The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 20

"Your name, if you please, sir?"

"Harley."

"You'll remember, Tom, Harley."

The door was shut.

"Since we are here," said the stranger, "we shall not lose our walk if we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park."

The conversation as they walked was brilliant on the side of his companion.

When they had finished their walk and were returning by the corner of the park they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, "An excellent ordinary on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays." It happened to be Sat.u.r.day, and the table was covered for the purpose.

"What if we should go in and dine, sir?" said the young gentleman.

Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the parlour.

Over against the fire-place was seated a man of a grave aspect, who wore a pretty large wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish yellow; his coat was a modest coloured drab; and two jack-boots concealed in part the well-mended knees of an old pair of buckskin breeches. Next him sat another man, with a tankard in his hand and a quid of tobacco in his cheek, whose dress was something smarter.

The door was soon opened for the admission of dinner. "I don't know how it is with you, gentlemen," said Harley's new acquaintance, "but I am afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid mechanical hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any want of appet.i.te by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the meat, and criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the tablecloth was removed proposed calling for some punch, which was readily agreed to.

While the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by this young gentleman, who told a great many "immensely comical stories" and "confounded smart things," as he termed them. At last the man in the jack-boots, who turned out to be a grazier, pulling out a watch of very unusual size, said that he had an appointment. And the young gentleman discovered that he was already late for an appointment.

When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A gentleman!"

said he. "I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman. But some of the great folks to whom he has been serviceable had him made a ganger. And he has the a.s.surance to pretend an acquaintance with men of quality. The impudent dog! With a few s.h.i.+llings in his pocket, he will talk three times as much as my friend Mundy, the grazier there, who is worth nine thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the rascal, and despise him as he deserves!"

Harley began to despise him, too, but he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed, too, by this same ganger, as he should have been by such a man of fas.h.i.+on as he had thought proper to personate.

_III.--Harley's Success with the Baronet_

The card he received was in the politest style in which disappointment could be communicated. The baronet "was under a necessity of giving up his application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the lease was engaged for a gentleman who had long served his majesty in another capacity, and whose merit had ent.i.tled him to the first lucrative thing that should be vacant." Even Harley could not murmur at such a disposal.

"Perhaps," said he to himself, "some war-worn officer, who had been neglected from reasons which merited the highest advancement; whose honour could not stoop to solicit the preferment he deserved; perhaps, with a family taught the principles of delicacy without the means of supporting it; a wife and children--gracious heaven!--whom my wishes would have deprived of bread--!"

He was interrupted in his reverie by someone tapping him on the shoulder, and on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who had recently explained to him the condition of his gay companion.

"I believe we are fellows in disappointment," said he. Harley started, and said that he was at a loss to understand him.

"Pooh! you need not be so shy," answered the other; "everyone for himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it than the rascally ganger. I was making interest for it myself, and I think I had some t.i.tle. I voted for this same baronet at the last election, and made some of my friends do so, too; though I would not have you imagine that I sold my vote. No, I scorn it--let me tell you I scorn it; but I thought as how this man was staunch and true, and I find he's but a double-faced fellow after all, and speechifies in the House for any side he hopes to make most by. A murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and after all to get it for this rascal of a ganger."

"The ganger! There must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me that it was engaged for one whose long services--"

"Services!" interrupted the other; "some paltry convenience to the baronet. A plague on all rogues! I shall but just drink destruction to them to-night and leave London to-morrow by sunrise."

"I shall leave it, too," said Harley; and so he accordingly did.

In pa.s.sing through Piccadilly, he had observed on the window of an inn a notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place on his road homewards; on the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it.

_IV.--He Meets an Old Acquaintance_

When the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley, who did things frequently in a way different from what other people call natural, set out immediately afoot, having first put a spare s.h.i.+rt in his pocket and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau.

It was a method of travelling which he was accustomed to take.

On the road, about four miles from his destination, Harley overtook an old man, who from his dress had been a soldier, and walked with him.

"Sir," said the stranger, looking earnestly at him, "is not your name Harley? You may well have forgotten my face, 'tis a long time since you saw it; but possibly you may remember something of old Edwards? When you were at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at South Hill?"

"Edwards!" cried Harley, "O, heavens! let me clasp those knees on which I have sat so often. Edwards! I shall never forget that fireside, round which I have been so happy! But where have you been? Where is Jack?

Where is your daughter?"

"'Tis a long tale," replied Edwards, "but I will try to tell it you as we walk."

Edwards had been a tenant farmer where his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had lived before him. The rapacity of a land steward, heavy agricultural losses, and finally the arrival of a press-gang had reduced him to misery. By paying a certain sum of money he had been accepted by the press-gang instead of his son, and now old Edwards was returning home invalided from the army.

When they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed to, Harley stopped short and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls of a ruined house that stood by the roadside.

"What do I see?" he cried. "Silent, unroofed, and desolate! That was the very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; 'tis but a twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with cherubs. That opposite side of the road was the green on which they sported; see, it is now ploughed up!"

Just then a woman pa.s.sed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the way of his prospects.

"If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir," said the woman. "I can show you the way to her house."

They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of bread and milk in their hands.

"They are poor orphans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I never saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood, and a sober, industrious man he was; but n.o.body can help misfortunes.

What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were, sir. There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."

"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.

He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms, cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"

"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve them. It will bless me if I can be the means of a.s.sisting you."

"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade G.o.d bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it so to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither."

The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept between every kiss.

_V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous_

Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.

"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.

"Is it?" said Harley.