Part 20 (1/2)
”And your manner of fighting,” said I, ”was the manner employed by Sergeant Broughton?”
”Yes,” said my new acquaintance; ”it was the manner in which he beat every one who attempted to contend with him, till, in an evil hour, he entered the ring with Slack, without any training or preparation, and by a chance blow lost the battle to a man who had been beaten with ease by those who, in the hands of Broughton, appeared like so many children. It was the way of fighting of him who first taught Englishmen to box scientifically, who was the head and father of the fighters of what is now called the old school, the last of which were Johnson and Big Ben.”
”A wonderful man, that Big Ben,” said I.
”He was so,” said the elderly individual; ”but had it not been for Broughton, I question whether Ben would have ever been the fighter he was. Oh! there was no one like old Broughton; but for him I should at the present moment be sneaking along the road, pursued by the hissings and hootings of the dirty flatterers of that blackguard coachman.”
”What did you mean,” said I, ”by those words of yours, that the coachmen would speedily disappear from the roads?”
”I meant,” said he, ”that a new method of travelling is about to be established, which will supersede the old. I am a poor engraver, as my father was before me; but engraving is an intellectual trade, and by following it, I have been brought in contact with some of the cleverest men in England. It has even made me acquainted with the projector of the scheme, which he has told me many of the wisest heads of England have been dreaming of during a period of six hundred years, and which it seems was alluded to by a certain Brazen Head in the story-book of Friar Bacon, who is generally supposed to have been a wizard, but in reality was a great philosopher. Young man, in less than twenty years, by which time I shall be dead and gone, England will be surrounded with roads of metal, on which armies may travel with mighty velocity, and of which the walls of bra.s.s and iron by which the friar proposed to defend his native land are the types.” He then, shaking me by the hand, proceeded on his way, whilst I returned to the inn.
CHAPTER XXVII
Francis Ardry--His Misfortunes--Dog and Lion Fight--Great Men of the World.
A few days after the circ.u.mstance which I have last commemorated, it chanced that, as I was standing at the door of the inn, one of the numerous stage-coaches which were in the habit of stopping there, drove up, and several pa.s.sengers got down. I had a.s.sisted a woman with a couple of children to dismount, and had just delivered to her a band-box, which appeared to be her only property, which she had begged me to fetch down from the roof, when I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder, and heard a voice exclaim, ”Is it possible, old fellow, that I find you in this place?” I turned round, and, wrapped in a large blue cloak, I beheld my good friend Francis Ardry. I shook him most warmly by the hand, and said, ”If you are surprised to see me, I am no less so to see you; where are you bound to?”
”I am bound for L-; at any rate, I am booked for that sea-port,” said my friend in reply.
”I am sorry for it,” said I, ”for in that case we shall have to part in a quarter of an hour, the coach by which you came stopping no longer.”
”And whither are you bound?” demanded my friend.
”I am stopping at present in this house, quite undetermined as to what to do.”
”Then come along with me,” said Francis Ardry.
”That I can scarcely do,” said I; ”I have a horse in the stall which I cannot afford to ruin by racing to L--- by the side of your coach.”
My friend mused for a moment: ”I have no particular business at L---,”
said he; ”I was merely going thither to pa.s.s a day or two, till an affair, in which I am deeply interested, at C--- shall come off. I think I shall stay with you for four-and-twenty hours at least; I have been rather melancholy of late, and cannot afford to part with a friend like you at the present moment; it is an unexpected piece of good fortune to have met you; and I have not been very fortunate of late,” he added, sighing.
”Well,” said I, ”I am glad to see you once more, whether fortunate, or not; where is your baggage?”
”Yon trunk is mine,” said Francis, pointing to a trunk of black Russian leather upon the coach.
”We will soon have it down,” said I; and at a word which I gave to one of the hangers-on of the inn, the trunk was taken from the top of the coach.
”Now,” said I to Francis Ardry, ”follow me, I am a person of some authority in this house;” thereupon I led Francis Ardry into the house, and a word which I said to a waiter forthwith installed Francis Ardry in a comfortable private sitting-room, and his trunk in the very best sleeping-room of our extensive establishment.
It was now about one o'clock: Francis Ardry ordered dinner for two, to be ready at four, and a pint of sherry to be brought forthwith, which I requested my friend the waiter might be the very best, and which in effect turned out as I requested; we sat down, and when we had drunk to each other's health, Frank requested me to make known to him how I had contrived to free myself from my embarra.s.sments in London, what I had been about since I quitted that city, and the present posture of my affairs.
I related to Francis Ardry how I had composed the Life of Joseph Sell, and how the sale of it to the bookseller had enabled me to quit London with money in my pocket, which had supported me during a long course of ramble in the country, into the particulars of which I, however, did not enter with any considerable degree of fulness. I summed up my account by saying that ”I was at present a kind of overlooker in the stables of the inn, had still some pounds in my purse, and, moreover, a capital horse in the stall.”
”No very agreeable posture of affairs,” said Francis Ardry, looking rather seriously at me.
”I make no complaints,” said I, ”my prospects are not very bright, it is true, but sometimes I have visions both waking and sleeping, which, though always strange, are invariably agreeable. Last night, in my chamber near the hayloft, I dreamt that I had pa.s.sed over an almost interminable wilderness--an enormous wall rose before me, the wall, methought, was the great wall of China:--strange figures appeared to be beckoning to me from the top of the wall; such visions are not exactly to be sneered at. Not that such phantasmagoria,” said I, raising my voice, ”are to be compared for a moment with such desirable things as fas.h.i.+on, fine clothes, cheques from uncles, parliamentary interest, the love of splendid females. Ah! woman's love,” said I, and sighed.