Читать книгу The Fortunes of Hector O'Halloran, and His Man, Mark Antony O'Toole - W. H. Maxwell - Страница 22

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“I’ll ne’er be drunk while I live again but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick; if I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.”—Merry Wives of Windsor.

Reader,—will you make a clean breast and answer a simple question?—Were you ever regularly cribbed, and deposited for safe keeping in a watch-house? Don’t confound places, and suppose for a moment, that I mean those réfugia peccatorum, now-a-days called “station-houses.” The two are no more alike, than the London Tavern is to a boiled-beef shop. If you reply to my inquiry in the negative, and art young, I can only say the mischief is irremediable—and for the best reason, because watch-houses have been defunct these twenty years. If, like myself, you are a gentleman of a certain age, and also plead ignorance—you have nothing left but to mourn over misspent time, and lament a misfortune, for which no one is blamable but yourself.

Many a jovial hour have I passed in St. Andrews—I don’t mean the Scotch College so called, but the Dublin watch-house of pleasant memory; and I have also occasionally favoured with a visit other establishments of the same kind, where belated gentlemen were sure to find the door open without having the trouble of knocking twice:—but who, except “upon compulsion,” would enter a modern bastile? The place is in everything an abomination, and so republican wherewithal in its regulations, as to be fitted only for the reception of the canaille. There, captains and cabmen are placed upon a par. “Look to him, jailer,” is the only order that is attended to; and whether you belong to swells West-end, or the swell-mob, matters not a brass button. The thing’s similar all through, and you undergo the same process of purification. You are cooped up all night, thermometer in summer 110, in winter down to zero—and bundled before the Beak in the morning all “unkempt” and with “marvellous foul linen.” Of course, you are not flat enough to give your real name. If you are a tradesman, why you wish to “come it genteel,” and pass for the time being as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. If, on the contrary, you happen to be a “top-sawyer,” you descend from your “high estate,” and—though “Baron or Squire, or Knight of the Shire,”—adopt “for the nonce,” the simpler appellation of Smith, Brown, or Robinson. Well, in due course, you are favoured with a hearing—the charges are proven, and the Worthy Magistrate—he’s always so termed in the Sunday papers—runs you up a bill as glibly as the waitress of an eating-house. Imprimis, you are scored down five shillings for being drunk—forty ditto, for assault and battery—as much more for jingling some Doctor’s bell—and the tale ends in your five-pound flimsy having got a regular sickener. You fork the money out, and prepare directly to make your exit; but hold, you are not safe yet—wait for the parting admonition. Beaky having first premised that your name is neither Smith, Brown, nor Robinson, is sorry to assure you that he considers you a disgrace to your family and order—and, after a flattering panegyric upon his own nice sense of what is due to public justice, he concludes with a positive assurance, that if you ever renew your acquaintance with him, so far from standing “betwixt the wind and your nobility,” you shall have the benefit of a month’s exercise on the tread-mill, “and no mistake.” And now comes Mr. Ferdinand Fitzsnooks. He stands forward—but how different is his bearing from that of the pseudo Mr. Smith, who has just jumped into a cab in waiting, with coronets emblazoned on the panels. He does not listen to the charges with inattention; nor does he venture to meet the magistrate’s eye, as it occasionally is turned to that part of the court where he stands. He has been silly and noisy and riotous—but he has done no mischief. He is found guilty, and fined three pounds. The pale girl behind him—she with the infant in her arms—begins to sob, while Ferdinand appeals to the bench, and on the plea of a first offence, solicits a remission of the penalty. But Rhadamanthus is not sterner than his judge. Pshaw! worthy sir, let him go! he is but a drudge in a lawyer’s office—his master is strict—he will lose his situation, and what will that pale girl and her infant do? No; the upright magistrate is obdurate—and the slang of what “justice requires” is his only answer to the prisoner’s appeal. The jailer, a filthy, dogged, drunken, red-nosed brute, taps him on the shoulder and inquires, in pickpocket parlance, whether he can “stump the rowdy?” A melancholy shake of the head tells his inability, and he is committed for—what?—want of money—to the House of Correction for a fortnight. Worthy sir—pause before you send that silly young man to prison. Look at his wife—she is barely eighteen—young, pretty, and inexperienced. She has not a relative in London,—and steeped in poverty and surrounded with temptations, will you rob her for fourteen days of her protector, because he cannot command three sovereigns? True, you fined Mr. Smith two pounds more, and also talked something about the tread-mill—but, for your very life, you would not have ventured to commit him. I could show you Mr. Smith’s name in the peerage—ay, and high up, too; and he could have as easily given you a cheque upon his bankers for five thousand, as he handed you the penalty of five pounds. And this is law!—England, England! you call yourself the land of freedom!

But what has all this to do with your story? Reader,—I beg your pardon, and thank you for the hint.

The hatch of St. Andrew’s watch-house—a sort of outer-door, only breast-high, but furnished with a row of iron spikes which would bid defiance to Harlequin himself—was closed—and, a very unusual occurrence at that late hour, all within the house of durance was quiet. Peter Bradley, the captain of the hold, was seated on a wooden bench in his accustomed corner, with a little table before him, on which was awfully displayed the fatal book in which delinquencies were chronicled, flanked by a pewter vessel full charged with Sweetman’s XXX. Three guardians of the night, who formed the jail-guard, sate round the fire “drawing” a comfortable dudheine, and casting, from time to time, a longing eye at the battered quart deposited beside the elbow of the commander. There were other occupants—for occasionally melancholy faces peeped through a grated wicket in the door, which separated the dungeon-keep from the guard-room,—and from their place of captivity looked anxiously at the great man seated in the corner, whose nod could loose or bind. Indeed the task of watch and ward was easy, for the prisoners were comprised in one solitary group, namely—a drunken sailor, a fiddler with one leg, and “a maid who loved the moon,” brought there for fading through a shop-window and making smithereens of divers panes of glass, for which, as, from a lack of the king’s currency, they could make no proper compensation, they were safely incarcerated.

Peter Bradley nibbed his pen, laid down his spectacles, gave a heavy sigh, and then, as if to kill care, took a long and steady pull from the pewter. “Business,” said the commander, addressing himself to his myrmidons at the fire, “business is gone to the dogs.‘Tis twelve o’clock!” he continued, as the wooden time-piece above his head announced the “witching hour.”

“Twelve o’clock! and not a sowl picked up but devils who couldn’t muster, if it saved them from the gallows, turnpike-money for a walking-stick. Out with them varmint in the black-hole, Barney Casey; what use in shuttin’ up craters without a scultogue, * and lumbrin the place wid people who can’t stand a pint of beer.”

* “Seultogue, is a monetary phrase, used generally in the kingdom of Connaught. Its metallic value not being clearly ascertained, I have doubts whether it would be a legal tender.”—Extract from an opinion of Mr. Richard Dunn, the eminent barrister.

Barney, obedient to the orders of his chief, made a general jail delivery. The nymph as she glided out, acknowledged the favour conferred by dropping a graceful curtsey as she passed “the seat of justice;” the fiddler as he hopped across the floor, dutifully ducked his head, and bade a “good night to his Honour;” but the sailor, reckless of the merciful interposition which had restored him to liberty, and freed him from all liability incurred for broken glass, consigned all and every in the watch-house to a climate much hotter than the West Indies, for which ungrateful and irreligious proceeding, he received a momentum in the door-way which enabled him, “in double quick,” to reach the opposite curb-stone. The hatch was thereupon safely locked, and Mr. Bradley again addressed his brother officials:—

“There’s more beside that’s vexin’ me, boys. I hear they are goin’ to overhawl us—and sorra a turn, good or bad, that happens through the night, but must be entered in black and white. Feaks! I thought myself yesterday, that something was in the wind, for the magistrates were as short with me as cat’s-hair; and that divil, Artur French, was nearly hobblin’ me fairly. ‘Who’s this Artur French?’ says Mr. Jones.

“‘Ah, then,’ says I, ‘it’s himself that’s a raal gintleman. Sure, wasn’t his father Ulick French, of French Hall, and his mother’ ——— ———— ‘Don’t bother me about his mother,’ says he, mad as a hatter; ‘Who is he? what is he?’—‘A collegian, plase ye’r honour.’—‘Ay, and a promising disciple he is, if I may judge,’ says he, ‘by your watch-book. Why, he’s wid ye, Mr. Bradley, three times a week. The next time he pays you a visit, I beg you’ll be good enough to introduce him to me.’”

“Troth; and ye won’t,” observed one of the guard of honour at the fire-place, as he leisurely recharged his dudheine; “he’ll blarney ye, and git away wid the ould story of both ye’r mothers being Roscommon women.”

“I wish the Lord would send in a dacent customer, any how, that could pay his way,” said a second charlie: “if iver I was drier in my life!”

“Feaks!” observed the third, “and it’s myself that has got a cobweb in my throat. But, whisht! boys—look out there! Who knows our luck yet?”

Up jumped one of the smokers, and craning his head over the hatch, communicated the gratifying intelligence that the patrol were coming up with divers delinquents in close custody. The charlies pocketed their pipes, Mr. Bradley mounted his spectacles, while the shuffling of feet, and an uproar of many voices talking and arguing at their highest pitch, joined to the maudlin singing of a noisy drunkard, announced the immediate approach of a detachment of a body whom poor Burns dreaded and denounced—

“That black banditti—the city guard.”

“Here they come,” said the charlie at the hatch: “one man in red, either dead or dead drunk—three shy-looking scamps behind him—and a regular swell in front. Blessed Bridget! is it him? Be the hole in my coat, that’s yourself, Artur French, if ye’r ovir ground. May the davil welcome you, astore!

“Then if it is,” said the irritated commandant, “Artur French, you’ll have a new acquaintance in the morning, before ten o’clock.”

There was no mistake in the identity. A young man dressed in the extreme of fashion pushed through the watchmen with an air of authority, and hopping on the bench where Mr. Bradley had hitherto reposed his person in solitary dignity, seated himself, unbidden, beside this dreaded functionary, and—

“for no inviting did he wait,”

but seized the sacred pewter, and drained the contents to the very bottom.

“How thirsty,” said he, “a shindy makes one! Not bad stuff that, Peter. But, governor, what’s the matter?”—and Mr. French looked steadily in Mr. Bradley’s face, which had assumed what was intended to pass for an expression of dignified displeasure. “If you’re not as sour as a Seville orange to-night! Come, come, old chap, tip us your daddle—give us a grip of your bunch of fives!”

But Mr. Bradley held back his hand. “I tell ye what, Artur—don’t be after vexin’ me—I’m in bad temper to-night—and I’ll stand no gammon.”

“Stand your granny!” returned the young roué; “I’ll tell ye what I’ll stand—and that’s more to the purpose. Broiled kidneys, black cockles, a gallon of heavy wet, and as much punch as you can swim in. Off with ye to Nosey McKeown’s,”—and crumpling up a pound note, he pitched it into a watchman’s face,—“See that all comes in hot; and take care that his daughter Sibby brews the punch. Now, Peter, try and look pleasant. An’t I better to you than a bad stepson?”—and he punched the commander’s ribs unceremoniously.

“Arrah—Artur, have done, will ye? What the divil druv ye here the night, good or bad?” asked the commandant.

“Well, I fancy you have named the gentleman that did it.”

“I say, what brought ye here?”

“Half a score of your scoundrels, Peter. I fell over that cursed fellow in the red jacket sleeping on the guard bed—and before I could get fairly on my pins, these villains had me fast.”

“Well, there’s nothing else for it—you must go before Mr. Jones.”

“Mr. Jones may go to Bath; but before Mr. Jones I won’t go.”

“I can’t screen ye longer,” exclaimed the governor.

“Screen me!” exclaimed the prisoner; “why what a pother you make about a little trifling civility.”

“Trifling civility!” exclaimed’ the astonished constable: “Oh, murder, murder! there’s nothing like ungratitude. Trifling civility! Och, Artur French—I have done wid ye. When you were cotched in the garret, drinkin taa with Mr. Abbot’s maid, who got ye off, Artur? When the sawyer’s arm was broke in the roohawn at Pie-corner, who got the tinker’s wife to prove your alabay, and sware she met ye wid Kitty Flanigan, in Mud Island? When—”

“Arrah, stop man: what’s the use of raking up old yarns? Peter, I always said you were a decent cove—but they swear you’re doting lately, and that you’ll never stop till ye turn Methodist. Only for the tender regard I have for yourself, I would give up your shop altogether, and take my custom across the water to Mary’s watchhouse. But I can’t forget old friendship—the more so, when I remember that your mother and mine were both born in Roscommon.”

A horse-laugh was heard from the fire-place.

“Arrah, have done wid your blarney,” said the commander, testily, “and nivir mind my mother. What charge is again ye, the night?”

“Nothing—a mere trifle; I was endeavouring to make peace.” returned Mr. French, with unblushing effrontery.

“Mighty like a whale!” observed the commander, in a side whisper. “I charge him wid a felonious assault!” exclaimed a voice from behind the door.

“Step forward, young man.” And the complainant placed himself in front of Mr. Bradley’s table.

“What’s ye’r charge?” inquired the judge. “What have ye to say agin this respectable young gentleman, who was strivin’ to bring about pace and harmony?”

“Pace and harmony!” exclaimed the complainant; “he was the worst of the whole lot, barrin’ the quaker. There wouldn’t have been a blow, but for the two of them; and the quaker—”

“The quaker’s not before this court,” said Mr. Bradley, with great dignity: and yet Mr. Bradley told a fib; for the identical Quaker was lying sound asleep upon the guard bed. “What charge do you make, young man?”

“Why that Mr. French, as you call him, split my ear with a black thorn.”

“Oh! you villain!” exclaimed the accused. “Now, Peter, the fellow’s on his oath. Peter, I leave it to you. On the nick of your sowl, as an honest man, don’t I always fight with a sapling?”

“He does, in troth!” responded three charlies in a breath.

“Now, Peter, what do you say to that? Wouldn’t that make a man’s hair stand an end?”

“‘Pon my conscience,” observed Mr. Bradley, “I’m thunderstruck—young man, what’s ye’r name?”

“Sniggs,” said the complainant.

“What are ye?”

“A tailor, to trade,” replied the accuser.

“Then, Sniggs,” returned Mr. Bradley, “the least I can do is to transport ye.”

“Transport me!” exclaimed the astonished tailor: “Arrah, for what? Is it for having my ear split?”

“Hold your tongue; I see, though young, ye’r a hardened offender. Have ye no conscience,1 man? Oh, murder! to try and sware away the life of an innicint gintleman!—Is your mother livin’?”

“No,” replied Mr. Sniggs, not exactly comprehending the drift of Mr. Bradley’s examination.

“Have you sister, or brother?”

“Nather,” returned the quondam accuser; but now, as it would appear, by some freak of fortune transmuted into the accused.

“Have ye no relashins, good nor bad, ye unfortunit divil?”

“I have,” replied the artist, “a third cousin, a well-behaved girl she is, and greatly respected by her mistress, who’s married to a tanner in the Liberty.”

“Well,” said Peter graciously, “on account of that well-behaved girl, your third cousin, I’ll show mercy to you this time. Turn him out. Go home and repent, Sniggs: God forgive ye! that’s all I have to say. Be off wid ye.”

“Arrah, blur and nouns!” ejaculated the disappointed tailor, “and is that all the satisfaction I’m to get for having my ear slit like a swallow’s tail?”

“Out with him, I say. Wait till I ketch ye here agen, Sniggs. Be this book,” (and Peter flourished the empty pewter-pot) “that well-behaved girl, your third cousin that lives wid the tanner, won’t get you off the second time. I wish the drink was come. I’m grately fatigued givin’ good advice—it always laves me dry as a whistle. But what’s to be done wid the chap in the corner?”

“There’s no use spakin’ to him now,” returned a watchman; “he’s blind drunk, and fast asleep into the bargain.”

“Did he do much damage?”

“Not he,” returned Mr. French; “poor divil! he couldn’t stand, let alone strike. At the commencement of the row he was knocked down like a nine-pin, and I wonder he was not trodden to death. Send him home, Peter ‘pon my life, it’s dangerous to keep him here.”

“Are ye joking, Artur?”

“No, honour bright, Peter. Look at his buttons, one of ye. What’s the number of his regiment?”

“The twenty-first.”

“Away with him to George’s-street.”

“Arrah, and upon my conscience, ourselves ought to know the road purty well. God’s blessin’ attind the Kilkinnys! it was a plasure to do bisnis wid them;—four or five to be carried home, reglar, at two shillins a head, and no cobblin’ about the money afterwards. The sergeant of the guard tallied them as they eame in, and it was only to bring the score to the quarter-master, and down came the brads in the mornin’. But who’s to pay for this chap?”

“I,” said the wild collegian, as he tossed a piece of money to the speaker. “It’s only what one gentleman should do for another, when he’s too drunk to be able to do it for himself. But here comes supper. I wonder what became of the quaker. Ah, Peter! he was a trump—and such a hitter! I’ll respect a quaker while I live. Give me a pull of ‘the heavy,’ and let us have the cockles while they are hot.”

While Mr. Bradley, with his young and amiable friend, proceeded to discuss their supper, a couple of watchmen lifted the unfortunate quaker off the guard-bed. The movement roused him; but it was soon evident that the late symposium was still uppermost in his brain.

“Come along,” said the charlie; “step out like a man; we’re bringin’ you home.”

The remark elicited a drunken effort to be melodious—and Mr Pryme sang, or strove to sing, “We won’t go home till morning.”

“The divil a here ye’ll stay then,” responded his supporters.

“Wine—more wine.—‘Wine cures the gout,’” returned the quaker.

“If it does, sorra touch you’ll have of the disorder for a month of Sundays. Come along wid him.”

The quaker’s head was still ringing with drunken madrigals, and he proceeded to chaunt “Old King Cole.”

“Arrah, don’t bother us wid King Cole; but try and put the feet aninder ye. We’ll bring ye to George’s-street.”

“No,” no muttered the Quaker; “I’ll go home to the Merchants’ Quay.”

“Divil a sich an umproper place ye’ll go near. Haven’t ye been enough on the ran-tan already the night?” and away they toddled towards the barracks, which destination was safely reached, and the body of the pseudo lieutenant delivered to the guard, with an intimation on the part of the watchmen, that on the morrow particular inquiries should be made touching the general health of the invalid.

“This must be the officer that joined last week,” said the sergeant. “Go to his room and find his servant; and first put a knapsack under his head, and take his stock off. To do him justice, I never saw a more drunken gentleman.”

When John Crawford was awakened, and had made a personal inspection, to the utter surprise of the main guard, “pioneers and all,” he repudiated the sleeping gentleman, and satisfactorily illustrated the old adage, that the cowl no more constitutes a monk, than a red jacket makes the soldier. Honest John’s first care was to secure his master’s uniform from further damage, which he contrived to effect by the substitution of a shooting jacket; and then, nemine contradicente, it was agreed, that drunken men should be permitted to sleep themselves sober; and that accordingly, the unhappy puritan should be left in undisturbed repose.

Morning dawned through the guard-room lattice before Samuel Pryme awoke. If there be a feeling more horrible than another, it is the return of reason to a drunken neophyte when he wakens after his first debauch. The quaker stared wildly round him; there were twenty men in the room—all strangers to him; some sleeping on the wooden bench on which he lay, and others sitting smoking by the fire. His head was giddy—his brain wandered—he was tortured with a burning thirst. Where was he? Suddenly his pale cheeks reddened with shame; he felt like a Hindu who has lost caste; and, burying his face between his hands, in a smothered voice that bespoke a consciousness of abasement, while tears fell fast, he faintly murmured, “Where am I?”

The sergeant laid aside a book which he had been reading in the window—and, though a rough soldier, he felt sincerely for the penitent.

“Don’t take on so,” said he. “Young folk will be giddy. Bless your heart—there’s none of our gentlemen that arn’t wildish now and then. I wish we could get you something to drink; but the canteen is closed. Would you like to go home? I dare not spare a man; but I’ll send for Mr. O’Halloran’s servant, and pass him through the gate.” The quaker thanked him, but declined assistance; asked for and received a draught of water “cold from the pump,” the sentry unclosed the wicket, and Samuel Pryme returned to his father’s house, “a sadder, if not a wiser man,” than when he quitted it the preceding evening.

The clock struck five. Peter Bradley was snoring on his guard-bed, and Mr. French taking his ease at an unpretending hostelrie in Smock Alley, not generally known in the fashionable world, but, patronized by the pleasant part of the community, and ycleped “The Hole in the Wall.” I felt as much at home in my dormitory as if I had been legal proprietor of it, while he, unhappy youth! reconnoitred the house from the outside, with all the suspicion of a man who meditates a burglary on the premises. In their respective chambers, Mrs. Pryme and her handmaiden had owned the influence of the drowsy god, and Rachel slumbered with as safe a conscience as if she had never kissed a fusileer. There is an old saw, gentle reader, which insinuates that it is prudent occasionally to allow “sleeping dogs to lie.” We’ll adopt it “for the nonce”—inquire what had befallen that alter ego, my foster-brother, and, with your gracious permission, follow through the next chapter, the fortunes of Mark Antony O’Toole.