A Story

by William Makepeace Thackeray

and so great was the confidence and intimacy subsisting between

  these two young people, that the reader will be glad to hear that

  Mrs. Polly accepted every shilling of the money which Tom Billings

  had received from his mamma the day before; nay, could with

  difficulty be prevented from seizing upon the cut-velvet breeches

  which he was carrying to the nobleman for whom they were made.

  Having paid his adieux to Mrs. Polly, Mr. Billings departed to visit

  his father.

  CHAPTER IX. INTERVIEW BETWEEN COUNT GALGENSTEIN AND MASTER THOMAS

  BILLINGS, WHEN HE INFORMS THE COUNT OF HIS PARENTAGE.

  I don't know in all this miserable world a more miserable spectacle

  than that of a young fellow of five or six and forty. The British

  army, that nursery of valour, turns out many of the young fellows I

  mean: who, having flaunted in dragoon uniforms from seventeen to

  six-and-thirty; having bought, sold, or swapped during that period

  some two hundred horses; having played, say, fifteen thousand games

  at billiards; having drunk some six thousand bottles of wine; having

  consumed a reasonable number of Nugee coats, split many dozen pairs

  of high-heeled Hoby boots, and read the newspaper and the army-list

  duly, retire from the service when they have attained their eighth

  lustre, and saunter through the world, trailing from London to

  Cheltenham, and from Boulogne to Paris, and from Paris to Baden,

  their idleness, their ill-health, and their ennui. "In the morning

  of youth," and when seen along with whole troops of their

  companions, these flowers look gaudy and brilliant enough; but there

  is no object more dismal than one of them alone, and in its

  autumnal, or seedy state. My friend, Captain Popjoy, is one who has

  arrived at this condition, and whom everybody knows by his title of

  Father Pop. A kinder, simpler, more empty-headed fellow does not

  exist. He is forty-seven years old, and appears a young,

  good-looking man of sixty. At the time of the Army of Occupation he

  really was as good-looking a man as any in the Dragoons. He now

  uses all sorts of stratagems to cover the bald place on his head, by

  combing certain thin grey sidelocks over it. He has, in revenge, a

  pair of enormous moustaches, which he dyes of the richest

  blue-black. His nose is a good deal larger and redder than it used

  to be; his eyelids have grown flat and heavy; and a little pair of

  red, watery eyeballs float in the midst of them: it seems as if the

  light which was once in those sickly green pupils had extravasated

  into the white part of the eye. If Pop's legs are not so firm and

  muscular as they used to be in those days when he took such leaps

  into White's buckskins, in revenge his waist is much larger. He

  wears a very good coat, however, and a waistband, which he lets out

  after dinner. Before ladies he blushes, and is as silent as a

  schoolboy. He calls them "modest women." His society is chiefly

  among young lads belonging to his former profession. He knows the

  best wine to be had at each tavern or cafe, and the waiters treat

  him with much respectful familiarity. He knows the names of every

  one of them; and shouts out, "Send Markwell here!" or, "Tell

  Cuttriss to give us a bottle of the yellow seal!" or, "Dizzy voo,

  Monsure Borrel, noo donny shampang frappy," etc. He always makes

  the salad or the punch, and dines out three hundred days in the

  year: the other days you see him in a two-franc eating-house at

  Paris, or prowling about Rupert Street, or St. Martin's Court, where

  you get a capital cut of meat for eightpence. He has decent

  lodgings and scrupulously clean linen; his animal functions are

  still tolerably well preserved, his spiritual have evaporated long

  since; he sleeps well, has no conscience, believes himself to be a

  respectable fellow, and is tolerably happy on the days when he is

  asked out to dinner.

  Poor Pop is not very high in the scale of created beings; but, if

  you fancy there is none lower, you are in egregious error. There

  was once a man who had a mysterious exhibition of an animal, quite

  unknown to naturalists, called "the wusser." Those curious

  individuals who desired to see the wusser were introduced into an

  apartment where appeared before them nothing more than a little lean

  shrivelled hideous blear-eyed mangy pig. Everyone cried out

  "Swindle!" and "Shame!" "Patience, gentlemen, be heasy," said the

  showman: "look at that there hanimal; it's a perfect phenomaly of

  hugliness: I engage you never see such a pig." Nobody ever had

  seen. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I'll keep my promise, has per

  bill; and bad as that there pig is, look at this here" (he showed

  another). "Look at this here, and you'll see at once that it's A

  WUSSER." In like manner the Popjoy breed is bad enough, but it

  serves only to show off the Galgenstein race; which is WUSSER.

  Galgenstein had led a very gay life, as the saying is, for the last

  fifteen years; such a gay one, that he had lost all capacity of

  enjoyment by this time, and only possessed inclinations without

  powers of gratifying them. He had grown to be exquisitely curious

  and fastidious about meat and drink, for instance, and all that he

  wanted was an appetite. He carried about with him a French cook,

  who could not make him eat; a doctor, who could not make him well; a

  mistress, of whom he was heartily sick after two days; a priest, who

  had been a favourite of the exemplary Dubois, and by turns used to

  tickle him by the imposition of penance, or by the repetition of a

  tale from the recueil of Noce, or La Fare. All his appetites were

  wasted and worn; only some monstrosity would galvanise them into

  momentary action. He was in that effete state to which many

  noblemen of his time had arrived; who were ready to believe in

  ghost-raising or in gold-making, or to retire into monasteries and

  wear hair-shirts, or to dabble in conspiracies, or to die in love

  with little cook-maids of fifteen, or to pine for the smiles or at

  the frowns of a prince of the blood, or to go mad at the refusal of

  a chamberlain's key. The last gratification he remembered to have

  enjoyed was that of riding bareheaded in a soaking rain for three

  hours by the side of his Grand Duke's mistress's coach; taking the

  pas of Count Krahwinkel, who challenged him, and was run through the

  body for this very dispute. Galgenstein gained a rheumatic gout by

  it, which put him to tortures for many months; and was further

  gratified with the post of English Envoy. He had a fortune, he

  asked no salary, and could look the envoy very well. Father

  O'Flaherty did all the duties, and furthermore acted as a spy over

  the ambassador--a sinecure post, for the man had no feelings,

  wishes, or opinions--absolutely none.

  "Upon my life, father," said this worthy man, "I care for nothing.

  You have been talking for an hour about the Regent's death, and the

  Duchess of Phalaris, and sly old Fleury, and what not; and I care

  just as much as if you told me that one of my bauers at Galgenst
ein

  had killed a pig; or as if my lacquey, La Rose yonder, had made love

  to my mistress."

  "He does!" said the reverend gentleman.

  "Ah, Monsieur l'Abbe!" said La Rose, who was arranging his master's

  enormous Court periwig, "you are, helas! wrong. Monsieur le Comte

  will not be angry at my saying that I wish the accusation were

  true."

  The Count did not take the slightest notice of La Rose's wit, but

  continued his own complaints.

  "I tell you, Abbe, I care for nothing. I lost a thousand guineas

  t'other night at basset; I wish to my heart I could have been vexed

  about it. Egad! I remember the day when to lose a hundred made me

  half mad for a month. Well, next day I had my revenge at dice, and

  threw thirteen mains. There was some delay; a call for fresh bones,

  I think; and would you believe it?--I fell asleep with the box in my

  hand!"

  "A desperate case, indeed," said the Abbe.

  "If it had not been for Krahwinkel, I should have been a dead man,

  that's positive. That pinking him saved me."

  "I make no doubt of it," said the Abbe. "Had your Excellency not

  run him through, he, without a doubt, would have done the same for

  you."

  "Psha! you mistake my words, Monsieur l'Abbe" (yawning). "I

  mean--what cursed chocolate!--that I was dying for want of

  excitement. Not that I cared for dying; no, d---- me if I do!"

  "WHEN you do, your Excellency means," said the Abbe, a fat

  grey-haired Irishman, from the Irlandois College at Paris.

  His Excellency did not laugh, nor understand jokes of any kind; he

  was of an undeviating stupidity, and only replied, "Sir, I mean what

  I say. I don't care for living: no, nor for dying either; but I

  can speak as well as another, and I'll thank you not to be

  correcting my phrases as if I were one of your cursed schoolboys,

  and not a gentleman of fortune and blood."

  Herewith the Count, who had uttered four sentences about himself (he

  never spoke of anything else), sunk back on his pillows again, quite

  exhausted by his eloquence. The Abbe, who had a seat and a table by

  the bedside, resumed the labours which had brought him into the room

  in the morning, and busied himself with papers, which occasionally

  he handed over to his superior for approval.

  Presently Monsieur la Rose appeared.

  "Here is a person with clothes from Mr. Beinkleider's. Will your

  Excellency see him, or shall I bid him leave the clothes?"

  The Count was very much fatigued by this time; he had signed three

  papers, and read the first half-a-dozen lines of a pair of them.

  "Bid the fellow come in, La Rose; and, hark ye, give me my wig: one

  must show one's self to be a gentleman before these scoundrels."

  And he therefore mounted a large chestnut-coloured, orange-scented

  pyramid of horsehair, which was to awe the new-comer.

  He was a lad of about seventeen, in a smart waistcoat and a blue

  riband: our friend Tom Billings, indeed. He carried under his arm

  the Count's destined breeches. He did not seem in the least awed,

  however, by his Excellency's appearance, but looked at him with a

  great degree of curiosity and boldness. In the same manner he

  surveyed the chaplain, and then nodded to him with a kind look of

  recognition.

  "Where have I seen the lad?" said the father. "Oh, I have it! My

  good friend, you were at the hanging yesterday, I think?"

  Mr. Billings gave a very significant nod with his head. "I never

  miss," said he.

  "What a young Turk! And pray, sir, do you go for pleasure, or for

  business?"

  "Business! what do you mean by business?"

  "Oh, I did not know whether you might be brought up to the trade, or

  your relations be undergoing the operation."

  "My relations," said Mr. Billings, proudly, and staring the Count

  full in the face, "was not made for no such thing. I'm a tailor

  now, but I'm a gentleman's son: as good a man, ay, as his lordship

  there: for YOU a'n't his lordship--you're the Popish priest you

  are; and we were very near giving you a touch of a few Protestant

  stones, master."

  The Count began to be a little amused: he was pleased to see the

  Abbe look alarmed, or even foolish.

  "Egad, Abbe," said he, "you turn as white as a sheet."

  "I don't fancy being murdered, my Lord," said the Abbe, hastily;

  "and murdered for a good work. It was but to be useful to yonder

  poor Irishman, who saved me as a prisoner in Flanders, when

  Marlborough would have hung me up like poor Macshane himself was

  yesterday."

  "Ah!" said the Count, bursting out with some energy, "I was thinking

  who the fellow could be, ever since he robbed me on the Heath. I

  recollect the scoundrel now: he was a second in a duel I had here

  in the year six."

  "Along with Major Wood, behind Montague House," said Mr. Billings.

  "I'VE heard on it." And here he looked more knowing than ever.

  "YOU!" cried the Count, more and more surprised. "And pray who the

  devil ARE you?"

  "My name's Billings."

  "Billings?" said the Count.

  "I come out of Warwickshire," said Mr. Billings.

  "Indeed!"

  "I was born at Birmingham town."

  "Were you, really!"

  "My mother's name was Hayes," continued Billings, in a solemn voice.

  "I was put out to a nurse along with John Billings, a blacksmith;

  and my father run away. NOW do you know who I am?"

  "Why, upon honour, now," said the Count, who was amused,--"upon

  honour, Mr. Billings, I have not that advantage."

  "Well, then, my Lord, YOU'RE MY FATHER!"

  Mr. Billings when he said this came forward to the Count with a

  theatrical air; and, flinging down the breeches of which he was the

  bearer, held out his arms and stared, having very little doubt but

  that his Lordship would forthwith spring out of bed and hug him to

  his heart. A similar piece of naivete many fathers of families

  have, I have no doubt, remarked in their children; who, not caring

  for their parents a single doit, conceive, nevertheless, that the

  latter are bound to show all sorts of affection for them. His

  lordship did move, but backwards towards the wall, and began pulling

  at the bell-rope with an expression of the most intense alarm.

  "Keep back, sirrah!--keep back! Suppose I AM your father, do you

  want to murder me? Good heavens! how the boy smells of gin and

  tobacco! Don't turn away, my lad; sit down there at a proper

  distance. And, La Rose, give him some eau-de-Cologne, and get a cup

  of coffee. Well, now, go on with your story. Egad, my dear Abbe, I

  think it is very likely that what the lad says is true."

  "If it is a family conversation," said the Abbe, "I had better leave

  you."

  "Oh, for Heaven's sake, no! I could not stand the boy alone. Now,

  Mister ah!--What's-your-name? Have the goodness to tell your

  story."

  Mr. Billings was woefully disconcerted; for his mother and he had

  agreed that as soon as his father saw him he would be recognised at<
br />
  once, and, mayhap, made heir to the estates and title; in which

  being disappointed, he very sulkily went on with his narrative, and

  detailed many of those events with which the reader has already been

  made acquainted. The Count asked the boy's mother's Christian name,

  and being told it, his memory at once returned to him.

  "What! are you little Cat's son?" said his Excellency. "By heavens,

  mon cher Abbe, a charming creature, but a tigress--positively a

  tigress. I recollect the whole affair now. She's a little fresh

  black-haired woman, a'n't she? with a sharp nose and thick eyebrows,

  ay? Ah yes, yes!" went on my Lord, "I recollect her, I recollect

  her. It was at Birmingham I first met her: she was my Lady

  Trippet's woman, wasn't she?"

  "She was no such thing," said Mr. Billings, hotly. "Her aunt kept

  the 'Bugle Inn' on Waltham Green, and your Lordship seduced her."

  "Seduced her! Oh, 'gad, so I did. Stap me, now, I did. Yes, I

  made her jump on my black horse, and bore her off like--like Aeneas

  bore his wife away from the siege of Rome! hey, l'Abbe?"

  "The events were precisely similar," said the Abbe. "It is

  wonderful what a memory you have!"

  "I was always remarkable for it," continued his Excellency. "Well,

  where was I,--at the black horse? Yes, at the black horse. Well, I

  mounted her on the black horse, and rode her en croupe, egad--ha,

  ha!--to Birmingham; and there we billed and cooed together like a

  pair of turtle-doves: yes--ha!--that we did!"

  "And this, I suppose, is the end of some of the BILLINGS?" said the

  Abbe, pointing to Mr. Tom.

  "Billings! what do you mean? Yes--oh--ah--a pun, a calembourg. Fi

  donc, M. l'Abbe." And then, after the wont of very stupid people,

  M. de Galgenstein went on to explain to the Abbe his own pun.

  "Well, but to proceed," cries he. "We lived together at Birmingham,

  and I was going to be married to a rich heiress, egad! when what do

  you think this little Cat does? She murders me, egad! and makes me

  manquer the marriage. Twenty thousand, I think it was; and I wanted

  the money in those days. Now, wasn't she an abominable monster,

  that mother of yours, hey, Mr. a--What's-your-name?"

  "She served you right!" said Mr. Billings, with a great oath,

  starting up out of all patience.

  "Fellow!" said his Excellency, quite aghast, "do you know to whom

  you speak?--to a nobleman of seventy-eight descents; a count of the

  Holy Roman Empire; a representative of a sovereign? Ha, egad!

  Don't stamp, fellow, if you hope for my protection."

  "D--n your protection!" said Mr. Billings, in a fury. "Curse you

  and your protection too! I'm a free-born Briton, and no ---- French

  Papist! And any man who insults my mother--ay, or calls me feller--

  had better look to himself and the two eyes in his head, I can tell

  him!" And with this Mr. Billings put himself into the most approved

  attitude of the Cockpit, and invited his father, the reverend

  gentleman, and Monsieur la Rose the valet, to engage with him in a

  pugilistic encounter. The two latter, the Abbe especially, seemed

  dreadfully frightened; but the Count now looked on with much

  interest; and, giving utterance to a feeble kind of chuckle, which

  lasted for about half a minute, said,--

  "Paws off, Pompey! You young hangdog, you--egad, yes, aha! 'pon

  honour, you're a lad of spirit; some of your father's spunk in you,

  hey? I know him by that oath. Why, sir, when I was sixteen, I used

  to swear--to swear, egad, like a Thames waterman, and exactly in

  this fellow's way! Buss me, my lad; no, kiss my hand. That will

  do"--and he held out a very lean yellow hand, peering from a pair of

  yellow ruffles. It shook very much, and the shaking made all the

  rings upon it shine only the more.

  "Well," says Mr. Billings, "if you wasn't a-going to abuse me nor