CHAPTER III.
"NOW, young sir," said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but peremptory,--"now
we are in the town, where am I to take you? and wherever it be, there
to say good-by."
"No, not good-by. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to feel
frightened, and I am so friendless;" and the boy, who had before
resented the slightest nudge on the part of Kenelm, now wound his arm
into Kenelm's, and clung to him caressingly.
I don't know what my readers have hitherto thought of Kenelm
Chillingly: but, amid all the curves and windings of his whimsical
humour, there was one way that went straight to his heart; you had
only to be weaker than himself and ask his protection.
He turned round abruptly; he forgot all the strangeness of his
position, and replied: "Little brute that you are, I'll be shot if I
forsake you if in trouble. But some compassion is also due to the
cob: for his sake say where we are to stop."
"I am sure I can't say: I never was here before. Let us go to a nice
quiet inn. Drive slowly: we'll look out for one."
Tor-Hadham was a large town, not nominally the capital of the county,
but, in point of trade and bustle and life, virtually the capital.
The straight street, through which the cob went as slowly as if he had
been drawing a Triumphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated
appearance. The shops had handsome facades and plate-glass windows;
the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evidently not merely of
business, but of pleasure, for a large proportion of the passers-by
was composed of the fair sex, smartly dressed, many of them young and
some pretty. In fact a regiment of her Majesty's -----th Hussars had
been sent into the town two days before; and, between the officers of
that fortunate regiment and the fair sex in that hospitable town,
there was a natural emulation which should make the greater number of
slain and wounded. The advent of these heroes, professional
subtracters from hostile and multipliers of friendly populations, gave
a stimulus to the caterers for those amusements which bring young
folks together,--archery-meetings, rifle-shootings, concerts, balls,
announced in bills attached to boards and walls and exposed at
shop-windows.
The boy looked eagerly forth from the gig, scanning especially these
advertisements, till at length he uttered an excited exclamation, "Ah,
I was right: there it is!"
"There what is?" asked Kenelm,--"the inn?" His companion did not
answer, but Kenelm following the boy's eye perceived an immense
hand-bill.
"TO-MORROW NIGHT THEATRE OPENS.
"RICHARD III. Mr. COMPTON."
"Do just ask where the theatre is," said the boy, in a whisper,
turning away his head.
Kenelm stopped the cob, made the inquiry, and was directed to take the
next turning to the right. In a few minutes the compo portico of an
ugly dilapidated building, dedicated to the Dramatic Muses, presented
itself at the angle of a dreary, deserted lane. The walls were
placarded with play-bills, in which the name of Compton stood forth as
gigantic as capitals could make it. The boy drew a sigh. "Now," said
he, "let us look out for an inn near here,--the nearest."
No inn, however, beyond the rank of a small and questionable looking
public-house was apparent, until at a distance somewhat remote from
the theatre, and in a quaint, old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat,
newly whitewashed house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large
black letters of funereal aspect, "Temperance Hotel."
"Stop," said the boy; "don't you think that would suit us? it looks
quiet."
"Could not look more quiet if it were a tombstone," replied Kenelm.
The boy put his hand upon the reins and stopped the cob. The cob was
in that condition that the slightest touch sufficed to stop him,
though he turned his head somewhat ruefully as if in doubt whether hay
and corn would be within the regulations of a Temperance Hotel.
Kenelm descended and entered the house. A tidy woman emerged from a
sort of glass cupboard which constituted the bar, minus the comforting
drinks associated with the /beau ideal/ of a bar, but which displayed
instead two large decanters of cold water with tumblers /a discretion,
and sundry plates of thin biscuits and sponge-cakes. This tidy woman
politely inquired what was his "pleasure."
"Pleasure," answered Kenelm, with his usual gravity, "is not the word
I should myself have chosen. But could you oblige my horse--I mean
/that/ horse--with a stall and a feed of oats, and that young
gentleman and myself with a private room and a dinner?"
"Dinner!" echoed the hostess,--"dinner!"
"A thousand pardons, ma'am. But if the word 'dinner' shock you I
retract it, and would say instead something to eat and drink.'"
"Drink! This is strictly a Temperance Hotel, sir."
"Oh, if you don't eat and drink here," exclaimed Kenelm, fiercely, for
he was famished, "I wish you good morning."
"Stay a bit, sir. We do eat and drink here. But we are very simple
folks. We allow no fermented liquors."
"Not even a glass of beer?"
"Only ginger-beer. Alcohols are strictly forbidden. We have tea and
coffee and milk. But most of our customers prefer the pure liquid.
As for eating, sir,--anything you order, in reason."
Kenelm shook his head and was retreating, when the boy, who had sprung
from the gig and overheard the conversation, cried petulantly, "What
does it signify? Who wants fermented liquors? Water will do very
well. And as for dinner,--anything convenient. Please, ma'am, show
us into a private room: I am so tired." The last words were said in a
caressing manner, and so prettily, that the hostess at once changed
her tone, and muttering, "Poor boy!" and, in a still more subdued
mutter, "What a pretty face he has!" nodded, and led the way up a
very clean old-fashioned staircase.
"But the horse and gig, where are they to go?" said Kenelm, with a
pang of conscience on reflecting how ill treated hitherto had been
both horse and owner.
"Oh, as for the horse and gig, sir, you will find Jukes's
livery-stables a few yards farther down. We don't take in horses
ourselves; our customers seldom keep them: but you will find the best
of accommodation at Jukes's."
Kenelm conducted the cob to the livery-stables thus indicated, and
waited to see him walked about to cool, well rubbed down, and made
comfortable over half a peck of oats,--for Kenelm Chillingly was a
humane man to the brute creation,--and then, in a state of ravenous
appetite, returned to the Temperance Hotel, and was ushered into a
small drawing-room, with a small bit of carpet in the centre, six
small chairs with cane seats, prints on the walls descriptive of the
various effects of intoxicating liquors upon sundry specimens of
mankind,--some resembling ghosts, others fiends, and all with a
general aspect of beggary and perdition; contrasted by Happy-Family
pictures,--smiling wives, portly husbands, rosy infants, emblematic of
the beatified condition of members of the Temperance Society.
A table with a spotless cloth, and knives and forks for two, chiefly,
however, attracted Kenelm's attention.
The boy was standing by the window, seemingly gazing on a small
aquarium which was there placed, and contained the usual variety of
small fishes, reptiles, and insects, enjoying the pleasures of
Temperance in its native element, including, of course, an occasional
meal upon each other.
"What are they going to give us to eat?" inquired Kenelm. "It must be
ready by this time I should think."
Here he gave a brisk tug at the bell-pull. The boy advanced from the
window, and as he did so Kenelm was struck with the grace of his
bearing, and the improvement in his looks, now that he was without his
hat, and rest and ablution had refreshed from heat and dust the
delicate bloom of his complexion. There was no doubt about it that he
was an exceedingly pretty boy, and if he lived to be a man would make
many a lady's heart ache. It was with a certain air of gracious
superiority such as is seldom warranted by superior rank if it be less
than royal, and chiefly becomes a marked seniority in years, that this
young gentleman, approaching the solemn heir of the Chillinglys, held
out his hand and said,--
"Sir, you have behaved extremely well, and I thank you very much."
"Your Royal Highness is condescending to say so," replied Kenelm
Chillingly, bowing low, "but have you ordered dinner? and what are
they going to give us? No one seems to answer the bell here. As it
is a Temperance Hotel, probably all the servants are drunk."
"Why should they be drunk at a Temperance Hotel?"
"Why! because, as a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to
anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who
sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that
he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of
saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug. Masculine
honesty, whether it be saint-like or sinner-like, does not label
itself either saint or sinner. Fancy Saint Augustine labelling
himself saint, or Robert Burns sinner; and therefore, though, little
boy, you have probably not read the poems of Robert Burns, and have
certainly not read the 'Confessions' of Saint Augustine, take my word
for it, that both those personages were very good fellows; and with a
little difference of training and experience, Burns might have written
the 'Confessions' and Augustine the poems. Powers above! I am
starving. What did you order for dinner, and when is it to appear?"
The boy, who had opened to an enormous width a naturally large pair of
hazel eyes, while his tall companion in fustian trousers and Belcher
neckcloth spoke thus patronizingly of Robert Burns and Saint
Augustine, now replied, with rather a deprecatory and shamefaced
aspect, "I am sorry I was not thinking of dinner. I was not so
mindful of you as I ought to have been. The landlady asked me what we
would have. I said, 'What you like;' and the landlady muttered
something about--" here the boy hesitated.
"Yes. About what? Mutton-chops?"
"No. Cauliflowers and rice-pudding."
Kenelm Chillingly never swore, never raged. Where ruder beings of
human mould swore or raged, he vented displeasure in an expression of
countenance so pathetically melancholic and lugubrious that it would
have melted the heart of an Hyrcanian tiger. He turned his
countenance now on the boy, and murmuring "Cauliflower!--Starvation!"
sank into one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and added quietly, "so much
for human gratitude."
The boy was evidently smitten to the heart by the bitter sweetness of
this reproach. There were almost tears in his Voice, as he said
falteringly, "Pray forgive me, I /was/ ungrateful. I'll run down and
see what there is;" and, suiting the action to the word, he
disappeared.
Kenelm remained motionless; in fact he was plunged into one of those
reveries, or rather absorptions of inward and spiritual being, into
which it is said that the consciousness of the Indian dervish can be
by prolonged fasting preternaturally resolved. The appetite of all
men of powerful muscular development is of a nature far exceeding the
properties of any reasonable number of cauliflowers and rice-puddings
to satisfy. Witness Hercules himself, whose cravings for substantial
nourishment were the standing joke of the classic poets. I don't know
that Kenelm Chillingly would have beaten the Theban Hercules either in
fighting or in eating; but, when he wanted to fight or when he wanted
to eat, Hercules would have had to put forth all his strength not to
be beaten.
After ten minutes' absence, the boy came back radiant. He tapped
Kenelm on the shoulder, and said playfully, "I made them cut a whole
loin into chops, besides the cauliflower; and such a big rice-pudding,
and eggs and bacon too! Cheer up! it will be served in a minute."
"A-h!" said Kenelm.
"They are good people; they did not mean to stint you: but most of
their customers, it seems, live upon vegetables and farinaceous food.
There is a society here formed upon that principle; the landlady says
they are philosophers!"
At the word "philosophers" Kenelm's crest rose as that of a practised
hunter at the cry of "Yoiks! Tally-ho!" "Philosophers!" said he,
"philosophers indeed! O ignoramuses, who do not even know the
structure of the human tooth! Look you, little boy, if nothing were
left on this earth of the present race of man, as we are assured upon
great authority will be the case one of these days,--and a mighty good
riddance it will be,--if nothing, I say, of man were left except
fossils of his teeth and his thumbs, a philosopher of that superior
race which will succeed to man would at once see in those relics all
his characteristics and all his history; would say, comparing his
thumb with the talons of an eagle, the claws of a tiger, the hoof of a
horse, the owner of that thumb must have been lord over creatures with
talons and claws and hoofs. You may say the monkey tribe has thumbs.
True; but compare an ape's thumb with a man's: could the biggest ape's
thumb have built Westminster Abbey? But even thumbs are trivial
evidence of man as compared with his teeth. Look at his teeth!"--here
Kenelm expanded his jaws from ear to ear and displayed semicircles of
ivory, so perfect for the purposes of mastication that the most
artistic dentist might have despaired of his power to imitate
them,--"look, I say, at his teeth!" The boy involuntarily recoiled.
"Are the teeth those of a miserable cauliflower-eater? or is it purely
by farinaceous food that the proprietor of teeth like man's obtains
the rank of the sovereign destroyer of creation? No, little boy, no,"
continued Kenelm, closing his jaws, but advancing upon the infant, who
at each stride receded towards the aquarium,--"no; man is the master
of the world, because of all created beings he devours the greatest
variety and the greatest number of created things. His teeth evince
that man can live upon every soil from the torrid to the frozen zone,
because man can eat everything that other creatures cannot eat. And
the formation of his teeth proves it. A tiger can eat a deer; so can
man: but a tiger can't eat an eel; man can. An elephant can eat
cauliflowers and rice-pudding; so can man! but an elephant can't eat a
beefsteak; man can. In sum, man can live everywhere, because he can
eat anything, thanks to his dental formation!" concluded Kenelm,
making a prodigious stride towards the boy. "Man, when everything
else fails him, eats his own species."
"Don't; you frighten me," said the boy. "Aha!" clapping his hands
with a sensation of gleeful relief, "here come the mutton-chops!"
A wonderfully clean, well-washed, indeed well-washed-out, middle-aged
parlour-maid now appeared, dish in hand. Putting the dish on the
table and taking off the cover, the handmaiden said civilly, though
frigidly, like one who lived upon salad and cold water, "Mistress is
sorry to have kept you waiting, but she thought you were Vegetarians."
After helping his young friend to a mutton-chop, Kenelm helped
himself, and replied gravely, "Tell your mistress that if she had only
given us vegetables, I should have eaten you. Tell her that though
man is partially graminivorous, he is principally carnivorous. Tell
her that though a swine eats cabbages and such like, yet where a swine
can get a baby, it eats the baby. Tell her," continued Kenelm (now at
his third chop), "that there is no animal that in digestive organs
more resembles man than a swine. Ask her if there is any baby in the
house; if so, it would be safe for the baby to send up some more
chops."
As the acutest observer could rarely be quite sure when Kenelm
Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlour-maid paused a moment
and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably
sad and profound, and said mournfully, "I should be so sorry for the
baby. Bring the chops!" The parlour-maid vanished. The boy laid
down his knife and fork, and looked fixedly and inquisitively on
Kenelm. Kenelm, unheeding the look, placed the last chop on the boy's
plate.
"No more," cried the boy, impulsively, and returned the chop to the
dish. "I have dined: I have had enough."
"Little boy, you lie," said Kenelm; "you have not had enough to keep
body and soul together. Eat that chop or I shall thrash you: whatever
I say I do."
Somehow or other the boy felt quelled; he ate the chop in silence,
again looked at Kenelm's face, and said to himself, "I am afraid."
The parlour-maid here entered with a fresh supply of chops and a dish
of bacon and eggs, soon followed by a rice-pudding baked in a tin
dish, and of size sufficient to have nourished a charity school. When
the repast was finished, Kenelm seemed to forget the dangerous
properties of the carnivorous animal; and stretching himself
indolently out, appeared to be as innocently ruminative as the most
domestic of animals graminivorous.
Then said the boy, rather timidly, "May I ask you another favour?"
"Is it to knock down another uncle, or to steal another gig and cob?"
"No, it is very simple: it is merely to find out the address of a
friend here; and when found to give him a note from me."
"Does the commission press? 'After dinner, rest a while,' saith the
proverb; and proverbs are so wise that no one can guess the author of
them. They are supposed to be fragments of the philosophy of the
antediluvians: came to us packed up in the ark."
"Really, indeed," said the boy, seriously. "How interesting! No, my
commission does not press for an hour or so. Do you think, sir, they
had any drama before the Deluge?"
"Drama! not a doubt of it. Men who lived one or two thousand years
had time to invent and improve everything; and a play could have had
its natural length then. It would not have been necessary to crowd
the whole history of Macbeth, from his youth to his old age, into an
absurd epitome of three hours. One cannot trace a touch of real human
nature in any actor's delineation of that very interesting Scotchman,
because the actor always comes on the stage as if he were the same age
when he murdered Duncan, and when, in his sear and yellow leaf, he was
lopped off by Macduff."
"Do you think Macbeth was young when he murdered Duncan?"
"Certainly. No man ever commits a first crime of violent nature, such
as murder, after thirty; if he begins before, he may go on up to any
age. But youth is the season for commencing those wrong calculations
which belong to irrational hope and the sense of physical power. You
thus read in the newspapers that the persons who murder their
sweethearts are generally from two to six and twenty; and persons who
murder from other motives than love--that is, from revenge, avarice,
or ambition--are generally about twenty-eight,--Iago's age.
Twenty-eight is the usual close of the active season for getting rid
of one's fellow-creatures; a prize-fighter falls off after that age.
I take it that Macbeth was about twenty-eight when he murdered Duncan,
and from about fifty-four to sixty when he began to whine about
missing the comforts of old age. But can any audience understand that
difference of years in seeing a three-hours' play? or does any actor
ever pretend to impress it on the audience, and appear as twenty-eight
in the first act and a sexagenarian in the fifth?"
"I never thought of that," said the boy, evidently interested. "But I
never saw 'Macbeth.' I have seen 'Richard III.:' is not that nice?
Don't you dote on the play? I do. What a glorious life an actor's
must be!"
Kenelm, who had been hitherto rather talking to himself than to his
youthful companion, here roused his attention, looked on the boy
intently, and said,--
"I see you are stage-stricken. You have run away from home in order
to turn player, and I should not wonder if this note you want me to
give is for the manager of the theatre or one of his company."
The young face that encountered Kenelm's dark eye became very flushed,
but set and defiant in its expression.
"And what if it were? would not you give it?"
"What! help a child of your age run away from his home, to go upon the
stage against the consent of his relations? Certainly not."
"I am not a child; but that has nothing to do with it. I don't want
to go on the stage, at all events without the consent of the person
who has a right to dictate my actions. My note is not to the manager
of the theatre, nor to one of his company; but it is to a gentleman
who condescends to act here for a few nights; a thorough gentleman,--a
great actor,--my friend, the only friend I have in the world. I say
frankly I have run away from home so that he may have that note, and
if you will not give it some one else will!"
The boy had risen while he spoke, and he stood erect beside the
recumbent Kenelm, his lips quivering, his eyes suffused with
suppressed tears, but his whole aspect resolute and determined.
Evidently, if he did not get his own way in this world, it would not
be for want of will.
"I will take your note," said Kenelm.
"There it is; give it into the hands of the person it is addressed
to,--Mr. Herbert Compton."
