Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.1 #4 (Feb 1867).
It was wrong to be led away by Scavenger. Scavenger was the third favourite for the St. Leger; and a sporting prophet of some celebrity, Mr. Mooney Dooem, of Little Hocus-street, London-road, Manchester, assured me, for the moderate consideration of three shillings and sixpence in postage stamps, that if I wanted to do a good thing for myself, the way to set about it was to back Scavenger with all the loose cash I could lay my hands on.
Now, I am not a sporting man, and I don't know much of horseflesh. If I had met Scavenger drawing a parcels-delivery van, my sense of the fitness of things would not have been jarred by the circumstance; nevertheless, I like a race. Yes, I am passionately devoted to a race. I make a point of taking Mrs. Pettifer to Epsom and Hampton races every spring. I like champagne and lobster-salad. I like to wear a green veil, and to talk to admiring servant-girls at open windows on the dusty road. I used to like chaffing the toll-keeper—one feels so witty in a barouche and pair. I like having my fortune told. I like coming home in the evening with my mind in a pleasing state of uncertainty as to whether it is the day before yesterday or the day after to-morrow; and I like finishing the evening with iced punch, another lobster, and a "frienly rub-r-r-r."
So I backed Scavenger. On Saturday I gave six to five on him, on Monday I gave five to four on him, and on Tuesday my partner Peck (Peck and Pettifer, solicitors, Gray's-inn) made me give him seven to three on that abominable brute. Peck always backs the field. He is a cautious man, and never means to marry. He makes unpleasant puns about not wanting to be hen-Pecked. I have laughed at that doleful joke so long from sheer habit, that if I heard it in a funeral sermon I believe I should burst into a-loud guffaw; and I give you my honour I never thought it funny in the whole course of my life. I am rather afraid of Peck, if the truth must be told, for I think he looks down upon me. I remember once, after a jovial night we had together, going to the office next morning with a labyrinth of streaky red marks all over my face; and when I told him that I had awoke and found the cat walking over my face, he looked as if he didn't believe me.
I backed Scavenger; and then it struck me that as Peck was going down to Doncaster for the St. Leger week, I really ought to go too. I could afford the week's holiday quite as well as Peck, though I was not a single man. So I told Mrs. Pettifer that I must run down to Yorkshire to wait on one of our best clients, who was going to marry his eldest daughter (to somebody else of course), and who required my professional services for the preparation of the settlements. Now I suppose Yorkshire sounded rather vague, for Mrs. Pettifer asked immediately what part of Yorkshire I was going to. I replied, as immediately, Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey. Now I don't know of any town answering to that name in Yorkshire; but that is no reason there should not be such a place, and I thought the address would be reassuring to Mrs. P.; and so it was. Unfortunately, she wanted me to write it down. I could not have spelt it if you had offered me a million of money; so I told my esteemed Julia Maria that I would write to her the minute I reached Slitherem; and so departed.
That brute Scavenger was nowhere, and my loose cash was jingling in the pockets of the prudent Peck half an hour after the great race. The cup was won by an outsider of obscure lineage, a rawboned chestnut animal with one white fore-leg, which made him look as if he had dressed himself in a hurry and had forgotten to put on his other stocking. Peck had backed him, and came away from the course with his leathern pocket-book distended, as in a dropsy, with bank-notes. I hated him with a deep and undying hatred; but as he asked me to dine with him at the Reindeer, I went.
He is a brute (perhaps I have said that before), but he is, on the whole, a generous brute, and he gave me a very good dinner. They know what a bottle of champagne is at the Reindeer, I can tell you; they can send you up something very creditable in the way of sparkling hock; and if you've a fancy for a bottle of old madeira, such as might rival Captain Cook for sea-voyages, don't be afraid to order it. We had some of that madeira with our fish. We didn't go into "sparkling" till the next course came in; and when we were tired of champagne, we went in for burgundy. I think it was some time in the fourth course that I was rather annoyed by the very peculiar conduct of a partridge. It began by his sliding about my plate, and persistently eluding my fork; he then dipped—yes, this malicious bird absolutely dipped down, plate and all, as if he were taking a sensation header, or going through a trap in the table-cloth. Next he dodged me—yes, dodged me from side to side; concealed himself behind the bread-sauce to avoid my knife; till on my making a final effort to pinion him with my fork, he took to himself wings and flew away—into Peck's shirt-front. I believe this gave rise to high words between Peck and me; but I know we afterwards shook hands; and there was something so really touching in our reconciliation that I wept. It was foolish of me to wipe my eyes upon my dinner-napkin, because I thereby introduced foreign particles in the way of crumbs and mustard into those optics, which injured my sight for the rest of the evening; but Peck said my conduct did equal honour to my head and my heart. I think it was in the course of a speech he said this; and I believe he paid me some very high compliments on my professional capacity and unblemished integrity. I felt grateful to him, though he pronounced it "feshnl epcty" and "nblmshed tgrity," and I didn't quite catch his meaning. This, of course, was after the cloth was removed, and we were taking our port and walnuts.
I don't know what brought Julia Maria (Mrs. Pettifer) so vividly to my recollection at this time, but the image of that injured woman did recur to me, and my feelings got the better of me. I had not acted well towards the wife of my bosom. I had not kept my promise; I had never written to her from Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey; partly because I had not been there, and partly because I did not believe there was any place of that name in the map of England. How we came to think about the theatre, I don't know; perhaps it was because we had received a circular from the manager of that place of entertainment, perhaps it was the landlord who suggested the idea, perhaps it was the waiter; at any rate there was Peck standing with his back to the fireplace (O, what had he been doing to himself to make himself so indistinct and undulating?)—there was Peck, looking at his watch and saying that it was only half-past nine, and that we might as well go and look in at the theatre.
I don't know whether earthquakes are indigenous to Doncaster, but that town was certainly agitated by some convulsion of nature on this particular evening; and as the inhabitants appeared quite undisturbed by the phenomenon, I conclude that it was quite a common occurrence.
As to that man who told us the nearest way to the theatre, I hope he may come to an untimely end. Nearest way indeed! "Bear to your left down the street opposite, and then turn sharp round the first corner you come to, into a narrow lane." I did bear to my left, whereby I bore right into a horse's mouth, and received a torrent of abuse from a stable-boy riding the quadruped. The lad had been drinking—they will do it at these times!—so I forgave him. Then, as to turning sharp round the corner, did I not turn sharp round the corner, and did I not do the bridge of my nose a serious injury against the brickwork of the corner house? I have never quite understood how we ultimately made our way into the theatre; but I think it was side-ways, because I know something seemed to be taking me into the Market-place, which, as every body knows, is adjacent to that building. Peck took me into a box near the stage. Peck is a play-going man, quotes Shakespeare and Maddison Morton in his conversation. I take my family to see the pantomimes every Christmas; beyond that I am not a connoisseur. The play was Hildebrand the Avenger, or the Spectre of the Mount. Peck said it was trash; I thought it interesting. Mrs. Hildebrand was a widow, Hildebrand having been murdered at some remote period. She wore black-cotton velvet, ornamented with spiky embellishments in crochet-work. I knew it was cotton velvet, because it looked brown, and clung around her queenly form as she walked. She also wore pearls in her hair—the correct costume I daresay of widows in the time of Hildebrand the A. She was rather a big woman, and she might have been younger; but she was a model of conjugal propriety; and O, didn't she annihilate Hildebrand's bad brother in yellow boots, when he revealed a guilty passion which he had chee-yerished—he pronounced it "chee-yerished"—for a space of some ten or twenty years!
Now I should have enjoyed this dramatic entertainment very much,—for I felt a strong interest in the female Hildebrand, and I rather admired Yellow-boots, though he was a consummate villain, and had three supernumerary consummate villains, dressed in green baize and bluchers, always ready to carry out any scheme of a criminal description,—but there was a virtuous steward, who talked a great deal more than any body else, and who seemed to obtain all the applause. I don't know how he came to be connected with the partridge that had so aggravated me at dinner; but he—the virtuous steward—was nearly related to that malignant bird, and from the moment he spied me in the corner of the boxes, he made a dead-set at me. Yes, at me! The abominable and abusive language he used, I shall never forget. O, ah! he might pretend he meant it for Yellow-boots (the noble-er Count-er, as he called him); but when he said that "the man who didn't do so and so deserved the most ignominious treatment," it was at me he levelled his denunciations, and I felt myself the focus of a whole houseful of indignant eyes. I told Peck of this fact, but he said he had not observed it. Peck never observes anything. I asked my partner if there was anything in my appearance calculated to attract the attention of that obnoxious steward; and P. said I did look rather pale. Suppose I did; was that the virtuous steward's business or mine, pray? and was I to ask his permission before I turned pale? I felt pale, and I rather fancied I looked interesting: that black ballet-girl with the eyes—I mean that ballet-girl with the black eyes—thought so, to judge by the way she stared at me. Well now, who do you suppose that virtuous steward was? The most experienced playgoer would have failed to fathom that secret. That virtuous steward was Hildebrand himself, who had been cleaning his own plate in his own butler's pantry, and waiting on his own wife, and depriving himself of all the comforts and privileges of his station for ten years; for the sake of keeping his eye on Yellow-boots, who had intended to murder him, but had foolishly intrusted the carrying out of the business to one of the supernumerary villains, who had evidently made a regular fiasco of it. Now, was not that idea charmingly original? I'm sure, when the virtuous steward threw off a white beard and a black cloak (how ever did he clean his plate or draw his corks in that cloak?), you might have heard a pin drop. I did distinctly hear the wire springs of the beard when it fell on the stage. And then there was such a burst of applause! And then poor Yellow-boots (he was a handsome young man, and would have been graceful if he had only been more settled in his ideas as to what he should do with his arms) was led away by his own minions, with a view to instantaneous execution. Perhaps he had been behindhand with their wages, for they really seemed glad to do it.
How ever it came about, I don't know; but all of a sudden we were behind the scenes. It was very dark, and there were a good many stairs, and somebody tumbled down, and I hurt myself. Peck knew the manager; and it was by some occult and back-stairs influence on the part of Peck that we had gained admittance to those sacred precincts. And there was Yellow-boots dressed in the costume. of private life, smoking a meerschaum-pipe, and playing dominoes with the virtuous steward. My first impulse was to strangle the V.S., on account of those abusive remarks he had made about me; but Peck said I had better not; and then I found that I actually had a strong feeling of friendship for the V.S., and that I should respect and admire him to my dying day.
I think presently the manager wanted to turn me out, because I was something that began with a d, and disorderly. I knew that I was a model of gentlemanly propriety, and that the remark was the emanation of an envious mind; so I did not resent it. But Peck told the manager I was a jolly good fellow, and as quiet as a lamb when I was something that began with an s; and he invited the manager to come and sup with us at the Reindeer, which the manager consented to do.
They gave us a spatch-cock and curried lobster for supper; and this time we tried the sparkling moselle, quite a lady's wine, and not the sort of stuff to get into your head, especially if you laid a good foundation of old dry sherry and bitter beer, as I did. Wasn't that manager a glorious fellow too? And couldn't he sing a comic song too? And did not Peck and I join in the chorus? O, it was such a song! There were seven murders and nine ghosts in it; and really, though you were ready to expire with laughing while you heard it sung, it was not the sort of thing to think of afterwards when you found yourself alone in the dark.
After supper I proposed the manager, with all the honours; and the manager proposed Peck and me, with all the honours; and we drank the theatrical profession, out of compliment to the manager; and the manager proposed the law, out of compliment to Peck and me. Did he not make a witty speech about landsharks and bilge water? I believe it was extracted from the drama of Black-eyed Susan; but the manager passed it off as original. And then Peck returned thanks in a speech that was positively affecting; and then we drank the ladies—not that there were any present, but the fair sex in general; Peck said, the black-eyed ballet-girl in particular: but of course Peck is a single man. And then we went to the station.
Yes, we went to the station, though I don't particularly remember how we went. We had been to bed, of course, because it was six o'clock to-morrow morning, and there we were at the station. We might have had a cab, or we might have walked down and carried our carpet-bags ourselves—I can't say which; but I am ready to make an affidavit that it was six, o'clock A.M., and there we were on the platform. How that clerk we took our tickets from came to be my second cousin Mary Jane Thomas's husband, who died when I was a little boy, I don't know; but Mary Jane T.'s husband he was; and what's more, I was not in the least surprised to see him. Neither did I perceive anything incongruous in the conduct of the manager, though, on my turning round to wish him good-bye, he all at once grew so like my great aunt Storkins—Aunt Storkins was in trade once, and no Pettifer ever would notice anybody connected with trade—that I could have taken him for that elderly individual, if I had not known all the time that he was the manager as well.
Talk of a long journey! I conclude we went express, because we didn't stop anywhere; but, upon my honour, it seemed to me as if we began that journey in the period of the old red sandstone, and didn't reach our destination till the reign of Queen Victoria. Eons and eons seemed to pass away, and still that Wandering Jew of an express-train tore onward on its interminable course; and there was Peck sitting opposite me eating sandwiches the whole time. He wasn't always Peck, by the bye; sometimes he was Earl Russell; once he was the Emperor Nero, with a faint tinge of Mr. Alfred Tennyson; but there was an under-current of himself perceptible all the time.
How we came to pass Bagdad I don't know, unless it was through the stupidity of the engine-driver; but I remember somebody pointing to a city which seemed to be constructed of brick-and-mortar pepper-boxes and fish-sauce bottles with tall stoppers, and which Peck declared to be that ancient capital of the Saracenic Caliphs. In spite of everything, we reached London by half-past ten A.M.; and before I knew where I was, I found myself opposite my own door, No. 4 Montefiasco-villas, Denmark-hill. When I say my own door, I am bound to add that at first I could hardly believe it to be my own door; for of all the stylish funerals I ever remembered seeing, the most stylish was just starting from No. 4 Montefiasco-villas. Such ponderous mutes! I knew the grief depicted in their rubicund faces could not have cost a trifle. Such feathers! I clung convulsively to the palings, for my thoughts reverted to Julia Maria. I remembered the guilty deception which had attended my departure from home, and I felt a conscience-stricken man.
Our parlour-maid Mary was standing at the garden-gate, gaping after the dismal cortège. I gasped out, "Whose funeral? Not your mistress's?"
"No, sir; master's." Yes; she said it quite distinctly; "master's."
"Stop a minute," I said. "Collect yourself, Mary; you may have been availing yourself of a false key to the cellaret. Calm yourself, my good girl, and try back. Whose funeral?"
"Master's, sir. Fatal collision" (she said "klision") "on the Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey Railroad. Poor Mr. Pettifer brought home on a shutter!"
Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey. The girl had the name of that mysterious vicinity as pat as I have my A B C,—perhaps patter.
I was a little thrown off my moral equilibrium, but I was not going to give way; so I said,
"Don't you know me, Mary?"
The girl stared at me with that vacuous expression peculiar to the lower classes.
"I never saw you before, sir, to my knowledge."
This was too much. I strode past the girl, and up the gravel walk; but she stopped me, and said she didn't think her mistress would see a stranger to-day. I used bad language; I said "Fiddlesticks' ends!" And I went into the house.
She told me, this pert menial, to wipe my shoes on my own mat, that I might not injure my own carpet; and she looked at me, when she showed me into my own drawing-room, very much as if she thought I might mean to purloin some of my own nicknacks.
There was a newspaper on the table. I took it up mechanically. It was the Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey Chronicle and Monday Morning Advertiser. Good gracious me! this Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey—a place the very name of which I believed to be an emanation of my own brain, devised to pacify Mrs. Pettifer—seemed to have sprung into life by some mysterious agency, and to have become a flourishing city. The paper was full of advertisements, which plainly showed that Slitherem was a populous place. One column was marked with a long black streak, evidently the work of a soft quill-pen. I read that column. It was a detailed account of the fatal accident on the Dwingey Junction-line, between the stations of Slitherem and Slopeydreggon,—I never invented Slopeydreggon; that place was a frightful reality,—and of the subsequent death of Mr. Augustus Pettifer, solicitor, of Gray's-inn, from injuries received therein.
Yes; there were the full particulars. The engine had run off the bank, and I, with several other passengers, had been precipitated into a field at some distance from the railroad, fearfully mutilated. Fearfully mutilated! Yes; that was the expression.
The door opened, and admitted Julia Maria Pettifer, in tears and a widow's cap. In mourning for me! Things were really growing unpleasant. "Julia Maria!" I was about to exclaim; but I had scarcely enunciated the J before she interrupted me by burying her face in her pocket-handkerchief with a sound as of choking.
I felt very awkward; here was I expected to console my own wife for my own loss. After an embarrassing pause of some moments, Julia Maria emerged from behind the pocket-handkerchief. I don't know what she had been doing, but her eyes were not at all red. I took a note of that.
"Ah, sir," she said, "you perhaps were a friend of the dear departed."
Well, I flattered myself I was.
"But," I ejaculated, "Ju—"
She stopped me short at the Ju.
"In that case," she said, "I am sorry you did not arrive in time to attend the funeral. There was a vacant place in one of the carriages. Mr. Spivins had the toothache, and couldn't come."
O, Spivins had the toothache, had he! and it was too much trouble to attend my funeral! I took another note of Spivins's toothache—I had lent Spivins money.
"But as you were a friend of the dear departed, you may like to hear the will read," continued my wife. "It will be read in the dining-room at one o'clock. You would perhaps wish to be present; you may be interested." Having said which, she went back into the pocket-handkerchief and out of the room.
Now what did it all mean? That was the question I put to myself. What did it all mean? Could it be possible that any impostor had had the impertinence to be killed on the Dwingey Junction in my name, brought home to my house on a shutter, and had even carried his audacity so far as to go and be buried in my coffin in my family vault in Norwood-cemetery? I had been induced to purchase a family vault by Julia Maria, though really I had thought it a foolish investment, because of course if I died, somebody must bury me, or if they did not choose to go to that expense, it would be their look-out.
One thing may strike the reader as rather singular,—it struck me in that light myself,—namely, that I didn't explain myself; that I didn't say to Julia Maria, "Take off that widow's cap, and put that absurd handkerchief in your pocket, and draw the blinds up. For this is me; and I never went to Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey in my life, and consequently never came home on a shutter;" and so on. The fact is, that I was continually trying to say these very words, and I continually couldn't. This failure I attributed to two causes. First, the pain at my chest—O, such a pain—a weight, an oppression! I don't suppose any body ever had an Atlas omnibus, full inside and out, settled on their lungs; but only a person who had laboured under such a disease could form a just estimate of my sensations. Secondly, really, what with the parlour-maid's asseverations, Julia Maria's mourning, and the graphic account of the accident in the newspaper, I was in a manner beginning to believe in Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey. Suppose I had been killed? Suppose I had been brought home on a shutter, and didn't know it? There was an awful situation!
I pinched myself; it was painful. There was a fire in the grate; I laid hold of the bars; that was painful, very, and I believe I swore; but O, it was such a comfort to feel that I was mortal, that I could have blessed anybody for treading upon my pet corn.
It was a nice thing to be asked into my own dining-room to hear my own will read. There was Peck, in a suit of black, with ebony death's-heads for studs,—he always had a playful fancy,—sitting in one of my morocco chairs at the top of my patent telescopic dining-table. He seemed to have forgotten all about Doncaster. I tried to recall it to his recollection, but a temporary paralysis of the vocal organs prevented me.
I suppose our dining-room must have been built on some newly-invented expanding principle, because it certainly was not as large as Exeter-hall when I left home; and in the matter of cubic feet it decidedly had the advantage of that edifice now.
It was really edifying to sit and hear how I had disposed of my property. There was a picture I rather prided myself upon—a Titian, a genuine Titian. The man I bought it from said it was, and of course he ought to know. Now, I had bequeathed this picture to Peck; Peck was not a bad fellow on the whole, and had stood my friend once or twice with Julia Maria after our Masonic dinner in Great Queen-street; and what do you think was Peck's remark on reading the passage in my will which made him possessor of this gem? "Poor fellow!" he said; "I appreciate his kind feeling; but he wouldn't have known a Reynolds from a Morland, and he always considered Michael Angelo and Buonarotti two distinct artists. The thing is the vilest daub that ever came out of Wardour-street." I tried to express my indignation, but another touch of paralysis was too much for me, and I took another note. Peck—daub—Wardour-street. I had learnt Beniowski's system of artificial memory, and I checked off those three heads on the fire-irons.
After the will was read, we all gathered round the fire, and we really became quite sociable. Mary the parlour-maid brought in a tray of decanters. Didn't the wine go to work!—my '48 port in particular. I don't know who it was that suggested smoking; but we
all looked at each other; and presently some one—I think it was Peck—said there was a box of poor Pettifer's cheroots in the sideboard drawer, and as it wasn't likely he would ever smoke them, we might as well blow a cloud. And so there was I, thanking Peck for one of my own cigars.
Our conversation was very melancholy at first; but presently we became a little more resigned; afterwards we grew quite cheerful; and at last, upon my word, we were almost uproarious. Peck told one of his best stories. I knew it by heart, and I laughed in the wrong place, and he scowled at me. I did it on purpose. Ha, ha! that vengeance at least was within my power.
It was very pleasant, too, to be taken by the button and told a good story about myself, the point of which was, that I had made a consummate fool of myself; and I think if Peck told me one such story, he told me six; and what's more, I laughed—yes, I actually laughed.
I think it was Peck proposed that as we'd had a very melancholy morning, we should run down to Greenwich and take a bit of dinner at the Crown and Sceptre—of course in a quiet way. "We shall find plenty of hansoms at Camberwell-green," said Peck; and off we went.
Now, when I say off we went, I mean to say off they went, for I did not go; and yet I wanted to go, and yet I kept continually trying to go, and yet I continually seemed to be going; but go I did not. Go I did not; for the substantial macadam of Denmark-hill transformed itself all in a moment into the airy nothingness of the Goodwin-sands, and I felt myself suddenly going down, down, down into a fathomless gulf, like another Edgar Ravenswood.
Two broken wine-glasses, a plate of oyster and lobster shells, a play-bill, a candlestick, and my boots! When I opened my eyes at the bottom of the fathomless gulf, these were the articles which met my bewildered gaze. They were on the table above my head; my feet were in the boots, and I was lying on the floor of that apartment in the Reindeer in which Peck, the manager, and I had partaken of supper prior to my hearing my own will read. I was lying on my back on the floor, with my feet on the table above me; and that is not a pleasant attitude in which to abandon oneself to slumber. I had one cork-screw, two balance-handle knives, and the neck of a champagne-bottle exactly under the small of my back. Those trifles did not add to the comfort of my position; and when I tell you that my head was against a sharp corner of the fender, and that I found the heel of the manager's varnished boot planted upon my chest, you will not perhaps wonder that I had assisted at the reading of my own will.
Yes, it had been only a hideous dream, after all; and there was the manager, asleep in an easy-chair, with my chest for a footstool, and looking quite aggravatingly comfortable. There was Peck too in another easy-chair, with a pocket-handkerchief over his face, looking still more aggravatingly comfortable. We had a splendid breakfast, plenty of soda-water and green tea, and started (it really was to-morrow) by the afternoon express-train; and at eight o'clock in the evening I was seated before the social board, quaffing with Mrs. Pettifer the cup that cheers and does not do the other thing, in the sacred shelter of my own home.
I told her a good deal, if I did not tell her exactly all; and never again, Julia Maria, never again! No more Slitherem-on-the-Dwingeys, no more St. Leger stakes, no more Scavengers, no more Reindeers, and no more last wills and testaments. No; we will go to Epsom in the spring-time of the coming year, and hob and nob out of our modest bottle of moselle, as a steady married couple should do. But, dream or no dream, I mean to revenge myself upon Peck for his impertinence about that picture.