I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble.”
“Gamble!” exclaimed Mr. Peacock, in virtuous indignation—“gamble! what do you mean, sir? You insult me!” and he rose threateningly, and slapped his white hat on his wig. “Pshaw! let him alone, Hal,” said the boy, contemptuously. “Sir, if he is impertinent, thrash him.” (This was to me.) “Impertinent! thrash!” exclaimed Mr. Peacock, waxing very red; but catching the sneer on his companion’s lip, he sat down, and subsided into sullen silence.
Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty—rarely a cheerful one—performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was in the boy’s hands. He was very coolly reading the address, which, in case of accidents, I prudently placed on it: “Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.,—Hotel,—Street, Strand.”
I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of good manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I should have been at a similar error on the part of Mr. Peacock. He made no apology, but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full length on the bench. Mr. Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience, vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and in another moment I was alone on the high-road. My thoughts turned long upon the young man I had left; mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits and in such companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he assumed over a comrade so much older than himself.
The day twas far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me turn my head, and as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside Mr. Peacock, still struggling with a cigar,—it could scarcely be the same,—and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently unobservant both of me and every one else.
CHAPTER V
I am apt—judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience—to measure a young man’s chance of what is termed practical success in life by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs forward to examine everything new to his information; a nervous activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily fatigue to interfere with some object in view,—constitute, in my mind, very profitable stock-in-hand to begin the world with.
Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions and refreshed myself in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with the pedestrian’s best beverage, familiar and oft calumniated tea, I could not resist the temptation of the broad, bustling street, which, lighted with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and the contrast of lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, with sober, deserted night in the lanes and fields, struck me forcibly.
I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at the windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found myself before a cookshop, round which clustered a small knot of housewives, citizens, and hungry-looking children. While contemplating this group, and marvelling how it comes to pass that the staple business of earth’s majority is how, when, and where to eat, my ear was struck with “‘In Troy there lies the scene,’ as the illustrious Will remarks.”
Looking round, I perceived Mr. Peacock pointing his stick towards an open doorway next to the cookshop, the hall beyond which was lighted with gas, while painted in black letters on a pane of glass over the door was the word “Billiards.”
Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the aperture, and vanished. The boy-companion was following more slowly, when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek; he stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and long before he said: “Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London.”
“Oh!” said I, ingenuously, “everything here amuses me,—the lights, the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me everything is new.”
The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness than the melancholy his words expressed,—
“One thing, at least, cannot be new to you,—it is an old truth with us before we leave the nursery: ‘Whatever is worth having must be bought;’ ergo, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having.”
“I don’t think,” said I, wisely, “that the things best worth having can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing before his shop-door: his shop is the finest in the street, and I dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good health and strong legs. Oh, no! I think with my father: ‘All that are worth having are given to all,’—that is, Nature and labor.”
“Your father says that; and you go by what your father says? Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don’t see that the fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners.”
“So much the worse for the sons,” said I, bluntly. “Nature,” continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation,—“Nature indeed does give us much, and Nature also orders each of us how to use her gifts. If Nature give you the propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she give me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise,—but I certainly shall not work.”
“Oh,” said I, “you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?”
“And the blood in our veins, and our mothers’ milk. We inherit other things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father tells you! Good boy!”
I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for goodness, I never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled. However, I answered sturdily: “If you had as good a father as I have, you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you.”
“Ah! so he is a very good father, is he? He must have a great trust in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as he does.”
“I am going to join him in London.”
“In London! Oh, does he live there?”
“He is going to live there for some time.”
“Then perhaps we may meet. I too am going to town.”
“Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!” said I, with frank gladness; for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar,—it was low, musical, but hollow and artificial.
“Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?”
I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I expected to find my father, although his deliberate inspection of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address. He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large churchyard,—a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards
