The Young Duke, Benjamin Disraeli [early reader books TXT] 📗

ask Captain Jones, of the 58th, if I be telling you a lie. The building I mean is the palace of the Sultan Acber; for I have served my king and country five-and-twenty years last seventh of June, and have seen strange things; all built of precious stones, ma'am. What do you think of that? All built of precious stones; carnelian, of which you make your seals; as sure as I'm a sinner saved. If I ayn't speaking the truth, I am not going to Selby. Maybe you'd like to know why I am going to Selby? I'll tell you what. Five-and-twenty years have I served my king and country last seventh of June. Now I begin with the beginning. I ran away from home when I was eighteen, you see! and, after the siege of Bhurtpore, I was sitting on a bale of silk alone, and I said to myself, I'll go and see my mother. Sure as I am going to Selby, that's the whole. I landed in England last seventh of June, absent five-and-twenty years, serving my king and country. I sent them a letter last night. I put it in the post myself. Maybe I shall be there before my letter now.'

'To be sure you will,' said the utilitarian; 'what made you do such a silly thing? Why, your letter is in this coach.'

'Well! I shouldn't wonder. I shall be there before my letter now. All nonsense, letters: my wife wrote it at Falmouth.'

'You are married, then?' said the widow.

'Ayn't I, though? The sweetest cretur, madam, though I say it before you, that ever lived.'

'Why did you not bring your wife with you?' asked the widow.

'And wouldn't I be very glad to? but she wouldn't come among strangers at once; and so I have got a letter, which she wrote for me, to put in the post, in case they are glad to see me, and then she will come on.'

'And you, I suppose, are not sorry to have a holiday?' said the Duke.

'Ayn't I, though? Ayn't I as low about leaving her as ever I was in my life; and so is the poor cretur. She won't eat a bit of victuals till I come back, I'll be sworn; not a bit, I'll be bound to say that; and myself, although I am an old soldier and served my king and country for five-and-twenty years, and so got knocked about, and used to anything, as it were, I don't know how it is, but I always feel queer whenever I am away from her. I shan't make a hearty meal till I see her. Somehow or other, when I am away from her, everything feels dry in the throat.'

'You are very fond of her, I see,' said the Duke.

'And ought I not to be? Didn't I ask her three times before she said _yes_? Those are the wives for wear, sir. None of the fruit that falls at a shaking for me! Hasn't she stuck by me in every climate, and in every land I was in? Not a fellow in the company had such a wife. Wouldn't I throw myself off this coach this moment, to give her a moment's peace? That I would, though; d----me if I wouldn't.'

'Hush! hush!' said the widow; 'never swear. I am afraid you talk too much of your love,' she added, with a faint smile.

'Ah! you don't know my wife, ma'am. Are you married, sir?'

'I have not that happiness,' said the Duke.

'Well, there is nothing like it! but don't take the fruit that falls at a shake. But this, I suppose, is Selby?'

The marine took his departure, having stayed long enough to raise in the young Duke's mind curious feelings.

As he was plunged into reverie, and as the widow was silent, conversation was not resumed until the coach stopped for dinner.

'We stop here half-an-hour, gentlemen,' said the guard. 'Mrs. Burnet,' he continued, to the widow, 'let me hand you out.'

They entered the parlour of the inn. The Duke, who was ignorant of the etiquette of the road, did not proceed to the discharge of his duties, as the youngest guest, with all the promptness desired by his fellow-travellers.

'Now, sir,' said an outside, 'I will thank you for a slice of that mutton, and will join you, if you have no objection in a bottle of sherry.'

'What you please, sir. May I have the pleasure of helping you, ma'am?'

After dinner the Duke took advantage of a vacant outside place.

Tom Rawlins was the model of a guard. Young, robust, and gay, he had a letter, a word, or a wink for all he met. All seasons were the same to him; night or day he was ever awake, and ever alive to all the interest of the road; now joining in conversation with a passenger, shrewd, sensible, and respectful; now exchanging a little elegant badinage with the coachman; now bowing to a pretty girl; now quizzing a passer-by; he was off and on his seat in an instant, and, in the whiff of his cigar, would lock a wheel, or unlock a passenger.

From him the young Duke learned that his fellow-inside was Mr. Duncan Macmorrogh, senior, a writer at Edinburgh, and, of course, the father of the first man of the day. Tom Rawlins could not tell his Grace as much about the principal writer in 'The Screw and Lever Review' as we can; for Tom was no patron of our periodical literature, farther than a police report in the Publican's Journal. Young Duncan Macmorrogh was a limb of the law, who had just brought himself into notice by a series of articles in 'The Screw and Lever,' in which he had subjected the universe piecemeal to his critical analysis. Duncan Macmorrogh cut up the creation, and got a name. His attack upon mountains was most violent, and proved, by its personality, that he had come from the Lowlands. He demonstrated the inutility of all elevation, and declared that the Andes were the aristocracy of the globe. Rivers he rather patronised; but flowers he quite pulled to pieces, and proved them to be the most useless of existences. Duncan Macmorrogh informed us that we were quite wrong in supposing ourselves to be the miracle of creation. On the contrary, he avowed that already there were various pieces of machinery of far more importance than man; and he had no doubt, in time, that a superior race would arise, got by a steam-engine on a spinning-jenny.

The other 'inside' was the widow of a former curate of a Northumbrian village. Some friend had obtained for her only child a clerkship in a public office, and for some time this idol of her heart had gone on prospering; but unfortunately, of late, Charles Burnet had got into a bad set, was now involved in a terrible scrape, and, as Tom Rawlins feared, must lose his situation and go to ruin.

'She was half distracted when she heard it first, poor creature! I have known her all my life, sir. Many the kind word and glass of ale I have had at her house, and that's what makes me feel for her, you see. I do what I can to make the journey easy to her, for it is a pull at her years. God bless her! there is not a better body in this world; that I will, say for her. When I was a boy, I used to be the playfellow in a manner with Charley Burnet: a gay lad, sir, as ever you'd wish to see in a summer's day, and the devil among the girls always, and that's been the ruin of him; and as open-a-hearted fellow as ever lived. D----me! I'd walk to the land's end to save him, if it were only for his mother's sake, to say nothing of himself.'

'And can nothing be done?' asked the Duke.

'Why, you see, he is back in L s. d.; and, to make it up, the poor body must sell her all, and he won't let her do it, and wrote a letter like a prince (No room, sir), as fine a letter as ever you read (Hilloa, there! What! are you asleep?)--as ever you read on a summer's day. I didn't see it, but my mother told me it was as good as e'er a one of the old gentleman's sermons. "Mother," said he, "my sins be upon my own head. I can bear disgrace (How do, Mr. Wilkins?), but I cannot bear to see you a beggar!"'

'Poor fellow!'

'Ay! sir, as good-a-hearted fellow as ever you'd wish to meet!'

'Is he involved to a great extent, think you?'

'Oh! a long figure, sir (I say, Betty, I've got a letter for you from your sweetheart), a very long figure, sir (Here, take it!); I should be sorry (Don't blush; no message?)--I should be sorry to take two hundred pounds to pay it. No, I wouldn't take two hundred pounds, that I wouldn't (I say, Jacob, stop at old Bag Smith's).'

Night came on, and the Duke resumed his inside place. Mr. Macmorrogh went to sleep over his son's article; and the Duke feigned slumber, though he was only indulging in reverie. He opened his eyes, and a light, which they passed, revealed the countenance of the widow. Tears were stealing down her face.

'I have no mother; I have no one to weep for me,' thought the Duke; 'and yet, if I had been in this youth's station, my career probably would have been as fatal. Let me assist her. Alas! how I have misused my power, when, even to do this slight deed, I am obliged to hesitate, and consider whether it be practicable.'

The coach again stopped for a quarter of an hour. The Duke had, in consideration of the indefinite period of his visit, supplied himself amply with money on repairing to Dacre. Besides his purse, which was well stored for the road, he had somewhat more than three hundred pounds in his notebook. He took advantage of their tarrying, to inclose it and its contents in a sheet of paper with these lines:

'An unknown friend requests Mrs. Burnet to accept this token of his sympathy with suffering virtue.'

Determined to find some means to put this in her possession before their parting, he resumed his place. The Scotchman now prepared for his night's repose. He produced a pillow for his back, a bag for his feet, and a cap for his head. These, and a glass of brandy-and-water, in time produced a due effect, and he was soon fast asleep. Even to the widow, night brought some solace. The Duke alone found no repose. Unused to travelling in public conveyances at night, and unprovided with any of the ingenious expedients of a mail coach adventurer, he felt all the inconveniences of an inexperienced traveller. The seat was unendurably hard, his back ached, his head whirled, the confounded sherry, slight as was his portion, had made him feverish, and he felt at once excited and exhausted. He was sad, too; very depressed. Alone, and no longer surrounded with that splendour which had hitherto made solitude precious, life seemed stripped of all its ennobling spirit. His energy vanished. He repented his rashness; and the impulse of the previous night, which had gathered fresh power from the dewy moon, vanished. He felt alone, and without a friend, and night passed without a moment's slumber, watching the driving clouds.

The last fifteen miles seemed longer than the whole journey. At St. Alban's he got