Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/92

21, 1860.] which his own imprudence has made and baked for him. Accordingly, I regret to say, I lost no time in inquiring, “What the (two of cards) he meant by such ungentlemanlike behaviour?”

Ate and Alecto, what a rage he was in!

“Hear him, hear him!” he exclaimed, turning to his servants, (I remember that the under-keeper touched his hat assentingly, and was sneered at for so doing by Mr. Crupper): “don’t lose a word from this fine young gentleman, who has kindly ridden all the way from Oxford to teach us how to behave. I trust, sir, that you have brought your Catechism with you, and that you will edify us with a dissertation on our ‘Duty towards our Neighbour.’ ‘What do I mean, sir?’ By the Lord Harry,” (he made frequent reference to this nobleman, who was, I suppose, an influential friend), “what do you mean by sending your stinking friends across my estates, sir, and galloping over my wheat, sir, with those mangy curs? Won’t you take a canter with that,” (he tried hard, but could find no fault with my steed), “with that borrowed beast of yours, into the gardens, and have a turn in the conservatory? By the (usual nobleman), I’ll write to the Dons, sir, I will, and have you disgraced. And as for your delightful playmate in the coach-house, sir, I’ll have him fumigated with cayenne and brimstone, sir, and when he’s sweet enough, he goes to jail. There is my card, sir; I want yours.”

“Sir,” I replied, meekly, for I apprehended mischief, “I am extremely sorry that the Drag should have been brought over your property, and I am quite sure that Lord Augustus Plantagenet” (I brought out the title with much dignity of intonation, anticipating a great impression), “who is the manager of it, will offer any apology or reparation in his power. His lordship, I am confident, will lose no time in calling upon you. Meanwhile, I trust, sir,” giving him my card, “you will overlook my intrusion, and pardon my words. I am not in very good odour with the College authorities—”

“Good odour, sir!” he replied. “I should as soon expect a foumart to be in good odour, as a man who mixed himself up with this—this putrid amusement. And you may tell Master Gussy from me, sir,” (that was a finisher, that Master Gussy), “that if he don’t mind, I’ll write to the Duke, sir, from whose house I have just returned, and have him whipped when he goes home for the holidays, and rests awhile from his refined and arduous studies. You shall hear from me shortly, sir. I wish you good morning. Crupper, give me the key of the coach-house, and open the yard doors.”

He was gone, “iracundus, inexorabilis, acer;” and there was nothing for it but to return to Oxford, and convoke my friends in council. So forth I rode, pensively and slowly, musing on the mutabilities of life, and upon the consoling influence of Mr. Hudson’s weeds.

I had not achieved a mile of the homeward route, when I heard a clattering of hoofs behind, and a voice calling me to stop.

“The General’s compliments,” says Mr. Crupper, cantering up on a pony, “and will be glad to see you, sir, if you please, immediate.”

Come, thought I, this sounds cheerier by several octaves; and back I went, hopeful, but wondering.

You will readily imagine how my surprise culminated and my spirits rose, when the General, coming to me through those most awful doors, seized me by the hand, and, looking me earnestly in the face, vociferated,

“By the Lord Harry, sir, how’s your father? Get off, get off, and take care of the horse, Crupper. Your father, sir, is one of my oldest and dearest friends, though I have not seen him since I came from India. If I had known you were his son, as I know it from this card,” (it had my country address upon it), “by (the usual nobleman) you might have jumped in at the drawing-room windows, sir, and run that odoriferous rascal to ground in the best bed!”

How I relished his “rent-day” ale! too strong for any human beings, save the undergraduate and the British yeoman. How many happy hours did I afterwards pass at his pleasant home, in the good old times, when men kept their port! How many scores of pheasants have I bagged in his broad woods!

But Billy Bouquet could never forgive himself for being “caught and trapped like a stoat,” (very like a stoat, the General would have said); and the subsequent behaviour of the under-keeper seemed to trouble him even more than the capture. “I ain’t partickler proud,” he would say, “but when I see that blackguard with the black whiskers a taking on hisself a horfice of which he know’d nothing, and a trailing of the Drag down  that ’ere lane to deceive them innocent dogs, I could a punched his ’ed with the biggest o’ pleasure, and I should ’a punched it, if t’other elephant hadn’t been so illconvenient handy.” H.

attention of the public has recently been called to the distresses incident to unmarried women of gentle birth and refined habits, but whom circumstances have left dependent on their own exertions. The public was reluctantly surprised—as it usually is when grievances are indicated wherewith it is so familiarised as to be insensible of them—but the public was also interested; for the painful narrative had a personal application to the auditors, many of whom vaguely apprehended the like future contingency for their relatives, and pondered how it might be averted.

That in this wealthy land so large a proportion of those claiming our tenderness should remain in enforced celibacy; that they should with such  difficulty earn distressful bread; that by social usage all employ should be closed to them except tuition—and that that should involve personal humiliation and exhausting labour that would not  patiently be submitted to by a kitchen drudge—is  a bitter sarcasm on our civilisation that may partially account for the pale phantoms that haunt the steps and sadden the heart of a thoughtful observer in our cities.

The impression produced by these sad revelations augurs favourably for the abolition of this wrong. And, as this is not to be effected by