Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - The Caxtons - A Family Picture — Complete

While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord called “No mistake,” two pedestrians, passing the same road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to my years.

The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin dotted with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a “life-preserver.” As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord’s ale, in that wig there was “no mistake;” it was brought (after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and cheeks of the wig’s proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain drollery in the corners of his eyes.

The younger man was apparently about my own age,—a year or two older, perhaps, judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to command the attention even of the most careless observer. It had not only the darkness, but the character of the gipsy face, with large, brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling; the features were aquiline, but delicate, and when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of the countenance; and yet it had that expression, at once stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket, or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist, loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently, and with some haughtiness, from his companion, he surveyed me with a quick, observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to dose or muse, till, in obedience to his companion’s orders, the board was spread with all the cold meats the larder could supply.

“Beef!” said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass into his right eye. “Beef,—mottled, cowey; humph! Lamb,—oldish, rawish, muttony; humph! Pie,—stalish. Veal?—no, pork. Ah! what will you have?”

“Help yourself,” replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up, looked disdainfully at the viands, and, after a long pause, tasted first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up, and called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a composure that spoke of habitual use.

“Wrong!” said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. “Wrong! coats of stomach soon wear out with that kind of clothes-brush. Better stick to the ‘yeasty foam,’ as sweet Will says. That young gentleman sets you a good example,” and therewith the speaker nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbor thus saluted. I was not deceived. “Anything to tempt you, sir?” asked this social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife.

“I thank you, sir, but I have dined.”

“What then? ‘Break out into a second course of mischief,’ as the Swan recommends,—Swan of Avon, sir! No? ‘Well, then, I charge you with this cup of sack.’ Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask?”

“To London.”

“Oh!” said the traveller, while his young companion lifted his eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy.

“London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life there,—‘glass of fashion and mould of form.’ Fond of the play, sir?”

“I never saw one.”

“Possible!” cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally; “then, young man,” he added solemnly, “you have,—but I won’t say what you have to see. I won’t say,—no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, ‘Mr. Peacock, these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!’”

I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man’s face grew dark at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed.

“Why,” continued his friend, “my companion here, who, I suppose, is about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,—he could tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town; ‘perused the traders,’ as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?”

Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on his lips,—

“Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say—”

“A farce?” put in his comrade.

“No, a tragedy,—or comedy as Moliere wrote it.”

“And how is that?” I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the tone of my contemporary.

“Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend here has no chance!”

“‘Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,’ hem—yes, Hal Peacock may be witty, but he is no rogue.”

“This was not exactly my meaning,” said the boy, dryly.

“‘A fico for your meaning,’ as the Swan says.—Hallo, you sir! Bully Host, clear the table—fresh tumblers—hot water—sugar—lemon—and—The bottle’s out! Smoke, sir?” and Mr. Peacock offered me a cigar.

Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen of some fabulous havanna, moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition, bit off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith the young gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance,—being of velvet, embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for “From Juliet” was very legibly worked thereon,—selected a cigar of better appearance than that in favor with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.

“Fast, sir, fast lad that,” quoth Mr. Peacock, in the short gasps which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone permitted; “nothing but [puff, puff] your true [suck, suck] syl—syl—sylva—does for him. Out, by the Lord! the ‘jaws of darkness have devoured it up;’” and again Mr. Peacock applied to his phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded, and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardor of its wooer.