Thereby Hangs a Tale. Volume One

“Tried that there game at a plate-glass winder t’other day,” said Sam, shouting over his shoulder as he left the yard. “He’d ha’ done it, too, if it hadn’t been for a lamp-post.”

Sam and his steed went gently out of Grey’s Inn Lane towards Pentonville, where, in a little quiet street, Mrs Jenkles resided, and Sam began musing as he went along —

“I smelt that there stuff in the cupboard, and meant to ask her what it was, but I forgot. On’y to think of her making that up, and taking it to poor Buddy’s little bairn! Well, she’s a good sort, is the missus, on’y she will be so hard on me about a drop o’ beer. ’Old that there ’ead still, will yer? What are yer lookin’ arter, there? Oh! that cats-meat barrer. Ah! yer may well shy at that, Ratty; I don’t wonder at it. Now, then, get on, old boy, the missus ’ll be waiting.”

On reaching Spring Place, where Sam dwelt, the horse objected. He was sawing along in a straightforward way, when Sam drew one rein, with the consequence that the horse’s head came round, his long neck bending till the animal’s face was gazing at him in a dejected, lachrymose fashion: Ratty seeming to say, as plainly as looks would express it, “What are you doing?” while all the time the legs went straight forward up Pentonville Hill.

They had got twenty yards past Spring Place before Sam could pull the horse up; and then he had to get down to take it by the head and turn it in a very ignominious fashion.

“Jest opposite a public, too,” said Sam. “I never did see such a haggravating beast as you are, Ratty. Here, come along. It aint no wonder as fellows drinks, with a place offering ’em the stuff every five minutes of their lives, and when they’ve got a Ratty to lead ’em right up to it. Come on, will yer?”

Mrs Jenkles was standing at the door ready, in a blue bonnet and red Paisley shawl – for she was a woman of her word. She had said that she would go up and see those people, and Sam had promised to drive her.

Going the Rounds

Fin was quite right. They had not gone above a couple of hundred yards down the lane, with Mr Mervyn between them, swinging his empty soup tin, when they became aware of a loud whistling, as of some one practising a polka. Then it would cease for a few moments, and directly after begin again.

“There’s somebody,” said Fin; and then, turning a sharp corner, they came suddenly on Mr Frank Pratt, perched in a sitting posture on the top of a huge, round lith of granite, with his back to them, and his little legs stretching out almost at right angles. He was in his threatened tweeds, a natty little deerstalker’s hat was cocked on one side of his head; in one hand he held a stick, and in the other a large pipe, from which he drew refreshment between the strains of the polka he tried to whistle.

Mr Frank Pratt was evidently enjoying the beauty of the place after his own particular fashion; for, being a short man, he had a natural love for elevated places. As a boy, he had delighted in climbing trees, and sitting in the highest fork that would bear him, eating cakes or munching apples; as a man, cakes and apples had given way to extremely black pipes, in company with which he alternately visited the top of the Monument, the Duke of York’s column, and the golden gallery of Saint Paul’s, where he regretted that the cost was eighteen-pence to go any higher. In these places, where it was strictly forbidden, he indulged in surreptitious smokes, from which his friends deduced the proposition that if not the cakes, probably the apples had been stolen.

The tail stone then being handy, Mr Pratt was enjoying himself, when he suddenly became aware of steps behind, and hopped down in a most ungraceful fashion to stare with astonishment so blank, that by the time he had raised his hat Fin had gone by with her chin raised in the air, and a very disdainful look upon her countenance, and her sister, with a slightly heightened colour, had plunged into conversation with Mr Mervyn.

Pratt stood half paralysed for a few moments, watching the party, until a turn in the lane hid them from sight, and then he refilled and lit his pipe, from which the burning weed had fallen.

“It’s a mistake,” he said at last, between tremendous puffs at his pipe. “It’s impossible. I don’t believe it. One might call it a hallucination, only that the beardless female face is so similar in one woman to another that a man easily makes a mistake. Those cannot be the same girls that we saw at the steeplechase – it isn’t possible; but there is a resemblance, certainly; and, treating the thing philosophically, I should say here we have the real explanation of what is looked upon as infidelity in the male being.”

A few puffs from the pipe, and then Mr Pratt reclimbed to his perch upon the stone.

“I’ll carry that out, and then write it down as a position worthy of argument. Yes, to be sure. Here it is. A man falls in love – say, for the sake of argument, at first sight, with a pretty girl, quite unknown to him before, upon a racecourse. Symptoms: a feeling of sympathetic attraction; a throbbing of the pulses; and the heart beating bob and go one. Say he gets to know the girl; is engaged to her; and is then separated by three or four hundred miles.”

A few more puffs, and sundry nods of the head, and then Mr Pratt went on.

“He there encounters another girl, whose face and general appearance are so much like the face and general appearance of girl number one, that his secondary influences – to wit, heart, pulses, and sympathies generally – immediately give signals; love ensues, and he declares and is accepted by girl number two, while girl number one says he is unfaithful. The man is not unfaithful; it is simply an arrangement of Nature, and he can’t help himself. Infidelity, then, is the same thing in a state of change. Moral: Nature has no business to make women so much alike.”

Mr Pratt got down once more from his perch, and began to stroll up the lane, to encounter Trevor at the end of a few minutes.

“Did you meet any one?” was the inquiry.

“Yes,” said Pratt, “a gentleman and two ladies.”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“Did you not know them?”

“Ah!” said Pratt, “then you, too, noticed the similarity of feature, did you?”

“Similarity?”

“Yes; wonderfully like the ladies we met at the steeplechase, were they not?”

Richard Trevor looked hard in his friend’s face for a moment, and then they walked on side by side; for at a turn of the lane they met the young keeper, who had so suddenly changed the aspect of the encounter on the course.

“Ah, Humphrey!” said Trevor, “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ll have a walk round the preserves.”

The young keeper touched his hat, changed the double gun from one shoulder of his well-worn velveteen coat to the other, whistled to a setter, and led the way to a stone stile.

“Another curious case of similarity of feature,” said Trevor, laughing.

“Well, no – I’ll give in now,” said Pratt; “but I say, Dick, old fellow, ought coincidences like this to occur out of novels?”

“Never mind that,” said Trevor, “the keeper here, who used to be my playmate as a boy, was as much astonished as I was – weren’t you, Humphrey?”

“Well, sir,” said the young man, “when I see you th’ other morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes like, that the gentleman who’d pummelled that fellow was the one I’d come up to London to meet. I saw you, too, sir,” he said, touching his hat to Pratt.

“Yes, my man,” said Pratt, “and felt my toe. I’m sorry to find you did, for you’ve blown up one of the most beautiful propositions I ever made in my life.”

“Well, now then,” said Trevor, “I’ll see about matters with you, Lloyd; but, by the way, you had better be Humphrey, on account of your father.”

“Yes, sir; Humphrey, please, sir,” said the young man.

“Well, now then, as we go on,” said Trevor, “if it don’t bore you, Pratt, we’ll have a talk about farm matters.”

“Won’t bore me,” said Pratt; “I’m going in for the country gentleman while I stay.”

“Well, then, Humphrey, how are the crops!”

“Well, sir,” said Humphrey. “Ah, Juno! what are you sniffing after there?” This to the young dog, which seemed to have been born with a mission to push its head up rabbit burrows too small for the passage. “Well, sir, begging your pardon, but that dog’s took more looking after than e’er a one I ever had.”

“All right, go on,” said Trevor, following the man across a broad, rock-sided ditch, with a little brook at the bottom.

“Well, sir,” said the keeper, “the corn is – ”

“Here, I say, hold hard a minute! This isn’t Pall Mall, Trevor,” shouted Pratt. “How the deuce am I to get over that place?”

“Jump, man,” cried Trevor, laughing and looking back. “That’s nothing to some of our ditches.”

Pratt looked at the ditch, then down at his little legs, and then blew out his cheeks.

“Risk it,” he said, laconically; and, stepping back a few yards, he took a run, jumped, came short, and had to scramble up the bank, a little disarranged, but smiling and triumphant. “All right,” he said, “go on.”

“Corn is, on the whole, a fair crop, sir,” said Humphrey.

“And barley?”

“Plenty of that too, sir. But I’ve a deal of trouble with trespassers, sir.”

“How’s that?” said Trevor, looking round at the bright, rugged hill and dale, with trees all aglow with the touch of autumn’s hand.

“You see, sir, it’s the new people,” said the keeper.

“What new people?”

“The old gentleman as bought Tolcarne, sir.”

“Well, what of him?” said Trevor, rather anxiously.

“Well, sir, he’s a magistrate and a Sir, and a great City of London man, and he wants to be quite the squire. The very first thing he does is to get two men to work on the estate, and who does he get but that Dick Darley and Sam Kelynack; and a nice pair they are, as you may know, sir.”

“Seeing that I’ve been away for years, Humphrey, I don’t know,” said Trevor.

“Well, sir, they was both turned out of their last places – one for a bit o’ poaching, and the other for being always on the drink. They know I don’t like ’em – both of ’em,” said Humphrey, with the veins swelling in his white forehead; “and no sooner do they get took on, than they begin to worry me.”

“How?” said Trevor, smiling.

“Trespassing on my land, sir – I mean yours, sir, begging your pardon, sir. They will do it, too, sir. You see, there’s a bit of land at the corner where Penreife runs right into the Tolcarne estate – sort of tongue o’ land, sir – and to save going round, they make a path right across there, sir, over our bit of pasture.”

“Put up a fence, Humphrey,” said Trevor.

“I do, sir, and bush it, and set up rails; but they knocks ’em down, and tramples all over the place. Sir Hampton’s got an idea that he’s a right to that bit, as his land comes nigh surrounding it, and that makes ’em so sarcy.”

“Well, we must see to it,” said Trevor. “I want to be good friends with all my neighbours.”

“Then you’ve cut out your work,” said Pratt, drily.

“You won’t be with Sir Hampton, sir, you may reckon on that,” said Humphrey. “Lady Rea is a kind, pleasant lady enough, and the young ladies is very nice, sir, and he’s been civil enough to me; but he upsets everybody nearly – him and his sister.”

“Never mind about that,” said Trevor, checking him. “I wish to be on good terms with my neighbours, and if there be any trespass – any annoyance from Sir Hampton’s people – tell me quietly, and I will lay the matter before their master.”

“Or we might get up a good action for trespass,” said Pratt. “But, by the way,” he said, stopping short, and sticking one finger on his forehead, “is this Sir Hampton the chuffy old gentleman we saw at the steeplechase?”

“Yes, sir; and as told me I might get up on the box-seat. That was him, you know, as that blackguard prodded with his stick.”

“Phew!” whistled Pratt. “I say, Dick,” he whispered, “the old chap did not see us under the best of auspices.”

“No; it’s rather vexing,” was the reply.

They walked on from dense copse to meadow, through goodly fields of grain, and down in deep little vales, with steep sides covered with fern, bramble, and stunted pollard oaks.

“Poor youth!” said Pratt, and stopped to mop his forehead. “How low-spirited you must feel to be the owner of such a place. It’s lovely. Nature’s made it very beautiful; but no wonder – see what practice she has had.”

Trevor laughed, and Humphrey smiled, saying —

“If you come a bit farther this way, sir, there’s a capital view of the house.”

Pratt followed the man; and there, at about half a mile distance, on the slope of a steep hill, was the rugged, granite-built seat – Penreife – half ancient, half modern; full of buttresses, gables, awkward chimney-stacks, and windows of all shapes, with the ivy clustering over it greenly, and a general look of picturesque comfort that no trimly-built piece of architecture could display. The house stood at the end of one of the steep valleys running up from the sea, which shone in the autumn sun about another half-mile farther, with grey cottages clustering on the cliff, and a little granite-built harbour, sheltering some half a dozen duck-shaped luggers and a couple of yachts.

“Ah,” said Pratt, “that’s pretty! Beats Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street all to fits. Is that your master’s yacht?”

“The big ’un is, sir – the Sea Launce,” said Humphrey; “the little ’un’s Mr Mervyn’s – the Swallow.”

“By the way, who is this Mr Mervyn?” said Trevor, who had sauntered up.

“Well, sir,” said Humphrey, taking off his hat and rubbing his brown curls, “I don’t kinder know what he is. He’s been in the navy, I think, for he’s a capital sailor; but he’s quite the gentleman, and wonderful kind to the poor people, and he lives in that little white house the other side of the cliff.”

“I can’t see any white house,” said Pratt.

“No, sir, you can’t see it, ’cause it’s the other side of the cliff; but that’s his flagstaff rigged up, as you can see, with the weathercock on it, and – Here, hi! you, sir, come out of that! Here, Juno, lass, come along.”

“Has he gone mad?” cried Pratt.

For Humphrey had suddenly set off down a steep slope towards a meadow, and went on shouting with all his might.

“No,” said Trevor, shading his eyes, “there’s a man – two men with billhooks there – labourers, I should think. Come along, or perhaps there’ll be a quarrel; and I can’t have that.”

The Lion at Home

Sir Hampton Rea was out that morning, and very busy.

He had been round to the stables and seen the four horses that had arrived the night before, and bullied the coachman because he had said that one of them had a splinter in its leg, and that the mare meant for Miss Rea had rather a nasty look about the eye.

“You’re an ass, Thomas,” he said.

The man touched his hat, and Sir Hampton walked half across the stable-yard.

“Er-rum!” he ejaculated, half turning; and the coachman came up, obsequiously touching his hat again.

“Those horses, Thomas, were examined by a veterinary surgeon.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man.

“Er-rum! And I chose them and examined them myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve made a mistake, Thomas.”

“Very like, sir,” said the man. “Very sorry, sir.”

Sir Hampton did not respond, but gave a sharp glance round the very new-looking stable-yard and buildings, saw nothing to find fault about; and then, clearing his throat, went into the garden as the coachman winked at the groom, and the groom raised a wen upon his cheek by the internal application of his tongue.

“Er-rum! – Sanders!” cried the knight.

And something that had worn the aspect of a huge boa constrictor in cord trousers, crawling into a melon-frame, slowly drew itself back, stood upright, and revealed a yellow-faced man with a scarlet head and whiskers.

Perhaps it is giving too decided a colour to the freckles which covered Mr Sanders’s face to say they were yellow, and to his hair to say it was scarlet; but they certainly approached those hues, “Er-rum! Sanders, come here,” said Sir Hampton.

Sanders leisurely closed the melon-frame and raised the light a few inches with a piece of wood, and then slowly approached his master, to stop in front of him and scrape his feet upon a spade.

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