CHAPTER XII COME A PRISONER TO A FAMILIAR HOUSE, AND FIND STRANGE COMPANYWe had marched along for what seemed to me in my unhappy state an intolerable period, although I suppose actually the time was less than an hour, when we passed through the gates of a great house. When the porter came out of his lodge to let us through, and held his lantern against the iron-work, I observed that the device of the family wrought therein had a strangely familiar appearance. There was something about the porter too that awoke all sorts of remote recollections in my mind. As we went along the paths, even the situation of the trees that skirted them added to this impression. And when we came at last on to the lawn, and the house itself was clearly exposed in the moonlight, a cry of surprise almost escaped my lips, for the place had once been my own.It was a house in which a great part of my boyhood had been spent, and one that I had inherited at my father's death. It was but a little while that it remained in my hands, however, for one night, having lost much more than I cared about over a game of piquet, I think it was, in a desperate attempt to retrieve my fortunes, I staked this precious house upon the cards and lost it also, to a fellow as reckless as myself. It is impossible to say, therefore, what my emotions were at this my strange return to the home of my childhood, and the seat for many a generation of those whose name I bore. But I think that the first moment of recognition over, my tendency was towards laughter, for could anything have been more comical than that I should be brought in such a company, and on such a charge, to this of all the places in the world?Even the fellow who replied to the summons on the great hall-door, I remembered nearly as well as my own father, for I ought to tell you that servants, furniture and plate had passed over with the property. We were kept waiting without whilst the head-constable or chief officer among our captors went in to confer with the magistrate. In the end it was decided that we should be brought before the justice in person. He was said to have been a prime mover in the matter from the first, and was highly incensed against the unfortunate gypsies."We could not have come to a worse place," said my friend the flute-player, who stood beside me. "This is the house of Sir Thomas Wheatley, a hard man, and the biggest enemy to us poor folk of any one about. If his name and interest count for anything, we shall all of us infallibly be hanged."There were eight of us prisoners, and we were presently led into Sir Thomas's presence. When we were brought into the fine dining-room that I knew so well, every inch of which was so familiar to me, in which every object of vertu and article of furniture was a thing so well recollected that even in this predicament I could not refrain from regarding them with pride and affection, how can I indicate the flood of emotions that surged in my head? After all, a man in the depths of his abandonment is something more than a piece of wood.The justice was a common type of person enough; a man in middle life, who doubtless lived well and drank much, to judge by his purple cheeks and the somewhat puffed appearance of his body. He was a middling sort of man in every way; middling in his stature, in his mind and in his character, and more especially so, as we were to discover, in his thoughts and ideas. He affected the very nicest style of the squire in his dress, was highly formal in his deportment; and he sat playing cards with another fellow, apparently not so much for the amusement of himself or the entertainment of his friend, but rather as one who followed a dignified occupation in a dignified way. In his every word, gesture and motion he had an indescribable air of one sitting for his picture. He was in a towering rage, it is true, but it was a rage that appeared not to spring from the heat of his blood, for he was of that lethargic habit, which does not rise to heats of any sort. He was in a towering rage, because it was expected of one of his position and sentiments to be in one at such a time. Therefore, when we poor prisoners had been ranged along the wall, he put down his cards with great deliberation, slowly wheeled his chair round towards us, put together his thumbs, and looked us all over with a noble indignation."Soh!" says the justice, counting us carefully. "One, two, three—eight of you fairly taken; eight cut-throat rogues that most richly merit a hanging. And a hanging you shall get if there is any law left in the country. I will commit you at once, so help me I will! Fetch me pen and ink somebody, and I'll fill in the mittimus. I hope you are mightily ashamed of yourselves, you wicked, blackamoor villains.""Can you not see that they are, good Tommie?" says the man with whom he was playing at cards. "They are as ashamed as the devil was when he singed the hairs on his tail through overheating his parlour."The solemn justice was somewhat shocked at this piece of levity. He frowned at his companion, and coughed to cover his annoyance. The man who had spoken to this disconcerting tenor appeared rather a singular fellow. It was difficult to say who or what he might be. Of a rather massive frame, he had a countenance that recommended him to the curious. His features were large and bold, with an aquiline nose, a devil of a chin, and a short upper lip. His face shone with wassail and intemperate excess; there was a deal of sensuality in it, and more than a suggestion of coarseness, but it was for none of these things that it was remarkable. There was something besides that was baffling and indescribable to a degree, that drew one's attention to it again and again. It was a face of marvellous humorous animation, with the mockery of a devil and the candour of a saint. It was as prodigal of wit as it was of appetite; of majesty and mischief; of impudence and nobility. It was the face of a poet and a sot. Here, apparently, was a great heart, a humane spirit overlaid with flesh and infirmities. I think I was never so arrested by a countenance before, and certainly never more puzzled by one."Why do you propose to hang these gentlemen, Tommie?" says this whimsical fellow, with a mockery in his eyes and a curl of the lip that made the justice more uncomfortable than ever. "Have they picked a few hazel-twigs off your honour's footpaths?""Oh lord, Harry, I pray you be a little serious," says the justice. "These are gypsies and sheep-stealers; villains and rascals all.""They are beyond our prayers then," says Harry. "The law must take its course. Even if it could overlook the rape of the mutton, it could never condone the colour of their hair.Lex citius tolerare vult privatum damnum quam publicum malum. There you are as pat and pragmatical as Marcus Tullius Cicero. I tell you, Tommie, the world lost a great lawyer when I became a hackney writer."While this was going forward I had collected a few of my wits and had determined on the course to pursue. Unless by hook or by crook I could seize these precious moments prior to our committal to prison in which to put myself right or regain my freedom, all chance would be gone. Jack Tiverton was as dear to the law as a sheep-stealing gypsy, and once before a judge I must prove myself to be the one before I could prove I was not the other. Therefore I boldly seized the occasion."I beg your worship's pardon," says I, humbly; "but surely you will not commit a man without evidence? And there is not a tittle of evidence against me. I am neither a gypsy nor a sheep-stealer."I was several times interrupted in the course of this little address by one of our custodians, who continued to pluck at my sleeve, and enjoined me in audible whispers to hold my impertinent tongue. The justice was astounded by my audacity in daring to address him, and grew as red and pompous as a turkey-cock."How dare you, fellow, talk to me?" says he. "If I had the power I would commit you twice over for your insolent presumption, yes I would, so help me.""Yes, Tommie, you would, so help you," says his friend. "The spirit of Hector; ye speak like Priam's son. How dare the fellow ask to hear the evidence when you have had the magnanimity to commit him without it? Does he forget too that when innocence ceases to suffer it will no longer be the highest wisdom to be a rogue?"I was likely to profit nothing by these protestations of my innocence. This justice was evidently of the worst type of magistrate. He was too high and mighty to imperil his preconceived opinions by entering into the merits of the matter. He was too lofty to argue; too swollen with self-esteem to be affronted with facts. All persons who were brought before him must be guilty of some crime or other, otherwise they would not have come there; and he held that he had discharged his office with credit to himself and with profit to his country when he had impartially committed them to gaol. I soon came to the conclusion therefore that it would be impossible to prevail on a man of this mould with a simple relation of the case, or expect to meet with any suggestion of justice at his hands. I must try a more uncompromising method; and that an exceedingly bold one. I must prove to him beyond all doubt that I was far other than an ignorant gypsy, taking the risk of the revelation of my true identity, and any consequences that might ensue. For that matter if I must go to gaol, I might just as well go there in the role of the defaulting nobleman as in that of the larcenous vagabond.Disregarding all attempts on the part of the officers of the law to restrain me, I gazed about the spacious apartment with the air I might have worn had it still belonged to me, and says: "The old place is just as it was, I see. But, my good Sir Thomas, it grieves me to observe that you have put your fat aunt by the side of a Rubens; and that you have not scrupled to set a pompous citizen in a tie-wig, who, to judge by a certain consanguinity of expression and countenance, was the illustrous man your father and a cheesemonger at that, cheek by jowl with one of Vandyck's gentlemen."The justice was too incensed by this audacious speech to find words with which to reply to it. He spluttered and stuttered himself to the verge of an apoplexy. His friend took it far otherwise, however."A hit, a palpable hit," says he, laughing heartily. "I never heard a ripe thought better expressed. And, damn it, Tommie, you deserve it too. Your fat aunt, and your illustrious father the cheesemonger in a tie-wig, ha, ha, ha! Our friend of the black eye and the bloody countenance is an amateur of the arts, a lover of the beautiful.""Remove the prisoners out of my presence," says the justice in a fury."No, no, Tommie," says his companion, "you go too fast. Our friend is so monstrous good that I vow and I protest he must drink a glass of claret."Thereupon he countermanded the justice's order with a certain easy air of authority that was natural to him, which carried more weight than all the assumption of the magistrate. This strange fellow, still chuckling, poured out a glass of wine from one of several bottles that adorned the table, and leaving his seat carried it over to me, despite the fact that he hobbled very badly with the gout. When he stood up he was wonderfully imposing, being more than six feet tall, with an appearance of perfect breeding and majesty, for all his profligate looks and his free, laughing, jovial, devil-may-care manners. As he offered me the glass of claret with a charming grace, I looked down at the cords that so tightly secured my wrists with an air of humorous deprecation."Here, hold this, and keep your long nose clear of the rim," says he, putting the wine into the hands of the astonished head-constable. He then drew a knife from his pocket, and without more ado cut off my fetters. As he did so an honest indignation seemed to run in him suddenly."What a dirty way to treat a gentleman!" he said. "But you must excuse these low fellows; they are not to blame. They have no discretion but simply to follow their calling. They only know a hog by his bristles.""As a formercustos rotulorumfor the county of Wilts, none knows that better than I, sir. But I am vastly obliged to you, vastly obliged."Thereupon I drank the glass he so kindly handed to me."My dear sir," says he, with another great laugh, "that was not the work of a tyro. There was a neatness and a deftness in the manner of it that must have cost you at least ten thousand liftings of the elbow to acquire. You are as good to drink with as to talk to. I'faith you must do me the honour of sitting at table, for you are a three-bottle man, or I have never seen one in the world."You may be sure that I was nothing loth to accept an invitation that was as unexpected as it was desirable. The bewilderment of the justice, the constable and his men, and the poor gypsies too, was boundless as I briskly followed this extraordinary gentleman when he hobbled back to his chair, and promptly ensconced my disreputable self in one of the high-backed oaken seats of my forefathers, now so courteously placed at my disposal. While he proceeded to refill my glass and his own too, the scandalized magistrate very naturally expostulated in the most vehement manner."Why, Harry, God save us all!" he cried, "have you gone horn-mad? It is the most outrageous thing that ever was perpetrated. I vow and protest, Harry, that you are gone stark mad to bring a thief and a gypsy to my table to share your cups. It is unbearable, Harry, and 'fore God I will not have it. When this gets wind in the county they will deride me to death. Lord, I shall get struck off the justice-roll.""Your petitioner will ever pray," says Harry, while simultaneously we raised the distraught justice's good claret to our lips.Taking my cue from the familiarity of my entertainer, I threw aside restraint and adopted the attitude of a guest in lieu of the humbler one of a prisoner. Continuing to gaze about completely at my ease, says I, with that frank criticism that had been formerly so effective:"Things are no longer what they were. This place hath deteriorated since I was in it last. The city creeps into the ancestral hall; cheesemongery obtrudes itself. Where formerly there were Old Masters and French Tales, there are now Bibles and bad prints. But I rejoice to see that some few of my ancestors are still faithful to their old-time haunt. My parents, my grand parents, my uncles, my cousins and my aunts, Vandycks, Lelys, and Knellers, and the devil knows who, are still assembled here, even to the replica of Sir Peter's picture of that nobleman, most illustrious of his race, who made a Commentary on theAnalects of Confucius, the original of which I last saw in the shop of a Jew dealer the other day."My singular acquaintance with the contents of his dining-room, evidently far more extensive than his own, was not without its effect on the justice."What is the meaning of all this, Harry?" he asked of my benefactor. "What is the fel——what is the man talking of? What does the man mean by his ancestors? Who ever heard such impudence, such effrontery?""Well, Tommie," says his frank friend, "I'll lay my last guinea that he hath more right to call them his ancestors than their present owner.""A murrain take you," says the justice, more purple than before, for this was a stab in a tender place. "Will you never learn to control your infernally long tongue? And yet again must I ask you not to address me as Tommie when I am in the exercise of my high functions. Thomas if you like, or my full title would be still better on these occasions. The King would not have conferred it upon me, were it not designed for use, and that he desired I should profit by it."His friend nearly choked himself with laughter long before the justice had come through this solemn homily. Indeed he could not recover his breath until he had poured himself out another glass of wine, and had refilled mine."You will kill me of laughing, Tommie, one of these days," says he. "If it were not that your claret is as good as any for thirty miles round London, I would never come near you. How a man can keep such a good table and yet such a poor understanding is a thing I have never fathomed. But I protest you will certainly kill me if you do not amend your mind a little.""Harry," says the justice sternly. "I can never understand how it is that a grandson of the Earl of Denbigh, and a person of undeniable family and descent, should have such ungenteel manners.""Damn the Earl of Denbigh," says Harry, banging his fist on the table, "and you too, Tommie. You can no more keep that fly out of the ointment, than a pig can his snout out of the muck.""What, sir," says I eagerly, "are you also cursed with a grandfather?""Aye, to be sure I am," says he. "Though I'll thank no man that names him. If it were not for my grandfather I could go to the devil in my own way.""Why, my dear sir," says I, "never were there two such brothers in misfortune. Your case is the very counterpart of mine."
We had marched along for what seemed to me in my unhappy state an intolerable period, although I suppose actually the time was less than an hour, when we passed through the gates of a great house. When the porter came out of his lodge to let us through, and held his lantern against the iron-work, I observed that the device of the family wrought therein had a strangely familiar appearance. There was something about the porter too that awoke all sorts of remote recollections in my mind. As we went along the paths, even the situation of the trees that skirted them added to this impression. And when we came at last on to the lawn, and the house itself was clearly exposed in the moonlight, a cry of surprise almost escaped my lips, for the place had once been my own.
It was a house in which a great part of my boyhood had been spent, and one that I had inherited at my father's death. It was but a little while that it remained in my hands, however, for one night, having lost much more than I cared about over a game of piquet, I think it was, in a desperate attempt to retrieve my fortunes, I staked this precious house upon the cards and lost it also, to a fellow as reckless as myself. It is impossible to say, therefore, what my emotions were at this my strange return to the home of my childhood, and the seat for many a generation of those whose name I bore. But I think that the first moment of recognition over, my tendency was towards laughter, for could anything have been more comical than that I should be brought in such a company, and on such a charge, to this of all the places in the world?
Even the fellow who replied to the summons on the great hall-door, I remembered nearly as well as my own father, for I ought to tell you that servants, furniture and plate had passed over with the property. We were kept waiting without whilst the head-constable or chief officer among our captors went in to confer with the magistrate. In the end it was decided that we should be brought before the justice in person. He was said to have been a prime mover in the matter from the first, and was highly incensed against the unfortunate gypsies.
"We could not have come to a worse place," said my friend the flute-player, who stood beside me. "This is the house of Sir Thomas Wheatley, a hard man, and the biggest enemy to us poor folk of any one about. If his name and interest count for anything, we shall all of us infallibly be hanged."
There were eight of us prisoners, and we were presently led into Sir Thomas's presence. When we were brought into the fine dining-room that I knew so well, every inch of which was so familiar to me, in which every object of vertu and article of furniture was a thing so well recollected that even in this predicament I could not refrain from regarding them with pride and affection, how can I indicate the flood of emotions that surged in my head? After all, a man in the depths of his abandonment is something more than a piece of wood.
The justice was a common type of person enough; a man in middle life, who doubtless lived well and drank much, to judge by his purple cheeks and the somewhat puffed appearance of his body. He was a middling sort of man in every way; middling in his stature, in his mind and in his character, and more especially so, as we were to discover, in his thoughts and ideas. He affected the very nicest style of the squire in his dress, was highly formal in his deportment; and he sat playing cards with another fellow, apparently not so much for the amusement of himself or the entertainment of his friend, but rather as one who followed a dignified occupation in a dignified way. In his every word, gesture and motion he had an indescribable air of one sitting for his picture. He was in a towering rage, it is true, but it was a rage that appeared not to spring from the heat of his blood, for he was of that lethargic habit, which does not rise to heats of any sort. He was in a towering rage, because it was expected of one of his position and sentiments to be in one at such a time. Therefore, when we poor prisoners had been ranged along the wall, he put down his cards with great deliberation, slowly wheeled his chair round towards us, put together his thumbs, and looked us all over with a noble indignation.
"Soh!" says the justice, counting us carefully. "One, two, three—eight of you fairly taken; eight cut-throat rogues that most richly merit a hanging. And a hanging you shall get if there is any law left in the country. I will commit you at once, so help me I will! Fetch me pen and ink somebody, and I'll fill in the mittimus. I hope you are mightily ashamed of yourselves, you wicked, blackamoor villains."
"Can you not see that they are, good Tommie?" says the man with whom he was playing at cards. "They are as ashamed as the devil was when he singed the hairs on his tail through overheating his parlour."
The solemn justice was somewhat shocked at this piece of levity. He frowned at his companion, and coughed to cover his annoyance. The man who had spoken to this disconcerting tenor appeared rather a singular fellow. It was difficult to say who or what he might be. Of a rather massive frame, he had a countenance that recommended him to the curious. His features were large and bold, with an aquiline nose, a devil of a chin, and a short upper lip. His face shone with wassail and intemperate excess; there was a deal of sensuality in it, and more than a suggestion of coarseness, but it was for none of these things that it was remarkable. There was something besides that was baffling and indescribable to a degree, that drew one's attention to it again and again. It was a face of marvellous humorous animation, with the mockery of a devil and the candour of a saint. It was as prodigal of wit as it was of appetite; of majesty and mischief; of impudence and nobility. It was the face of a poet and a sot. Here, apparently, was a great heart, a humane spirit overlaid with flesh and infirmities. I think I was never so arrested by a countenance before, and certainly never more puzzled by one.
"Why do you propose to hang these gentlemen, Tommie?" says this whimsical fellow, with a mockery in his eyes and a curl of the lip that made the justice more uncomfortable than ever. "Have they picked a few hazel-twigs off your honour's footpaths?"
"Oh lord, Harry, I pray you be a little serious," says the justice. "These are gypsies and sheep-stealers; villains and rascals all."
"They are beyond our prayers then," says Harry. "The law must take its course. Even if it could overlook the rape of the mutton, it could never condone the colour of their hair.Lex citius tolerare vult privatum damnum quam publicum malum. There you are as pat and pragmatical as Marcus Tullius Cicero. I tell you, Tommie, the world lost a great lawyer when I became a hackney writer."
While this was going forward I had collected a few of my wits and had determined on the course to pursue. Unless by hook or by crook I could seize these precious moments prior to our committal to prison in which to put myself right or regain my freedom, all chance would be gone. Jack Tiverton was as dear to the law as a sheep-stealing gypsy, and once before a judge I must prove myself to be the one before I could prove I was not the other. Therefore I boldly seized the occasion.
"I beg your worship's pardon," says I, humbly; "but surely you will not commit a man without evidence? And there is not a tittle of evidence against me. I am neither a gypsy nor a sheep-stealer."
I was several times interrupted in the course of this little address by one of our custodians, who continued to pluck at my sleeve, and enjoined me in audible whispers to hold my impertinent tongue. The justice was astounded by my audacity in daring to address him, and grew as red and pompous as a turkey-cock.
"How dare you, fellow, talk to me?" says he. "If I had the power I would commit you twice over for your insolent presumption, yes I would, so help me."
"Yes, Tommie, you would, so help you," says his friend. "The spirit of Hector; ye speak like Priam's son. How dare the fellow ask to hear the evidence when you have had the magnanimity to commit him without it? Does he forget too that when innocence ceases to suffer it will no longer be the highest wisdom to be a rogue?"
I was likely to profit nothing by these protestations of my innocence. This justice was evidently of the worst type of magistrate. He was too high and mighty to imperil his preconceived opinions by entering into the merits of the matter. He was too lofty to argue; too swollen with self-esteem to be affronted with facts. All persons who were brought before him must be guilty of some crime or other, otherwise they would not have come there; and he held that he had discharged his office with credit to himself and with profit to his country when he had impartially committed them to gaol. I soon came to the conclusion therefore that it would be impossible to prevail on a man of this mould with a simple relation of the case, or expect to meet with any suggestion of justice at his hands. I must try a more uncompromising method; and that an exceedingly bold one. I must prove to him beyond all doubt that I was far other than an ignorant gypsy, taking the risk of the revelation of my true identity, and any consequences that might ensue. For that matter if I must go to gaol, I might just as well go there in the role of the defaulting nobleman as in that of the larcenous vagabond.
Disregarding all attempts on the part of the officers of the law to restrain me, I gazed about the spacious apartment with the air I might have worn had it still belonged to me, and says: "The old place is just as it was, I see. But, my good Sir Thomas, it grieves me to observe that you have put your fat aunt by the side of a Rubens; and that you have not scrupled to set a pompous citizen in a tie-wig, who, to judge by a certain consanguinity of expression and countenance, was the illustrous man your father and a cheesemonger at that, cheek by jowl with one of Vandyck's gentlemen."
The justice was too incensed by this audacious speech to find words with which to reply to it. He spluttered and stuttered himself to the verge of an apoplexy. His friend took it far otherwise, however.
"A hit, a palpable hit," says he, laughing heartily. "I never heard a ripe thought better expressed. And, damn it, Tommie, you deserve it too. Your fat aunt, and your illustrious father the cheesemonger in a tie-wig, ha, ha, ha! Our friend of the black eye and the bloody countenance is an amateur of the arts, a lover of the beautiful."
"Remove the prisoners out of my presence," says the justice in a fury.
"No, no, Tommie," says his companion, "you go too fast. Our friend is so monstrous good that I vow and I protest he must drink a glass of claret."
Thereupon he countermanded the justice's order with a certain easy air of authority that was natural to him, which carried more weight than all the assumption of the magistrate. This strange fellow, still chuckling, poured out a glass of wine from one of several bottles that adorned the table, and leaving his seat carried it over to me, despite the fact that he hobbled very badly with the gout. When he stood up he was wonderfully imposing, being more than six feet tall, with an appearance of perfect breeding and majesty, for all his profligate looks and his free, laughing, jovial, devil-may-care manners. As he offered me the glass of claret with a charming grace, I looked down at the cords that so tightly secured my wrists with an air of humorous deprecation.
"Here, hold this, and keep your long nose clear of the rim," says he, putting the wine into the hands of the astonished head-constable. He then drew a knife from his pocket, and without more ado cut off my fetters. As he did so an honest indignation seemed to run in him suddenly.
"What a dirty way to treat a gentleman!" he said. "But you must excuse these low fellows; they are not to blame. They have no discretion but simply to follow their calling. They only know a hog by his bristles."
"As a formercustos rotulorumfor the county of Wilts, none knows that better than I, sir. But I am vastly obliged to you, vastly obliged."
Thereupon I drank the glass he so kindly handed to me.
"My dear sir," says he, with another great laugh, "that was not the work of a tyro. There was a neatness and a deftness in the manner of it that must have cost you at least ten thousand liftings of the elbow to acquire. You are as good to drink with as to talk to. I'faith you must do me the honour of sitting at table, for you are a three-bottle man, or I have never seen one in the world."
You may be sure that I was nothing loth to accept an invitation that was as unexpected as it was desirable. The bewilderment of the justice, the constable and his men, and the poor gypsies too, was boundless as I briskly followed this extraordinary gentleman when he hobbled back to his chair, and promptly ensconced my disreputable self in one of the high-backed oaken seats of my forefathers, now so courteously placed at my disposal. While he proceeded to refill my glass and his own too, the scandalized magistrate very naturally expostulated in the most vehement manner.
"Why, Harry, God save us all!" he cried, "have you gone horn-mad? It is the most outrageous thing that ever was perpetrated. I vow and protest, Harry, that you are gone stark mad to bring a thief and a gypsy to my table to share your cups. It is unbearable, Harry, and 'fore God I will not have it. When this gets wind in the county they will deride me to death. Lord, I shall get struck off the justice-roll."
"Your petitioner will ever pray," says Harry, while simultaneously we raised the distraught justice's good claret to our lips.
Taking my cue from the familiarity of my entertainer, I threw aside restraint and adopted the attitude of a guest in lieu of the humbler one of a prisoner. Continuing to gaze about completely at my ease, says I, with that frank criticism that had been formerly so effective:
"Things are no longer what they were. This place hath deteriorated since I was in it last. The city creeps into the ancestral hall; cheesemongery obtrudes itself. Where formerly there were Old Masters and French Tales, there are now Bibles and bad prints. But I rejoice to see that some few of my ancestors are still faithful to their old-time haunt. My parents, my grand parents, my uncles, my cousins and my aunts, Vandycks, Lelys, and Knellers, and the devil knows who, are still assembled here, even to the replica of Sir Peter's picture of that nobleman, most illustrious of his race, who made a Commentary on theAnalects of Confucius, the original of which I last saw in the shop of a Jew dealer the other day."
My singular acquaintance with the contents of his dining-room, evidently far more extensive than his own, was not without its effect on the justice.
"What is the meaning of all this, Harry?" he asked of my benefactor. "What is the fel——what is the man talking of? What does the man mean by his ancestors? Who ever heard such impudence, such effrontery?"
"Well, Tommie," says his frank friend, "I'll lay my last guinea that he hath more right to call them his ancestors than their present owner."
"A murrain take you," says the justice, more purple than before, for this was a stab in a tender place. "Will you never learn to control your infernally long tongue? And yet again must I ask you not to address me as Tommie when I am in the exercise of my high functions. Thomas if you like, or my full title would be still better on these occasions. The King would not have conferred it upon me, were it not designed for use, and that he desired I should profit by it."
His friend nearly choked himself with laughter long before the justice had come through this solemn homily. Indeed he could not recover his breath until he had poured himself out another glass of wine, and had refilled mine.
"You will kill me of laughing, Tommie, one of these days," says he. "If it were not that your claret is as good as any for thirty miles round London, I would never come near you. How a man can keep such a good table and yet such a poor understanding is a thing I have never fathomed. But I protest you will certainly kill me if you do not amend your mind a little."
"Harry," says the justice sternly. "I can never understand how it is that a grandson of the Earl of Denbigh, and a person of undeniable family and descent, should have such ungenteel manners."
"Damn the Earl of Denbigh," says Harry, banging his fist on the table, "and you too, Tommie. You can no more keep that fly out of the ointment, than a pig can his snout out of the muck."
"What, sir," says I eagerly, "are you also cursed with a grandfather?"
"Aye, to be sure I am," says he. "Though I'll thank no man that names him. If it were not for my grandfather I could go to the devil in my own way."
"Why, my dear sir," says I, "never were there two such brothers in misfortune. Your case is the very counterpart of mine."