Night and Morning Part 9

"I have never seen a play."

"Never seen a play! How very odd!"

"Not at all odd, Mr. Plimmins," said the stationer. "Mr. Morton has known troubles--so hand him the hot toast."

Silent and morose, but rather disdainful than sad, Philip listened to the babble round him, and observed the ungenial characters with which he was to a.s.sociate. He cared not to please (that, alas! had never been especially his study); it was enough for him if he could see, stretching to his mind's eye beyond the walls of that dull room, the long vistas into fairer fortune. At sixteen, what sorrow can freeze the Hope, or what prophetic fear whisper, "Fool!" to the Ambition? He would bear back into ease and prosperity, if not into affluence and station, the dear ones left at home. From the eminence of five s.h.i.+llings a week, he looked over the Promised Land.

At length, Mr. Plaskwith, pulling out his watch, said, "Just in time to catch the coach; make your bow and be off-smart's the word!" Philip rose, took up his hat, made a stiff bow that included the whole group, and vanished with his host.

Mrs. Plaskwith breathed more easily when he was gone. "I never seed a more odd, fierce, ill-bred-looking young man! I declare I am quite afraid of him. What an eye he has!"

"Uncommonly dark; what I may say gipsy-like," said Mr. Plimmins.

"He! he! You always do say such good things, Plimmins. Gipsy-like, he!

he! So he is! I wonder if he can tell fortunes?"

"He'll be long before he has a fortune of his own to tell. Ha! ha!" said Plimmins.

"He! he! how very good! you are so pleasant, Plimmins."

While these strictures on his appearance were still going on, Philip had already ascended the roof of the coach; and, waving his hand, with the condescension of old times, to his future master, was carried away by the "Express" in a whirlwind of dust.

"A very warm evening, sir," said a pa.s.senger seated at his right; puffing, while he spoke, from a short German pipe, a volume of smoke in Philip's face.

"Very warm. Be so good as to smoke into the face of the gentleman on the other side of you," returned Philip, petulantly.

"Ho, ho!" replied the pa.s.senger, with a loud, powerful laugh-the laugh of a strong man. "You don't take to the pipe yet; you will by and by, when you have known the cares and anxieties that I have gone through.

A pipe!--it is a great soother!--a pleasant comforter! Blue devils fly before its honest breath! It ripens the brain--it opens the heart; and the man who smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan!"

Roused from his reverie by this quaint and unexpected declamation, Philip turned his quick glance at his neighbour. He saw a man of great bulk and immense physical power--broad-shouldered--deep-chested--not corpulent, but taking the same girth from bone and muscle that a corpulent man does from flesh. He wore a blue coat--frogged, braided, and b.u.t.toned to the throat. A broad-brimmed straw hat, set on one side, gave a jaunty appearance to a countenance which, notwithstanding its jovial complexion and smiling mouth, had, in repose, a bold and decided character. It was a face well suited to the frame, inasmuch as it betokened a mind capable of wielding and mastering the brute physical force of body;--light eyes of piercing intelligence; rough, but resolute and striking features, and a jaw of iron. There was thought, there was power, there was pa.s.sion in the s.h.a.ggy brow, the deep-ploughed lines, the dilated, nostril and the restless play of the lips. Philip looked hard and grave, and the man returned his look.

"What do you think of me, young gentleman?" asked the pa.s.senger, as he replaced the pipe in his mouth. "I am a fine-looking man, am I not?"

"You seem a strange one."

"Strange!--Ay, I puzzle you, as I have done, and shall do, many. You cannot read me as easily as I can read you. Come, shall I guess at your character and circ.u.mstances? You are a gentleman, or something like it, by birth;--that the tone of your voice tells me. You are poor, devilish poor;--that the hole in your coat a.s.sures me. You are proud, fiery, discontented, and unhappy;--all that I see in your face. It was because I saw those signs that I spoke to you. I volunteer no acquaintance with the happy."

"I dare say not; for if you know all the unhappy you must have a sufficiently large acquaintance," returned Philip.

"Your wit is beyond your years! What is your calling, if the question does not offend you?"

"I have none as yet," said Philip, with a slight sigh, and a deep blush.

"More's the pity!" grunted the smoker, with a long emphatic nasal intonation. "I should have judged that you were a raw recruit in the camp of the enemy."

"Enemy! I don't understand you."

"In other words, a plant growing out of a lawyer's desk. I will explain.

There is one cla.s.s of spiders, industrious, hard-working octopedes, who, out of the sweat of their brains (I take it, by the by, that a spider must have a fine craniological development), make their own webs and catch their flies. There is another cla.s.s of spiders who have no stuff in them wherewith to make webs; they, therefore, wander about, looking out for food provided by the toil of their neighbours. Whenever they come to the web of a smaller spider, whose larder seems well supplied, they rush upon his domain--pursue him to his hole--eat him up if they can--reject him if he is too tough for their maws, and quietly possess themselves of all the legs and wings they find dangling in his meshes: these spiders I call enemies--the world calls them lawyers!"

Philip laughed: "And who are the first cla.s.s of spiders?"

"Honest creatures who openly confess that they live upon flies. Lawyers fall foul upon them, under pretence of delivering flies from their clutches. They are wonderful blood-suckers, these lawyers, in spite of all their hypocrisy. Ha! ha! ho! ho!"

And with a loud, rough chuckle, more expressive of malignity than mirth, the man turned himself round, applied vigorously to his pipe, and sank into a silence which, as mile after mile glided past the wheels, he did not seem disposed to break. Neither was Philip inclined to be communicative. Considerations for his own state and prospects swallowed up the curiosity he might otherwise have felt as to his singular neighbour. He had not touched food since the early morning. Anxiety had made him insensible to hunger, till he arrived at Mr. Plaskwith's; and then, feverish, sore, and sick at heart, the sight of the luxuries gracing the tea-table only revolted him. He did not now feel hunger, but he was fatigued and faint. For several nights the sleep which youth can so ill dispense with had been broken and disturbed; and now, the rapid motion of the coach, and the free current of a fresher and more exhausting air than he had been accustomed to for many months, began to operate on his nerves like the intoxication of a narcotic. His eyes grew heavy; indistinct mists, through which there seemed to glare the various squints of the female Plaskwiths, succeeded the gliding road and the dancing trees. His head fell on his bosom; and thence, instinctively seeking the strongest support at hand, inclined towards the stout smoker, and finally nestled itself composedly on that gentleman's shoulder. The pa.s.senger, feeling this unwelcome and unsolicited weight, took the pipe, which he had already thrice refilled, from his lips, and emitted an angry and impatient snort; finding that this produced no effect, and that the load grew heavier as the boy's sleep grew deeper, he cried, in a loud voice, "Holla! I did not pay my fare to be your bolster, young man!" and shook himself l.u.s.tily. Philip started, and would have fallen sidelong from the coach, if his neighbour had not griped him hard with a hand that could have kept a young oak from falling.

"Rouse yourself!--you might have had an ugly tumble." Philip muttered something inaudible, between sleeping and waking, and turned his dark eyes towards the man; in that glance there was so much unconscious, but sad and deep reproach, that the pa.s.senger felt touched and ashamed.

Before however, he could say anything in apology or conciliation, Philip had again fallen asleep. But this time, as if he had felt and resented the rebuff he had received, he inclined his head away from his neighbour, against the edge of a box on the roof--a dangerous pillow, from which any sudden jolt might transfer him to the road below.

"Poor lad!--he looks pale!" muttered the man, and he knocked the weed from his pipe, which he placed gently in his pocket. "Perhaps the smoke was too much for him--he seems ill and thin," and he took the boy's long lean fingers in his own. "His cheek is hollow!--what do I know but it may be with fasting? Pooh! I was a brute. Hush, coachee, hus.h.!.+ don't talk so loud, and be d---d to you--he will certainly be off!" and the man softly and creepingly encircled the boy's waist with his huge arm.

"Now, then, to s.h.i.+ft his head; so-so,--that's right." Philip's sallow cheek and long hair were now tenderly lapped on the soliloquist's bosom. "Poor wretch! he smiles; perhaps he is thinking of home, and the b.u.t.terflies he ran after when he was an urchin--they never come back, those days;--never--never--never! I think the wind veers to the east; he may catch cold;"--and with that, the man, sliding the head for a moment, and with the tenderness of a woman, from his breast to his shoulder, unb.u.t.toned his coat (as he replaced the weight, no longer unwelcomed, in its former part), and drew the lappets closely round the slender frame of the sleeper, exposing his own st.u.r.dy breast--for he wore no waistcoat--to the sharpening air. Thus cradled on that stranger's bosom, wrapped from the present and dreaming perhaps--while a heart scorched by fierce and terrible struggles with life and sin made his pillow--of a fair and unsullied future, slept the fatherless and friendless boy.

CHAPTER VII.

"Constance. My life, my joy, my food, my all the world, My widow-comfort."--King John.

Amidst the glare of lamps--the rattle of carriages--the lumbering of carts and waggons--the throng, the clamour, the reeking life and dissonant roar of London, Philip woke from his happy sleep. He woke uncertain and confused, and saw strange eyes bent on him kindly and watchfully.

"You have slept well, my lad!" said the pa.s.senger, in the deep ringing voice which made itself heard above all the noises around.

"And you have suffered me to incommode you thus!" said Philip, with more grat.i.tude in his voice and look than, perhaps, he had shown to any one out of his own family since his birth.

"You have had but little kindness shown you, my poor boy, if you think so much of this."

"No--all people were very kind to me once. I did not value it then."

Here the coach rolled heavily down the dark arch of the inn-yard.

"Take care of yourself, my boy! You look ill;" and in the dark the man slipped a sovereign into Philip's hand.

"I don't want money. Though I thank you heartily all the same; it would be a shame at my age to be a beggar. But can you think of an employment where I can make something?--what they offer me is so trifling. I have a mother and a brother--a mere child, sir--at home."

"Employment!" repeated the man; and as the coach now stopped at the tavern door, the light of the lamp fell full on his marked face. "Ay, I know of employment; but you should apply to some one else to obtain it for you! As for me, it is not likely that we shall meet again!"

"I am sorry for that!--What and who are you?" asked Philip, with a rude and blunt curiosity.

"Me!" returned the pa.s.senger, with his deep laugh. "Oh! I know some people who call me an honest fellow. Take the employment offered you, no matter how trifling the wages--keep out of harm's way. Good night to you!"

So saying, he quickly descended from the roof, and, as he was directing the coachman where to look for his carpetbag, Philip saw three or four well-dressed men make up to him, shake him heartily by the hand, and welcome him with great seeming cordiality.

Philip sighed. "He has friends," he muttered to himself; and, paying his fare, he turned from the bustling yard, and took his solitary way home.

A week after his visit to R----, Philip was settled on his probation at Mr. Plaskwith's, and Mrs. Morton's health was so decidedly worse, that she resolved to know her fate, and consult a physician. The oracle was at first ambiguous in its response. But when Mrs. Morton said firmly, "I have duties to perform; upon your candid answer rest my Plans with respect to my children--left, if I die suddenly, dest.i.tute in the world,"--the doctor looked hard in her face, saw its calm resolution, and replied frankly:

"Lose no time, then, in arranging your plans; life is uncertain with all--with you, especially; you may live some time yet, but your const.i.tution is much shaken--I fear there is water on the chest. No, ma'am-no fee. I will see you again."