At the opera, my great, great, grandmother's attention was arrested
by my notice; and, upon surveying me through her eye-glass, she was
struck with a certain family resemblance to herself. Thus interested,
and knowing that the heir she sought was actually in the city, she
made inquiries of her party respecting me. The gentleman who attended
her knew my person, and told her who I was. The information thus
obtained induced her to renew her scrutiny; and this scrutiny it was
which so emboldened me that I behaved in the absurd manner already
detailed. She returned my bow, however, under the impression that, by
some odd accident, I had discovered her identity. When, deceived by
my weakness of vision, and the arts of the toilet, in respect to the
age and charms of the strange lady, I demanded so enthusiastically of
Talbot who she was, he concluded that I meant the younger beauty, as
a matter of course, and so informed me, with perfect truth, that she
was "the celebrated widow, Madame Lalande."
In the street, next morning, my great, great, grandmother encountered
Talbot, an old Parisian acquaintance; and the conversation, very
naturally turned upon myself. My deficiencies of vision were then
explained; for these were notorious, although I was entirely ignorant
of their notoriety, and my good old relative discovered, much to her
chagrin, that she had been deceived in supposing me aware of her
identity, and that I had been merely making a fool of myself in
making open love, in a theatre, to an old woman unknown. By way of
punishing me for this imprudence, she concocted with Talbot a plot.
He purposely kept out of my way to avoid giving me the introduction.
My street inquiries about "the lovely widow, Madame Lalande," were
supposed to refer to the younger lady, of course, and thus the
conversation with the three gentlemen whom I encountered shortly
after leaving Talbot's hotel will be easily explained, as also their
allusion to Ninon De L'Enclos. I had no opportunity of seeing Madame
Lalande closely during daylight; and, at her musical soiree, my silly
weakness in refusing the aid of glasses effectually prevented me from
making a discovery of her age. When "Madame Lalande" was called upon
to sing, the younger lady was intended; and it was she who arose to
obey the call; my great, great, grandmother, to further the
deception, arising at the same moment and accompanying her to the
piano in the main drawing-room. Had I decided upon escorting her
thither, it had been her design to suggest the propriety of my
remaining where I was; but my own prudential views rendered this
unnecessary. The songs which I so much admired, and which so
confirmed my impression of the youth of my mistress, were executed by
Madame Stephanie Lalande. The eyeglass was presented by way of adding
a reproof to the hoax -- a sting to the epigram of the deception. Its
presentation afforded an opportunity for the lecture upon affectation
with which I was so especially edified. It is almost superfluous to
add that the glasses of the instrument, as worn by the old lady, had
been exchanged by her for a pair better adapted to my years. They
suited me, in fact, to a T.
The clergyman, who merely pretended to tie the fatal knot, was a boon
companion of Talbot's, and no priest. He was an excellent "whip,"
however; and having doffed his cassock to put on a great-coat, he
drove the hack which conveyed the "happy couple" out of town. Talbot
took a seat at his side. The two scoundrels were thus "in at the
death," and through a half-open window of the back parlor of the inn,
amused themselves in grinning at the denouement of the drama. I
believe I shall be forced to call them both out.
Nevertheless, I am not the husband of my great, great, grandmother;
and this is a reflection which affords me infinite relief, -- but I
am the husband of Madame Lalande -- of Madame Stephanie Lalande --
with whom my good old relative, besides making me her sole heir when
she dies -- if she ever does -- has been at the trouble of concocting
me a match. In conclusion: I am done forever with billets doux and am
never to be met without SPECTACLES.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
KING PEST.
A Tale Containing an Allegory.
The gods do bear and will allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
_Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex._
ABOUT twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, and during
the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the
crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys
and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much
astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house
in the parish of St. Andrews, London -- which ale-house bore for sign
the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar."
The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and
in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such
places at the period -- was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the
grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently
well adapted to its purpose.
Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting,
if not the most conspicuous.
The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion
addressed by the characteristic appellation of "Legs," was at the
same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet
and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have
been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous. --
Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by
deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and might,
as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant
at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a jib-boom. But
these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced,
at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar. With
high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen
under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his
countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to
matters and things in general, was not the less utterly solemn and
serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description.
The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse of
his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair
of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his
unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their
extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the fins of a
sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in
his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which
enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip
rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent
self-satisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking
them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall shipmate with a
feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally in
his face as the red setting sun stares up at the crags of Ben Nevis.
Various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations of the
worthy couple in and about the different tap-houses of the
neighbourhood during the earlier hours of the night. Funds even the
most ample, are not always everlasting: and it was with empty pockets
our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie.
At the precise period, then, when this history properly commences,
Legs, and his fellow Hugh Tarpaulin, sat, each with both elbows
resting upon the large oaken table in the middle of the floor, and
with a hand upon either cheek. They were eyeing, from behind a huge
flagon of unpaid-for "humming-stuff," the portentous words, "No
Chalk," which to their indignation and astonishment were scored over
the doorway by means of that very mineral whose presence they
purported to deny. Not that the gift of decyphering written
characters -- a gift among the commonalty of that day considered
little less cabalistical than the art of inditing -- could, in strict
justice, have been laid to the charge of either disciple of the sea;
but there was, to say the truth, a certain twist in the formation of
the letters -- an indescribable lee-lurch about the whole -- -which
foreboded, in the opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty
weather; and determined them at once, in the allegorical words of
Legs himself, to "pump ship, clew up all sail, and scud before the
wind."
Having accordingly disposed of what remained of the ale, and looped
up the points of their short doublets, they finally made a bolt for
the street. Although Tarpaulin rolled twice into the fire-place,
mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at length happily
effected -- and half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for
mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of
St. Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the landlady of the "Jolly Tar."
At the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for many years
before and after, all England, but more especially the metropolis,
resounded with the fearful cry of "Plague!" The city was in a great
measure depopulated -- and in those horrible regions, in the vicinity
of the Thames, where amid the dark, narrow, and filthy lanes and
alleys, the Demon of Disease was supposed to have had his nativity,
Awe, Terror, and Superstition were alone to be found stalking abroad.
By authority of the king such districts were placed under ban, and
all persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude upon their
dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate of the monarch, nor the huge
barriers erected at the entrances of the streets, nor the prospect of
that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty,
overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure,
prevented the unfurnished and untenanted dwellings from being
stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article, such as
iron, brass, or lead-work, which could in any manner be turned to a
profitable account.
Above all, it was usually found, upon the annual winter opening of
the barriers, that locks, bolts, and secret cellars, had proved but
slender protection to those rich stores of wines and liquors which,
in consideration of the risk and trouble of removal, many of the
numerous dealers having shops in the neighbourhood had consented to
trust, during the period of exile, to so insufficient a security.
But there were very few of the terror-stricken people who attributed
these doings to the agency of human hands. Pest-spirits,
plague-goblins, and fever-demons, were the popular imps of mischief;
and tales so blood-chilling were hourly told, that the whole mass of
forbidden buildings was, at length, enveloped in terror as in a
shroud, and the plunderer himself was often scared away by the
horrors his own depreciations had created; leaving the entire vast
circuit of prohibited district to gloom, silence, pestilence, and
death.
It was by one of the terrific barriers already mentioned, and which
indicated the region beyond to be under the Pest-ban, that, in
scrambling down an alley, Legs and the worthy Hugh Tarpaulin found
their progress suddenly impeded. To return was out of the question,
and no time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close upon their
heels. With thorough-bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned
plank-work was a trifle; and, maddened with the twofold excitement of
exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the
enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and
yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses.
Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their
reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their
situation. The air was cold and misty. The paving-stones, loosened
from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass,
which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up
the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere
prevailed; -- and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at
midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at
atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or
rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a
nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very
perpetration of his robbery.
-- But it lay not in the power of images, or sensations, or
impediments such as these, to stay the course of men who, naturally
brave, and at that time especially, brimful of courage and of
"humming-stuff!" would have reeled, as straight as their condition
might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of Death. Onward
-- still onward stalked the grim Legs, making the desolate solemnity
echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific war-whoop of the
Indian: and onward, still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging
on to the doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing
the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music, by
bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity of his stentorian lungs.
They had now evidently reached the strong hold of the pestilence.
Their way at every step or plunge grew more noisome and more horrible
-- the paths more narrow and more intricate. Huge stones and beams
falling momently from the decaying roofs above them, gave evidence,
by their sullen and heavy descent, of the vast height of the
surrounding houses; and while actual exertion became necessary to
force a passage through frequent heaps of rubbish, it was by no means
seldom that the hand fell upon a skeleton or rested upon a more
fleshly corpse.
Suddenly, as the seamen stumbled against the entrance of a tall and
ghastly-looking building, a yell more than usually shrill from the
throat of the excite
d Legs, was replied to from within, in a rapid
succession of wild, laughter-like, and fiendish shrieks. Nothing
daunted at sounds which, of such a nature, at such a time, and in
such a place, might have curdled the very blood in hearts less
irrevocably on fire, the drunken couple rushed headlong against the
door, burst it open, and staggered into the midst of things with a
volley of curses.
The room within which they found themselves proved to be the shop of
an undertaker; but an open trap-door, in a corner of the floor near
the entrance, looked down upon a long range of wine-cellars, whose
depths the occasional sound of bursting bottles proclaimed to be well
stored with their appropriate contents. In the middle of the room
stood a table -- in the centre of which again arose a huge tub of
what appeared to be punch. Bottles of various wines and cordials,
together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality,
were scattered profusely upon the board. Around it, upon
coffin-tressels, was seated a company of six. This company I will
endeavor to delineate one by one.
Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions,
sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. His
stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him
a figure more emaciated than himself. His face was as yellow as
saffron -- but no feature excepting one alone, was sufficiently
marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a
forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance
of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head. His
mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly
affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were
glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. This gentleman was
clothed from head to foot in a richly-embroidered black silk-velvet
pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 109