Charles Lever - A Day's Ride - A Life's Romance

“Where the – are you driving to, sir?” cried I, as a fellow with a brass-bound trunk in a hand-barrow came smash against my shin.

“Don’t you see, sir, the train is just starting?” said he, hastening on; and I now perceived that such was the case, and that I had barely time to rush down to the pay-office and secure my ticket.

“What class, sir?” cried the clerk.

“Which has she taken?” said I, forgetting all save the current of my own thoughts.

“First or second, sir?” repeated he, impatiently.

“Either, or both,” replied I, in confusion; and he flung me back some change and a blue card, closing the little shutter with a bang that announced the end of all colloquy.

“Get in, sir!”

“Which carriage?”

“Get in, sir!”

“Second-class? Here you are!” called out an official, as he thrust me almost rudely into a vile mob of travellers.

The bell rang out, and two snorts and a scream followed, then a heave and a jerk, and away we went As soon as I had time to look around me, I saw that my companions were all persons of an humble order of the middle class, – the small shopkeepers and traders, probably, of the locality we were leaving. Their easy recognition of each other, and the natural way their conversation took up local matters, soon satisfied me of this fact, and reconciled me to fall back upon my own thoughts for occupation and amusement This was with me the usual prelude to a sleep, to which I was quietly composing myself soon after. The droppings of the conversation around me, however, prevented this; for the talk had taken a discussional tone, and the differences of opinion were numerous. The question debated was, Whether a certain Sir Samuel Somebody was a great rogue, or only unfortunate? The reasons for either opinion were well put and defended, showing that the company, like most others of that class in life in England, had cultivated their faculties of judgment and investigation by the habit of attending trials or reading reports of them in newspapers.

After the discussion on his morality, came the question, Was he alive or dead?

“Sir Samuel never shot himself, sir,” said a short pluffy man with an asthma. “I ‘ve known him for years, and I can say he was not a man to do such an act.”

“Well, sir, the Ostrich and the United Brethren offices are both of your opinion,” said another; “they ‘ll not pay the policy on his life.”

“The law only recognizes death on production of the body,” sagely observed a man in shabby black, with a satin neckcloth, and whom I afterwards perceived was regarded as a legal authority.

“What’s to be done, then, if a man be drowned at sea, or burned to a cinder in a lime-kiln?”

“Ay, or by what they call spontaneous combustion, that does n’t leave a shred of you?” cried three objectors in turn.

“The law provides for these emergencies with its usual wisdom, gentlemen. Where death may not be actually proven it can be often inferred.”

“But who says that Sir Samuel is dead?” broke in the asthmatic man, evidently impatient at the didactic tone of the attorney. “All we know of the matter is a letter of his own signing, that when these lines are read I shall be no more. Now, is that sufficient evidence of death to induce an insurance company to hand over some eight or ten thousand pounds to his family?”

“I believe you might say thirty thousand, sir,” suggested a mild voice from the corner.

“Nothing of the kind,” interposed another; “the really heavy policies on his life were held by an old Cumberland baronet, Sir Elkanah Crofton, who first established Whalley in the iron trade. I ‘ve heard it from my father fifty times, when a child, that Sam Whalley entered Milford in a fustian jacket, with all his traps in a handkerchief.”

At the mention of Sir Elkanah Crofton, my attention was quickly excited; this was the uncle of my friends at the Rosary, and I was at once curious to hear more of him.

“Fustian jacket or not, he had a good head on his shoulders,” remarked one.

“And luck, sir; luck, which is better than any head,” sighed the meek man, sorrowfully.

“I deny that, deny it totally,” broke in he of the asthma. “If Sam Whalley hadn’t been a man of first-rate order, he never could have made that concern what it was, – the first foundry in Wales.”

“And what is it now, and where is he?” asked the attorney, triumphantly.

“At rest, I hope,” murmured the sad man.

“Not a bit of it, sir,” said the wheezing voice, in a tone of confidence; “take my word for it, he ‘s alive and hearty, somewhere or other, ay, and we ‘ll hear of him one of these days: he ‘ll be smelting metals in Africa, or cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Heaven knows what, or prime minister of one of those rajahs in India. He’s a clever dog, and he knows it too. I saw what he thought of himself the day old Sir Elkanah came down to Fairbridge.”

“To be sure, you were there that morning,” said the attorney; “tell us about that meeting.”

“It’s soon told,” resumed the other. “When Sir Elkanah Crofton arrived at the house, we were all in the garden. Sir Samuel had taken me there to see some tulips, which he said were the finest in Europe, except some at the Hague. Maybe it was that the old baronet was vexed at seeing nobody come to meet him, or that something else had crossed him, but as he entered the garden I saw he was sorely out of temper.

“‘How d’ye do, Sir Elkanah?’ said Whalley to him, coming up pleasantly. 'We scarcely expected you before dinner-time. My wife and my daughters,’ said he, introducing them; but the other only removed his hat ceremoniously, without ever noticing them in the least.

“‘I hope you had a pleasant journey, Sir Elkanah?’ said Whalley, after a pause, while, with a short jerk of his head, he made signs to the ladies to leave them.

“‘I trust I am not the means of breaking up a family party?’ said the other, half sarcastically. ‘Is Mrs. Whalley – ’

“‘Lady Whalley, with your good permission, sir,’ said Samuel, stiffly.

“‘Of course; how stupid of me! I should remember you had been knighted. And, indeed, the thought was full upon me as I came along, for I scarcely suppose that if higher ambitions had not possessed you, I should find the farm buildings and the outhouse in the state of ruin I see them.’

“‘They are better by ten thousand pounds than the day on which I first saw them; and I say it in the presence of this honest townsman here, my neighbor,’ – meaning me , – ‘that both you and they were very creaky concerns when I took you in hand.’

“I thought the old Baronet was going to have a fit at these words, and he caught hold of my arm and swayed backwards and forwards all the time, his face purple with passion.

“‘Who made you, sir? who made you?’ cried he, at last, with a voice trembling with rage.

“‘The same hand that made ns all,’ said the other, calmly. ‘The same wise Providence that, for his own ends, creates drones as well as bees, and makes rickety old baronets as well as men of brains and industry.’

“‘You shall rue this insolence; it shall cost you dearly, by Heaven!’ cried out the old man, as he gripped me tighter. ‘You are a witness, sir, to the way I have been insulted. I ‘ll foreclose your mortgage – I ‘ll call in every shilling I have advanced – I ‘ll sell the house over your head – ’

“‘Ay! but the head without a roof over it will hold itself higher than your own, old man. The good faculties and good health God has given me are worth all your title-deeds twice told. If I walk out of this town as poor as the day I came into it, I ‘ll go with the calm certainty that I can earn my bread, – a process that would be very difficult for you when you could not lend out money on interest.’