CHAPTER IV.
The letter, madam; have you none for me?--The Rendezvous.
Provide surgeons.--Lover's Progress.
Our solitary traveller pursued his way with the light step and gay
spirits of youth and health.
"Turn gypsy, indeed!" he said, talking to himself; "there is something
better in store for me than that. Ay, I have all the world before me
where to choose--not my place of rest. No, many a long year will pass
away ere any place of rest will be my choice! I wonder whether I
shall find the letter at W----; the letter, the last letter I shall
ever have from home but it is no home to me now; and I--I, insulted,
reviled, trampled upon, without even a name--well, well, I will earn a
still fairer one than that of my forefathers. They shall be proud to
own me yet." And with these words the speaker broke off abruptly,
with a swelling chest and a flashing eye; and as, an unknown and
friendless adventurer, he gazed on the expanded and silent country
around him, he felt like Castruccio Castrucani that he could stretch
his hands to the east and to the west and exclaim, "Oh, that my power
kept pace with my spirit, then should it grasp the corners of the
earth!"
The road wound at last from the champaign country, through which it
had for some miles extended itself, into a narrow lane, girded on
either side by a dead fence. As the youth entered this lane, he was
somewhat startled by the abrupt appearance of a horseman, whose steed
leaped the hedge so close to our hero as almost to endanger his
safety. The rider, a gentleman of about five-and-twenty, pulled up,
and in a tone of great courtesy apologized for his inadvertency; the
apology was readily admitted, and the horseman rode onwards in the
direction of W----.
Trifling as this incident was, the air and mien of the stranger were
sufficient to arrest irresistibly the thoughts of the young traveller;
and before they had flowed into a fresh channel he found himself in
the town and at the door of the inn to which his expedition was bound.
He entered the bar; a buxom landlady and a still more buxom daughter
were presiding over the spirits of the place.
"You have some boxes and a letter for me, I believe," said the young
gentleman to the comely hostess.
"To you, sir!--the name, if you please?"
"To--to--to C---- L----," said the youth; "the initials C. L., to be
left till called for."
"Yes, sir, we have some luggage; came last night by the van; and a
letter besides, sir, to C. L. also."
The daughter lifted her large dark eyes at the handsome stranger, and
felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the letter to C. L. could
possibly be about; meanwhile mine hostess, raising her hand to a shelf
on which stood an Indian slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at
the Golden Fleece, brought from its cavity a well-folded and well-
sealed epistle.
"That is it," cried the youth; "show me a private room instantly."
"What can he want a private room for?" thought the landlady's
daughter.
"Show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. 4, John Merrylack," said the
landlady herself.
With an impatient step the owner of the letter followed a slipshod and
marvellously unwashed waiter into No. 4,--a small square asylum for
town travellers, country yeomen, and "single gentlemen;" presenting,
on the one side, an admirable engraving of the Marquis of Granby, and
on the other an equally delightful view of the stable-yard.
Mr. C. L. flung himself on a chair (there were only four chairs in No.
4), watched the waiter out of the room, seized his letter, broke open
the seal, and read--yea, reader, you shall read it too--as follows:--
"Enclosed is the sum to which you are entitled; remember, that it is
all which you can ever claim at my hands; remember also that you have
made the choice which now nothing can persuade me to alter. Be the
name you have so long iniquitously borne henceforth and always
forgotten; upon that condition you may yet hope from my generosity the
future assistance which you must want, but which you could not ask
from my affection. Equally by my heart and my reason you are forever
DISOWNED."
The letter fell from the reader's hands. He took up the inclosure: it
was an order payable in London for 1,000 pounds; to him it seemed like
the rental of the Indies.
"Be it so!" he said aloud, and slowly; "be it so! With this will I
carve my way: many a name in history was built upon a worse
foundation!"
With these words he carefully put up the money, re-read the brief note
which enclosed it, tore the latter into pieces, and then, going
towards the aforesaid view of the stable-yard, threw open the window
and leaned out, apparently in earnest admiration of two pigs which
marched gruntingly towards him, one goat regaling himself upon a
cabbage, and a broken-winded, emaciated horse, which having just been
what the hostler called "rubbed down," was just going to be what the
hostler called "fed."
While engaged in this interesting survey, the clatter of hoofs was
suddenly heard upon the rough pavement, a bell rang, a dog barked, the
pigs grunted, the hostler ran out, and the stranger, whom our hero had
before met on the road, trotted into the yard.
It was evident from the obsequiousness of the attendants that the
horseman was a personage of no mean importance; and indeed there was
something singularly distinguished and highbred in his air and
carriage.
"Who can that be?" said the youth, as the horseman, having dismounted,
turned towards the door of the inn: the question was readily answered,
"There goes pride and poverty!" said the hostler, "Here comes Squire
Mordaunt!" said the landlady.
At the farther end of the stable-yard, through a narrow gate, the
youth caught a glimpse of the green sward and the springing flowers of
a small garden. Wearied with the sameness of No. 4 rather than with
his journey, he sauntered towards the said gate, and, seating himself
in a small arbour within the garden, surrendered himself to
reflection.
The result of this self-conference was a determination to leave the
Golden Fleece by the earliest conveyance which went to that great
object and emporium of all his plans and thoughts, London. As, full
of this resolution and buried in the dream which it conjured up, he
was returning with downcast eyes and unheeding steps through the
stable-yard, to the delights of No. 4, he was suddenly accosted by a
loud and alarmed voice,--
"For God's sake, sir, look out, or--"
The sentence was broken off, the intended warning came too late, our
hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and motionless,
against the stable door. Unconsciously he had passed just behind the
heels of the stranger's horse, which being by no means in good humour
with the clumsy manoeuvres of his shampooer, the hostler, had taken
advantage of the opportunity presented to him of working off his
irritability, and had consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the
right shoulder of Mr. C. L.
The stranger, honoured by the landlady with the name and title of
Squire Mordaunt, was in the yard at the moment. He hastened towards
the sufferer, who as yet was scarcely sensible, and led him into the
house. The surgeon of the village was sent for and appeared. This
disciple of Galen, commonly known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton,
was a gentleman considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He
was exactly five feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a
milestone; a wig of modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, gave
somewhat of a modish and therefore unseemly grace to a solemn eye; a
mouth drawn down at the corners; a nose that had something in it
exceedingly consequential; eyebrows sage and shaggy; ears large and
fiery; and a chin that would have done honour to a mandarin. Now Mr.
Jeremiah Bossolton had a certain peculiarity of speech to which I
shall find it difficult to do justice. Nature had impressed upon his
mind a prodigious love of the grandiloquent; Mr. Bossolton, therefore,
disdained the exact language of the vulgar, and built unto himself a
lofty fabric of words in which his sense managed very frequently to
lose itself. Moreover, upon beginning a sentence of peculiar dignity,
Mr. Bossolton was, it must be confessed, sometimes at a loss to
conclude it in a period worthy of the commencement; and this caprice
of nature which had endowed him with more words than thoughts
(necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention) drove him into a very
ingenious method of remedying the deficiency; this was simply the plan
of repeating the sense by inverting the sentence.
"How long a period of time," said Mr. Bossolton, "has elapsed since
this deeply-to-be-regretted and seriously-to-be-investigated accident
occurred?"
"Not many minutes," said Mordaunt; "make no further delay, I beseech
you, but examine the arm; it is not broken, I trust?"
"In this world, Mr. Mordaunt," said the practitioner, bowing very low,
for the person he addressed was of the most ancient lineage in the
county, "in this world, Mr. Mordaunt, even at the earliest period of
civilization, delay in matters of judgment has ever been considered of
such vital importance, and--and such important vitality, that we find
it inculcated in the proverbs of the Greeks and the sayings of the
Chaldeans as a principle of the most expedient utility, and--and--the
most useful expediency!"
"Mr. Bossolton," said Mordaunt, in a tone of remarkable and even
artificial softness and civility, "have the kindness immediately to
examine this gentleman's bruises."
Mr. Bossolton looked up to the calm but haughty face of the speaker,
and without a moment's hesitation proceeded to handle the arm, which
was already stripped for his survey.
"It frequently occurs," said Mr. Bossolton, "in the course of my
profession, that the forcible, sudden, and vehement application of any
hard substance, like the hoof of a quadruped, to the soft, tender, and
carniferous parts of the human frame, such as the arm, occasions a
pain--a pang, I should rather say--of the intensest acuteness, and--
and of the acutest intensity."
"Pray, Mr. Bossolton, is the bone broken?" asked Mordaunt.
By this time the patient, who had been hitherto in that languor which
extreme pain always produces at first, especially on young frames, was
sufficiently recovered to mark and reply to the kind solicitude of the
last speaker: "I thank you, sir," said he with a smile, "for your
anxiety, but I feel that the bone is not broken; the muscles are a
little hurt, that is all."
"Young gentleman," said Mr. Bossolton, "you must permit me to say that
they who have all their lives been employed in the pursuit, and the
investigation, and the analysis of certain studies are in general
better acquainted with those studies than they who have neither given
them any importance of consideration--nor--nor any consideration of
importance. Establishing this as my hypothesis, I shall now proceed
to--"
"Apply immediate remedies, if you please, Mr. Bossolton," interrupted
Mr. Mordaunt, in that sweet and honeyed tone which somehow or other
always silenced even the garrulous practitioner.
Driven into taciturnity, Mr. Bossolton again inspected the arm, and
proceeded to urge the application of liniments and bandages, which he
promised to prepare with the most solicitudinous despatch and the most
despatchful solicitude.
