great numbers.”
My grandfather had never heard that voice before. Yet he almost guessed whose it was. He whipped round with greater quickness than he had turned the first time.
Not far behind him, as though fated to be there from the first, stood the tall dragoon captain who had thumped him aside so unseeingly at York House.
The captain still did not look at Kinsmere, or seem to look, though his eye may have strayed to the glitter of the big sapphire ring. On the coils of his periwig he wore a dragoon’s beaver hat with a flat plume round the brim. His nose was lifted above the thick upper lip, the narrow mouth, and the congealed sneer; he stared blankly, incuriously, above my grandfather’s head.
An argument had burst out between the three-card man and the stout slut in the draggled finery.
“What you say, Chelsea Bess, may be gospel truth …”
“It is, Tom; I vow it is!”
“Should he have a good eye, as no doubt he has, I venture much and rashly against a fine noble gentleman with a full purse. Still and all, Bess! ’Tis a short life, and what’s money? Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” declared this generous-minded mountebank, as though with sudden inspiration. “Shall it be a first wager of one shilling, now, to make a tack at finding the lady? What d’ye say, sir? Will you bet, sir?”
“No,” replied Kinsmere, “I will not.”
“ You’ll not bet, by the Hilts?”
“On all else, yes. On the lady, never again. At Pie Powder Court in Bristol, once, when half a dozen of us had spent fifty pounds in an endeavour to find that lady, we commenced to suspect something must be wrong. How we served the rogue who mulcted us, after he had been turned upside down and the coins shaken from his clothes, you will be spared the pain of hearing. Yet the lesson was a salutary one. By which I would intimate, good friend,” says my grandfather, “that the charitable offer on which you pride yourself can be little else save a bubble and a cheat.”
The mountebank uttered a hoarse scream.
“Bubble, is it? Cheat, is it? By the Hilts, Bess, here’s impudence! Tom o’ Bedlam am I, with my license under the hand and seal of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to His Most Sacred Majesty. Tom o’ Bedlam am I, most honest of all the honest, who—”
The dragoon captain spoke again, this time addressing the three-card man and the doxy.
“Hold your clack, carrion,” he said in his harsh, bored voice. “Now be off, and no skreeking about it, lest I summon guards to take you in custody.”
“Tom o’ Bedlam am I, by God’s death and Christ’s body, the most honest of all the honest …”
“D’ye question my orders, fellow? Or you either, wench? Must I be at pains to repeat it? Go!”
It completed their demoralization; both turned and fled.
Now the captain faced towards my grandfather, but still would not look at him. In the sun-and-smoky courtyard, as antagonism flared, something sizzled between these two like a match to a powder train. The captain, nose higher still, kept his glazed little eye fixed at a point somewhere past Kinsmere’s shoulder. He spoke as though to an invisible third party.
“Rogues and trulls of such kidney are not welcome at Whitehall Palace. But less welcome, it may be, are country bumpkins too grasping or cowardly to risk their poor shillings at a wager. Country bumpkins have no place in a world of fashion; they also had best begone too.”
“Had they so? And who will compel this?”
“They had best be off, I said. Country bumpkins must not threaten.”
“Do you threaten, my bold dragoon?”
“It is not needful”—still the captain addressed his invisible auditor—“to make threats against oafs and clods. Who threatens a poor blackbeetle in a kitchen? It is ignored, no more, until stamped upon and squashed. I have given myself the trouble to say: DEPART.”
“And I am still here.”
“If there be any poor clod who thinks himself jeered and insulted,
My grandfather had never heard that voice before. Yet he almost guessed whose it was. He whipped round with greater quickness than he had turned the first time.
Not far behind him, as though fated to be there from the first, stood the tall dragoon captain who had thumped him aside so unseeingly at York House.
The captain still did not look at Kinsmere, or seem to look, though his eye may have strayed to the glitter of the big sapphire ring. On the coils of his periwig he wore a dragoon’s beaver hat with a flat plume round the brim. His nose was lifted above the thick upper lip, the narrow mouth, and the congealed sneer; he stared blankly, incuriously, above my grandfather’s head.
An argument had burst out between the three-card man and the stout slut in the draggled finery.
“What you say, Chelsea Bess, may be gospel truth …”
“It is, Tom; I vow it is!”
“Should he have a good eye, as no doubt he has, I venture much and rashly against a fine noble gentleman with a full purse. Still and all, Bess! ’Tis a short life, and what’s money? Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” declared this generous-minded mountebank, as though with sudden inspiration. “Shall it be a first wager of one shilling, now, to make a tack at finding the lady? What d’ye say, sir? Will you bet, sir?”
“No,” replied Kinsmere, “I will not.”
“ You’ll not bet, by the Hilts?”
“On all else, yes. On the lady, never again. At Pie Powder Court in Bristol, once, when half a dozen of us had spent fifty pounds in an endeavour to find that lady, we commenced to suspect something must be wrong. How we served the rogue who mulcted us, after he had been turned upside down and the coins shaken from his clothes, you will be spared the pain of hearing. Yet the lesson was a salutary one. By which I would intimate, good friend,” says my grandfather, “that the charitable offer on which you pride yourself can be little else save a bubble and a cheat.”
The mountebank uttered a hoarse scream.
“Bubble, is it? Cheat, is it? By the Hilts, Bess, here’s impudence! Tom o’ Bedlam am I, with my license under the hand and seal of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to His Most Sacred Majesty. Tom o’ Bedlam am I, most honest of all the honest, who—”
The dragoon captain spoke again, this time addressing the three-card man and the doxy.
“Hold your clack, carrion,” he said in his harsh, bored voice. “Now be off, and no skreeking about it, lest I summon guards to take you in custody.”
“Tom o’ Bedlam am I, by God’s death and Christ’s body, the most honest of all the honest …”
“D’ye question my orders, fellow? Or you either, wench? Must I be at pains to repeat it? Go!”
It completed their demoralization; both turned and fled.
Now the captain faced towards my grandfather, but still would not look at him. In the sun-and-smoky courtyard, as antagonism flared, something sizzled between these two like a match to a powder train. The captain, nose higher still, kept his glazed little eye fixed at a point somewhere past Kinsmere’s shoulder. He spoke as though to an invisible third party.
“Rogues and trulls of such kidney are not welcome at Whitehall Palace. But less welcome, it may be, are country bumpkins too grasping or cowardly to risk their poor shillings at a wager. Country bumpkins have no place in a world of fashion; they also had best begone too.”
“Had they so? And who will compel this?”
“They had best be off, I said. Country bumpkins must not threaten.”
“Do you threaten, my bold dragoon?”
“It is not needful”—still the captain addressed his invisible auditor—“to make threats against oafs and clods. Who threatens a poor blackbeetle in a kitchen? It is ignored, no more, until stamped upon and squashed. I have given myself the trouble to say: DEPART.”
“And I am still here.”
“If there be any poor clod who thinks himself jeered and insulted,
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