The Wayfarers

Much to Mr. Sadler's disappointment, and I believe to his astonishment too, I politely declined this liberal proposal. It was almost incredible to him that a gentleman of his eminence and success could meet with a refusal. It was like two green apprentices declining to enter into partnership with a master of the highest credit!

"I confess you pass me altogether," says he in despair.

The last glimpse we had of this strange, whimsical, and in a sense gifted man, was his sitting at the table, with his wig, his spectacles and false whiskers removed, waving his good-night in the most cordial fashion. He was as handsome and intelligent a fellow as I ever encountered; and I can readily believe what was asserted of him at the time of his hanging less than a year from this date, that he was a cadet of a noble family. Certainly in his gaiety, generosity, and gallant good humour, he was the very type of man to win the great fame of the public that I believe was his. Strange as it may appear, there was not one trace of vulgarity that I could discern in him; and leaving his peculiar ideas in regard to meum and tuum out of the question, in all other particulars he was a charming gentleman. And if I am one day burnt for the heresy, I shall be ever the first to admit that in my short acquaintance of this wicked rogue that so richly came to be hanged on the Tree, I discovered better parts, a more chivalrous heart, and vastly more liberal talents than in half the persons of high consideration and great place, whose intimacy it has been my misfortune to submit to for a longer period.

As for Cynthia, the first thing she did in the privacy of our chamber was to burst into tears.

"Oh," she sobbed, "to think that a man like that should be such a villain. Oh, I am sure I cannot believe it of him."

"Then why weep for him?" says I. "But what a pity it is that these villains are so delectable. Even a man like your husband if he gets his deserts will come to be hanged. Can you tell me, my dear, why it is that virtue never walks in these radiant colours? Can it be that you strait-laced madams secretly lean to the wicked?"

Poor Cynthia sobbed louder than ever.

"Oh, I cannot, I will not believe it of such a dear fine gentleman!" says she.

The next morning found us heavy of heart. In what manner we could meet the landlord's charges we did not know. Although we were both too proud to say so, I am sure we should have been greatly thankful could we have had our share of the highwayman's booty to comfort us. After all it was a queer kind of scruple that preferred to rob the innkeeper rather than the squire. For it was plain that he, poor fellow, must go unpaid. Honesty, I take it, is largely a question of terms; and why we should hold it to be more venial to rob the one than the other I cannot tell. We breakfasted over the hard problem of what to do. We had no other course, we decided, than to persevere in the original fiction of our misfortunes on the road at the hands of a highwayman, and defer the settlement of the landlord's account against the time when our affairs had assumed a more prosperous shape.

As it happened, our misgivings and searchings of conscience were in vain. The highwayman, who had ridden away in the small hours of the morning, had insisted unknown to us in giving at least some token of his gratitude. He had discharged our score and his own in a handsome manner, the innkeeper said. Perchance it was he held that our host merited some sort of reward for his behaviour too; and he doubtless held in the shrewd opinion he had formed of our condition, that it was little enough he was likely to receive at our hands.

In this fortunate manner we were able to go forth into the world again. Our hunger and weariness had been amply refreshed and our debts paid. We did not pause to consider that these happy contingencies had been brought about by the very means that we had so loftily disdained. It was the squire's purse after all that had paid our charges. Honesty, as I have said, is largely a question of terms.

To the downpour of the night had succeeded a sullen morning. The lowering sky promised more misery to follow. The air was wet with mists; the trees dripped incessantly; every blade of grass shone with the dankness that clung to it, and the state of the deep-rutted, rude, uneven roads was terrible. But even all these things together, and the fact that we had to plough our way, step by step, slowly through seas of mud could not entirely depress our spirits. We felt ourselves in the society of one another, to be in spite of everything, invincible in our common courage, unconquerable in our common resolution. The one sustained the other in these adventures.

"My prettiness," says I, "it is under embarrassing conditions such as these that we should endeavour to sustain ourselves with a few tender, amorous passages of love. I think I will pay you a compliment or two upon your beauty, if you will give me but a minute's time in which to rack my mind to find them."

"For your pretty speeches to be sincere, sir," says Cynthia, "they should be quite spontaneous."

"Here is one," says I. "The sunshine of your countenance lights up the morning's gloom."

"A common enough figure, I confess," says she, "which a hundred poets have better exprest."

"Here is another, then," says I, undaunted. "The solace of your companionship sweetens the bitter miles."

"Nay," says she, "I think no better of that trope than the first. It wants a poet to give an originality, a point and grace, to things of this sort."

"But every lover is a poet," says I triumphantly.

"I am deluded then," says Cynthia, "for if your love is measured by your poetry I am like to die of a broken heart. But after all, that last glib phrase of yours is but a poor sort of speech for a man to make to his mistress. A poet, as all the world knows, is but an embellisher of common things."

"A poet is more than that," says I. "A thousand times more. A poet is – A poet is – "

"A poet is?" says Cynthia archly.

"The human mind cannot express what a poet is," says I. "He is all, and he is nothing. He weaves a sovereign spell about material things. He can put a new glamour in the stars, although he cannot hold a candle to the sun. He is the airy nothing that can reveal the face of God to simple men."

"But what hath all this to do with Love?" says Cynthia. "And I confess I never suspected this phase to your character. I always held you for a common four-square kind of a fellow enough, by no means given to these sudden heats and violences, these sudden whimsies and nonsensicals."

"No more did I," says I ruefully. "But it is so like this wretched passion to take us in our weakest part, which in me, as you are ever the first to remind me, is the head."

"It is not such a wretched passion neither," says Cynthia, "if it is but left to itself. It is these low poets and people that debase it. Love is the noblest thing in the world, until your puny twopenny poets and the like sing of it, and prate of it, and write an advertisement of it, that they may earn enough to spend at the nearest tavern."

"Alas! mistress," says I, "you are too severe on the muse. There have been elegies composed to Love that could dignify even that sacred passion."

"All of which the sacred passion could very well have done without," says my didactic miss. "There is not a painter in the world, be he never so cunning, that can put a new colour in the sunset, nor is there an author of them all that can add a new rapture to a kiss."

"Body o' me," says I, "you are not a little right there."

If there is any vindication needed of the sex's incontestable prerogative to enjoy the last word in any argument, be it of the nature of metaphysics, reason or common practice, here is it to be found. We stopped in the middle of the road and concluded our discourse with a chaste salute. And I think there was a strain of poetry in us both as we did so. The weeping heavens smiled upon us; all the wet verdure of the spring was a sparkling face that laughed and greeted us. We went along refreshed and more cheerful of heart.

Yet it was a toilsome journey. The mud clogged our feet, the damp pervaded our clothes, and our unaccustomed fatigues of the last few days were beginning to tell upon us terribly. Never in all our lives had we given our feet such exercise. We had not walked much beyond an hour this morning before I noticed with something of a sinking heart that poor Cynthia was limping. At first these symptoms were hardly to be discerned, and when I taxed her with them, she denied them stoutly. But too soon were they revealed beyond a doubt. It was getting towards noon before my proud little miss would in any wise admit this to be the case, though. By then, however, she was so footsore that she could scarce drag one foot behind the other. Chancing to pass near a handrail bridge a little later, that spanned a small clear stream running over long floating moss and stones, nothing would content me but she should go and sit upon it, take off her shoes and stockings, and bathe her bruised feet by dangling them over the side. A little cottage nestling close at hand, fenced with box in front and apple-trees behind, thither I repaired to beg clean linen rags to wrap them in.

The cottage door was opened at my knock by a smiling, buxom housewife, who stood out upon a background of crowing babes. No sooner had I made my request than with cheerful energy, says she:

"Oh yes, sir, to be sure I can," and feeling that we were like to find a true friend in her, no sooner had I explained the occasion for it than she proved a friend indeed. Having procured these requisites with a bustling promptitude, she carried them to Cynthia and found her seated on the bridge as I had left her, bathing her toes in the cool sweetness of the stream. With many a "poor lamb!" and many a "deary, deary me!" she played the good Samaritan to my unlucky little one. She dried them, comforted them, and bound them up with all the honest grace of her great good nature. Never did I see a woman so brisk and motherly, and certainly never one so overflowing with true charity. When she had fulfilled her tender offices, and having kissed poor Cynthia on both cheeks in a most resounding manner, "because she was such a little beauty," she had us both go back with her to the cottage, that we might eat a bowl of curds and whey in the arbour cut in the laurel bushes, next the well, at the bottom of the garden.

Looking back on the scenes of our itinerary, this bustling, kindly housewife makes the fairest picture of them all. Can the great who dwell in palaces conceive the degree of simple happiness it is in the power of such a creature to bestow? Whenever subsequently, in an hour of gloom, I may have been led to doubt the essential goodness that lies buried in the hearts of our human kind, I insensibly recall the conduct of this honest woman on that wet spring morning when we came to her door afflicted of mind and body.

By gentle walking we were able to make many more miles that day. But a shadow had come over us. We had no longer the joyous intrepidity with which we had set out less than a week ago. A foreboding had come upon us. We could not hope to go much farther by our present mode. My little companion, strive as she might to conceal the dire fact, was rapidly being overcome. Her boots were wearing thin, she was already suffering much pain, and there was the sum of sevenpence left to us by which she could obtain her ease. We had not the heart to endeavour to increase it by blowing further on the flute. Besides, if the truth of that matter must be told, the stocks had given us a particular distaste for the gentle instrument. As the slow, cloud-laden hours passed to the occasional accompaniment of rain, with no glint of sunshine to relieve their drab monotony, it called for all the courage of which we had made a boast that morning to keep us from repining. The nearer we approached the evening the greater was our gloom. There was the eternal problem of food and shelter to be solved. The previous night our audacity had solved it for us. But in our present state we both felt quite incapable of furnishing the necessary spirit and effrontery for a repetition of that bold trick. Alas! our one desire was to be wafted by some magic into warmth and plenty that we might sup and fall asleep.

We spent our last pence at a hedge inn on our habitual repast of bread and cheese and ale. But the longer we lingered, the cheerless, wretched place appeared to heighten our dejection, so that we hailed the wet countryside as a relief when we walked out again upon it. But I cannot tell you how we dreaded the coming of night. The barren character of the landscape, and the few people and the fewer habitations that we came upon probably increased the depression of our spirits. Indeed, towards evening, the only human being that we encountered in several miles was a travelling tinker singing on a stile, and I think we could have wished to have been spared this meeting. In our forlorn state we regarded such an irresponsible gaiety in the light of a personal affront. But the dirty rogue had such a cheerful, jolly look that I was fain to accost him with my curiosity.

"I beg your pardon, sir," says I, "but why do you uplift your soul in merriment on such a dismal afternoon?"

The tinker looked at me suspiciously, and then at his bundle reposing at his feet. He evidently speculated as to what designs I could have upon it.

"It is a good world, my lad, that is why I sing," says he, "and you'd be singing too, I fancy, if this was your first day out o' jail."

However that might be I am sure we both envied the tinker his frame of mind. Our own was desperate indeed. There was nothing for it but to push on relentlessly, and to hope against hope for some happy chance. We were both utterly wearied and dispirited by this; no houses were near at hand; and the night was closing in. We were consoled in a slight degree with the thought that we were on a high road and that a shelter of one sort or another should not be far to seek. By what means we should be able to avail ourselves of it in our destitute state was another question.

In the very height of our distresses we suddenly came upon a wayside inn, and a scene of a violent and singular character was being enacted on the threshold. Two persons, a man and a woman of mean appearance, had evidently just been ejected from it, since they stood resentfully in the middle of the road with divers bundles containing their goods and chattels scattered around them. The landlord stood at the inn door, shaking his fist and declaiming his great indignation, whilst his wife, standing in a haven of security behind him, was giving rein to her own sentiments with neither hesitation nor uncertainty.

CHAPTER XIX

WE APPEAR IN A NEW CHARACTER

It seemed that the man and woman in the middle of the road were the ostler and chambermaid to the inn, who had just been convicted of a grave misdemeanour. The language in which it was designated and described by the host and hostess, energetic in form and warm in colour as it was, could not, I fear, be reproduced in this chaste narrative. It must suffice to say that the guilty persons had been discharged at a moment's notice. They were now resenting this extreme course from their station in the middle of the road; and whatever were the colours in which their own conduct had been depicted, it is greatly to be doubted, whether they could possibly have been more vivid than those applied to that of their late master and mistress.

To these people in the midst of their altercation came Cynthia and I. Almost at the same instant a similar thought entered the minds of us both. Why should we not apply for these vacated situations? We had had no experience of such duties, it was true. Our lot indeed would be arduous. But we should at least be provided with a shelter for the night; and we could relinquish our unaccustomed tasks the moment we might feel ourselves better served by doing so. A brief whispered conference as we stood apart in the road, and we decided to make application. Never for an instant did the idea cross our minds that such a highly superior ostler and chambermaid could be anything but acceptable to the good people of the inn. Yet when taking our courage in our hands we came up to the door, and I put forward my suggestion with a becoming modesty, the landlord seemed by no means so eager to close with this tempting offer as I had fully expected he would be.

"Have you a character?" says he sharply.

"Oh yes, I think I have a very good character," says I.

"Humph," says he, "you think you have a very good character, do you? Well, my lad, I should like to see it."

"Well," says I, "a character is not very easy to see, unless there is something to show it by."

"I am quite aware of that," says the landlord sharply. "However, we will leave this precious pair and go inside, light a candle and look at it."

With that, man and wife led the way within, and we followed meekly, leaving the discharged couple in the road to pursue their own devices. In what way a candle would enable them to discern our characters we could not tell, although we were half inclined to think that the common phrase "to hold a candle to" might have in fact a more literal significance than any we had dreamt of. The inn kitchen presented a rosy fire and a cosy appearance. The sight of it seemed to increase the sense of our unhappy plight, and I think we both anxiously awaited the landlord's judgment, for it was impossible to contemplate being turned out into the night again with equanimity.

"Now then, my lad," says the landlord, "I will thank you to let me see your character."

"I do not know how I can show you my character, sir," I ventured to say, "until I have been some little time in your service."

"Come, that won't do, my lad," says the landlord, "I must either see your character or out you go."

Filled with misgiving, I was about to ask the landlord for an explanation of this odd demand, when it suddenly occurred to me that he wished to have it in writing, like any other master who was about to engage a servant. I had to confess that I had not a character.

"Ha," says the landlord keenly. "Then why did you leave your last place?"

I had to confess that I had never had a last place.

"You don't mean to tell me," says the landlord, "that you have had the impidence to apply to me when you have never had no experience of the dooties?"

I had to explain that such was the case, but earnestly stated that whatever I might lack in knowledge I would certainly make up in zeal. For all that it was like to have gone hard with our engagement had it not been for the intervention of the landlord's wife. It may have been that vanity which is inseparable from the male character, but it did seem to me that from the first the good woman had been disposed to regard me with favour.

"Well, Joseph," says she at this critical moment, "he is a very proper looking young man, I am sure, and as honest looking as the day. I am sure he will do his best if he says he will. Besides, they are man and wife, which is a very main thing."

This reference to the pair of us had the effect of diverting the worthy landlord's attention to Cynthia. No sooner did he observe her than his objections became sensibly less formidable than they had been. And I am afraid it was my little madam's beaux yeux and not our qualifications and accomplishments that got us the situation. Yet even when we had been duly engaged at four pounds a year and our keep, there was like to have been a hitch. The landlady's closer inspection of us revealed the fact that although I might, as she had been good enough to say be "a very proper-looking young man," Cynthia in her opinion was vastly too fine-looking a young woman. She even went the length of describing her as "a blue-eyed slut." Whatever the force of her objections, however, as she herself was entirely responsible for the engagement of the ostler, she could hardly have gainsaid, much as she could have wished to have done so, her husband's right to engage the chambermaid.

It was in this singular but fortunate fashion then that we found ourselves once more provided for. The inn being on a coaching road was not such a mean one as we had at first supposed. The host and hostess of it did not seem to be such bad people either, and as they did not except to have company in the place until later in the evening, and observing that our travels had left us in a sorry condition, they allowed us to make a rough meal, and afterwards to sit by the fire a bit.

It went to my heart that my poor little companion should be brought to this pass, but she acquiesced in it so cheerfully, and with such a merry sense of the occasion as did a great deal to diminish my concern. She was indeed a courageous little creature; and there was something about her new duties that seemed to amuse her, for she went about them with a humorous zest as though she was laughing at herself while she did so. All the same we were genuinely glad when at last the hour came for our retirement. We were thoroughly wearied and footsore too.

We rose in much better heart betimes on the following morning, and set about our unaccustomed tasks with a vigour that compensated for our inexperience. After all, they were of an elementary character, not at all difficult to learn. To be sure it was more than a little strange at first to find ourselves engaged in such lowly capacities, but when after an hour or two the singularity had worn off, they became by no means irksome. Indeed, the novelty of the thing might be said to pass the time pleasantly. But as it happened, we were to be startled out of these pursuits in the rudest manner.

It chanced that about noon I had led the horse of a gentleman, who had passed the previous night at the inn, out of the stable round to the front door. And while I was holding its head against its master's departure there arose a clatter of wheels on the road. In a minute, or less, a chaise drew up at the door. No glance was needed at its occupants to tell me to whom it belonged. The peculiar shape and colour were quite sufficient to advertise me of that matter. It was the Duke in person, accompanied by the indefatigable Mr. Waring. His Grace lost no time in relinquishing the reins, and together they stepped from the vehicle to ease their legs somewhat, and entered the inn in quest of any little refreshment it might afford them. Happily neither paid much heed to me. Indeed beyond an order to give an eye to the horses and to fetch them a drink of water, I claimed no share of their attention.

No sooner had they entered the inn, however, than in the midst of some self-congratulation on my present impunity from discovery, I was beset with a sudden fear of Cynthia. What more likely than that they should directly encounter her, unless she could be apprised of their proximity? She must be warned at all costs. Fortunately at that moment the owner of the horse, whose head I was holding, appeared and relieved me of its charge. Thereupon I hastily entered to advise Cynthia of her danger. Yet I did so only to find that the worst had happened already.

From the parlour the Duke's voice issued in a tremendous key. There could be no doubt that it was as I feared. I lost no time in hastening to my poor little one's assistance, if only to divert a portion of her father's wrath. The scene that confronted me when I entered the inn parlour would not by any means have been devoid of a certain whimsicality had it not had so sinister a bearing on our fortunes. The innkeeper and his wife stood aghast. Mr. Waring was languidly helping himself to a pinch of snuff with an air of the frankest amusement. Cynthia was in a dreadful taking, and weeping bitterly. The Duke, her father, was hopping about like a pea on a hot plate, and threatening to go off any minute into an apoplexy. At my appearance he very nearly did so.

"You villain," he squeaked, shaking his fist in my face, and dancing round me, "you impudent, unblushing villain! Have I routed you out at last? Have I run you to earth, you damned young scoundrel? By God, you shall pay a price; yes, you shall, so help me. Your purse may be bankrupt, but you shall pay this account with the last drop of blood that is left in your black heart. Pass your box, Humphrey."

Mr. Waring passed his box with a grim chuckling countenance; and his Grace paused in the midst of his violent denunciation to make use of it. It appeared to lend him succour, whereon he continued with renewed vigour. I would not like to set down here the number of hard names he put his tongue to, every one of which was levelled at my devoted head. To be sure I had used him pretty badly, but I fear that I was not in the least repentant. I listened to his passionate abuse which he delivered in a curious senile staccato, with an amusement possibly as great as Mr. Waring's own, and certainly more cynical. I don't think at the moment I cared much about the pass I was come to. I was utterly desperate.