Mr. Golightly, Chapter IX

Note: original spelling has been maintained.

From the series: MR. GOLIGHTLY;

OR,

MEMOIRS OF A CAMBRIDGE FRESHMAN.

“ I’LL just leave ye to answer it as soon a as ye conveniently can,” and an intimation that Mr. Chutney would be at home all the morning, were the words of adieu with which The O’Higgins parted from Mr. Samuel Adolphus Golightly on the eventful morning when he placed the “message” of his injured friend in our hero’s astonished hand.

Mr. Samuel’s amazement at first, when the blustering descendant of the Kings of Erin’s green isle burst in upon him and his mutton chop, had been very great. It became still greater when The O’Higgins announced his style and title, and placed the note of a gentleman to whom he was a stranger in his hand. It culminated with The O’H.’s abrupt and most unexpected departure.

“Good gr-r-acious! what can all this be about?” exclaimed our hero, as he rushed excitedly to his window, and watched the retreating figure of Mr. O’Higgins pacing, with martial stride, across the quad.

“Wh-wh-what does it all m-mean, I wonder?"

But he did not give himself up long to ignorant wondering.

It has been said, by many wise and observing writers, that if a man receives a letter, among a number of letters, which he well knows to be an unpleasant letter, he opens all his other packets first, and makes himself master of their contents. Then he chips his egg, and swallows a mouthful of toast or of tea, eyeing all the while the unpleasant, epistle, and at last reluctantly opens that also.

We claim for our hero the merit of a different course of conduct; at all events, in the present instance, he neglected the chop now cooling in its own fat on his plate—he did not even stop to sip his tea; but the bearer of the missive was no sooner out of sight than he broke the seal, and satisfied himself as to the nature of its contents. He read, with rapidly varying expressions of feature, thus:—

“Sir —As you have been pleased to make both yourself—which is of the slightest possible consequence—and Miss Bellair— which is of some importance—ridiculous, by presuming to think yourself a pretender, to her good opinion, and as I am further advised you have made certain remarks concerning me of a disparaging character, though you are a Freshman, I suppose you know well enough the satisfaction one gentleman demands of another under such circumstances as those stated above. Any gentleman you may appoint to arrange preliminaries will find me, and the friend who carries this message, in readiness to receive him at any time that is convenient to you.—Yours indignantly,

“To S. A. Golightly, Esq.” It instantly struck Mr. Golightly, with very unpleasant force, that the “satisfaction one gentleman demands of another” meant fighting, either with swords, pistols, or larger weapons, as might be agreed upon; and that the “preliminaries” mentioned by Mr. Chutney were the preparations necessary for the hostile meeting. If these were among the manners and customs of a University, Mr. Golightly, who was pre-eminently a man of peace—for though his grandfather had borne arms, it was only in the militia—began to wish he had never come there. He recollected, on the spur of the moment, that he had never drawn a sword from its sheath — for his late grandfather’s weapons were kept hanging up at the Hall, where they were looked up to with due veneration—or snapped a pistol in his life. Here was a pretty predicament to be placed in! And what aggravated the matter, our hero not unnaturally felt that he was not in the least at fault, being the most amiable of mortals, and ready—aye ready—at the call of duty, to resign all claim to the hand of Miss Bellair, or any other young lady to whom any other gentleman reasonably considered that he had a prior right. Glancing again at Mr. Chutney’s letter, he noticed the day of the week at its head. “Friday” stared him ominously in the face.

“Y-yesterday was Thursday, and—and it—it is Friday,” he said to himself; and his family prepossession against that ill-fated day recurred to his memory with a vividness increased by present circumstances.

“I’ll—I’ll go and talk to George about it, and show him the letter,” continued our hero, still talking to himself.

Snatching up his cap, he put it on his head, and hurried down the stairs; but his cousin George’s door was “sported” very determinedly against assault, and his knocks and gentle kicks remained unanswered.

He stood in the doorway looking on the quad, when Mrs. Cribb came up, with a can in one hand and a pail in the other. Our hero was first made aware of her presence by hearing her voice—

“Beg pardon, sir,” said his bedmaker, “but if the tooters should see you in your dressin’ gownd a walkin’ about of a morning they might objeck, which has been the case before.”

“Oh!” said our hero, for the first time thinking of his dress—such was his excitement of mind on the present occasion, though ordinarily the most particular of men. “I have—that is, I want to see my cousin.”

“Meaning, Mr. Golightly, my staircase ground floor,” said Mrs. Cribb. “He’s been gone out half an hour ago. I seed him myself, when I was a pumpin’ a can of water. Sneek ought to have pumped an hour and a half before, agoin’ across the quad in his boots and ridin’ whip, so I think p’r’aps he’s gone for a ride or something, sir.”

This was bad news, indeed; and Mr. Samuel’s face fell accordingly. Just as George could have been of immense service to him, to find him gone—perhaps for the day! What was he to do? “Be cool”— that was clear, but not easy. Then, again, the honour of the family might or might not be at stake, according to the way in which you regarded duelling. But his aunt Dorothea had cautioned him to “remember that he was a Golightly;” and if the honour of the family was lost through him, what would his aunt say? Write to Oakinghamcum-Pokeington? But his mamma would die of anxiety and alarm; and he never could trust his father to keep the affair a secret, for he knew all the family would insist on reading the letter, or go into instant hysterics if they did not. He was in a dilemma—a peculiar dilemma, of a circular sort, with horns all round. Two would have been nothing to deal with. Turning these things over in his mind, he retraced his steps to his own rooms.

“You’ve gone and let this nice chop get cold, sir. Shall I put it before the fire for a few minutes? It would soon get hot again, with a plate over it.”

But her master had not the slightest appetite for chops, hot or cold; and told Mrs. Cribb that such was the case.

“ Dear me, now,” said that worthy woman, in a tone of the deepest concern, as she cleared away his breakfast things, and gleefully put the chop into her basket, with the breads and butters and other perquisites it contained.

Mr. Golightly retired into the solitude of the little room dignified by the name of study, and there thought He had not been so engaged more than a few minutes, when he thought he heard a low and hesitating single knock at the door of his keeping room. He advanced as far as his study door to satisfy himself of the truth of his surmise. The knock was repeated in the same timid fashion. He walked towards the door, and happening at the same time, as he passed his windows, to cast his eyes across the quad, he saw something more than a dozen seedy individuals, of different ages and degrees of seediness, coming towards the block of buildings in which he resided. It struck him as an unusual phenomenon; but what with being near-sighted and much preoccupied in mind with the thought of Mr. Chutney’s letter, Mr. Golightly failed to observe that each of these persons carried in his hands a hat, and in some cases an umbrella. By this time, the knock at his door was repeated in a louder and more determined tone, and he opened it to an individual—who held in one hand the bill describing, in most effective type, the loss of a hat and an umbrella sustained by a gentleman of St. Mary’s College, and in the other hand a battered beaver and a tattered parapluie.

Placing the bill in our hero’s hand, the bearer took off his own hat, and, giving his curling forelock a respectful pull, said—

“ Mister G’lightly—d’rected here by the porter at the gate—said as you was the gen’elman as had lost a Nat and a Numbereller. Beggin’ pardon, sir—is these ’um? They was found—upon my Dick, they was— a floatin’ down the river agen Maudlin” (Magdalen) “Bridge. Out in the middle they was, upon my Dick; and great trouble I had a-reskyin’ of ’um.”

Mr. Golightly at once admitted that he was the gentleman who had lost a hat and an umbrella, and the bill produced referred to his property; but he indignantly repudiated any connection with the articles produced. They were both in the last stage of decay, and must have been thrown into the river as the best means of getting rid of them; but as they were quite dry now, and showed no sign of any recent immersion, our hero slightly doubted the assertion of the finder, and felt disinclined even to believe him or “his Dick”—which was probably his way of invoking Saint Richard in short, an oath he made use of with great solemnity of manner several times over.

This Bargee—as Mr. Pokyr afterwards styled him—had hardly got to the end of his narrative of the rescue from a watery grave of the hat and umbrella he carried, when numerous other Bargees made their appearance, and urged their rival claims to credence; addressing Mr. Golightly with great respect, and each other with a considerable degree of contempt, and much appropriate imagery in the way of language.

“ N-no, no, no—none of them are mine,” exclaimed Mr. Golightly, whose room was filled with the Bargees, and who did not know how in the world to get rid of them.

“ ’Xcuse me, sir, but this ’un is youm, and no mistake about it,” cried one, holding up for our hero’s inspection an old drab wideawake.

“ No, I never had such a one.”

“ Let the gen’elman alone. He knows his own—in course he do. This ’un’s his; my brother Billy seed it drop off his head.”

And so each Bargee pressed his claims upon Mr. Golightly, with much volubility. At last, a man in a horsey suit of clothes and a bird’s-eye neckerchief, who seemed to have come in with the rest “ on spec,” as he apparently had not found the identical hat Mr. Samuel had lost, remarked—

“Well, if none of these hats aint the gentleman’s, what I say is, What is he going to stand?”

“ That’s right, Spot,” said one.

“Well done, Glanders!” said another. “ Go it—that’s the ticket.”

“’It ’im agen!”

“Brayvo!” from a great many.

Encouraged by these remarks, Spot Glanders, their spokesman, proceeded—

“ You see, sir, you are a gentleman, and these here men have taken a great deal of trouble to restore your property to you; and if the mistake is theirs, it’s partly yours as well, for there isn’t no description of the hat and the umbrella on the bills.”

“ Hear, hear!” from all the Bargees.

“And time is time, and money too, to us working men here.”

“ So it is, Spot.”

A happy thought struck Mr. Golightly. He had some silver in his pocket. He had proceeded to the distribution of several shillings as a recompense for the trouble the Bargees had taken on his account, when Mr. Sneek suddenly appeared on the scene. Placing himself in his favourite attitude in the doorway, and addressing the assembled roughs, the gyp said, with a smile of irony—

“And what are you all here for? Come, clear out.”

In vain Spot Glanders remonstrated; in vain the Bargees protested or murmured at the hardness of their fate.

“ Clear out, or I’ll have you all discommonsed,” said Mr. Sneek.

Slowly and unwillingly, those who had not been favoured with the shillings left the room; comforting themselves, however, with the reflection, “We’ve got enough for a gallon or two o’ beer among us.”

“They’re imposin’ upon you, sir,” said Sneek, as soon as they were gone. “I do hate imposition of any sort, and often I’ve said so to Cribb, when I’ve seed her or anybody else a takin’ advantage behind my back.”

“They brought what they said were my hats and umbrellas,” said our hero, laughing, and forgetting his greater cause of disquiet in the recollection of the Bargee scene.

“Your ’At and Umbereller,” reiterated the gyp, with a satirical sneer— “let them as sent ’em to you give ’em something for cornin’. That’s what I say.”

Here Mr. Sneek gave a flip or two with his duster to the table legs, with an air of conscious rectitude very impressive to witness.

Our hero was again rapt in thought—the duel in prospective taking up the whole of his attention. He wanted a confidant very badly; and Sneek was certainly a man of sense, and versed in the customs of University life.

He was within an ace of communicating some slight hint of his troubles to honest John Sneek, when Mr. Pokyr called to pay him a visit, and so prevented him from unburdening himself to his gyp.

“Good morning, Golightly,” said Mr. Pokyr, with a sprightly but innocent air. “ I have just looked up your cousin, but I find his door is sported. So I suppose he’s out.”

“ George is out, I believe,” responded our hero. “ Mrs. Cribb told me she saw him going across the quad an hour ago.”

“Early bird. After the little grubs, no doubt. Had anybody here this morning, my dear boy? Looking at you with the philosophical eye of an old hand, I should say your mental equanimity is slightly disturbed. Whose pills do you take?” “ I do not often require medicine, thank you,” said our hero, with refreshing innocence. “ When we do, we have antibilious pills from Keeled, at Fuddleton. I have had a number of people here this morning—”

“Yerse,” said Mr. Sneek, “we har had them, as you s——”

Before he had finished his sentence, the gyp observed that Mr. Pokyr was pointing imperatively in the direction of the door; and there was also a dangling, swaying motion of his right foot accompanying it which was not lost upon Sneek, who rapidly made his exit. When he had closed the door behind him, and was out of danger—pointing back with his left thumb over his shoulder, and at the same time winking his eye—he said to himself—

“You are a havin’ him a rum ’un. All round the ’oop, and no mistake.”

“What say, John Sneek?” said Mrs. Cribb, who was in the gyp-room, just packing up her basket for departure.

“ What do I say, Betsy Cribb? I say, get out o’ the way,” was the polite rejoinder. “What ’ave we got there?”

And Sneek proceeded carefully to overhaul Mrs. Cribb’s basket, to assure himself that she had got nothing in it that properly belonged to him—conduct the bedmaker resented very indignantly indeed.

“ Really, what a funny thing. Kind of them, though, was it not?” Mr. Pokyr said to Mr. Golightly, when he heard of the visit our hero had received from the Bargees.

“ I have thought since, do you know, that they must have known the hats and umbrellas were not mine,” replied Mr. Go. lightly.

“Not a bit of it, my dear boy, I assure you. All of them honest, poor fellows; and, after all, the working classes are very ignorant, you know. How were they to tell what style of hat you wore on a weekday?” “We for-forgot to describe them.”

“Ah, we did. But it was too bad of you to let Sneek turn them all out just as you were ‘liberally rewarding’ them.”

“ Was it? Do you think it was?” said our hero, vacantly—not in the least knowing what his queries meant. “Pokyr,” he said, abruptly, “ read that.” And he placed the missive The O’Higgins had brought him an hour before in his friend’s hand. “Read that letter. I don’t know what in the world to do.”

Mr. Pokyr stood with one foot on the window seat, and carefully read the letter.

“ There’s no doubt about it,” he said, shaking his head ominously. “You see, Chutney is a very excitable fellow.”

“ Am I—am I obliged to accept it?” asked Mr. Samuel, nervously.

“ ’Pon my honour, I think you are. There seems no other way out of it. Ugly affair —pre-engagement between Miss Bellair and Chutney, seemingly. But ‘take a bull by the horns,’ you know,” he added, cheerfully.

“But—but—but,” said our hero, “I don't want to take a bull by the horns.”

“All over by this time to-morrow. Be a man. I’ll telegraph result to our friends at the Rectory. Think all the better of you (or behaving like a man of spirit, whatever may happen.”

“Aunt Dorothea would,” said Mr. Samuel, thinking aloud. “But suppose—”

Mr. Pokyr closed his eyes and shook his head.

“ Do suppose a case—only suppose it, you know—suppose I did not exactly wish to fight—”

“ The only way out of it now, I fear.”

“ Would not a sort—a sort of apol—”

“ Apology? Oh, Chutney is the last man in the world to take any apology. The fact is, he loves a fight—swords or pistols.” '

“ The bloodthirsty wretch,” thought Mr. Samuel.

“ His speech at the Union was in favour of duels, was it not?” asked Mr. Pokyr. “I was not there.”

“ It was,” said our hero.

“ Screw your courage up to the shooting, point. It’s nothing, after all. Make your will first, you know; and then you will have nothing on your mind.”

“ But I thought duelling was quite out of date. I’m sure I’ve heard so.”

“ Not here. Universities are old-fashioned places. Old manners hang about for ages.”

“ Good gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Samuel, in great trepidation, “what would my Fa say?”

“ Your Fa would say, Fight. He would not see the family honour in the dust.”

“ But—but I never fired a pistol off in my life,” urged Mr. Golightly, faintly.

“ Never mind that—easiest thing in the world, I assure you,” said Mr. Pokyr, stretching out his hand and imitating the action. “ You can stand close together, you know.”

“ I should like to be some distance off. I do not wish to shoot Chutney.”

“ And he does not wish to shoot you, my dear fellow. Merely a matter of form, which must be gone through, or your honour is gone. You could not live here, and see yourself pointed to as the man who dared not fight to rescue his honour! Now, could you?”

“ But suppose anything happened?”

“ Fire in the air—thus,” said Pokyr, aiming with his finger at the ceiling. “ Then you can’t hurt Chutney, you know.”

“ I wish George had not gone out,” said Mr. Samuel.

“ Yes, it is a pity. He would have told you as I do. You must accept the challenge.”

In the end, Mr. Golightly commissioned Mr. Pokyr to carry his reply to the other side; and willingly left all preliminary arrangements in his hands.

During the morning, The O’Higgins was busily engaged in keeping up the courage of Mr. Chutney—not an easy task; and his mind was considerably relieved when Pokyr arrived with the answer of our hero, accepting the gage that had been thrown down.

Those gentlemen at once sat down to arrange between them the place, the time, and the weapons. This being done to their satisfaction, they strolled into the cigar shop of the teterrima causa belli —the Brown street Venus, otherwise Miss Emily Bellair. Giving Mrs. Bellair a nod as they walked through the shop, they passed into the little back parlour, which was styled, on the half glass door which shut it off from the snuff and tobacco jars, “Cigar Divan.” Here, looking at the morning papers, they found Mr. Blaydes.

“Well, is it a go?” asked the last-named gentleman.

“Right as ninepence,” replied Mr. Pokyr. “They are going to fight it out like men.”

“Well done,” said Blaydes. “I would have given anything to pay that little braggart, Chutney, back in his own coin. Strange we have so soon got the chance. What a pair of nincompoops they both are!”

Mr. Pokyr nodded benignly, by way of reply.

“When is it to be?”

“To-morrow morning, at eight.”

“Where?”

“Behind the Ditch on Newmarket Heath.”

“ Weapons of war?”

“Pistols—be all the saints,” replied The O’Higgins.

“Keep it quiet, and don’t tell anybody,” said Pokyr, as a caution to Jamaica Blaydes, whose tongue was not that of a discreet man. “We brought the other little affair with Sneek’s daughter off very nicely; and this morning his room was full of Bargees from every point of the compass.”

“You got in at the finish?”

“No—I was late. Sneek had just sent them all off. Never mind, the duel will be the best fun we have had this year. They are both in a mortal funk of one another; and I’ll lay a wager neither hits a haystack at ten paces.”

“They are sure to show up? The Heath is a long way to go for nothing, at such an unearthly hour as eight.”

“ Better go to-night, and sleep there.”

“Not a bad notion; but if Bloke knew the reason, he might refuse the exeat” replied the wary Blaydes.

“We are going to keep their courage up. The Captain is to stay with Tommy, and I coach Golightly. We’ve sent George out of the way—that is, he is sported in, and won’t open to anybody—which, after all, is as good as being fifty miles away. He says he dares not advise his cousin Samuel to fight, for fear of after-rows.”

After drinking a tankard of bitter, which Mrs. Bellair’s precocious little boy fetched from the Pig and Whistle opposite, the three friends separated. Mr. Pokyr went off to coach one rival, at St. Mary’s; the Captain to the King’s Parade, to keep up the pluck of the other.

“I have brought a pistol with me, for you just to get your eye in, Golightly,” said Pokyr, who found our hero in a very despondent state, sitting over his fire, with his head between his hands, looking thoughtfully at the embers.

“Thank you—I don’t feel very well.”

“But, by Jove, you must feel well, or you’ll be nothing but a target to-morrow. Think of Muley Moloch, or some fellow, and be well.”

“What did Muley Moloch do?”

“ Why, made up his mind to be well, and was well.”

“ I’ll—I'll try,” said Mr. Samuel, with a faint smile on his wan features.

“ Stand up,” said Pokyr, in the tone of a drill-sergeant addressing his awkward squad.

Mr. Samuel rose.

“ Right about—wheel.”

He turned to his instructor, who placed a pistol in his hands.

“ It—it—isn’t loaded, I hope,” ejaculated Mr. Golightly, eyeing the instrument of destruction with manifest dread.

“ No—got a cap on, that’s all. Now, make ready—stay, you want a mark. Here,” said Pokyr, cutting a button from his pantaloons, and taking a pin from his neckerchief, with which he fixed the button to the wall, “aim at that—fancy it’s Chutney’s nose.”

“ I can’t,” said Mr. Samuel — “ it seems so wicked to do so.”

Mr. Pokyr never left his principal till late that night. They dined together off beefsteak and oyster sauce, Mr. Samuel’s appetite for which was not improved by his second’s reminding him more than once that he might never taste oysters again.

During the afternoon and evening he fired many caps at the button, and made it shake on the pin several times. There was a very gun powdery atmosphere in the room when Mrs. Cribb came in.

“They’re been lettin’ off fireworks or something, John Sneek,” she said. “They’ll be doin’ some mischief, mark my words.”

“ There’s somethink hup,” said Mr. Sneek. “ I’ll find it out, though.”

With this remark, the gyp bade Mrs. Cribb good-night Mr. Golightly spent the night without getting one wink of sleep, and the morning found him very feverish and queer. At the early breakfast improvised before the arrival of Mrs. Cribb, he found the knives had crossed themselves, and he spilled the salt. The omens were unpropitious; but our hero rose above omens. Like a certain potentate we read of, who, when the birds were dead against him, kicked the Sacred Chickens, coop and all, into the sea, Mr. Samuel uncrossed the knives, and let the salt lie, in a reckless manner that plainly bade them do their worst.

The drive to the Heath—a good twelve miles—on a cool morning, took out of him what little courage he had left after his sleepless night; and, like Bob Acres’s, Mr. Samuel’s valour was gone. In vain Mr. Pokyr was facetious — in vain his joke as they passed Quy Church—

“‘Ecclesia Quy stat in agris' — nearest churchyard: might bring you there if anything serious occurs. How shaky you look! Have another pull at the brandy flask.”

“ I don’t feel quite myself,” was Mr. Golightly’s rejoinder. It was plain he did not.

Behind the ditch they found poor little Mr. Chutney and the valorous O’Higgins waiting for them.

“ The top of the morning to you,” said the Captain to Mr. Pokyr.

The place was chosen—the ground was measured—all was ready for the signal to fire—when an unexpected arrival made Mr. Pokyr exclaim—

“One moment, gentlemen—I can see strangers approaching.”