Part 10 (2/2)
Shallgotobed!”
”Well, Giglamps,” said the first speaker, ”and By-by won't be at all a bad move for you. D'ye think you can unrig yourself and get between the sheets, eh, my beauty?”
”Its allri, allri!” was the reply; ”limycandle!”
”No, no,” said the second gentleman, as he pulled up the window-blind, and let in the moonlight; ”here's quite as much light as you want. It's almost morning.”
”Sotis,” said the gentleman in the evening costume: ”anlittlebirds beginsingsoon! Ilike littlebirds sing! jollittlebirds!” The speaker had suddenly fallen upon his bed, and was lying thereon at full length, with his feet on the pillow.
[78 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
”He'll be best left in this way,” said the second speaker, as he removed the pillow to the proper place, and raised the prostrate gentleman's head; ”I'll take off his choker and make him easy about the neck, and then we'll shut him up, and leave him. Why the beggar's asleep already!” And so the two gentlemen went away, and left him safe and sleeping.
It is conjectured, however, that he must have got up shortly after this, and finding himself with his clothes on, must have considered that a lighted candle was indispensably necessary to undress by; for when Mrs. Tester came at her usual early hour to light the fires and prepare the sitting-rooms, she discovered him lying on the carpet embracing the coal-skuttle, <vg078.jpg> with a candle by his side.
The good woman raised him, and did not leave him until she had, in the most motherly manner, safely tucked him up in bed.
Clink, clank! clink, clank! tingle, tangle! tingle, tangle! Are demons smiting ringing hammers into Mr. Verdant Green's brain, or is the dreadful bell summoning him to rise for morning chapel?
Mr. Filcher puts an end to the doubt by putting his head in at the bedroom door, and saying, ”Time for chapel, sir! Chapel,” thought Mr.
Filcher; ”here is a chap ill, indeed! - Bain't you well, sir?
Restless you look!”
Oh, the shame and agony that Mr. Verdant Green felt! The desire to bury his head under the clothes, away from Robert's and everyone else's sight; the fever that throbbed his brain and parched his lips, and made him long to drink up Ocean; the eyes that felt like burning lead; the powerless hands that trembled like a weak old man's; the voice that came in faltering tones that jarred the brain at every word! How he despised himself; how he loathed the very idea of wine; how he resolved never, never to transgress so again! But perhaps Mr.
Verdant Green was not the only Oxford freshman who has made this resolution.
”Bain't you well, sir?” repeated Mr. Filcher, with a pa.s.sing thought that freshmen were sadly degenerating, and could
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 79]
not manage their three bottles as they did when he was first a scout: ”bain't you well, sir?”
”Not very well, Robert, thank you. I - my head aches, and I'm afraid I shall not be able to get up for chapel. Will the Master be very angry?”
”Well, he ~might~ be, you see, sir,” replied Mr. Filcher, who never lost an opportunity of making anything out of his master's infirmities; ”but if you'll leave it to me, sir, I'll make it all right for you, ~I~ will. Of course you'd like to take out an ~aeger~, sir; and I can bring you your Commons just the same. Will that do, sir?”.
”Oh, thank you; yes, any thing. You will find five s.h.i.+llings in my waistcoat-pocket, Robert; please to take it; but I can't eat.”
”Thank'ee, sir,” said the scout, as he abstracted the five s.h.i.+llings; ”but you'd better have a bit of somethin', sir; - a cup of strong tea, or somethin'. Mr. Smalls, sir, when he were pleasant, he always had beer, sir; but p'raps you ain't been used to bein' pleasant, sir, and slops might suit you better, sir.”
”Oh, any thing, any thing!” groaned our poor, unheroic hero, as he turned his face to the wall, and endeavoured to recollect in what way he had been ”pleasant” the night before. But, alas! the wells of his memory had, for the time, been poisoned, and nothing clear or pure could be drawn therefrom. So he got up and looked at himself in the gla.s.s, and scarcely recognized the tangled-haired, sallow-faced wretch, whose bloodshot eyes gazed heavily at him from the mirror.
So he nervously drained the water-bottle, and buried himself once more among the tossed and tumbled bed-clothes.
The tea really did him some good, and enabled him to recover sufficient nerve to go feebly through the operation of dressing; though it was lucky that nature had not yet brought Mr. Verdant Green to the necessity of shaving, for the handling of a razor might have been attended with suicidal results, and have brought these veracious memoirs and their hero to an untimely end.
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