The theatrical profession mustered pretty strongly to do honour to the sister art on this particular occasion. The theatre next door to the Gloves happened, fortunately, to be closed, on account of the extensive scale of preparations for a grand dramatic and spectacular performance, entitled, “The Sikh Victories; or, The Tyrant of the Ganges,” which was to be brought out the ensuing Monday, with even more than usual magnificence. So the votaries of Thespis were free to testify their admiration for the noble science of self-defence, by taking tickets for the dinner at ten-and-sixpence a-piece, the banquet being, as Mr. Montressor, the comedian above-mentioned, remarked, with more energy than elegance, a cheap blow-out, as the dinner would last the guests who partook of it two days, and the indigestion attendant thereon would carry them through the rest of the week.
I shall not enter into the details of the pugilistic dinner, but will introduce the reader into the banquet-hall at rather a late stage in the proceedings; in point of fact, just as the festival is about to break up. It is two o’clock in the morning; the table is strewn with the débris of a dessert, in which figs, almonds and raisins, mixed biscuits, grape-stalks, and apple and orange-peel seem rather to predominate. The table is a very field of Cressy or Waterloo, as to dead men in the way of empty bottles; good execution having evidently been done upon Mr. Hemmar’s well-stocked cellar. From the tumblers and spoons before each guest, however, it is also evident that the festive throng has followed the example of Mr. Sala’s renowned hero, and after having tried a “variety of foreign drains,” has gone back to gin-and-water pur et simple. It is rather a peculiar and paradoxical quality of neat wines that they have, if anything, rather an untidy effect on those who drink them: certainly there is a looseness about the hair, a thickness and indecision in the speech, and an erratic and irrelevant energy and emphasis in the gestures of the friends of the Smasher, which is entirely at variance with our ordinary idea of the word “neat.” Yet, why should we quarrel with them on that account? They are harmless, and they are happy. It is surely no crime to see two gas-burners where, to the normal eye, there is only one; neither is it criminal to try five distinct times to enunciate the two words, “slightest misunderstanding,” and to fail ignominiously every time. If anything, that must be an amiable feeling which inspires a person with a sudden wild and almost pathetic friendship for a man he never saw before; such a friendship, in short, as pants to go to the block for him, or to become his surety to a loan-office for five pounds. Is it any such terrible offence against society to begin a speech of a patriotic nature, full of allusions to John Bull, Queen Victoria, Wooden Walls, and the Prize Ring, and to burst into tears in the middle thereof? Is there no benevolence in the wish to see your friend home, on account of your strong impression that he has taken a little too much, and that he will tumble against the railings and impale his chin upon the spikes; which, of course, you are in no danger of doing? Are these things crimes? No! We answer boldly, No! Then, hurrah for neat wines and free trade! Open wide our harbours to the purple grapes that flourish in the vineyards of sunny Burgundy and Bordeaux; and welcome, thrice welcome, to the blushing tides which Horace sang so many hundred years ago, when our beautiful Earth was younger, and maybe fairer, and held its course, though it is hard to believe it, very well indeed, without the genius of modern civilization at the helm.
There had been a silver cup, with one of the labours of Hercules — poor Hercules, how hard they work him in the sporting world! — embossed thereon, presented to the Smasher, as a tribute of respect for those British qualities which had endeared him to his admirers; and the Smasher’s health had been drunk with three-times-three, and a little one in; and then three more three-times-three, and another little one in; and the Smasher had returned thanks, and Brandolph of the Brand had proposed the Daddy Longlegs, and the Daddy Longlegs had made a very neat speech in the Lancashire dialect, which the gentlemen of the theatrical profession had pretended to understand, but had not understood; and a literary individual — being, in fact, the gentleman whose spirited writing we have quoted above, Mr. Jeffrey Hallam Jones, of the Liverpool Aristides, sporting and theatrical correspondent, and constant visitor at the Gloves — had proposed the Ring; and the Smasher had proposed the Press, for the liberties of which, as he said in noble language afterwards quoted in the Aristides, the gentlemen of the Prize Ring were prepared to fight as long as they had a bunch of fives to rattle upon the knowledge-box of the foe; and then the Daddy Low legs had proposed the Stage, and its greatest glory, Brandolph of the Brand; and ultimately everybody had proposed everybody else — and then, some one suggesting a quiet song, every body sang.
Now, as the demand for a song from each member of the festive band was of so noisy and imperative a nature that a refusal was not only a moral, but a physical impossibility, it would be unbecoming to remark that the melody and harmony of the evening were, at best, fluctuating. Annie Laurie was evidently a young lady of an undecided mind, and wandered in a pleasing manner from C into D, and from D into E, and then back again with laudable dexterity to C, for the finish. The gentleman whose heart was bowed down in the key of G might have rendered his performance more effective, had he given his statement of that affliction entirely in one key; and another gentleman, who sang a comic song of seventeen eight-line verses, with four lines of chorus to every verse, would have done better if he had confined himself to his original plan of singing superhumanly flat, instead of varying it, as he occasionally did, by singing preternaturally sharp. Of course it is an understood thing, that in a chorus, every singer should choose his own key, or where is the liberty of the subject? — so that need not be alluded to. But all this is over; and the guests of Mr. Hemmar have risen to depart, and have found the act of rising to depart by no means the trifle they thought it. It is very hard, of course, in such an atmosphere of tobacco, to find the door; and that, no doubt, is the reason why so many gentlemen seek for it in the wrong direction, and buffet insanely with their arms against the wall, in search of that orifice.
Now, there are two gentlemen in whom Mr. Hemmar’s neat wines have developed a friendship of the warmest description. Those two gentlemen are none other than the two master-spirits of the evening, the Left-handed Smasher and Brandolph of the Brand — who, by the bye, in private life, is known as Augustus de Clifford. His name is not written thus in the register of his baptism. On that malicious document he is described as William Watson; but to his friends and the public he has for fifteen years been admired and beloved as the great De Clifford, although often familiarly called Brandolph, in delicate allusion to his greatest character.
Now, Brandolph is positively convinced that the Smasher is not in a fit state to go home alone, and the Smasher is equally assured that Brandolph will do himself a mischief unless he is watched; so Brandolph is going to see the Smasher home to his hotel, which is a considerable distance from the Gloves Tavern; and then the Smasher is coming back again to see Brandolph to his lodgings, which are next door but two to the Gloves Tavern. So, after having bade good night to every one else, in some instances with tears, and always with an affectionate pathos verging upon tears, Brandolph flings on his loose overcoat, just as Manfred might have flung on his cloak prior to making a morning call upon the witch of the Alps, and the Smasher twists about five yards of particoloured woollen raiment, which he calls a comforter, round his neck, and they sally forth.
A glorious autumn night; the full moon high in the heaven with a tiny star following in her wake like a well-bred tuft-hunter, and all the other stars keeping their distance, as if they had retired to their own “grounds,” as the French say, and were at variance with their queen on some matter connected with taxes. A glorious night; as light as day-nay, almost lighter; for it is a light which will bear looking at, and which does not dazzle our eyes as the sun does, when we are presumptuous enough to elevate our absurdly infinitesimal optics to his sublimity. Not a speck on the Liverpool pavement, not a dog asleep on the doorstep, or a dissipated cat
sneaking home down an area, but is as visible as in the broad glare of noon. “Such a night as this” was almost too much for Lara, and Brandolph of the Brand grows sentimental.
“You wouldn’t think,” he murmurs, abstractedly, gazing at the moon, as he and the Smasher meander arm-in-arm over the pavement; “you wouldn’t think she hadn’t an atmosphere, would you? A man might build a theatre there, and he might get his company up in balloons; but I question if it would pay, on account of that trivial want — she hasn’t got an atmosphere.”
“Hasn’t she?” said the Smasher, who certainly, if anything, had, in the matter of sobriety, the advantage of the tragedian. “You’ll have a black eye though, if you don’t steer clear of that ‘ere lamp-post you’re makin’ for. I never did see sunk a cove,” he added; “with his hatmospheres, and his moons, and his Moons, one would think he’d never had a glass or two of wine before.”
Now, to reach the hotel which the left-handed one honoured by his presence, it was necessary to pass the quay; and the sight of the water and the shipping reposing in the stillness under the light of the moon, again awakened all the poetry in the nature of the romantic Brandolph.
“It is beautiful!” he said, taking his pet position, and waving his arm in the orthodox circle, prior to pointing to the scene before him. “It is peaceful: it is we who are the blots upon the beauty of the earth. Oh, why — why are we false to the beautiful and heroic, as the author of the Lady of Lyons would observe? Why are we false to the true? Why do we drink too much and see double? Standing amidst the supreme silences, with breathless creation listening to our words, we look up to the stars that looked down upon the philosopher of the cave; and we feel that we have retrograded.” Here the eminent tragedian gave a lurch, and seated himself with some violence and precipitation on the kerbstone. “We feel,” he repeated, “that we have retrograded. It is a pity!”
“Now, who’s to pick him up?” inquired the Smasher, looking round in silent appeal to the lamp-posts about him. “Who’s to pick him up? I can’t; and if he sleeps here he’ll very likely get cold. Get up, you snivelling fool, can’t you?” he said, with some asperity, to the descendant of Thespis, who, after weeping piteously, was drying his eyes with an announce bill of the “Tyrant of the Ganges,” and by no means improving his personal appearance with the red and black printer’s ink thereof.
How mine host of the Cheerful Cherokee would ever have extricated his companion from this degraded position, without the timely intervention of others, is not to be said; for at this very moment the Smasher beheld a gentleman alight from a cab at a little distance from where he stood, ask two or three questions of the cabman, pay and dismiss him, and then walk on in the direction of some steps that led to the water. This gentleman wore his hat very much slouched over his face; he was wrapped in a heavy loose coat, that entirely concealed his figure, and evidently carried a parcel of some kind under his left arm.
“Hi!” said the Smasher, as the pedestrian approached; “Hi, you there! Give us a hand, will you?”
The gentleman addressed as “you there” took not the slightest notice of this appeal, except, indeed, that he quickened his pace considerably, and tried to pass the left-handed one.
“No, you don’t,” said our pugilistic friend; “the cove as refuses to pick up the man that’s down is a blot upon the English character, and the sooner he’s scratched out the better;” wherewith the Smasher squared his fists and placed himself directly in the path of the gentleman with the slouched hat.
“I tell you what it is, my good fellow,” said this individual, “you may pick up your drunken friend yourself, or you may wait the advent of the next policeman, who will do the public a service by conveying you both to the station-house, where you may finish the evening in your own highly-intellectual manner. But perhaps you will be good enough to let me pass, for I’m in a hurry! You see that American vessel yonder — she’s dropped down the river to wait for the wind; the breeze is springing up as fast as it can, and she may set sail as it is before I can reach her; so, if you want to earn a sovereign, come and see if you can help me in arousing a waterman and getting off to her?”
“Oh, you are off to America, are you?” said the Smasher, thoughtfully. “Blow that ‘ere wine of Hemmar’s! I ought to know the cut of your figure-head. I’ve seen you before — I’ve seen you somewheres before, though where that somewheres was, spiflicate me if I can call to mind! Come, lend a hand with this ‘ere friend o’ mine, and I’ll lend you a hand with the boatman.”
“D — n your friend,” said the other, savagely; “let me pass, will you, you drunken fool?”
This was quite enough for the Smasher, who was just in that agreeable frame of mind attendant on the consumption of strong waters, in which the jaundiced eye is apt to behold an enemy even in a friend, and the equally prejudiced ear is ready to hear an insult in the most civil address.
“Come on, then,” said he; and putting himself in a scientific attitude, he dodged from side to side two or three times, as if setting to his partner in a quadrille, and then, with a movement rapid as lightning, went in with his left fist, and planted a species of postman’s knock exactly between the eyes of the stranger, who fell to the ground as an ox falls under the hand of an accomplished butcher.
It is needless to say that, in falling, his hat fell off, and as he lay senseless on the pavement, the moonlight on his face revealed every feature as distinctly as in the broadest day.
The Smasher knelt down by his side, looked at him attentively for a few moments, and then gave a long, low whistle.
“Under the circumstances,” he said, “perhaps I couldn’t have done a better thing than this ‘ere I’ve done promiscuous. He won’t go to America by that vessel at any rate; so if I telegraph to the Cherokees, maybe they will be glad to hear what he’s up to down here. Come along,” continued the sobered Smasher, hauling up Mr. De Clifford by the collar, as ruthlessly as if he had been a sack of coal; “I think I hear the footsteps of a Bobby a-coming this way, so we’d better make ourselves scarce before we’re asked any questions.”
“If,” said the distinguished Brandolph, still shedding tears, “if the town of Liverpool was conducted after the manner of the Republic of Plato, there wouldn’t be any policemen. But, as I said before, we have retrograded. Take care of the posts,” he added plaintively. “It is marvellous the effect a few glasses of light wine have upon some people’s legs; while others, on the contrary—” here he slid again to the ground, and this time eluded all the Smasher’s endeavours to pick him up.
“You had better let me be,” he murmured. “It is hard, but it is clean and comfortable. Bring me my boots and hot water at nine o’clock; I’ve an early rehearsal of ‘The Tyrant.’ Go home quietly, my dear friend, and don’t take anything more to drink, for your head is evidently not a strong one. Good night.”
“Here’s a situation!” said the Smasher. “I can’t dance attendance on him any more, for I must run round to the telegraph office and see if it’s open, that I may send Mr. Marwood word about this night’s work. The Count de Marolles is safe enough for a day or two, anyhow; for I have set a mark upon him that he won’t rub off just yet, clever as he is.”
CHAPTER IV. WHAT THEY FIND IN THE ROOM IN WHICH THE MURDER WAS COMMITTED.
AT the time that the arrest of the Count de Marolles was taking place, Mr. Joseph Peters was absent from London, being employed upon some mission of a delicate and secret nature in the town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy.
Slopperton is very little changed since the murder at the Black Mill set every tongue going upon its nine-days wonder. There may be a few more tall factory chimneys; a few more young factory ladies in cotton jackets and coral necklaces all the week, and in rustling silks and artificial flowers on Sunday; the new town — that dingy hanger-on of the old town — may have spread a little farther out towards the bright and breezy country; and the railway passenger may perhaps see a larger veil of black smoke hanging in the atmosphere
as he approaches the Slopperton station than he saw eight years ago.
Mr. Peters, being no longer a householder in the town, takes up his abode at a hostelry, and, strange to say, selects the little river-side public-house in which he overheard that conversation between the usher and the country girl, the particulars of which are already known to the reader.
He is peculiar in his choice of an hotel, for “The Bargeman’s Delight” certainly does not offer many attractions to any one not a bargeman. It is hard indeed to guess what the particular delight of the bargeman may be, which the members of that guild find provided for them in the waterside tavern alluded to. The bargeman’s delight is evidently not cleanliness, or he would go elsewhere in search of that virtue; neither can the bargeman affect civility in his entertainers, for the host and that one slip shod young person who is barmaid, barman, ostler, cook, chambermaid, and waiter all in one, are notoriously sulky in their conversation with their patrons, and have an aggrieved and injured bearing very unpleasant to the sensitive customer. But if, on the other hand, the bargeman’s delight should happen to consist in dirt, and damp, and bad cooking, and worse attendance, and liquors on which the small glass brandy-balls peculiar to the publican float triumphantly, and pertinaciously refuse to go down to the bottom — if such things as these be the bargeman’s delight, he has them handsomely provided for him at this establishment.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 37