The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore, bart., M.P., formerly known as «Tommy Upmore»

Meanwhile, the Earl of Counterpagne was lounging at the back of our deep pew; for he was very lazy, and had taken a great deal to drink last night, as I knew by his behaviour at the billiard-table; and being out of sight of Mr. Arkles, and his flock, he was stopping his ears with his dainty fingers, to shut out the "horrible row," as he called it, of their hearty, but untutored chanting. And throughout the reading of the Psalms, there he stayed, putting up his feet; which I could see, vexed Laura.

The First Lesson happened to be the twelfth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel, and Mr. Arkles began to read it beautifully; for he had a fine voice, and loved brave English. But before he had gone very far, my lord, being weary of his lounge, stood up to take a stretch, and have a look at the inferior people; among whom there were some bright comely girls, not unwilling to catch a great nobleman's glance. The clergyman read in a loud clear voice, as if himself were the prophet —

"The man, that hath done this, shall surely die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold; because he did this thing; and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David – "

"Thou art the man."

A far louder voice than Mr. Arkles' shouted these words, like thunder; and the big man pointed his staff, at the pale face of Lord Counterpagne.

"Yon stands the man, that made a harlot of my daughter."

"Churchwardens, I call upon you to remove that person;" the clergyman said, as soon as he recovered, from the breathless astonishment that filled the church.

Two elderly men arose, to do his bidding; but before they could get near him, the big man clapped his broad hat on his head, and walked out slowly through the open door, by which he had been standing.

Then my lord turned round to us, with a very ghastly smile, and said aloud, "It is only some poor madman; but he ought to be taken into custody."

Laura, who had become as pale as death, shrank from him to my side; and I took her hands, in fear that she might faint; but she did not do that, though her hands trembled coldly in mine, and a large tear rolled down either fluttering cheek.

To the rest of the service we paid small heed, though going through the forms of it; and it was all in vain, that our companion tried to catch our glances, and to smile it off.

We three were the last to leave the church; and Mr. Arkles very kindly followed us from the vestry, (into which he had called the churchwardens) and told us at the churchyard gate, how sorry he was for the disgraceful scene, and the alarm of the young lady. Then he shook hands with her, and lifted his hat very stiffly to Lord Counterpagne, and left us at the eastern lodge.

As we entered the avenue, leading to the Towers, which was more than half a mile in length, the Earl began to walk, at a pace very different from his wonted dawdle, and seemed to be casting his eyes, in a nervous manner, between the great trunks of the trees. The servants of the house were far in front, sometimes in sight, and sometimes hidden by the dips of the land, and the turns of the road, whose beauty he did not appreciate. This, however, I was capable of doing; and I did not see why we should be in a hurry, because his lordship was perhaps in a fright. So I said, to break the solemn silence (which seemed to have fallen upon us somehow, after a little weak talk about the weather),

"Why should we go at such a headlong rate? The day is very warm; and why should we endeavour to beat it, at its own business?"

Laura, who was walking between us, gave me a sweet little glance, almost the first she had ventured to exchange with me, since that occurrence in the church; but Lord Counterpagne said —

"Oh, very well. I forgot that you had not recovered your activity, Upmore; after all that business, when you were the pillars of Hercules, or somebody? Who was it – Atlas? You are fresh from Oxford. A remarkable instance of the unexpected. Your principal gift is of flight, I believe; though you have never favoured me with a specimen."

His manner was spiteful, to the last degree; possibly because I had not sided with him, throughout what I considered the confusion of a blackguard.

"Your lordship may envy me that gift," I said, with more irritation than I ought to have shown, in the presence of gentle Laura; "but I have never yet used it, to escape those I have injured."

Before I could answer his furious stare, a man of great substance appeared, from behind a big tree, and stood before us. In one hand he had the staff, which had given so much point to his Scriptural denunciation; and he held the other open, with great fingers bent, and a rapid growth of tendency, towards the collar of the Earl.

"Mind what you're about," I said, going up to him, with every expectation of being tossed into the hole of the tree, that had concealed him; and I pointed to Laura; and he said —

"Roight, lad; teak t' yoong leddy a waa, if tho wool. A foo pri'ate words, is aw' oi ston here fur."

"Shall I come back, to help you?" I called out to Lord Counterpagne, as I hurried off with Laura, to get her out of sight of it; and although he was in a very low ebb of heart (as his face, and legs showed), he had the courage to say —

"No. This is a private affair – an attempt to sponge on me. Fellow, take your hands off."

"To sponnge on e, eh?" I heard the loud voice roar; "ool't lack a mony sponnges, afore oi've a dooed wi' e."

And desirous as I was to know, how this was to happen, I durst not look round; because of darling Laura, who was terrified so that I had no resource, but to help her along, with both comfort and support.

"Oh, what does that mean?" she asked, with the saddest forebodings in her tearful eyes; and I answered,

"It must be the way, the grasshoppers are always going on, in this hot weather. It is the way they make love, you know, to one another."

"It sounds much heavier than a grasshopper," she whispered, as a yet louder stroke awoke the echoes; "and if that's the way they make love, – I am sure, it is not at all what I should like."

"Oh that I knew what way of doing it you do like!" I murmured even in that crisis, and she seemed not to hear me, except with her cheeks.

It struck me, that she should have been more anxious, for me to hurry back to the succour of the Earl. But, (either from not knowing what was toward, or from a readiness to keep me out of danger, or even perhaps some resignation to the code of justice) she took me quite up to the steps of the terrace, before she could at all dispense with me. And though I ran back at full speed, with three or four men after me, to the spot where I had left Lord Counterpagne; there was no evil-doer there, for us to apprehend, unless it was my lord himself. And we found him in such a very sad condition, that we were all afraid to lift him up.

CHAPTER XXX.

PERFIDY

Anything of that kind makes me sad; because I am in such a struggle to believe, what everybody now has settled long ago – and the younger he is, the more he feels it – that all our forefathers, in comparison with us, were low savages, fools, and brute beasts of the earth. And doubtless, to this perception of the nature, from which we ourselves descend – or rather, by some gift (more marvellous a thousandfold than mine) ascend, tower above their wretched loins, and soar into the seventy-seventh heaven, or at least as much as we have left of it undemolished – to this pure disdain of the brutes who begot us, are due our strong yearning towards, and reverend faith in, the great father of us all, – a little snail, without a head.

But so long as my nature is so disloyal to that great All-father, as to want a hat; thoughts will come into that superfluous, and therefore universally weak, part of the present human being, which goes into the chimney-pot – evolved, alas! as a penalty for that disloyalty. Oh, that Father Mollusk could only have foreseen a tithe of the woes, which the evolution of a head would entail upon his headstrong descendants! Unwise was he in his generation; and some Satan must already have been in posse, or why did Mother Mollusk – But such questions are not Science; which allows no question of her bashful physiology.

Happier would have been my position now, if the survival of the fittest had omitted me, or at least had restored me to the patriarchal state of headless existence, at the bottom of the sea. All birds are now proved to have been evolved from lizards; which accounts for my complicity with the Saurian race, and their influence upon my destiny. And another piercing genius has certified us, that the canine race, being threatened with extinction, after milliards of years, by hydrophobia,2 lay down, and eccn[=e]sted the protoplastic flea; who took to his labour of love, with congenital tripudiation, and rescued the author of his origin from impending annihilation thus.

Hydrophobia was the product of ennui, of lying chained up in the sun, and meditating too profoundly, as all dogs do. Thus, a dread of the depths of reflection was instituted in the mind of Towser, which developed, in the intellect of his descendants, into hydrophobia; and must have undone them to the ends of their tails, without the evolution of the genial flea. He, with an infusion of fresh blood, sprang forth, developed, his saltatory powers, by development of long legs – or vice versâ, for I am not sure which way that link goes, – and has ever since satisfied the exigency that developed him, by preserving every son of a dog thence generated, from the paraphrenitis of nothing to scratch.

"Acrior illumCura donat."

I thought of all this, (though without any room for the moral lesson it so well conveys) as I came upon old Grip, spread out largely in the sun, upon the pet flower-bed, upon the pet lawn, of that elegant Rus in urbe, as the house-agent called it – "Placid Bower." Grip had caught a lizard, which he did not care to eat, getting more in the trencher way, than he could away with, and finding his teeth more and more like a hay-rake, which has done its work upon a score of farms, by August. But it was against all the principles of his life, and the time-honoured policy of the nation he belonged to, to let go a hold he once had laid. And yet, as I could see by the twitching of his shoulder, and munch of his lip, he could scarcely tell how to defer the crisis, and climax, of a thoroughly exhaustive scratch. For no one durst wash him, except myself; and I had never been near him, for six hot weeks.

Poor old chap! It made all my low spirits go lower, to think that he could never more hear me, or see me, until I came as nigh him, as the length he once could jump. There was no need to chain him up any more, for fear of his flying at some visitor. He had lived in the world such a length of time now, that he cared not to strive any more against vice; unless it came meddling with his own dear belongings. All that old interest, of sticking up for honesty, he had long since resigned to his Oxford son, Grapple; whom he now approached with great consideration, through the loss of his teeth, and the stiffness of his loins. Grapple was bodily as good as Grip had been, in his fighting hey-day, neither was his pluck inferior; but the difference between them, in warmth of heart, and faith, and steadfast loyalty, was almost as great as that grown up, between our grandfathers and ourselves.

But I did not expect, well aware as I was of his staunch, and well-proven fidelity, such warmth, and I might say such wildness of welcome, as the ancient dog afforded me. When I called out "Grip," he pricked up his ears, as if he could never more believe them; and then he turned his poor eyes, spread with film; and looked at me, as if I were a memory. Beginning to get an idea of some bliss, he slowly arose, and shook himself; but still with his dull eyes set on me, and a tremulous inquiry of his worn-out tail.

"Grip," I said, "Grip, what an old stupe you are!" and the sudden joy made a young dog of him. With a mighty bark, such as he never expected to compass again, he leaped up at me, and put his great ossified paws on my breast, and offered me the delicate refreshment of his tongue. Then he capered about, and made such a proclamation, that the servants rushed out; and seeing me rushed back, to get things a little tidy, before they let me in.

I found that my mother was still from home, but expected to come back that night, and had written, to have the best bedroom prepared, for an invalid gentleman whom she would bring. This would, of course, be her brother William, of whom I had fully thought to hear as dead, and was greatly pleased to find it otherwise, having kind memories of him, and being uncommonly short of relatives.

As there was still a good piece of daylight, and it seemed dull to sit there by myself, I resolved to reward the faithful Grip, by taking him to see his native land, as he fairly might consider Maiden Lane. So we set forth together to call on Mr. Chumps, who still carried on his nutritious business, and wore the blue apron more stoutly than ever.

"Ha, my lad!" he cried, as I opened the shop-door, which rang a sharp tocsin against beef and mutton-reivers, "you are come just in time for a glass of the fizzing. Have you heard the good news? No, I s'pose not; you've been down among all them swells, so long. Wonder almost, you would deign to look us up. Go on into the parlour, with the missus, and our Linda. In ten minutes thirty seconds, I shall put the shutters up, and wouldn't take 'em down for the Dook, or his Royal Highness. Leastways, I might for H.R.H., if he were going to give a supper-party; but not for his Grace, – won't have shanks with his legs. Bill will be back in ten minutes; go in, lad."

In the parlour I found Mrs. Chumps, and her daughter Belinda, and some one else sitting in the corner, who seemed to be doubtful about turning round, at the sound of my voice, or whatever it might be. The room was rather gloomy, from a balcony over the windows, and the evening now set in; and I thought, what a very shy young lady they have got! Or perhaps, she has had too much tea and cake, and is gone fast asleep in the corner. Not to disturb her, I sat down far away.

"Poor dear!" said Mrs. Chumps, who was looking very well, and you might say ten years younger, with a new front to her hair, and a pink binding to her bosom, and a pair of long-skirted kid-gloves on her lap, and a juvenile jacket with Bohemian scollops, hung behind her, as if she had just pulled it off – which she never could have done, unless born in it. "Poor dear, she naturally feels it so deeply. Oh, Tommy Upmore, you men never feel!"

"Don't we?" I replied, while wondering who the poor dear was, and what her feelings were. "Mrs. Chumps, if you had only seen the stroke of our eight, that beat Cambridge three years running, when he was compelled to have his wise tooth out, and he had only cut it two years, I can assure you, and the dentist attributed its state entirely to the way the wind came over his left shoulder, and he begged me to support him with my moral presence, that was how he put it, from his demoralisation – "

"How exactly you do talk like your dear mother!" Mrs. Chumps answered, and rather shut me up; for a Bachelor of Arts ought to do more than that. "I dare say the young man felt that deep enough; and my very best sympathies would be with him, having had out, from first to last, five and forty of 'em."

"Ma!" cried Miss Belinda, "Now how can you be so wicked? Mr. Upmore knows better, when he sees them all there. And as for five and forty, and at fifty shillings each – oh, Mr. Upmore, how many have we got?"

"That depends upon circumstances," I replied, for fear of being wrong, having never been told at Oxford, nor yet by Mr. Cope, nor yet by Dr. Rumbelow, nor any of the Classics I had dealt with yet. "Some have got more, and some have less, no doubt."

"Never mind that;" Mrs. Chumps resumed, – "such subjects are meant for young people, or those who have never known what ill health means. But, my dear Tommy, the exact sum is twelve thousand, one hundred, and twenty-five pounds, deducting the duty of three per cent.; and hard it is to have to break the even money. But the poor dear does her best to feel resigned; and the other will have to pay six per cent.; that's one comfort, at any rate. And lucky she may count herself to get it at that reckoning, when the whole twenty-five should have come this way. But there, we must be easier to please, as I'm sure has always been my motto. It will fetch me back to the Church, it will; just when I was going to join the Congregation. They provides in the Church such a tenderness of feeling, as I first learned out of the Catechism. N. or M. it says, and he was both, for his name was 'Nathaniel Matthew,' and he sat at the receipt of Customs. And my Godfather, and Godmother, in my Baptism, wherein I was made an Inheritor. There is no such fine feeling among them Dissenters. Poor dear, it is a sad blow for her! There was tears in her eyes when she told us of it, and no Mammon of unrighteousness could stop them rolling. My son William, who was first of all the Colleges, is gone to the lawyer now, to give the proper orders, as a Barrister of Lincoln Inn is bound to do. She have just dropped in to talk about the mourning; her dear mamma says black; but her mind is too distressful, and not at all suitable to her bright complexion. Lavender, to my mind, is as deep as need be; and the poor dear never seen him till his funeral, that took place at Highgate yesterday. Give us your opinion, Mr. Upmore, if you please; after coming from all their Ladyships."

"But I don't understand, Mrs. Chumps," I answered, wondering at my own stupidity. "I have not the least idea, what the circumstances are."

"No more don't I, altogether. The whole have come such a sudden blow to us. Belinda, darling, run and fetch the papers. Oh, bless the girl, she's gone without the keys, I do believe!"

Mrs. Chumps laid down her gloves, and began hunting in her pockets; then hurried from the room upon her daughter's track, while I sat bewildered. Then a sad sigh issued from the gloomy corner, and a melancholy whisper followed it.

"Oh, Tommy, Tommy, will you ever forgive me? For years, you were the chosen of my heart. But – but you slighted me, you know you did; ever since you became so rich, and grand. Whatever has happened is all your own fault – and – and he is so many sizes bigger."

"Polly Windsor!" I exclaimed, going up to look at her. "Have you been there, all that time, and never spoke a word to me?"

"Oh, how could I do it in the presence of spectators? And I was so afraid, that you would make a dreadful scene, when you heard of all this money, and my perfidy. Oh no, you must never call it that, dear Tommy. You would break my poor heart. When I think of the many times, we have settled almost everything, sitting in the cleanest of the cinder-holes – my dress, and yours, and what the breakfast was to be, and where we would have our holidays – and now, oh now, you can be nothing more to me than the best man, if they even allow you to be that. But I shall insist upon it, and Bill, in return, may settle all about the bridesmaids. Oh, here they come again! For my sake, control your feelings."

I found no difficulty at all in doing this, and was heartily glad when I got at last to the kernel of the story, which was simply this. Mrs. Windsor, who had always spoken very highly of her grand connexions, had an uncle well posted in the Custom-House, and for many years enjoying fine opportunities – such as they seldom seem to get there now – of making due provision, for the benefit of himself. This thoroughly honest old gentleman contrived, by strict economy, and frugal speculations, to die of the value of more than half a plum; and having neither chick nor stick to care for, had left the sum of five and twenty thousand pounds, to be divided equally between his two God-daughters, Polly Windsor, and another yet more distantly related, whose name I have forgotten, but can find out if required. It must not be supposed for a moment, that these facts had any influence whatever on the heart of our Bill Chumps, which had found its purer half, and more exalted aim, in Polly, ever since he passed his little-go. Still, there were so many of the Windsor family, and soap had been so dull of late, and candles had looked down so much, that the paternal purveyor of meat, (more stubborn of fibre than a Clare-market steak), steeled his heart, and his block-knife, against an alliance, which would cost a fellowship of three hundred pounds a year.

Now this Custom-house money had redressed all that. Bill, who was sure to have his way in the end, as he always had done hitherto, was welcome to have it at once, with the blessing of the slaying and the boiling interest. I alone was to be left in the cold; and sympathy was felt for me, whenever I was present. But no sooner was I gone, than I found out once, by coming back sharply for my walking-stick, that everybody laughed, and made a good joke of it; as if I had been served quite right, and taught not to give myself airs – which I am sure I never did! And this imbued me with such a sense of wrong, that I declined to be the bride's best man at the wedding, any more than I would be Bill's bridesmaid; and instead of feeling any envy for him, I was sorry; being morally certain that he would pay out for it. For Polly Windsor's mother had a temper of her own; as my dear father (a very sound judge of women) had said in my presence, at least fifty times, when she had taken up her glass with her gloves on, a thing no right-minded woman ever thinks of doing. And such things can seldom, or I might say never, be thrown off in the female line.

However, it was no concern of mine, what sort of a handful Bill Chumps had got; and the public will perceive, that I should not have gone into this question at all, as I have been obliged to do, except for the stories put about, concerning my share in the matter – which, as you see, was none! But no sooner does a man become highly distinguished in politics – as I have been compelled to do – than everything he has handled (from the time he used his coral) is raked up, and ransacked, and rifled against him. Fifty times, have I been charged at elections, and five times in the House itself, by Irish members, with having jilted the daughter of a brother, and far superior, soap-maker to my father! It is below my dignity, to explain such matters, at the crisis of a very important debate, or even when they are throwing eggs at me. But I do hope, that now having set down the facts, with every word ready to be sworn to, I have heard the last of that vile calumny.

CHAPTER XXXI.

FREE TRADE

When one has been wronged by the outer world, the sooner he gets back to the bosom of his family, the likelier will he be to bear it well; and as soon as the Champagne was finished, I made off. It was useless to be in any hurry with old Grip, for he knew how undignified it is to pant, though the formal cause thereof be portliness; so that by the time we both got back to "Placid Bower," my mother had been at home more than an hour, and had packed Uncle William off to bed.

"Oh, darling Tommy, so weak he is," she told me, as soon as we had heard all about one another, and finished dinner; "I have only got to hold up my finger, and he does it. And I know the day when it was – 'Get away, Sophy;' or 'Do you think I'd put up with such – something – rubbish?' or 'Pack up my traps, if you want to try that game.' And he seems to have something on his mind, that he cannot quite bring himself to tell me, in the few times when he is at all fit to do it. You must understand, that he goes up and down pretty regular, according to the time of day, whenever the weather keeps side with it. Let him have his breakfast, and get up at his leisure, and have the barber in to shave him and the doctor to tell him that his pulse is better, and then let him sit, and see the sun come in, even through a shrubbery of chimney-pots, and tell him that he shall have one pipe, supposing he manages to eat his dinner well, and you should see how happy, and how smiling, he lies back. But, as soon as the dusk comes on, and the daylight goes, and we can find no star to show him, but only dull lamps in the narrowness of the streets, then he seems to lose all hope altogether, and turn over on his back, and put his hands together. And he says, 'Let me die, Sophy; I should like to die, if I thought there was any hope of going up to heaven.' And I say to him, 'William, don't think of such dreadful things; you are not an old man yet, you know.' And then he looks at me, more pitiful than you could endure, if you had known what a lively boy he was; and he doesn't say another word, as if it was all useless, but sighs till you can see his great ribs shake. Oh, Tommy, he brings me down so low sometimes, that I feel only fit to see a clergyman."