Peveril of the Peak

Julian heartily thanked him for his love.

“Nay, it is not altogether out of love neither,” said Lance, “though I am as loving as another; but it is, as it were, partly out of fear, lest I be called over the coals for last night’s matter; for as for the miners, they will never trouble them, as the creatures only act after their kind.”

“I will write in your behalf to Major Bridgenorth, who is bound to afford you protection, if you have such fear,” said Julian.

“Nay, for that matter, it is not altogether fear, more than altogether love,” answered the enigmatical keeper, “although it hath a tasting of both in it. And, to speak plain truth, thus it is – Dame Debbitch and Naunt Ellesmere have resolved to set up their horses together, and have made up all their quarrels. And of all ghosts in the world, the worst is, when an old true-love comes back to haunt a poor fellow like me. Mistress Deborah, though distressed enow for the loss of her place, has been already speaking of a broken sixpence, or some such token, as if a man could remember such things for so many years, even if she had not gone over seas, like woodcock, in the meanwhile.”

Julian could scarce forbear laughing. “I thought you too much of a man, Lance, to fear a woman marrying you whether you would or no.”

“It has been many an honest man’s luck, for all that,” said Lance; “and a woman in the very house has so many deuced opportunities. And then there would be two upon one; for Naunt, though high enough when any of your folks are concerned, hath some look to the main chance; and it seems Mistress Deb is as rich as a Jew.”

“And you, Lance,” said Julian, “have no mind to marry for cake and pudding.”

“No, truly, master,” answered Lance, “unless I knew of what dough they were baked. How the devil do I know how the jade came by so much? And then if she speaks of tokens and love-passages, let her be the same tight lass I broke the sixpence with, and I will be the same true lad to her. But I never heard of true love lasting ten years; and hers, if it lives at all, must be nearer twenty.”

“Well, then, Lance,” said Julian, “since you are resolved on the thing, we will go to London together; where, if I cannot retain you in my service, and if my father recovers not these misfortunes, I will endeavour to promote you elsewhere.”

“Nay, nay,” said Lance, “I trust to be back to bonny Martindale before it is long, and to keep the greenwood, as I have been wont to do; for, as to Dame Debbitch, when they have not me for their common butt, Naunt and she will soon bend bows on each other. So here comes old Dame Ellesmere with your breakfast. I will but give some directions about the deer to Rough Ralph, my helper, and saddle my forest pony, and your honour’s horse, which is no prime one, and we will be ready to trot.”

Julian was not sorry for this addition to his establishment; for Lance had shown himself, on the preceding evening, a shrewd and bold fellow, and attached to his master. He therefore set himself to reconcile his aunt to parting with her nephew for some time. Her unlimited devotion for “the family,” readily induced the old lady to acquiesce in his proposal, though not without a gentle sigh over the ruins of a castle in the air, which was founded on the well-saved purse of Mistress Deborah Debbitch. “At any rate,” she thought, “it was as well that Lance should be out of the way of that bold, long-legged, beggarly trollop, Cis Sellok.” But to poor Deb herself, the expatriation of Lance, whom she had looked to as a sailor to a port under his lee, for which he can run, if weather becomes foul, was a second severe blow, following close on her dismissal from the profitable service of Major Bridgenorth.

Julian visited the disconsolate damsel, in hopes of gaining some light upon Bridgenorth’s projects regarding his daughter – the character of this Ganlesse – and other matters, with which her residence in the family might have made her acquainted; but he found her by far too much troubled in mind to afford him the least information. The name of Ganlesse she did not seem to recollect – that of Alice rendered her hysterical – that of Bridgenorth, furious. She numbered up the various services she had rendered in the family – and denounced the plague of swartness to the linen – of leanness to the poultry – of dearth and dishonour to the housekeeping – and of lingering sickness and early death to Alice; – all which evils, she averred, had only been kept off by her continued, watchful, and incessant cares. – Then again turning to the subject of the fugitive Lance, she expressed such a total contempt of that mean-spirited fellow, in a tone between laughing and crying, as satisfied Julian it was not a topic likely to act as a sedative; and that, therefore, unless he made a longer stay than the urgent state of his affairs permitted, he was not likely to find Mistress Deborah in such a state of composure as might enable him to obtain from her any rational or useful information.

Lance, who good-naturedly took upon himself the whole burden of Dame Debbitch’s mental alienation, or “taking on,” as such fits of passio hysterica are usually termed in the country, had too much feeling to present himself before the victim of her own sensibility, and of his obduracy. He therefore intimated to Julian, by his assistant Ralph, that the horses stood saddled behind the Lodge, and that all was ready for their departure.

Julian took the hint, and they were soon mounted, and clearing the road, at a rapid trot, in the direction of London; but not by the most usual route. Julian calculated that the carriage in which his father was transported would travel slowly; and it was his purpose, if possible, to get to London before it should arrive there, in order to have time to consult, with the friends of his family, what measures should be taken in his father’s behalf.

In this manner they advanced a day’s journey towards London; at the conclusion of which, Julian found his resting-place in a small inn upon the road. No one came, at the first call, to attend upon the guests and their horses, although the house was well lighted up; and there was a prodigious chattering in the kitchen, such as can only be produced by a French cook when his mystery is in the very moment of projection. It instantly occurred to Julian – so rare was the ministry of these Gallic artists at that time – that the clamour he heard must necessarily be produced by the Sieur Chaubert, on whose plats he had lately feasted, along with Smith and Ganlesse.

One, or both of these, were therefore probably in the little inn; and if so, he might have some opportunity to discover their real purpose and character. How to avail himself of such a meeting he knew not; but chance favoured him more than he could have expected.

“I can scarce receive you, gentlefolks,” said the landlord, who at length appeared at the door; “here be a sort of quality in my house to-night, whom less than all will not satisfy; nor all neither, for that matter.”

“We are but plain fellows, landlord,” said Julian; “we are bound for Moseley-market, and can get no farther to-night. Any hole will serve us, no matter what.”

“Why,” said the honest host, “if that be the case, I must e’en put one of you behind the bar, though the gentlemen have desired to be private; the other must take heart of grace and help me at the tap.”

“The tap for me,” said Lance, without waiting his master’s decision. “It is an element which I could live and die in.”

“The bar, then, for me,” said Peveril; and stepping back, whispered to Lance to exchange cloaks with him, desirous, if possible, to avoid being recognised.

The exchange was made in an instant; and presently afterwards the landlord brought a light; and as he guided Julian into his hostelry, cautioned him to sit quiet in the place where he should stow him; and if he was discovered, to say that he was one of the house, and leave him to make it good. “You will hear what the gallants say,” he added; “but I think thou wilt carry away but little on it; for when it is not French, it is Court gibberish; and that is as hard to construe.”

The bar, into which our hero was inducted on these conditions, seemed formed, with respect to the public room, upon the principle of a citadel, intended to observe and bridle a rebellious capital. Here sat the host on the Saturday evenings, screened from the observation of his guests, yet with the power of observing both their wants and their behaviour, and also that of overhearing their conversation – a practice which he was much addicted to, being one of that numerous class of philanthropists, to whom their neighbours’ business is of as much consequence, or rather more, than their own.

Here he planted his new guest, with a repeated caution not to disturb the gentlemen by speech or motion; and a promise that he should be speedily accommodated with a cold buttock of beef, and a tankard of home-brewed. And here he left him with no other light than that which glimmered from the well-illuminated apartment within, through a sort of shuttle which accommodated the landlord with a view into it.

This situation, inconvenient enough in itself, was, on the present occasion, precisely what Julian would have selected. He wrapped himself in the weather-beaten cloak of Lance Outram, which had been stained, by age and weather, into a thousand variations from its original Lincoln green; and with as little noise as he could, set himself to observe the two inmates, who had engrossed to themselves the whole of the apartment, which was usually open to the public. They sat by a table well covered with such costly rarities, as could only have been procured by much forecast, and prepared by the exquisite Mons. Chaubert; to which both seemed to do much justice.

Julian had little difficulty in ascertaining, that one of the travellers was, as he had anticipated, the master of the said Chaubert, or, as he was called by Ganlesse, Smith; the other, who faced him, he had never seen before. This last was dressed like a gallant of the first order. His periwig, indeed, as he travelled on horseback, did not much exceed in size the bar-wig of a modern lawyer; but then the essence which he shook from it with every motion, impregnated a whole apartment, which was usually only perfumed by that vulgar herb, tobacco. His riding-coat was laced in the newest and most courtly style; and Grammont himself might have envied the embroidery of his waistcoat, and the peculiar cut of his breeches, which buttoned above the knee, permitting the shape of a very handsome leg to be completely seen. This, by the proprietor thereof, had been stretched out upon a stool, and he contemplated its proportions, from time to time, with infinite satisfaction.

The conversation between these worthies was so interesting, that we propose to assign to it another chapter.

CHAPTER XXVII

         – This is some creature of the elements,         Most like your sea-gull. He can wheel and whistle         His screaming song, e’en when the storm is loudest —         Take for his sheeted couch the restless foam         Of the wild wave-crest – slumber in the calm,         And daily with the storm. Yet ‘tis a gull,         An arrant gull, with all this.– THE CHAMPION.

“And here is to thee,” said the fashionable gallant whom we have described, “honest Tom; and a cup of welcome to thee out of Looby-land. Why, thou hast been so long in the country, that thou hast got a bumpkinly clod-compelling sort of look thyself. That greasy doublet fits thee as if it were thy reserved Sunday’s apparel; and the points seem as if they were stay-laces bought for thy true-love Marjory. I marvel thou canst still relish a ragout. Methinks now, to a stomach bound in such a jacket, eggs and bacon were a diet more conforming.”

“Rally away, my good lord, while wit lasts,” answered his companion; “yours is not the sort of ammunition which will bear much expenditure. Or rather, tell me news from Court, since we have met so opportunely.”

“You would have asked me these an hour ago,” said the lord, “had not your very soul been under Chaubert’s covered dishes. You remembered King’s affairs will keep cool, and entre-mets must be eaten hot.”

“Not so, my lord; I only kept common talk whilst that eavesdropping rascal of a landlord was in the room; so that, now the coast is clear once more, I pray you for news from Court.”

“The Plot is nonsuited,” answered the courtier – “Sir George Wakeman acquitted – the witnesses discredited by the jury – Scroggs, who ranted on one side, is now ranting on t’other.”

“Rat the Plot, Wakeman, witnesses, Papists, and Protestants, all together! Do you think I care for such trash as that? – Till the Plot comes up the Palace backstair, and gets possession of old Rowley’s own imagination, I care not a farthing who believes or disbelieves. I hang by him will bear me out.”

“Well, then,” said the lord, “the next news is Rochester’s disgrace.”

“Disgraced! – How, and for what? The morning I came off he stood as fair as any one.”

“That’s over – the epitaph12 has broken his neck – and now he may write one for his own Court favour, for it is dead and buried.”

The lines are well known: —

     “Here lies our sovereign lord the King,        Whose word no man relies on,      Who never said a foolish thing,        And never did a wise one.”

“The epitaph!” exclaimed Tom; “why, I was by when it was made; and it passed for an excellent good jest with him whom it was made upon.”

“Ay, so it did amongst ourselves,” answered his companion; “but it got abroad, and had a run like a mill-race. It was in every coffee-house, and in half the diurnals. Grammont translated it into French too; and there is no laughing at so sharp a jest, when it is dinned into your ears on all sides. So disgraced is the author; and but for his Grace of Buckingham, the Court would be as dull as my Lord Chancellor’s wig.”

“Or as the head it covers. – Well, my lord, the fewer at Court, there is the more room for those that can bustle there. But there are two mainstrings of Shaftesbury’s fiddle broken – the Popish Plot fallen into discredit – and Rochester disgraced. Changeful times – but here is to the little man who shall mend them.”

“I apprehend you,” replied his lordship; “and meet your health with my love. Trust me, my lord loves you, and longs for you. – Nay, I have done you reason. – By your leave, the cup is with me. Here is to his buxom Grace of Bucks.”

“As blithe a peer,” said Smith, “as ever turned night to day. Nay, it shall be an overflowing bumper, an you will; and I will drink it super naculum. – And how stands the great Madam?”13

“Stoutly against all change,” answered the lord – “Little Anthony14 can make nought of her.”

“Then he shall bring her influence to nought. Hark in thine ear. Thou knowest – ” (Here he whispered so low that Julian could not catch the sound.)

“Know him?” answered the other – “Know Ned of the Island? – To be sure I do.”

“He is the man that shall knot the great fiddle-strings that have snapped. Say I told you so; and thereupon I give thee his health.”

“And thereupon I pledge thee,” said the young nobleman, “which on any other argument I were loath to do – thinking of Ned as somewhat the cut of a villain.”

“Granted, man – granted,” said the other, – “a very thorough-paced rascal; but able, my lord, able and necessary; and, in this plan, indispensable. – Pshaw! – This champagne turns stronger as it gets older, I think.”

“Hark, mine honest fellow,” said the courtier; “I would thou wouldst give me some item of all this mystery. Thou hast it, I know; for whom do men entrust but trusty Chiffinch?”

“It is your pleasure to say so, my lord,” answered Smith (whom we shall hereafter call by his real name of Chiffinch) with such drunken gravity, for his speech had become a little altered by his copious libations in the course of the evening, – “few men know more, or say less, than I do; and it well becomes my station. Conticuere omnes, as the grammar hath it – all men should learn to hold their tongue.”

“Except with a friend, Tom – except with a friend. Thou wilt never be such a dogbolt as to refuse a hint to a friend? Come, you get too wise and statesman-like for your office. – The ligatures of thy most peasantly jacket there are like to burst with thy secret. Come, undo a button, man; it is for the health of thy constitution – Let out a reef; and let thy chosen friend know what is meditating. Thou knowest I am as true as thyself to little Anthony, if he can but get uppermost.”

“If, thou lordly infidel!” said Chiffinch – “talk’st thou to me of ifs?– There is neither if nor and in the matter. The great Madam shall be pulled a peg down – the great Plot screwed a peg or two up. Thou knowest Ned? – Honest Ned had a brother’s death to revenge.”

“I have heard so,” said the nobleman; “and that his persevering resentment of that injury was one of the few points which seemed to be a sort of heathenish virtue in him.”

“Well,” continued Chiffinch, “in manoeuvring to bring about this revenge, which he hath laboured at many a day, he hath discovered a treasure.”

“What! – In the Isle of Man?” said his companion.

“Assure yourself of it. – She is a creature so lovely, that she needs but be seen to put down every one of the favourites, from Portsmouth and Cleveland down to that threepenny baggage, Mistress Nelly.”

“By my word, Chiffinch,” said my lord, “that is a reinforcement after the fashion of thine own best tactics. But bethink thee, man! To make such a conquest, there wants more than a cherry-cheek and a bright eye – there must be wit – wit, man, and manners, and a little sense besides, to keep influence when it is gotten.”

“Pshaw! will you tell me what goes to this vocation?” said Chiffinch. “Here, pledge me her health in a brimmer. – Nay, you shall do it on knees, too. – Never such a triumphant beauty was seen – I went to church on purpose, for the first time these ten years – Yet I lie, it was not to church neither – it was to chapel.”

“To chapel! – What the devil, is she a Puritan?” exclaimed the other courtier.

“To be sure she is. Do you think I would be accessory to bringing a Papist into favour in these times, when, as my good Lord said in the House, there should not be a Popish manservant, nor a Popish maid-servant, not so much as dog or cat, left to bark or mew about the King!”15

“But consider, Chiffie, the dislikelihood of her pleasing,” said the noble courtier. – “What! old Rowley, with his wit, and love of wit – his wildness, and love of wildness – he form a league with a silly, scrupulous, unidea’d Puritan! – Not if she were Venus.”

“Thou knowest nought of the matter,” answered Chiffinch. “I tell thee, the fine contrast between the seeming saint and falling sinner will give zest to the old gentleman’s inclination. If I do not know him, who does? – Her health, my lord, on your bare knee, as you would live to be of the bedchamber.”

“I pledge you most devoutly,” answered his friend. “But you have not told me how the acquaintance is to be made; for you cannot, I think, carry her to Whitehall.”

“Aha, my dear lord, you would have the whole secret! but that I cannot afford – I can spare a friend a peep at my ends, but no one must look on the means by which they are achieved.” – So saying, he shook his drunken head most wisely.

The villainous design which this discourse implied, and which his heart told him was designed against Alice Bridgenorth, stirred Julian so extremely, that he involuntarily shifted his posture, and laid his hand on his sword hilt.

Chiffinch heard a rustling, and broke off, exclaiming, “Hark! – Zounds, something moved – I trust I have told the tale to no ears but thine.”

“I will cut off any which have drunk in but a syllable of thy words,” said the nobleman; and raising a candle, he took a hasty survey of the apartment. Seeing nothing that could incur his menaced resentment, he replaced the light and continued: – “Well, suppose the Belle Louise de Querouaille16 shoots from her high station in the firmament, how will you rear up the downfallen Plot again – for without that same Plot, think of it as thou wilt, we have no change of hands – and matters remain as they were, with a Protestant courtezan instead of a Papist – Little Anthony can but little speed without that Plot of his – I believe, in my conscience, he begot it himself.”17

“Whoever begot it,” said Chiffinch, “he hath adopted it; and a thriving babe it has been to him. Well, then, though it lies out of my way, I will play Saint Peter again – up with t’other key, and unlock t’other mystery.”

“Now thou speakest like a good fellow; and I will, with my own hands, unwire this fresh flask, to begin a brimmer to the success of thy achievement.”

“Well, then,” continued the communicative Chiffinch, “thou knowest that they have long had a nibbling at the old Countess of Derby. – So Ned was sent down – he owes her an old accompt, thou knowest – with private instructions to possess himself of the island, if he could, by help of some of his old friends. He hath ever kept up spies upon her; and happy man was he, to think his hour of vengeance was come so nigh. But he missed his blow; and the old girl being placed on her guard, was soon in a condition to make Ned smoke for it. Out of the island he came with little advantage for having entered it; when, by some means – for the devil, I think, stands ever his friend – he obtained information concerning a messenger, whom her old Majesty of Man had sent to London to make party in her behalf. Ned stuck himself to this fellow – a raw, half-bred lad, son of an old blundering Cavalier of the old stamp, down in Derbyshire – and so managed the swain, that he brought him to the place where I was waiting, in anxious expectation of the pretty one I told you of. By Saint Anthony, for I will swear by no meaner oath, I stared when I saw this great lout – not that the fellow is so ill-looked neither – I stared like – like – good now, help me to a simile.”

“Like Saint Anthony’s pig, an it were sleek,” said the young lord; “your eyes, Chiffie, have the very blink of one. But what hath all this to do with the Plot? Hold, I have had wine enough.”

“You shall not balk me,” said Chiffinch; and a jingling was heard, as if he were filling his comrade’s glass with a very unsteady hand. “Hey – What the devil is the matter? – I used to carry my glass steady – very steady.”

“Well, but this stranger?”

“Why, he swept at game and ragout as he would at spring beef or summer mutton. Never saw so unnurtured a cub – Knew no more what he ate than an infidel – I cursed him by my gods when I saw Chaubert’s chef-d’ oeuvres glutted down so indifferent a throat. We took the freedom to spice his goblet a little, and ease him of his packet of letters; and the fool went on his way the next morning with a budget artificially filled with grey paper. Ned would have kept him, in hopes to have made a witness of him, but the boy was not of that mettle.”

“How will you prove your letters?” said the courtier.

“La you there, my lord,” said Chiffinch; “one may see with half an eye, for all your laced doublet, that you have been of the family of Furnival’s, before your brother’s death sent you to Court. How prove the letters? – Why, we have but let the sparrow fly with a string round his foot. – We have him again so soon as we list.”

“Why, thou art turned a very Machiavel, Chiffinch,” said his friend. “But how if the youth proved restive? – I have heard these Peak men have hot heads and hard hands.”

“Trouble not yourself – that was cared for, my lord,” said Chiffinch – “his pistols might bark, but they could not bite.”

“Most exquisite Chiffinch, thou art turned micher as well as padder – Canst both rob a man and kidnap him!”

“Micher and padder – what terms be these?” said Chiffinch. “Methinks these are sounds to lug out upon. You will have me angry to the degree of falling foul – robber and kidnapper!”

“You mistake verb for noun-substantive,” replied his lordship; “I said rob and kidnap– a man may do either once and away without being professional.”

“But not without spilling a little foolish noble blood, or some such red-coloured gear,” said Chiffinch, starting up.

“Oh yes,” said his lordship; “all this may be without these dire consequences, and as you will find to-morrow, when you return to England; for at present you are in the land of Champagne, Chiffie; and that you may continue so, I drink thee this parting cup to line thy nightcap.”