Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/147

134 “Bless ye! I only seen him once since he was took,” returned Sally. “We’re none of us allowed to come anigh him—only missus.”

“Ah! ah!” went Kilne, and sniffed the air. Sally then rushed back to her duties.

“Now, there’s a man!” Kilne stuck his hand in his pockets and began his meditation: which, however, was cut short by the approach of his neighbour Barnes, the butcher, to whom he confided what he had heard, and who ejaculated professionally, “Obstinate as a pig!” As they stood together they beheld Sally, a figure of telegraph, at one of the windows, implying that all was just over.

“Amen!” said Barnes, as to a matter-of-fact affair.

Some minutes after the two were joined by Grossby the confectioner, who listened to the news, and observed:

“Just like him! I’d have sworn he’d never take doctor’s stuff;” and, nodding at Kilne, “liked his medicine best, eh?”

“Had a—hem!—good lot of it,” muttered Kilne, with a suddenly serious brow.

“How does he stand on your books?” asked Barnes.

Kilne shouldered round, crying: “Who the deuce is to know?”

"I don’t,” Grossby sighed. “In he comes with his ‘Good morning, Grossby,—fine day for the hunt, Grossby,’ and a ten pound note. ‘Have the kindness to put that down in my favour, Grossby.’ And just as I am going to say, ‘Look here,—this won’t do,’ he has me by the collar, and there’s one of the regiments going to give a supper-party, which he’s to order; or the admiral’s wife wants the receipt for that pie; or in comes my wife, and there’s no talking of business then, though she may have been bothering about his account all the night beforehand. Something or other! and so we run on.”

“What I want to know,” said Barnes the butcher, “is where he got his tenners from?”

Kilne shook a sagacious head: “No knowing!”

“I suppose we shall get something out of the fire?” Barnes suggested.

“That depends!” answered the emphatic Kilne.

“But, you know, if the widow carries on the business,” said Grossby, “there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get it all, eh?”

“There ain’t two that can make clothes for nothing, and make a profit out of it,” said Kilne.

“That young chap in Portugal,” added Barnes, "he won’t take to tailoring when he comes home. D’ye think he will?”

Kilne uttered: “Can’t say!” and Grossby, a kindly creature in his way, albeit a creditor, reverting to the first subject of their discourse, ejaculated, “But what a one he was!—eh?”

“Fine! to look on,” Kilne assented.

“Well, he was like a Marquis,” said Barnes.

Here the three regarded each other, and laughed, though not loudly. They instantly checked that unseemliness, and Kilne, as one who rises from the depths of a calculation with the sum in his head, spoke quite in a different voice:

“Well, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn? No use standing here.”

By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and partake of a morning draught. Barnes, the butcher, had no objection whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive them. In single file these mourners entered the publican’s house, where Kilne, after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important question, what it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence in his views as to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of the drink best befitting that early hour and the speaker’s particular constitution, poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.

“Here’s to him, poor fellow!” said Kilne; and it was deliberately echoed twice.

“Now, it wasn’t that,” Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the midst of a smacking of lips, “that wasn’t what got him into difficulties. It was expensive luckshries. It was being above his condition. Horses! What’s a tradesman got to do with horses? Unless he’s retired! Then he’s a gentleman, and can do as he likes. It’s no use trying to be a gentleman if you can’t pay for it. It always ends bad. Why, there was he, consorting with gentlefolks—gay as a lark! Who has to pay for it?”

Kilne’s fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.

“I’m not saying anything against him now,” the publican further observed. “It’s too late. And there! I’m sorry he’s gone, for one. He was as kind a hearted a man as ever breathed. And there! perhaps it was just as much my fault; I couldn’t say ‘No’ to him,—dash me, if I could!”

Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much despised British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments—just to freshen the account—and a surety that he who debits is on the spot, to be a right royal king of credit. Only the account must never drivel. Stare aut crescere appears to be his feeling on that point, and the departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for, though the running on of the account looked so deplorable and extraordinary now that Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, it was precisely that fact which had prevented it from being brought to a summary close long before.

Both Barnes, the butcher, and Grossby, the confectioner, confessed that they, too, found it hard ever to say “No” to him, and, sneaking broadly, never could.

“Except once,” said Barnes, “when he wanted me to let him have a ox to roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out against him on that. ‘No, no,’ says I, ‘I’ll joint him for ye, Mr. Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home;’—ha! ha!”

“Just like him!” said Grossby, with true