The landlord too fell in very sagaciously with the whole thing. Whatever opinion he might entertain on his own part of our figure in the world, the fact that we had been admitted to the friendship of Mr. Sadler was a sufficient guarantee of his not going unrequited. Armed with this assurance he produced some really excellent wine in liberal quantities, and furnished us with the fullest meed of his respectful service; though it is gravely to be doubted whether he considered we had any better right to enjoy our titles than had Mr. Sadler. But I will go bail for the justice, who rejoiced in the name of Hodgkin, that no such doubts invaded his mind. He was simply happy. His wildest dreams were realized. His loftiest ambitions were fulfilled. Was he not hobnobbing with the great at their own table on terms of perfect equality? He never addressed any of us without bringing in our titles somehow, either as the prologue or the epilogue of what he had to say, sometimes as both, and in the middle too. And just as a duke is a personage of more consideration than an earl, even if he be a justice of the peace, or a countess if she be young and fair, so did our squire, after he had felt his way a bit, had drunk a glass or two and got used to such unaccustomed company, direct the main of his attention to his grace of Salop. Indeed such advances did he presently make in the good esteem of that venerable nobleman that he was fain to direct nearly the whole of his discourse to him. He played him, and ogled him, your grace'd him this, and your grace'd him that, until he felt he had ingratiated himself into the highest favour. And having attained to this good fortune, he could hardly bring himself to so much as look at Cynthia and me. As in the case of his rustics and the inn-keeper, we, as it were, presently discovered him engaged with our betters; and he clearly hoped we should understand that to be the case.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONTAINS A PANEGYRIC ON THE GENTLE PASSION
It was truly a novel kind of amusement to enjoy the patronage of such a clodhopper; but it was one infinitely rich in the comic. The highwayman fell in exactly with the spirit of this comedy. He seemed to take an almost diabolical pleasure in causing this pitiful specimen of human nature to reveal the weakness and sterility of his mind. And I fear that this pleasure was communicated to Cynthia and myself. Could we have forgotten the persecution endured at the hands of the fellow that afternoon, we must have found it in our hearts to pity him in his fool's paradise. But with the sense of our late indignities yet abiding within us, we followed the course of the play with the keenness and zest of the leading actor in it. It was our revenge, and a very ample and satisfying one we felt it to be, although in the tameness of print it may not appear to possess the solid satisfaction of one administered with a cudgel or a pair of resolute fists.
When at last the squire proposed to depart, he vowed that never had he spent an evening with such profit and enjoyment. It far exceeded, he was good enough to say, the memorable one he had once had the honour to pass in the society of Colonel Musket of Barker's Hill. He swore he would cherish the memory of it to his last day; and having humbly thanked his grace for his condescension and his affability; and having given a curt nod to Cynthia and myself, since the boon companion of a duke is surely entitled to dispense his patronage, our justice stumbled out into the rainy night, with more good wine in him than he deserved, and certainly more than he could decently carry.
"Ships, pegs, coos and 'osses," says the highwayman, breaking out into laughter as soon as our guest had lurched into the rain. "Let a man live with them long enough, and they shall reduce his wit and understanding to the level of their own. Was there ever such a pitiful cheese of a fellow in the world before? If it were not such a foul night, and I lay less snug in my corner, I would go after him, drub him soundly, and fling him into the kennel. But at least we have had an entertainment, and I have thought well to exact a ransom of him for his own."
Here to our surprise our strange companion pulled forth a purse which a few minutes since had been the squire's. The justice had been seated next the venerable duke, and had paid for the high privilege. Besides, is it not an axiom among the great that they never condescend unless they are in need of a service, or can get something by their condescension? His grace's exaction was the latter. Neither Cynthia nor I could find it in our hearts to blame the highwayman for his trick. Nay, I do not know that in one sense we were not secretly glad that a tangible and material punishment had been inflicted upon the fellow. When the purse was opened it was found to contain the sum of nineteen pounds and a few odd shillings. The highwayman, after a careful mental calculation, doled the money out into three heaps of equal value, and having slipped one portion, some six pounds twelve shillings, into his fob, pushed the two remaining portions over to us, insisting that in this adventure it was share and share alike.
Of course we could not bring ourselves to accept of our friend's somewhat embarrassing generosity. But the sight of such a fortune to people in our penurious state, who had already partaken of much more than they could pay for, was temptation indeed. Although we refused the gifts with the same courtesy with which they were offered, I fear that our eyes shone with a singular lust, and our minds rebelled as we did so. The highwayman himself was astonished by our scruples.
"My dear friends," says he. "I confess I have never observed such reluctancy in persons of your kidney before. You baffle me. I cannot hold it to be generosity in you, since there can be little doubt that William Sadler makes a fatter living than you do with all your talents. Why then should you refuse a gift from a brother of your calling? And it cannot be pride either, for if we come down to plain terms it is not a gift at all. By all those unwritten laws that obtain amongst the brethren of our profession, you are each honourably entitled to take a share with me. Come, my friends, pocket the affront and let no more be said."
The highwayman's high sense of right and wrong in regard to those he was pleased to call "the brethren of our profession" was really touching. Nothing in the first place could convince him that we were not in that sense his brethren, and that we did not earn our livelihood by his uncompromising methods. We had entered the inn by the aid of false protestations; we had ordered a meal that he was sure we had no means of paying for; we had connived at the escape of a desperate malefactor, and had committed a gross fraud on a justice of the peace; therefore he had every good reason to stand firm in his estimate of our character. To my rejoinder that we hoped he would not pursue the matter, as we were anything but what we appeared to be, and were debarred by circumstances that had recently befallen us from publishing our true condition to him or to any one else, he replied with laughter of the most immoderate sort.
"Rat me," says he, "this is no new tale. I wonder how many times in a twelvemonth it does duty at Old Bailey! But I do not like to be baffled by anybody, and I must say your behaviour is inexplicable. It is Quixotic, my friends, it is Quixotic. I cannot possibly let it pass. I must beg you to accept these small monies as a token of my gratitude."
He had the devil for his advocate too. It truly was Quixotic. It was wealth untold to persons in our condition; persons condemned to blow the flute from place to place for a livelihood. We were reminded of nights in the rain; of empty bellies; of fainting limbs; of rags, misery and mud, and the hundred other ills that attend on a bitter poverty. We had sevenpence in our pockets with which to discharge a score that would be reckoned in pounds. What wonder that we felt our resolution falter before the lure that was laid before us? Together, however, we prevailed where one of us singly might have given way.
The highwayman vented his perplexity in various ways. He put forth a dozen theories that would cover our irreconcilable conduct. But all of them were equally wide of the mark. To all sources but the true one did he trace our demeanour. That we were striving to be as honest as our circumstances would permit, never entered his head. And when at last we gave him a cordial good-night prior to retiring to the chamber that had been prepared for us, he was fain to acknowledge that he was never so completely beaten by anything as by our behaviour.
"Smart you are, the pair of you," says he, "there's no manner of use in denying that. But I'm damned if I can make head or tail of you. Never heard of such a thing in my life as two pads on the road refusing their share of the booty. But I like you none the less. You are a well-favoured well-mannered pair, with rare good heads on your shoulders. I'faith you are endowed with a most excellent presence. You are bound to succeed in the line you have adopted; but if you are not above taking a piece of advice from one who hath had a pretty long apprenticeship on the road, you will dress a trifle better. Clothes go for a great deal. A lord in rags counts for less than a postilion in ruffles and a laced coat. You will not forget now; it is sure to mean such and such a sum per annum to you. And harkee, here's a proposal. I've got such a fancy for you both, that if you like to take up with me, we will do the country in company and share the profits; and this I may tell you is an offer not to be blinked at, when it is made by William Sadler. Little madam there shall be the decoy, and you and I, my lad, shall lift the blunt and generally attend to the practical matters. Come now, I can't speak fairer; what do you say!"
Much to Mr. Sadler's disappointment, and I believe to his astonishment too, I politely declined this liberal proposal. It was almost incredible to him that a gentleman of his eminence and success could meet with a refusal. It was like two green apprentices declining to enter into partnership with a master of the highest credit!
"I confess you pass me altogether," says he in despair.
The last glimpse we had of this strange, whimsical, and in a sense gifted man, was his sitting at the table, with his wig, his spectacles and false whiskers removed, waving his good-night in the most cordial fashion. He was as handsome and intelligent a fellow as I ever encountered; and I can readily believe what was asserted of him at the time of his hanging less than a year from this date, that he was a cadet of a noble family. Certainly in his gaiety, generosity, and gallant good humour, he was the very type of man to win the great fame of the public that I believe was his. Strange as it may appear, there was not one trace of vulgarity that I could discern in him; and leaving his peculiar ideas in regard to meum and tuum out of the question, in all other particulars he was a charming gentleman. And if I am one day burnt for the heresy, I shall be ever the first to admit that in my short acquaintance of this wicked rogue that so richly came to be hanged on the Tree, I discovered better parts, a more chivalrous heart, and vastly more liberal talents than in half the persons of high consideration and great place, whose intimacy it has been my misfortune to submit to for a longer period.
As for Cynthia, the first thing she did in the privacy of our chamber was to burst into tears.
"Oh," she sobbed, "to think that a man like that should be such a villain. Oh, I am sure I cannot believe it of him."
"Then why weep for him?" says I. "But what a pity it is that these villains are so delectable. Even a man like your husband if he gets his deserts will come to be hanged. Can you tell me, my dear, why it is that virtue never walks in these radiant colours? Can it be that you strait-laced madams secretly lean to the wicked?"
Poor Cynthia sobbed louder than ever.
"Oh, I cannot, I will not believe it of such a dear fine gentleman!" says she.
The next morning found us heavy of heart. In what manner we could meet the landlord's charges we did not know. Although we were both too proud to say so, I am sure we should have been greatly thankful could we have had our share of the highwayman's booty to comfort us. After all it was a queer kind of scruple that preferred to rob the innkeeper rather than the squire. For it was plain that he, poor fellow, must go unpaid. Honesty, I take it, is largely a question of terms; and why we should hold it to be more venial to rob the one than the other I cannot tell. We breakfasted over the hard problem of what to do. We had no other course, we decided, than to persevere in the original fiction of our misfortunes on the road at the hands of a highwayman, and defer the settlement of the landlord's account against the time when our affairs had assumed a more prosperous shape.
As it happened, our misgivings and searchings of conscience were in vain. The highwayman, who had ridden away in the small hours of the morning, had insisted unknown to us in giving at least some token of his gratitude. He had discharged our score and his own in a handsome manner, the innkeeper said. Perchance it was he held that our host merited some sort of reward for his behaviour too; and he doubtless held in the shrewd opinion he had formed of our condition, that it was little enough he was likely to receive at our hands.
In this fortunate manner we were able to go forth into the world again. Our hunger and weariness had been amply refreshed and our debts paid. We did not pause to consider that these happy contingencies had been brought about by the very means that we had so loftily disdained. It was the squire's purse after all that had paid our charges. Honesty, as I have said, is largely a question of terms.
To the downpour of the night had succeeded a sullen morning. The lowering sky promised more misery to follow. The air was wet with mists; the trees dripped incessantly; every blade of grass shone with the dankness that clung to it, and the state of the deep-rutted, rude, uneven roads was terrible. But even all these things together, and the fact that we had to plough our way, step by step, slowly through seas of mud could not entirely depress our spirits. We felt ourselves in the society of one another, to be in spite of everything, invincible in our common courage, unconquerable in our common resolution. The one sustained the other in these adventures.
"My prettiness," says I, "it is under embarrassing conditions such as these that we should endeavour to sustain ourselves with a few tender, amorous passages of love. I think I will pay you a compliment or two upon your beauty, if you will give me but a minute's time in which to rack my mind to find them."
"For your pretty speeches to be sincere, sir," says Cynthia, "they should be quite spontaneous."
"Here is one," says I. "The sunshine of your countenance lights up the morning's gloom."
"A common enough figure, I confess," says she, "which a hundred poets have better exprest."
"Here is another, then," says I, undaunted. "The solace of your companionship sweetens the bitter miles."
"Nay," says she, "I think no better of that trope than the first. It wants a poet to give an originality, a point and grace, to things of this sort."
"But every lover is a poet," says I triumphantly.
"I am deluded then," says Cynthia, "for if your love is measured by your poetry I am like to die of a broken heart. But after all, that last glib phrase of yours is but a poor sort of speech for a man to make to his mistress. A poet, as all the world knows, is but an embellisher of common things."
"A poet is more than that," says I. "A thousand times more. A poet is – A poet is – "
"A poet is?" says Cynthia archly.
"The human mind cannot express what a poet is," says I. "He is all, and he is nothing. He weaves a sovereign spell about material things. He can put a new glamour in the stars, although he cannot hold a candle to the sun. He is the airy nothing that can reveal the face of God to simple men."
"But what hath all this to do with Love?" says Cynthia. "And I confess I never suspected this phase to your character. I always held you for a common four-square kind of a fellow enough, by no means given to these sudden heats and violences, these sudden whimsies and nonsensicals."
"No more did I," says I ruefully. "But it is so like this wretched passion to take us in our weakest part, which in me, as you are ever the first to remind me, is the head."
"It is not such a wretched passion neither," says Cynthia, "if it is but left to itself. It is these low poets and people that debase it. Love is the noblest thing in the world, until your puny twopenny poets and the like sing of it, and prate of it, and write an advertisement of it, that they may earn enough to spend at the nearest tavern."
"Alas! mistress," says I, "you are too severe on the muse. There have been elegies composed to Love that could dignify even that sacred passion."
"All of which the sacred passion could very well have done without," says my didactic miss. "There is not a painter in the world, be he never so cunning, that can put a new colour in the sunset, nor is there an author of them all that can add a new rapture to a kiss."
"Body o' me," says I, "you are not a little right there."
If there is any vindication needed of the sex's incontestable prerogative to enjoy the last word in any argument, be it of the nature of metaphysics, reason or common practice, here is it to be found. We stopped in the middle of the road and concluded our discourse with a chaste salute. And I think there was a strain of poetry in us both as we did so. The weeping heavens smiled upon us; all the wet verdure of the spring was a sparkling face that laughed and greeted us. We went along refreshed and more cheerful of heart.
Yet it was a toilsome journey. The mud clogged our feet, the damp pervaded our clothes, and our unaccustomed fatigues of the last few days were beginning to tell upon us terribly. Never in all our lives had we given our feet such exercise. We had not walked much beyond an hour this morning before I noticed with something of a sinking heart that poor Cynthia was limping. At first these symptoms were hardly to be discerned, and when I taxed her with them, she denied them stoutly. But too soon were they revealed beyond a doubt. It was getting towards noon before my proud little miss would in any wise admit this to be the case, though. By then, however, she was so footsore that she could scarce drag one foot behind the other. Chancing to pass near a handrail bridge a little later, that spanned a small clear stream running over long floating moss and stones, nothing would content me but she should go and sit upon it, take off her shoes and stockings, and bathe her bruised feet by dangling them over the side. A little cottage nestling close at hand, fenced with box in front and apple-trees behind, thither I repaired to beg clean linen rags to wrap them in.
The cottage door was opened at my knock by a smiling, buxom housewife, who stood out upon a background of crowing babes. No sooner had I made my request than with cheerful energy, says she:
"Oh yes, sir, to be sure I can," and feeling that we were like to find a true friend in her, no sooner had I explained the occasion for it than she proved a friend indeed. Having procured these requisites with a bustling promptitude, she carried them to Cynthia and found her seated on the bridge as I had left her, bathing her toes in the cool sweetness of the stream. With many a "poor lamb!" and many a "deary, deary me!" she played the good Samaritan to my unlucky little one. She dried them, comforted them, and bound them up with all the honest grace of her great good nature. Never did I see a woman so brisk and motherly, and certainly never one so overflowing with true charity. When she had fulfilled her tender offices, and having kissed poor Cynthia on both cheeks in a most resounding manner, "because she was such a little beauty," she had us both go back with her to the cottage, that we might eat a bowl of curds and whey in the arbour cut in the laurel bushes, next the well, at the bottom of the garden.
Looking back on the scenes of our itinerary, this bustling, kindly housewife makes the fairest picture of them all. Can the great who dwell in palaces conceive the degree of simple happiness it is in the power of such a creature to bestow? Whenever subsequently, in an hour of gloom, I may have been led to doubt the essential goodness that lies buried in the hearts of our human kind, I insensibly recall the conduct of this honest woman on that wet spring morning when we came to her door afflicted of mind and body.
By gentle walking we were able to make many more miles that day. But a shadow had come over us. We had no longer the joyous intrepidity with which we had set out less than a week ago. A foreboding had come upon us. We could not hope to go much farther by our present mode. My little companion, strive as she might to conceal the dire fact, was rapidly being overcome. Her boots were wearing thin, she was already suffering much pain, and there was the sum of sevenpence left to us by which she could obtain her ease. We had not the heart to endeavour to increase it by blowing further on the flute. Besides, if the truth of that matter must be told, the stocks had given us a particular distaste for the gentle instrument. As the slow, cloud-laden hours passed to the occasional accompaniment of rain, with no glint of sunshine to relieve their drab monotony, it called for all the courage of which we had made a boast that morning to keep us from repining. The nearer we approached the evening the greater was our gloom. There was the eternal problem of food and shelter to be solved. The previous night our audacity had solved it for us. But in our present state we both felt quite incapable of furnishing the necessary spirit and effrontery for a repetition of that bold trick. Alas! our one desire was to be wafted by some magic into warmth and plenty that we might sup and fall asleep.
We spent our last pence at a hedge inn on our habitual repast of bread and cheese and ale. But the longer we lingered, the cheerless, wretched place appeared to heighten our dejection, so that we hailed the wet countryside as a relief when we walked out again upon it. But I cannot tell you how we dreaded the coming of night. The barren character of the landscape, and the few people and the fewer habitations that we came upon probably increased the depression of our spirits. Indeed, towards evening, the only human being that we encountered in several miles was a travelling tinker singing on a stile, and I think we could have wished to have been spared this meeting. In our forlorn state we regarded such an irresponsible gaiety in the light of a personal affront. But the dirty rogue had such a cheerful, jolly look that I was fain to accost him with my curiosity.
"I beg your pardon, sir," says I, "but why do you uplift your soul in merriment on such a dismal afternoon?"
The tinker looked at me suspiciously, and then at his bundle reposing at his feet. He evidently speculated as to what designs I could have upon it.
"It is a good world, my lad, that is why I sing," says he, "and you'd be singing too, I fancy, if this was your first day out o' jail."
However that might be I am sure we both envied the tinker his frame of mind. Our own was desperate indeed. There was nothing for it but to push on relentlessly, and to hope against hope for some happy chance. We were both utterly wearied and dispirited by this; no houses were near at hand; and the night was closing in. We were consoled in a slight degree with the thought that we were on a high road and that a shelter of one sort or another should not be far to seek. By what means we should be able to avail ourselves of it in our destitute state was another question.
In the very height of our distresses we suddenly came upon a wayside inn, and a scene of a violent and singular character was being enacted on the threshold. Two persons, a man and a woman of mean appearance, had evidently just been ejected from it, since they stood resentfully in the middle of the road with divers bundles containing their goods and chattels scattered around them. The landlord stood at the inn door, shaking his fist and declaiming his great indignation, whilst his wife, standing in a haven of security behind him, was giving rein to her own sentiments with neither hesitation nor uncertainty.