Lavengro, George Borrow [i love reading books txt] 📗

said the Hungarian. “I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself. You ask a young man to drink champagne with you, you make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good sense; he ask your pardon, yet you not⁠—”

“Well,” said the jockey, “I am satisfied. I am rather a short-tempered person, but I bear no malice. He is, as you say, drinking my wine, and has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to such high liquor; but one doesn’t like to be put out of one’s tale, more especially when one was about to moralise, do you see, oneself, and to show off what little learning one has. However, I bears no malice. Here is a hand to each of you; we’ll take another glass each, and think no more about it.”

The jockey having shaken both of our hands, and filled our glasses and his own with what champagne remained in the bottle, put on his coat, sat down, and resumed his pipe and story.

“Where was I? Oh, roaming about the country with Hopping Ned and Biting Giles. Those were happy days, and a merry and prosperous life we led. However, nothing continues under the sun in the same state in which it begins, and our firm was soon destined to undergo a change. We came to a village where there was a very high church steeple, and in a little time my comrades induced a crowd of people to go and see me display my gift by flinging stones above the heads of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who stood at the four corners on the top, carved in stone. The parson, seeing the crowd, came waddling out of his rectory to see what was going on. After I had flung up the stones, letting them fall just where I liked⁠—and one, I remember fell on the head of Mark, where I daresay it remains to the present day⁠—the parson, who was one of the description of people called philosophers, held up his hand, and asked me to let the next stone I flung up fall into it. He wished, do you see, to know with what weight the stone would fall down, and talked something about gravitation⁠—a word which I could never understand to the present day, save that it turned out a grave matter to me. I, like a silly fellow myself, must needs consent, and, flinging the stone up to a vast height, contrived so that it fell into the parson’s hand, which it cut dreadfully. The parson flew into a great rage, more particularly as everybody laughed at him, and, being a magistrate, ordered his clerk, who was likewise constable, to conduct me to prison as a rogue and vagabond, telling my comrades that if they did not take themselves off, he would serve them in the same manner. So Ned hopped off, and Giles ran after him, without making any gathering, and I was led to Bridewell, my mittimus following at the end of a week, the parson’s hand not permitting him to write before that time. In the Bridewell I remained a month, when, being dismissed, I went in quest of my companions, whom, after some time, I found up, but they refused to keep my company any longer, telling me that I was a dangerous character, likely to bring them more trouble than profit; they had, moreover, filled up my place. Going into a cottage to ask for a drink of water, they saw a country fellow making faces to amuse his children; the faces were so wonderful that Hopping Ned and Biting Giles at once proposed taking him into partnership, and the man⁠—who was a fellow not very fond of work⁠—after a little entreaty, went away with them. I saw him exhibit his gift, and couldn’t blame the others for preferring him to me; he was a proper ugly fellow at all times, but when he made faces his countenance was like nothing human. He was called Ugly Moses. I was so amazed at his faces, that though poor myself I gave him sixpence, which I have never grudged to this day, for I never saw anything like them. The firm throve wonderfully after he had been admitted into it. He died some little time ago, keeper of a public-house, which he had been enabled to take from the profits of his faces. A son of his, one of the children he was making faces to when my comrades entered his door, is at present a barrister, and a very rising one. He has his gift⁠—he has not, it is true, the gift of the gab, but he has something better, he was born with a grin on his face, a quiet grin; he would not have done to grin through a collar like his father, and would never have been taken up by Hopping Ned and Biting Giles, but that grin of his caused him to be noticed by a much greater person than either; an attorney observing it took a liking to the lad, and prophesied that he would some day be heard of in the world; and in order to give him the first lift, took him into his office, at first to light fires and do such kind of work, and after a little time taught him to write, then promoted him to a desk, articled him afterwards, and being unmarried, and without children, left him what he had when he died. The young fellow, after practising at the law some time, went to the bar, where, in a few years, helped on by his grin, for he had nothing else to recommend him, he became, as I said before, a rising barrister. He comes our circuit, and I occasionally employ him, when I am obliged to go to law about such a thing as an unsound horse. He generally brings me through⁠—or rather that grin of his does⁠—and yet I don’t