Part 7 (1/2)

”Gentlemen,” said the tall stranger whom we had rescued, ”we had better fly.”

Tarleton cast at him a contemptuous look, and placed himself in a posture of offence.

”Hark ye,” said I, ”let us effect an honourable peace. Messieurs the watch, be it lawful for you to carry off the slain, and for us to claim the prisoners.”

But our new foes understood not a jest, and advanced upon us with a ferocity which might really have terminated in a serious engagement, had not the tall stranger thrust his bulky form in front of the approaching battalion, and cried out with a loud voice, ”Zounds, my good fellows, what's all this for? If you take us up you will get broken heads to-night, and a few s.h.i.+llings perhaps to-morrow. If you leave us alone, you will have whole heads, and a guinea between you. Now, what say you?”

Well spoke Phaedra against the dangers of eloquence. The watchmen looked at each other. ”Why really, sir,” said one, ”what you say alters the case very much; and if d.i.c.k here is not much hurt, I don't know what we may say to the offer.”

So saying, they raised the fallen watchman, who, after three or four grunts, began slowly to recover himself.

”Are you dead, d.i.c.k?” said the owl with seven owlets.

”I think I am,” answered the other, groaning.

”Are you able to drink a pot of ale, d.i.c.k?” cried the tall stranger.

”I think I am,” reiterated the dead man, very lack-a-daisically. And this answer satisfying his comrades, the articles of peace were subscribed to.

Now, then, the tall stranger began searching his pockets with a most consequential air.

”Gad, so!” said he at last; ”not in my breeches pocket!-well, it must be in my waistcoat. No. Well, 'tis a strange thing-demme it is! Gentlemen, I have had the misfortune to leave my purse behind me: add to your other favours by lending me wherewithal to satisfy these honest men.”

And Tarleton lent him the guinea. The watchmen now retired, and we were left alone with our portly ally.

Placing his hand to his heart he made us half-a-dozen profound bows, returned us thanks for our a.s.sistance in some very courtly phrases, and requested us to allow him to make our acquaintance. We exchanged cards and departed on our several ways.

”I have met that gentleman before,” said Tarleton. ”Let us see what name he pretends to. 'Fielding-Fielding;' ah, by the Lord, it is no less a person! It is the great Fielding himself.”

”Is Mr. Fielding, then, as elevated in fame as in stature?”

”What, is it possible that you have not yet heard of Beau Fielding, who bared his bosom at the theatre in order to attract the admiring compa.s.sion of the female part of the audience?”

”What!” I cried, ”the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland's Fielding?”

”The same; the best-looking fellow of his day! A sketch of his history is in the 'Tatler,' under the name of 'Orlando the Fair.' He is terribly fallen as to fortune since the day when he drove about in a car like a sea-sh.e.l.l, with a dozen tall fellows, in the Austrian livery, black and yellow, running before and behind him. You know he claims relations.h.i.+p to the house of Hapsburg. As for the present, he writes poems, makes love, is still good-natured, humorous, and odd; is rather unhappily addicted to wine and borrowing, and rigidly keeps that oath of the Carthusians which never suffers them to carry any money about them.”

”An acquaintance more likely to yield amus.e.m.e.nt than profit.”

”Exactly so. He will favour you with a visit-to-morrow, perhaps, and you will remember his propensities.”

”Ah! who ever forgets a warning that relates to his purse!”

”True!” said Tarleton, sighing. ”Alas! my guinea, thou and I have parted company forever! vale, vale, inquit Iolas!”

CHAPTER V.

THE BEAU IN HIS DEN, AND A PHILOSOPHER DISCOVERED.

MR. FIELDING having twice favoured me with visits, which found me from home, I thought it right to pay my respects to him; accordingly one morning I repaired to his abode. It was situated in a street which had been excessively the mode some thirty years back; and the house still exhibited a stately and somewhat ostentatious exterior. I observed a considerable cl.u.s.ter of infantine ragam.u.f.fins collected round the door, and no sooner did the portal open to my summons than they pressed forward in a manner infinitely more zealous than respectful. A servant in the Austrian livery, with a broad belt round his middle, officiated as porter. ”Look, look!” cried one of the youthful gazers, ”look at the Beau's keeper!” This imputation on his own respectability and that of his master, the domestic seemed by no means to relish; for, muttering some maledictory menace, which I at first took to be German, but which I afterwards found to be Irish, he banged the door in the faces of the intrusive impertinents, and said, in an accent which suited very ill with his Continental attire,- ”And is it my master you're wanting, Sir?”

”It is.”

”And you would be after seeing him immediately?”

”Rightly conjectured, my sagacious friend.”

”Fait then, your honour, my master's in bed with a terrible fit of the megrims.”

”Then you will favour me by giving this card to your master, and expressing my sorrow at his indisposition.”

Upon this the orange-coloured lacquey, very quietly reading the address on the card, and spelling letter by letter in an audible mutter, rejoined, ”C-o-u (cou) n-t (unt) Count, D-e-v. Och, by my shoul, and it's Count Devereux after all I'm thinking?”

”You think with equal profundity and truth.”

”You may well say that, your honour. Stip in a bit: I'll tell my master; it is himself that will see you in a twinkling!”

”But you forget that your master is ill?” said I.

”Sorrow a bit for the matter o' that: my master is never ill to a jontleman.”

And with this a.s.surance ”the Beau's keeper” ushered me up a splendid staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and left me to amuse myself with the curiosities within, while he went to perform a cure upon his master's ”megrims.” The chamber, suiting with the house and the owner, looked like a place in the other world set apart for the reception of the ghosts of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge tomb-like table in the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a p.a.w.nbroker's ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little m.u.f.f, an immense broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a jackboot, and an old plumed hat; to these were added a cracked pomatum-pot containing ink, and a sc.r.a.p of paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches, on which were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and round that I could not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned away my eyes as quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus: ”Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain.” Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs. Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. ”There are changes in wit as in fas.h.i.+on,” said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance a n.o.bleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the greatest dullard in that of Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the revolutions of c.o.xcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty, to Beau Fielding the Oddity!

* The Earl of Norwich.

After I had remained in this apartment about ten minutes, the great man made his appearance. He was attired in a dressing-gown of the most gorgeous material and colour, but so old that it was difficult to conceive any period of past time which it might not have been supposed to have witnessed; a little velvet cap, with a tarnished gold ta.s.sel, surmounted his head, and his nether limbs were sheathed in a pair of military boots. In person he still retained the trace of that extraordinary symmetry he had once possessed, and his features were yet handsome, though the complexion had grown coa.r.s.e and florid, and the expression had settled into a broad, hardy, farcical mixture of effrontery, humour, and conceit.

But how different his costume from that of old! Where was the long wig with its myriad curls? the coat stiff with golden lace? the diamond b.u.t.tons,-”the pomp, pride, and circ.u.mstance of glorious war?” the glorious war Beau Fielding had carried on throughout the female world,-finding in every saloon a Blenheim, in every play-house a Ramilies? Alas! to what abyss of fate will not the love of notoriety bring men! to what but the l.u.s.t of show do we owe the misanthropy of Timon, or the ruin of Beau Fielding!

”By the Lord!” cried Mr. Fielding, approaching, and shaking me familiarly by the hand, ”by the Lord, I am delighted to see thee! As I am a soldier, I thought thou wert a spirit, invisible and incorporeal; and as long as I was in that belief I trembled for thy salvation, for I knew at least that thou wert not a spirit of Heaven, since thy door is the very reverse of the doors above, which we are a.s.sured shall be opened unto our knocking. But thou art early, Count; like the ghost in 'Hamlet,' thou snuffest the morning air. Wilt thou not keep out the rank atmosphere by a pint of wine and a toast?”

”Many thanks to you, Mr. Fielding; but I have at least one property of a ghost, and don't drink after daybreak.”

”Nay, now, 'tis a bad rule! a villanous bad rule, fit only for ghosts and graybeards. We youngsters, Count, should have a more generous policy. Come, now, where didst thou drink last night? has the bottle bequeathed thee a qualm or a headache, which preaches repentance and abstinence this morning?”

”No, but I visit my mistress this morning; would you have me smell of strong potations, and seem a wors.h.i.+pper of the 'Gla.s.s of Fas.h.i.+on,' rather than of 'the Mould of Form'? Confess, Mr. Fielding, that the women love not an early tippler, and that they expect sober and sweet kisses from a pair 'of youngsters' like us.”

”By the Lord,” cried Mr. Fielding, stroking down his comely stomach, ”there is a great show of reason in thy excuses, but only the show, not substance, my n.o.ble Count. You know me, you know my experience with the women: I would not boast, as I'm a soldier; but 'tis something! nine hundred and fifty locks of hair have I got in my strong box, under padlock and key; fifty within the last week,-true, on my soul,-so that I may pretend to know a little of the dear creatures; well, I give thee my honour, Count, that they like a royster; they love a fellow who can carry his six bottles under a silken doublet; there's vigour and manhood in it; and, then, too, what a power of toasts can a six-bottle man drink to his mistress! Oh, 'tis your only chivalry now,-your modern subst.i.tute for tilt and tournament; true, Count, as I am a soldier!”

”I fear my Dulcinea differs from the herd, then; for she quarrelled with me for supping with St. John three nights ago, and-”