Colin.
“I say, Jim,” remarked the coachman to his friend the guard, “that 's a neatish cove now, isn't he, to come here?”
“Wot do I care, d——his eyes! Pick up that basket, and go on, without you mean to stop here all day!”
Whereupon the driver folded up his waybill, and elbowed his passage through a crowd of miserable, perishing, be-coated and be-capped night-travellers, who blocked up the causeway with trunks, carpet-bags, and hat-boxes. Their pallid visages and heavy eyes, indeed, conveyed to the spectator no indifferent idea of so many unfortunate ghosts just landed on the far side of the Styx.
“So you are for London, young 'un, are you?” asked the coachman, when again on his seat.
“Yes, sir,” replied Colin, “and I suppose we are not far from it, now?”
“Jim!” shouted the coachman, as he leaned half round to catch a glimpse of the guard, “this chap wants to know how far he is from London, if you can tell him!” And this humorous remark he rounded off with a weasing chuckle, that appeared to have its origin in a region far below the thick superstratum of coat and shawl with which the coachman himself was covered. He then deliberately eyed Colin from head to foot several times, with a look of great self-satisfaction, and again inquired,—“Wot did your mother send you from home for?”
“Nobody sent me,” said Colin; “I came of my own accord.”
“Wot, you 're going i' sarvis, then? or, have you come up to get made Lord Mayor?” Our hero had felt sufficiently his own loneliness before; but this last observation made him feel it doubly. He coloured deeply.
“Come, I didn't mean that,” said the driver,—“it was only a joke to raise your spirits. I don't want to spile your feelin's, young man.”
“I assure you, sir,” replied Colin, with emotion, “I have no place to go to, and I do not know a single soul in London. When I get off this coach, I shall not know where to turn, nor what to do!”
“Then wot did you come for?” inquired the coachman.
“To get a place,” said Colin.
“And you don't know where to put up?”
“No.”
“Humph! Well, m'happen I can tell you. How much money have you got?”
Colin satisfied the inquirer on this particular; and in return received the coachman's promise to direct him to a respectable house, at which he might put up until he had done one of two things, either obtained a situation or “got himself cleaned out.”
IN the course of some subsequent conversation, Colin's friend the coachman ascertained that his “green” passenger came from some place in the county of York, and instantaneously concluded, by a peculiar process of reasoning, that our hero ought of necessity to put up at a “Yorkshire House.” He forthwith recommended him to a tavern of some notoriety in the city, backing his recommendation with the assurance that, as he was but raw in London, it would be better for him to be amongst his own countrymen.
In the “Yorkshire House,” then, we will suppose him. His first business, after having refreshed himself, was to call for ink and paper, and indite an epistle to Squire Lupton, giving him not only an explicit statement of the cause of his precipitate retreat from Bram-leigh, and his consequent inability to attend at the Hall on the appointed day, but also detailing the horrible scene of the lawyer's confession respecting the situation of James Woodruff, which had led to his recent attempt, and compelled that retreat. This being done, and duly despatched, he hastily prepared himself, fevered and confused in brain as he was by the long night-journey, to take a turn in the streets. He longed, as every stranger does who first enters this mighty city, to wander among its endless maze of houses, and witness the vastness of its resources. He passed down one of the by-streets into Cheapside; wondered at the numbers of caravans and carts, the coaches and cabs, which blocked themselves to a temporary stand-still in the streets branching from either side; marvelled what all the vehicles that shot along could be employed for; where the contrary and cross currents of human beings could all possibly be setting in; or how the enormous evidences of almost inconceivable wealth, displayed on all sides, could ever have been thus accumulated. As he ruminated, the crowd every now and then half spun him round, now one way, now another, in the endeavour to pass or to outstrip him. Some belated clerk, hurrying to his duty, put a forcible but inoffensive hand upon his shoulder, and pushed him aside; the butcher's boy (and butchers' boys arealwaysin a hurry) perhaps poked the projecting corner of his wooden tray or the shank of a leg of mutton into his ear; the baker drove a loaf into his ribs; the porter knocked his hat off with a box on his knot, accompanying the action with the polite expression of “By your leave;” the merchant pushed it into the gutter in order to avoid treading upon it, and the policeman, standing by the lamp-post, smiled as sedately as a wooden doll, whose lower jaw is pulled down with a string, and, when advice was useless, kindly told him to “take care of his hat.”
By the time he had passed through Fleet Street, and had returned along Oxford Street and Holborn, his head was in a whirl. In the course of a few short hours his senses had received more numerous and striking impressions than had been made upon them probably during the whole course of his previous life. London seemed to him a Babel, and himself one of those who were lost utterly in the confusion of tongues,—tongues not of men merely, but of iron and adamant, rattling together their horrible jargon, until his ears sounded and reverberated like two shells beside his head, and his brain became bewildered as if with (that which he had happily never yet experienced) a night's excess.
About seven o'clock in the evening he returned to his inn. Having placed himself quietly in a retired corner of the parlour of the “Yorkshire House,” and immediately beneath a sloping skylight extending the whole breadth of the room,—a position which very strongly suggested the idea that he was sitting under a cucumber frame,—Colin amused himself by making silent remarks upon the scene before him. Sundry very miscellaneous-looking personages formed the principal figures of the picture, and were relieved by numerous accessaries of mutton-chops, biscuits, broiled kidneys, pints of stout, and glasses of gin-punch; the whole being enveloped in an atmosphere of such dense smoke, as gave a very shadowy and mysterious character to every object seen through it.
“There's a fly on your nose, Mr. Prince,” remarked a lean hungry-looking fellow; “a blue-bottle, sir, just on the end there.”
The individual thus addressed was a sinister-looking man, who, it afterwards appeared was a native of Leeds, in which he had formerly carried on business, and contrived to scrape together a large fortune. In mercantile phraseology, he was a “thirty thousand pound man” and, though an ignorant and surly fellow, on account of his property he was looked up to by everybody as ignorant as himself. On hearing his friend Hobson's remark, Mr. Prince suddenly seized the end of his own nose, and grasped it in his hand, as he was in the regular habit of doing whenever the fly was mentioned, while with a very shallow assumption of facetiousness he replied, “Then I 've got him to-night, by Go'!”
Every individual in the company who knew his business properly now forced a laugh at the great man's witty method of doing things, while Hobson replied, “I think not, Mr. Prince. He's too 'fly' for you again.”
“Look in your hand, Mr. Prince,” suggested a thick-headed fellow from the East-Riding, not unlike a bullock in top-boots. Mr. Prince thanked him for the hint; but declined adopting it, on the score that if he opened his hand he should lose him.
“Put him in Hobson's glass,” said another.
“Well,” replied Hobson, “as we all know Mr. Prince is very poor, I 'll give him sixpence if he will.”
This hint at Mr. Prince's poverty was exceedingly relished both by the Prince himself and all the toadeaters about him. Its ingenuity seemed to delight them, as did also the reply made by the great man himself. “I doubt whether you ever had a sixpence to spare in your life.”
Another mechanical laugh was here put in at Hobson's expense, which that gentleman not relishing quite so well as he would have done had the insinuation been made at the expense of any other person, he repelled it by challenging Mr. Prince to produce, there and then, as many sovereigns upon the table as any other man in the company. This touched Mr. Prince in a delicate place, and he growled out with a horrible oath, that he could buy Hobson and all his family up with only the simple interest of his capital. At the same time he put his hand in his breeches-pocket, and drew forth a broad-bellied greasy black pocket-book, which he slapped heavily on the table, as he swore there was more money in it than Hobson had ever even so much as seen together before. Hobson flatly denied it, and offered to bet glasses round that it did not contain twenty pounds more than his own.
“Done!” roared Mr. Prince, as his clenched fist fell on the table, with a weight which made all the pipes and glasses upon it dance a momentary hornpipe. A comparison of pocket-books was immediately instituted. Mr. Prince's was declared to contain one hundred and seventy bank-notes more than Hobson's, and Hobson was called upon for the grog. This being more than he expected, he endeavoured to evade the bet altogether, by insinuating that he should not believe Mr. Prince's notes were good, unless he looked at them himself. Several voices cried together “No, no!” and the rest vented their opinions in loud exclamations of “Shame, shame!—Too bad!” and the like.
Mr. Prince felt the indignity offered to his pocket-book most keenly. He looked unutterable things at Hobson, and bellowed loud enough to have been heard as far as Lad Lane, that he would not trust a single farthing of his money in the hands of such a needy, starving, penniless bankrupt as he was. Many of those present felt that this language was not exactly warrantable; but there were no cries of shame in favour of Mr. Hobson.
At this interesting period of the discussion, Colin's eyes chanced to be fixed very earnestly on the countenance of Mr. Prince, which that gentleman remarking, he forthwith turned suddenly on the young man with this abrupt demand:—
“What areyoustaring at, eh? Did you never see a man's face before.”
“Yes,” very quietly replied Colin; “I have seen manymen'sfaces before.”
“What do you mean by that, eh?” cried Prince. “What does he mean?” addressing the company. “Come, come, young man, I 'll soon teach you how to know your betters.” And he strode towards Colin, with the apparent intention of practically illustrating the system he maintained. The latter instantly rose on his feet to meet him. All eyes were now turned towards these two, while the squabble with Hobson appeared for the time to be wholly forgotten.
“Beg my pardon, sir!” bellowed Prince.
“I shall beg no man's pardon whom I have neither injured nor insulted,” coolly answered Colin.
“I say, beg my pardon, sir!” repeated Prince. “Do you mean to take the law of me if I strike you? Say no, and I 'll knock you down.”
“No!” replied Colin, “I shall appeal to no law except that of my own force. If you strike me, I shall probably strike you again, old as you are.”
Smash went Mr. Prince's fist at Colin's face; but the latter parried the blow adroitly, and by a cool “counter” succeeded in pressing Mr. Prince's nose very much closer to his face than nature herself had intended it to be. Cries of “Shame!” again arose against Colin, and some attempts were made to seize and turn him out. These, however, were prevented by other portions of the company, who exclaimed loudly in favour of fair play, and against any interference. In the mean time Mr. Prince grew furious, and raised his stick to strike Colin with the determination of a butcher about to knock a bull on the head. The youth again parried the intended blow, and turned the weapon aside by receiving it in a slanting direction on his right arm. In order to close with him on the opposite side, Prince now jumped on the table; but this manouvre the young man avoided, and at the same instant a shower of broken glass fell upon him. Colin's enraged assailant's stick had gone through the lid of the “city cucumber-frame,” and some half dozen fractured squares attested his powers of mischief. A loud laugh echoed from every part of the room, which put Mr. Prince in a perfect whirlwind of passion. He plunged at his young opponent as though he meditated crushing him by the mere weight of his body; but as the coolness of the latter enabled him to take advantage of the slightest circumstance in his favour, he slipped aside at the critical moment, and his antagonist's head went with the power of a paviour's rammer against the wall. This terminated the fight. Mr. Prince lay on the floor, and groaned with pain and vexation, until he was picked up, and placed, almost as inanimate as a sack of potatoes, in his chair.
In an instant afterwards a gentleman, dressed in a dark-blue great-coat, and who, as Colin thought, was so very rich in that particular article of clothing as to lay himself under the necessity of having them numbered on the collar, made his appearance in the room; and at the instance of the landlord stepped forwards, and collared our hero, with the intention of conveying him to the station-house. Against this proceeding several friendly individuals protested, and joined vehemently in the opinions expressed by a stout young Welshman, who sat with a pipe in his mouth, that “Py cot! it was too bad to meddle with him instead of the old one.” This timely interference saved Colin for the present, and the policeman was obliged to retire.
Deeply fatigued as our hero was from previous want of rest, he early retired to his apartment, and soon fell into a slumber of many hours' duration. On rising in the morning, what was his astonishment to find a roll of paper like bank-notes lying near him, for the presence of which he knew not how to account?
After some hesitation he dressed, and rang for the servant.
“That roll of paper,” said he, when she appeared, “lay on my chair when I woke. It was not there last night, and it does not belong to me. How it came there I know not. The papers appear to be bank-notes. You had better take them to your master, and inquire whether any person in the house has lost them.”
The girl looked surprised; but took them up, and followed his advice.
Very soon after Colin heard a hue and cry raised below-stairs; and after a few minutes, a rush of people towards his room.
“Is this him?” demanded a man, with a belt round his body, and a glazed rim on the edge of his hat-crown.
168m
“That's him!” replied the servant-girl. “He gave them to me.”
“Come, young man, I want you,” said the policeman, seizing Colin roughly. “Come along with me.” And, in spite of all his entreaties and protestations, he was harried away. It appeared that Mr. Prince, who occupied a room on the same floor as his young antagonist, had identified the notes as his own, and declared that Colin must have robbed him.
After the lapse of a very short period, Colin stood before the grave magisterial authorities sitting at Guildhall, with Mr. Prince as his accuser. The charge having been heard, Colin replied to it with all the fearlessness, determination, and indignation, which the consciousness of innocence is sure to inspire. He related the occurrences of the previous evening, and concluded by expressing his firm belief that the money had been placed upon his chair in order to bring him into trouble. When searched, ten sovereigns and some silver had been found upon him. He was asked to account for the possession of so much money? To this question he flatly refused to answer, as well as those bearing upon his own character and employment; who he was; where he came from; and what place he had left when he arrived at the Yorkshire House.
In this dilemma an idea struck the subtle brain of Mr. Prince. He felt now perfectly secure of his victim. He owned the sovereigns also, and declared they were part of the money which had been abstracted during the night from his pocket-book. Here, however, he overstepped the mark. Colin instantly requested that the landlord of the inn might be called to witness that the money was in his possession at the time he arrived there, and many hours before it could even be pretended that he saw the individual who now stood forwards as his accuser. To this fact the landlord honestly bore testimony,—a piece of evidence which caused the face of Colin's accuser to assume the tint of a thundercloud with the sunshine on it—he looked black and white at the same time. Boots also declared that on going up-stairs to leave the gentlemen's boots at their doors, he saw some person come out of the young man's room, who certainly bore very little resemblance to the occupant of that room himself. After some further investigation Mr. Prince was accommodated with a reprimand from the bench, and the case was dismissed.