“I am not sure for the moment,” replied Jem Bottles ruefully. “I must bide till it stops spinning.”
“Truth,” cried I. “That would be a light blow to trouble the great O’Ruddy. Come now; let us have the pots filled again, and O’Ruddy shall tell us more of his adventures. What say you, lads?”
The yokels had now recovered some of their senses, and they greeted my plan with hoarse mutterings of hasty and submissive assent.
“Begin,” said I sternly to the highwayman. He stood miserably on one foot. He looked at the floor; he looked at the wall; from time to time he gave me a sheep’s glance. “Begin,” said I again. Paddy was wild with glee. “Begin,” said I for the third time and very harshly.
“I—” gulped out the wretched man, but he could get no further.
“I am seeing I must help you,” said I. “Come now, when did you learn the art of sticadoro proderodo sliceriscum fencing?”
Bottles rolled the eyes of despair at me, but I took him angrily by the shoulder. “Come now; when did you learn the art of sticadoro proderodo sliceriscum fencing?”
Jem Bottles staggered, but at last he choked out: “My mother taught me.” Here Paddy retired from the room, doubled in a strong but soundless convulsion.
“Good,” said I. “Your mother taught you. We are making progress any how. Your mother taught you. And now tell me this: When you slew Cormac of the Cliffs, what passado did you use? Don’t be stuttering. Come now; quick with you; what passado did you use? What passado?”
With a heroism born of a conviction that in any event he was a lost man, Jem Bottles answered: “A blue one.”
“Good,” I cried cheerfully. “‘A blue one’! We are coming on fine. He killed Cormac with a blue passado. And now I would be asking you—”
“Master,” interrupted the highwayman with sudden resolution. “I will say no more. I have done. You may kill me an it pleases you.”
Now I saw that enough was enough. I burst into laughter and clapped him merrily on the shoulder. “Be cheery, O’Ruddy,” I cried. “Sure an Irishman like you ought to be able to look a joke in the face.” He gave over his sulks directly, and I made him buy another pint each for the yokels. “’Twas dry work listening to you and your exploits, O’Ruddy,” said I.
Later I went to my chamber, attended by my followers, having ordered roast fowls and wine to be served as soon as possible. Paddy and Jem Bottles sat on stools one at each side of the fireplace, and I occupied a chair between them.
Looking at my two faithful henchmen, I was suddenly struck by the thought that they were not very brisk servants for a gentleman to take to fashionable London. I had taken Paddy out of his finery and dressed him in a suit of decent brown; but his hair was still unbarbered, and I saw that unless I had a care his appearance would greatly surprise and please London. I resolved to have him shorn at the first large town.
As for Jem Bottles, his clothes were well enough, and indeed he was passable in most ways unless it was his habit, when hearing a sudden noise, to take a swift dark look to the right and to the left. Then, further, people might shrewdly note his way of always sitting with his back to the wall and his face to the door. However, I had no doubt of my ability to cure him of these tricks as soon as he was far enough journeyed from the scenes of his earlier activity.
But the idea I entertained at this moment was more to train them to be fine grand servants, such as I had seen waiting on big people in Bath. They were both willing enough, but they had no style to them. I decided to begin at once and see what I could teach them.
“Paddy,” said I, taking off my sword and holding it out to him. “My sword!”
Paddy looked at it. “It is, sir,” he answered respectfully.
“Bad scran to you, Paddy!” I cried angrily. “I am teaching you your duties. Take the sword! In both hands, mind you! Now march over and lay it very tenderly on the stand at the head of the bed. There now!”
I now turned my attention to Jem Bottles.
“Bottles,” said I peremptorily, “my coat and waistcoat.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Bottles quickly, profiting by Paddy’s lesson.
“There now,” said I, as Bottles laid the coat and waistcoat on a dresser. “’Tis a good beginning. When supper comes I shall teach you other duties.”
The supper came in due course, and after the inn’s man had gone I bid Jem and Paddy stand one on either side of my chair and a little way back. “Now,” said I, “stand square on your feet, and hold your heads away high, and stick your elbows out a little, and try to look as if you don’t know enough to tell fire from water. Jem Bottles has it. That’s it! Bedad! look at the ignorance on him! He’s the man for you, Paddy! Wake up now, and look stupid. Am I not telling you?”
“Begor!” said Paddy dejectedly, “I feel like the greatest omadhaun in all the west country, and if that is not being stupid enough for your honour I can do no better.”
“Shame to you, Paddy, to let an Englishman beat you so easily,” said I. “Take that grin off your face, you scoundrel! Now,” I added, “we are ready to begin. Wait, now. You must each have something to hold in your fist. Let me be thinking. There’s only one plate and little of anything else. Ah, I have it! A bottle! Paddy, you shall hold one of the bottles. Put your right hand underneath it, and with your left hand hold it by the neck. But keep your elbows out. Jem, what the devil am I to give you to hold? Ah, I have it! Another bottle! Hold it the same as Paddy. Now! Stand square on your feet, and hold your heads away high, and stick your elbows out a little, and look stupid. I am going to eat my supper.”
I finished my first and second bottles with the silence only broken by the sound of my knife-play and an occasional restless creaking of boots as one of my men slyly shifted his position. Wishing to call for my third bottle, I turned and caught them exchanging a glance of sympathetic bewilderment. As my eye flashed upon them, they stiffened up like grenadier recruits.
But I was not for being too hard on them at first. “’Tis enough for one lesson,” said I. “Put the bottles by me and take your ease.”
With evident feelings of relief they slunk back to the stools by the fire, where they sat recovering their spirits.
After my supper I sat in the chair toasting my shins and lazily listening to my lads finishing the fowls. They seemed much more like themselves, sitting there grinding away at the bones and puffing with joy. In the red firelight it was such a scene of happiness that I misdoubted for a moment the wisdom of my plan to make them into fine grand numskulls.
I could see that all men were not fitted for the work. It needed a beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity, a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the great mass of the people, the frivolity of the gentry, the arrogance and wickedness of the court, one ceases to wonder that many men of taste took to the highway as a means of recreation and livelihood. And there I had been attempting to turn my two frank rascals into the kind of sheep-headed rubbish whom you could knock down a great staircase, and for a guinea they would say no more. Unless I was the kicker, I think Paddy would have returned up the staircase after his assailant. Jem Bottles probably would have gone away nursing his wrath and his injury, and planning to waylay the kicker on a convenient night. But neither would have taken a guinea and said no more. Each of these simple-hearted reprobates was too spirited to take a guinea for a kick down a staircase.
Any how I had a mind that I could be a gentleman true enough without the help of Jem and Paddy making fools of themselves. I would worry them no more.
As I was musing thus my eyes closed from a sense of contented weariness, but I was aroused a moment later by hearing Paddy address Jem Bottles in a low voice. “’Tis you who are the cool one, Jem!” said he with admiration, “trying to make them think you were him!” Here I was evidently indicated by a
sideways bob of the head. “Have you not been seeing the fine ways of him? Sure, be looking at his stride and his habit of slatting people over the head, and his grand manners with his food. You are looking more like a candlestick than you are looking like him. I wonder at you.”
“But I befooled them,” said Bottles proudly. “I befooled them well. It was Mr. O’Ruddy here, and Mr. O’Ruddy there, and the handsome wench she gave me many a glance of her eye, she did.”
“Sorrow the day for her, then,” responded Paddy, “and if you would be cozening the girls in the name of him there, he will be cozening you, and I never doubt it.”
“’Twas only a trick to make the time go easy, it was,” said Bottles gloomily. “If you remember, Master Paddy, I have spent the most of my new service waiting under oak-trees; and I will not be saying that it rained always, but oft-times it did rain most accursedly.”
CHAPTER XVII
We rode on at daybreak. At the first large village I bid a little man cut Paddy’s hair, and although Paddy was all for killing the little man, and the little man twice ran away, the work was eventually done, for I stood over Paddy and threatened him. Afterward the little boys were not so anxious to hoot us through the streets, calling us Africans. For it must be recalled that at this time there was great curiosity in the provinces over the Africans, because it was known that in London people of fashion often had African servants; and although London cared nothing for the provinces, and the provinces cared nothing for London, still the rumour of the strange man interested the country clodhopper so greatly that he called Paddy an African on principle, in order that he might blow to his neighbours that he had seen the fascinating biped. There was no general understanding that the African was a man of black skin; it was only understood that he was a great marvel. Hence the urchins in these far-away villages often ran at the heels of Paddy’s horse, yelling.
In time the traffic on the highway became greatly thickened, and several times we thought we were entering London because of the large size and splendour of the towns to which we came. Paddy began to fear the people had been deceiving us as to the road, and that we had missed London entirely. But finally we came to a river with hundreds of boats upon it, and there was a magnificent bridge, and on the other bank was a roaring city, and through the fog the rain came down thick as the tears of the angels. “That’s London,” said I.
We rode out upon the bridge, all much interested, but somewhat fearful, for the noise of the city was terrible. But if it was terrible as we approached it, I hesitate to say what it was to us when we were once fairly in it. “Keep close to me,” I yelled to Paddy and Jem, and they were not unwilling. And so we rode into this pandemonium, not having the least idea where we were going.
As we progressed I soon saw what occasioned the major part of the noise. Many heavy carts thundered slowly through the narrow, echoing streets, bumping their way uproariously over a miserable pavement. Added to this, of course, were the shrill or hoarse shouts of the street vendors and the apprentices at the shop-doors. To the sky arose an odour almost insupportable, for it was new to us all.
The eaves of the houses streamed with so much water that the sidewalks were practically untenable, although here and there a hardy wayfarer strode on regardless of a drenched cloak, probably being too proud to take to the street. Once our travel was entirely blocked by a fight. A butcher in a bloody apron had dashed out of his shop and attacked the driver of a brewer’s sledge. A crowd gathered miraculously and cheered on this spectacle; women appeared at all the windows; urchins hooted; mongrel dogs barked. When the butcher had been worsted and chased back into his shop by the maddened brewer we were allowed to pursue our journey.
I must remark that neither of these men used aught but his hands. Mostly their fists were doubled, and they dealt each other sounding, swinging blows; but there was some hair-pulling, and when the brewer had the butcher down I believe the butcher tried to bite his opponent’s ear. However they were rather high-class for their condition. I found out later that at this time in the darker parts of London the knife was a favourite weapon of the English and was as rampant as ever it is in the black alleys of an Italian city. It was no good news for me, for the Irish had long been devoted to the cudgel.
When I wish for information I always prefer making the request to a gentleman. To have speech of a boor is well enough if he would not first study you over to find, if he can, why you want the information, and, after a prolonged pause, tell you wrong entirely. I perceived a young gentleman standing in under a porch and ogling a window on the opposite side of the way. “Sir,” said I, halting my horse close to him, “would you be so kind as to point to a stranger the way to a good inn?” He looked me full in the face, spat meaningly in the gutter, and, turning on his heel, walked away. And I will give oath he was not more than sixteen years old.
I sat stiff in the saddle; I felt my face going hot and cold. This new-feathered bird with a toy sword! But to save me, as it happened, from a preposterous quarrel with this infant, another man came along the sidewalk. He was an older man, with a grave mouth and a clean-cut jowl. I resolved to hail him. “And now my man,” said I under my breath, “if you are as bad as the other, by the mass, I’ll have a turnover here with you, London or no London.”
Then I addressed him. “Sir—” I began. But here a cart roared on my other side, and I sat with my mouth open, looking at him. He smiled a little, but waited courteously for the hideous din to cease. “Sir,” I was enabled to say at last, “would you be so kind as to point to a stranger the way to a good inn?” He scanned me quietly, in order, no doubt, to gain an idea what kind of inn would suit my condition. “Sir,” he answered, coming into the gutter and pointing, “’tis this way to Bishopsgate Street, and there you will see the sign of the ‘Pig and Turnip,’ where there is most pleasurable accommodation for man and beast, and an agreeable host.” He was a shop-keeper of the city of London, of the calm, steady breed that has made successive kings either love them or fearingly hate them, — the bone and the sinew of the great town.
I thanked him heartily, and we went on to the “Pig and Turnip.” As we clattered into the inn yard it was full of people mounting and dismounting, but there seemed a thousand stable-boys. A dozen flung themselves at my horse’s head. They quite lifted me out of the saddle in their great care that I should be put to no trouble. At the door of the inn a smirking landlord met me, bowing his head on the floor at every backward pace, and humbly beseeching me to tell how he could best serve me. I told him, and at once there was a most pretentious hubbub. Six or eight servants began to run hither and yon. I was delighted with my reception, but several days later I discovered they had mistaken me for a nobleman of Italy or France, and I was expected to pay extravagantly for graceful empty attentions rather than for sound food and warm beds.
This inn was so grand that I saw it would no longer do for Paddy and Jem to be sleeping in front of my fire like big dogs, so I nodded assent when the landlord asked if he should provide lodgings for my two servants. He packed them off somewhere, and I was left lonely in a great chamber. I had some fears having Paddy long out of my sight, but I assured myself that London had such terrors for him he would not dare any Irish mischief. I could trust Jem Bottles to be discreet, for he had learned discretion in a notable school.
Toward the close of the afternoon, the rain ceased, and, attiring myself for the street and going to the landlord, I desired him to tell me what interesting or amusing walk could now conveniently be taken by a gentleman who was a stranger to the sights of London. The man wagged his head in disapproval.
“‘Twill be dark presently, sir,” he answered, “and I would be an ill host if I did not dissuade a perfect stranger from venturing abroad in the streets of London of a night-time.”
“And is it as bad as that?” I cried, surprised.
“For strangers, yes,” said he. “For they be for ever wandering, and will not keep to the three or four streets which be as safe as the Kin
g’s palace. But if you wish, sir, I will provide one man with a lantern and staff to go before you, and another man with lantern and staff to follow. Then, with two more stout lads and your own servants, I would venture—”
“No, no!” I cried, “I will not head an army on a night march when I intended merely an evening stroll. But how, pray you, am I to be entertained otherwise than by going forth?”
The innkeeper smiled with something like pity.
“Sir, every night there meets here such a company of gay gentlemen, wits and poets, as would dazzle the world did it but hear one half of what they say over their pipes and their punch. I serve the distinguished company myself, for I dare trust nobody’s care in a matter so important to my house; and I assure you, sir, I have at times been so doubled with mirth there was no life in me. Why, sir, Mr. Fullbil himself comes here at times!”
“Does he, indeed?” I cried, although I never had heard of the illustrious man.
“Indeed and he does, sir,” answered the innkeeper, pleased at my quick appreciation of this matter. “And then there is goings on, I warrant me. Mr. Bobbs and the other gentlemen will be in spirits.”
“I never doubt you,” said I. “But is it possible for a private gentleman of no wit to gain admittance to this distinguished company?”
“Doth require a little managing, sir,” said he, full of meaning.
“Pray you manage it then,” said I, “for I have nought to do in London for at least two days, and I would be seeing these famous men with whose names my country rings.”
Early in the evening the innkeeper came to me, much pleased. “Sir, the gentlemen bid me bring you their compliments, and I am to say they would be happy to have a pleasure in the honour of your presence. Mr. Fullbil himself is in the chair to-night. You are very fortunate, sir.”
“I am,” said I. “Lead away, and let us hope to find the great Fullbil in high feather.”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 74
