Part 17 (2/2)
”Only three,” answered Frank, laughing, ”and not a good man in the lot.
They wouldn't have tried it on if we had been together; but your boots went so fast I couldn't catch them.”
The other shook his head gravely. ”Three,” said he. ”An' I hadn't even a tooth-pick.”
”Tooth-pick!” repeated Frank in astonishment. ”Lucky you hadn't--you'd have swallowed it!”
Picard being now arrived at that stage in which a man finds it impossible to make any statement, however trivial, without turning round and facing his companion, stopped short beneath a lamp-post, while he explained with great solemnity:
”A bowie-knife, about eighteen inches long, sharp on both sides, and weighted in the handle, is what _we_ call a tooth-pick, young man, down Arkansas way. It's a neat tool--very--and balances beautiful. Some like them up the sleeve. I used to wear mine down the collar of my coat. That an' a six-shooter, if you're pretty spry, will clear the kitchen smart enough in a general row. Down to Colorado now, I'd have laid those three loafers in the larder before you could say 'bitters.' And to think that to-night I shouldn't have had so much as a pencil case on me! How old Abe Affable would laugh if he came to hear of it. Poor old Abe! The last time I saw him he wanted to scalp a n.i.g.g.e.r for blacking his boots instead of greasing them. Well, well; different countries, different manners, and different drinks, no doubt. I like this country, Captain.
After all, I'm a citizen of the world, but more a Britisher than anything else.”
”Are we near your house now?” asked Frank, whose impatience made him almost wish he had left this citizen of the world to his fate.
”Next lamp-post but two,” replied the other, with an unmeaning laugh.
”Boots know where they are now, I do believe--would find their own way to the sc.r.a.per if I was to pull 'em off, I'll lay a hundred. Here you are, Captain, latch-key sober, at any rate. You won't come in? Well, perhaps it _is_ late; good night, mate. One word before you cast off.”
Poor Frank, chafing like an irritable horse at the starting-post, returned on his track, and Picard took hold of the lappet of his coat.
”I'll go back to Windsor with you,” said he cordially. ”I like Windsor, and I like _you_. I've reason to like both. Look here, Vanguard; there's something at Windsor that would have looked very queer if I'd been rubbed out just now; and I might have been, I don't deny it, but for you. Poor little chap, he's got n.o.body in the world but me! Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of him. I dare say Pharaoh's daughter thought there never was such a child as Moses when she pulled him out of the water. I know when I fished _my_ boy out he put his chubby arms round my neck as if I'd been his father. Little rogue! I couldn't care more for him if he _was_ my own, twenty times over.
”I'm a domestic fellow naturally, Vanguard, though I'm yarning to you now, under a lamp-post, at three in the morning. I've had a rough time of it, one way and another. Not always fair play, I fancy. Sometimes I think I'm the biggest blackguard unhung. Sometimes I hope I'm not so much worse than my neighbours.”
Frank was thoroughly good-natured.
”We'll talk that over to-morrow,” said he; ”in the mean time, good night.”
”Good night,” repeated the other. ”I know what I say, Vanguard,” he called out after his friend, while putting his latch-key in the lock; ”and to prove it, I'll show you, my boy!”
”He must be very drunk,” thought Frank, speeding down the street like a deer, ”and I'm glad I came across him in the nick of time--there would have been mischief if those fellows had got at him alone.”
In another moment, palpitating and breathless, he was on the steps of the ”Cauliflower” Club, where, pa.s.sing swiftly into the hall, he espied Goldthred reading a letter by gaslight, with an expression of countenance that denoted he was profoundly mystified by its contents.
This gentleman, strolling in to quench his thirst after the glare, heat, worry, disappointment, and general penance of Lady Shuttlec.o.c.k's ball, and running his eye as usual down the letter-rack, drew from the compartment ”G” a laconic little epistle without signature, of which the second and third perusals bewildered him no less than the first:
”If you are really in earnest,” so ran this mysterious doc.u.ment, ”come to-morrow, there is somebody to be consulted besides me.”
What could it mean? A lady's handwriting, to which he was an utter stranger. No name, no date, no monogram. ”Come to-morrow,” thought Goldthred. ”Certainly! But where? And when _is_ to-morrow? It's ten minutes past three now. Oh! this can't be intended for _me_!”
Then he turned it upside down, backwards and forwards, inside out. The envelope was addressed correctly enough, christian and surname in full, with even a flourish of calligraphy adorning his humble t.i.tle of ”Esquire.” Many members of the ”Cauliflower” would have pocketed the effusion without emotion, as a mere every-day conquest of some anonymous admirer, but such a suspicion never entered Goldthred's honest head. In his utter freedom from self-conceit, this note puzzled him exceedingly; but to have believed it due to his own powers of fascination, would, in his loyalty to Mrs. Lascelles, have annoyed him still more.
The same letter-rack, low down, under ”V,” produced another epistle in a similar handwriting, which Frank s.n.a.t.c.hed with eagerness from its place and pressed hungrily to his lips, as he rushed back into the street, feeling a strange suffocating necessity on him to read it in the open air. Earning an epicurean prolongation of pleasure, which most of us indulge in, by deferring its actual commencement, he walked some few paces on his homeward way ere he tore open the envelope, with a blessing on his lips for the girl he loved, and something like tears of grat.i.tude, affection, and happiness starting to his eyes.
These started back again, however, and cl.u.s.tered like icicles round his heart, while he read the following terse and explicit communication:
”DEAR SIR,--I regret that a previous engagement will prevent my availing myself of your polite offer. I shall, of course, inform my father of your proposal when he returns.
”And remain,
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