Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/560

2, 1860.] of it, or of my senses. Likewise, you will observe a gaudy person of the other sex, happily of an age to defy imputations. To her a tale appends. She was crying your name over Fallowfield this morning: ‘Mr. Evan Harrington has run away from his mother.’ In rushed Friendship, or, in other words, John Raikes. ‘Woman! what means this horrid clamour?’ Of course she objects to being called woman. ‘Man, then, clad in the garments of deception!’ says I. That doesn’t please her. ‘Oh, that my Wishaw were by to defend me!’ ‘What,’ says I, ‘have you married a sneeze?’ Lord, you never heard a thing take so! How the ostler laughed! I hear the echoes still. However, it ended in my driving her to Beckley; and as we journeyed, doubtful of the way, we met a carriage, and full short I stopped, and did inquire—but you like prose, old boy. I asked the road to Beckley Court—the bourne of heiresses that want the plucking. The gentleman—a regular nob—was pointing it, when up starts Woman, and addresses the lady sitting by him, as ‘Sweet creature, how I rejoice in meeting you! I come straight from your mother.’ Thereat the lady did, methought, turn pale. By the way, she was rather like you, Harrington. Such a spanker! If I could captivate her! What do you think she replied. And such a voice—and eyes! Oh, sugar and treacle, and candied lemon-peel! But these are base comparisons, that give you no idea of her. She’s a duchess! ‘Pray,’ says she to me, ‘drive as fast as you can to the Asylum;’ and her coachman whipped his horses, and Woman falls hang up against me, and cries, ‘Oh, you horrid impidence! oh, I never!’ and a mass of vulgarity and madness, kicking her feet almost in fits. Fects!—aha! ‘Let’s sneeze,’ said I aside, thinking to console her by filling her imagination with the notion of her husband. ‘A Wishaw,’ we all went. She got worse. She abused your family, Harrington,—said you had all been robbing Mr. Wishaw. ‘A fondness for snuff, ma'am,’ says I, ‘is no shame and no disgrace.’ I stood up for you manfully. There she sits. She won’t come in, and I must drive her back. Now say, am I your friend or not—ha!”

When he had finished his tale Mr. Raikes retired to the looking-glass, to which his final question was addressed, and something satisfactory resulting from it in his mind, he asked:

“Shall I be introduced to the family now?”

“No,” said Evan. “You must decidedly wait till you are cooler.”

“Very well, very well,” returned Jack indifferently. “I have press of business.”

“Sit and explain what you have been doing,” continued Evan, whose head was really whirling at Jack’s strange fortune.

Mr. Raikes objected that he had not a moment, and must be off: his country called him.

“I’ll make my bow to-morrow, and do the devoirs, Harrington. Any Dukes or Duchesses in the House?”

“Yes; so be on your guard.”

Mr. Raikes tapped his hat cheerfully.

“By the way, I presented that letter,” he remarked, and thrusting a bundle of notes into Evan’s hand: “There you are. It’s rather a pleasant country here,” he pursued negligently. “Good hunting, I doubt not. A southerly wind and a cloudy sky—yoicks, hark away, and tally-ho. I must have a suit ready. Good-bye, Harrington. Expect me to-morrow. Explanations deferred. Ta-ta.”

While Evan was untying the bundle, and gradually apprehending the fact that it was money he felt, Mr. Raikes turned on his heel, and bade the menials in the hall show him forth. He found Miss Bonner at the gate talking to Mrs. Wishaw, who seeing a young lady pass had suddenly been taken ill, and had consented to the administration of wine and water. His friends subsequently told him that Mrs. Wishaw had continued to abuse the Harrington family to Miss Bonner, and had entered into a great deal of the history of the family.

The hours flew past. Evan held in his pocket the price of his bondage to Tailordom, whilst he was every instant sealing his assumption of the character of Gentleman. He was of dull brain, and it had not yet dawned on him that he might possibly be tailor and gentleman in one: but events were moving to task him. As an instance of the power of Love, it may be related that not even the fact of his holding the money of his eccentric benefactor, nor the astounding revolution in the affairs of his friend Jack, dwelt on his mind half so much as the lighted edge of a mound of cloud against a grand sunset seen by him the day when his heart, bursting with deep desire, had been half prophetic of the happy night; or half so much as the little Portuguese Medinha sung by Rose: or those sweet solemn words of Ruth: words that conjured up his darling standing among piled sheaves in autumn fields, under stars sorrowful, but firm, brilliant, everlasting.

ninety or a hundred miles N.N.E. of London, there is a thriving and populous market-town. Built on the summit of a lofty eminence, and surrounded by a well wooded country for the space of a couple of miles, which is further environed by an open tract of heath several thousand acres in extent, Swaffham has for many centuries maintained its position as one of the most healthy and well-to-do market-towns in England. My story dates three hundred and fifty years back, and at that time there lived in one of the outskirts of the town a poor pedlar, by name John Chapman. Very little was known respecting him; he had carried his pack into Swaffham one day, and liking the place and its inhabitants, and its inhabitants liking him, had forgotten to carry it out again. At least he carried it no farther than the outskirts in question, where he took possession of a small tenement, and dropping in some measure the roving life of a pedlar, contrived to obtain a decent livelihood by following the avocation of a tinker, some knowledge of which trade he had, in his peregrinations, managed to pick up. In this manner, John Chapman had lived amongst the town folk for the space of twenty years, only leaving them once or twice for a few weeks in