Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/196

 25, 1860.] regarded Evan, of whom he was now abreast, eager for a controversy.

“Fine night,” said the postillion, to begin, and was answered by a short assent. “Lateish for a poor man to be out—don’t you think, sir, eh?”

"I ought to think so,” said Evan, mastering the shrewd unpleasantness he felt in the colloquy forced on him.

“Oh, you! you’re a gentleman!” the postillion ejaculates.

“You see I have no money.”

“Feel it, too, sir.”

“I am sorry you should be the victim.”

“Victim!” the postillion seized on an objectionable word. “I ain’t no victim, unless you was up to a joke with me, sir, just now. Was that the game?”

Evan informed him that he never played jokes with money, or on men.

’Cause it looks like it, sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.” The postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs. “Sixpence for a night’s work! It is a joke, if you don’t mean it for one. Why, do you know, sir, I could go—there, I don’t care where it is!—I could go before any magistrate livin’, and he’d make ye pay. It’s a charge, as custom is, and he’d make ye pay. Or p’rhaps you’re a goin’ on my generosity, and ’ll say, he gev’ back that sixpence! Well! I shouldn’t ’a thought a gentleman ’d make that his defence before a magistrate. But there, my man! if it makes ye happy, keep it. But you take my advice, sir. When you hires a chariot, see you’ve got the shiners. And don’t you go never again offerin’ a sixpence to a poor man for a night’s work. They don’t like it. It hurts their feelin’s. Don’t you forget that, sir. Lay that up in your mind.”

Now the postillion having thus relieved himself, jeeringly asked permission to smoke a pipe. To which Evan said, “Pray smoke, if it pleases you.” And the postillion, hardly mollified, added, “The baccy ’s paid for,” and smoked.

As will sometimes happen, the feelings of the man who had spoken out and behaved doubtfully, grew gentle and Christian, whereas those of the man whose bearing under the trial had been irreproachable were much the reverse. The postillion smoked—he was a lord on his horse; he beheld my gentleman trudging in the dust. Awhile he enjoyed the contrast, dividing his attention between the footfarer and the moon. To have had the last word is always a great thing; and to have given my gentleman a lecture, because he shunned a dispute, also counts. And then there was the poor young fellow trudging to his father’s funeral! The postillion chose to remember that now. In reality, he allowed, he had not very much to complain of, and my gentleman’s courteous avoidance of provocation (the apparent fact that he, the postillion, had humbled him and got the better of him, equally, it may be), acted on his fine English spirit. I should not like to leave out the tobacco in this good change that was wrought in him. However, he presently astonished Evan by pulling up his horses, and crying that he was on his way to Hillford to bait, and saw no reason why he should not take a lift that part of the road, at all events. Evan thanked him briefly, but declined, and paced on with his head bent.

“It won’t cost you nothing—not a sixpence!” the postillion sang out, pursuing him. “Come, sir! be a man! I ain’t a hintin’ at anything—jump in.”

Evan again declined, and looked out for a side path to escape the fellow, whose bounty was worse to him than his abuse, and whose mention of the sixpence was unlucky.

“Dash it!” cried the postillion, “you’re going down to a funeral—I think you said your father’s, sir—you may as well try and get there respectable—as far as I go. It’s one to me whether you’re in or out; the horses won’t feel it, and I do wish you’d take a lift, and welcome. It’s because you’re too much of a gentleman to be beholden to a poor man, I suppose!”

Evan’s young pride may have had a little of that base mixture in it, and certainly he would have preferred that the invitation had not been made to him; but he was capable of appreciating what the rejection of a piece of friendliness involved, and as he saw that the man was sincere, he did violence to himself, and said: “Very well; then I’ll jump in.”

The postillion was off his horse in a twinkling, and trotted his bandy legs to undo the door, as to a gentleman who paid. This act of service Evan valued.

“Suppose I were to ask you to take that six-pence now?” he said, turning round, with one foot on the step.

“Well, sir,” the postillion sent his hat aside to answer. “I don’t want it—I’d rather not have it; but there! I’d take it—dash the sixpence! and we’ll cry quits.”

Evan, surprised and pleased with him, dropped the bit of money in his hand, saying: “It will fill a pipe for you. While you’re smoking it, think of me as in your debt. You’re the only man I ever owed a penny to.”

The postillion put it in a side pocket apart, and observed: “A sixpence kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that’s grudged—that it is! In you jump, sir. It’s a jolly night!”

Thus may one, not a conscious sage, play the right tune on this human nature of ours: by forbearance, put it in the wrong; and then, by not refusing the burden of an obligation, confer something better. The instrument is simpler than we are taught to fancy. But it was doubtless owing to a strong emotion in his soul, as well as to the stuff he was made of, that the youth behaved as he did. We are now and then above our own actions: seldom on a level with them. Evan, I dare say, was long in learning to draw any gratification from the fact that he had achieved without money the unparalleled conquest of a man. Perhaps he never knew what immediate influence on his fortune this episode effected.

At Hillford they went their different ways. The postillion wished him good speed, and Evan shook his hand. He did so rather abruptly, for the postillion was fumbling at his pocket, and evidently rounding about a proposal in his mind.

My gentleman has now the road to himself.