Burlesques Part 2

"Rafael Mendoza!" exclaimed G.o.dfrey.

"The same, Lord Codlingsby," the individual so apostrophized replied. "I told you we should meet again where you would little expect me. Will it please you to enter? this is Friday, and we close at sunset. It rejoices my heart to welcome you home." So saying Rafael laid his hand on his breast, and bowed, an oriental reverence. All traces of the accent with which he first addressed Lord Codlingsby had vanished: it was disguise; half the Hebrew's life is a disguise. He s.h.i.+elds himself in craft, since the Norman boors persecuted him.

They pa.s.sed under an awning of old clothes, tawdry fripperies, greasy spangles, and battered masks, into a shop as black and hideous as the entrance was foul. "THIS your home, Rafael?" said Lord Codlingsby.

"Why not?" Rafael answered. "I am tired of Schloss Sc.h.i.n.kenstein; the Rhine bores me after a while. It is too hot for Florence; besides they have not completed the picture-gallery, and my place smells of putty.

You wouldn't have a man, mon cher, bury himself in his chateau in Normandy, out of the hunting season? The Rugantino Palace stupefies me.

Those t.i.tians are so gloomy, I shall have my Hobbimas and Tenierses, I think, from my house at the Hague hung over them."

"How many castles, palaces, houses, warehouses, shops, have you, Rafael?" Lord Codlingsby asked, laughing.

"This is one," Rafael answered. "Come in."

II.

The noise in the old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary's was clanging with alarm; St.

Giles's tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones s.h.i.+vering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed that the battle was at its height.

In Berlin they would have said it was a revolution, and the cuira.s.siers would have been charging, sabre in hand, amidst that infuriate mob. In France they would have brought down artillery, and played on it with twenty-four pounders. In Cambridge n.o.body heeded the disturbance--it was a Town and Gown row.

The row arose at a boat-race. The Town boat (manned by eight stout Bargees, with the redoubted Rullock for stroke) had b.u.mped the Brazenose light oar, usually at the head of the river. High words arose regarding the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and the University youths--their invariable opponents--grew louder and more violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmis.h.i.+ng took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate down to the broad and s.h.i.+ning waters of the Cam, and under the walls of Balliol and Sidney Suss.e.x. The Duke of Bellamont (then a das.h.i.+ng young sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy b.u.t.t, the bow-oar of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.

During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a narghilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid strokes of his flas.h.i.+ng paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his cool narghilly.

"Who is he?" asked the crowds who panted along the sh.o.r.e, encouraging, according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race.

Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking, in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query, save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the "Hoop Inn,"

opposite Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman. That boat--slim, s.h.i.+ning, and shooting through the water like a pike after a small fish--was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan's oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it was the workmans.h.i.+p of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the Russian Amba.s.sador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off, the Father of Believers presented the boat to Rafael Mendoza.

It was Rafael Mendoza that saved the Turkish monarchy after the battle of Nezeeb. By sending three millions of piastres to the Seraskier; by bribing Colonel de St. Cornichon, the French envoy in the camp of the victorious Ibrahim, the march of the Egyptian army was stopped--the menaced empire of the Ottomans was saved from ruin; the Marchioness of Stokepogis, our amba.s.sador's lady, appeared in a suite of diamonds which outblazed even the Romanoff jewels, and Rafael Mendoza obtained the little caique. He never travelled without it. It was scarcely heavier than an arm-chair. Baroni, the courier, had carried it down to the Cam that morning, and Rafael had seen the singular sport which we have mentioned.

The dinner over, the young men rushed from their colleges, flushed, full-fed, and eager for battle. If the Gown was angry, the Town, too, was on the alert. From Iffly and Barnwell, from factory and mill, from wharf and warehouse, the Town poured out to meet the enemy, and their battle was soon general. From the Addenbrook's hospital to the Blenheim turnpike, all Cambridge was in an uproar--the college gates closed--the shops barricaded--the shop-boys away in support of their brother townsmen--the battle raged, and the Gown had the worst of the fight.

A luncheon of many courses had been provided for Rafael Mendoza at his inn; but he smiled at the clumsy efforts of the university cooks to entertain him, and a couple of dates and a gla.s.s of water formed his meal. In vain the discomfited landlord pressed him to partake of the slighted banquet. "A breakfast! psha!" said he. "My good man, I have nineteen cooks, at salaries rising from four hundred a year. I can have a dinner at any hour; but a Town and Gown row" (a brickbat here flying through the window crashed the caraffe of water in Mendoza's hand)--"a Town and Gown row is a novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher cap."

"That is the Lord Codlingsby," the landlord said.

"A light weight, but a pretty fighter," Mendoza remarked. "Well hit with your left, Lord Codlingsby; well parried, Lord Codlingsby; claret drawn, by Jupiter!"

"Ours is werry fine," the landlord said. "Will your Highness have Chateau Margaux or Lafitte?"

"He never can be going to match himself against that bargeman!" Rafael exclaimed, as an enormous boatman--no other than Rullock--indeed, the most famous bruiser of Cambridge, and before whose fists the Gownsmen went down like ninepins--fought his way up to the spot where, with admirable spirit and resolution, Lord Codlingsby and one or two of his friends were making head against a number of the town.

The young n.o.ble faced the huge champion with the gallantry of his race, but was no match for the enemy's strength and weight and sinew, and went down at every round. The brutal fellow had no mercy on the lad. His savage treatment chafed Mendoza as he viewed the unequal combat from the inn-window. "Hold your hand!" he cried to this Goliath; "don't you see he's but a boy?"

"Down he goes again!" the bargeman cried, not heeding the interruption.

"Down he goes again: I likes wapping a lord!"

"Coward!" shouted Mendoza; and to fling open the window amidst a shower of brickbats, to vault over the balcony, to slide down one of the pillars to the ground, was an instant's work.

At the next he stood before the enormous bargeman.

After the coroner's inquest, Mendoza gave ten thousand pounds to each of the bargeman's ten children, and it was thus his first acquaintance was formed with Lord Codlingsby.

But we are lingering on the threshold of the house in Holywell Street.

Let us go in.

III.

G.o.dfrey and Rafael pa.s.sed from the street into the outer shop of the old mansion in Holywell Street. It was a masquerade warehouse to all appearance. A dark-eyed damsel of the nation was standing at the dark and grimy counter, strewed with old feathers, old yellow hoots, old stage mantles, painted masks, blind and yet gazing at you with a look of sad death-like intelligence from the vacancy behind their sockets.

A medical student was trying one of the doublets of orange-tawny and silver, slashed with dirty light blue. He was going to a masquerade that night. He thought Polly Pattens would admire him in the dress--Polly Pattens, the fairest of maids-of-all-work--the Borough Venus, adored by half the youth of Guy's.

"You look like a prince in it, Mr. Lint," pretty Rachel said, coaxing him with her beady black eyes.

"It IS the cheese," replied Mr. Lint; "it ain't the dress that don't suit, my rose of Sharon; it's the FIGURE. Hullo, Rafael, is that you, my lad of sealing-wax? Come and intercede for me with this wild gazelle; she says I can't have it under fifteen bob for the night. And it's too much: cuss me if it's not too much, unless you'll take my little bill at two months, Rafael."

"There's a sweet pretty brigand's dress you may have for half de monish," Rafael replied; "there's a splendid clown for eight bob; but for dat Spanish dress, selp ma Moshesh, Mistraer Lint, ve'd ask a guinea of any but you. Here's a gentlemansh just come to look at it. Look 'ear, Mr. Brownsh, did you ever shee a nisher ting dan dat?" So saying, Rafael turned to Lord Codlingsby with the utmost gravity, and displayed to him the garment about which the young medicus was haggling.

"Cheap at the money," Codlingsby replied; "if you won't make up your mind, sir, I should like to engage it myself." But the thought that another should appear before Polly Pattens in that costume was too much for Mr. Lint; he agreed to pay the fifteen s.h.i.+llings for the garment.

And Rafael, pocketing the money with perfect simplicity, said, "Dis vay, Mr. Brownsh: dere's someting vill shoot you in the next shop."

Lord Codlingsby followed him, wondering.

"You are surprised at our system," said Rafael, marking the evident bewilderment of his friend. "Confess you would call it meanness--my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why throw away a s.h.i.+lling without need? Our race never did. A s.h.i.+lling is four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean--you Normans--not we of the ancient race. You have your vulgar measurement for great things and small. You call a thousand pounds respectable, and a shekel despicable.

Psha, my Codlingsby! One is as the other. I trade in pennies and in millions. I am above or below neither."

They were pa.s.sing through a second shop, smelling strongly of cedar, and, in fact, piled up with bales of those pencils which the young Hebrews are in the habit of vending through the streets. "I have sold bundles and bundles of these," said Rafael. "My little brother is now out with oranges in Piccadilly. I am bringing him up to be head of our house at Amsterdam. We all do it. I had myself to see Rothschild in Eaton Place this morning, about the Irish loan, of which I have taken three millions: and as I wanted to walk, I carried the bag.

"You should have seen the astonishment of Lauda Latymer, the Archbishop of Croydon's daughter, as she was pa.s.sing St. Bennet's, Knightsbridge, and as she fancied she recognized in the man who was crying old clothes the gentleman with whom she had talked at the Count de St. Aulair's the night before." Something like a blush flushed over the pale features of Mendoza as he mentioned the Lady Lauda's name. "Come on," said he. They pa.s.sed through various warehouses--the orange room, the sealing-wax room, the six-bladed knife department, and finally came to an old baize door. Rafael opened the baize door by some secret contrivance, and they were in a black pa.s.sage, with a curtain at the end.

He clapped his hands; the curtain at the end of the pa.s.sage drew back, and a flood of golden light streamed on the Hebrew and his visitor.

CHAPTER XXIV.

They entered a moderate-sized apartment--indeed, Holywell Street is not above a hundred yards long, and this chamber was not more than half that length--it was fitted up with the simple taste of its owner.

The carpet was of white velvet--(laid over several webs of Aubusson, Ispahan, and Axminster, so that your foot gave no more sound as it trod upon the yielding plain than the shadow did which followed you)--of white velvet, painted with flowers, arabesques, and cla.s.sic figures, by Sir William Ross, J. M. W. Turner, R. A., Mrs. Mee, and Paul Delaroche.

The edges were wrought with seed-pearls, and fringed with Valenciennes lace and bullion. The walls were hung with cloth of silver, embroidered with gold figures, over which were worked pomegranates, polyanthuses, and pa.s.sion-flowers, in ruby, amethyst, and smaragd. The drops of dew which the artificer had sprinkled on the flowers were diamonds. The hangings were overhung by pictures yet more costly. Giorgione the gorgeous, t.i.tian the golden, Rubens the ruddy and pulpy (the Pan of Painting), some of Murillo's beatified shepherdesses, who smile on you out of darkness like a star, a few score first-cla.s.s Leonardos, and fifty of the master-pieces of the patron of Julius and Leo, the Imperial genius of Urbino, covered the walls of the little chamber. Divans of carved amber covered with ermine went round the room, and in the midst was a fountain, pattering and babbling with jets of double-distilled otto of roses.