Chapter VII

The villain! I believe a man to cozen somebody.
SHAKSPEARE.

----Give me any clothes;
I will some other be--some Florentine,
Some Neapolitan, or some mean man of Pisa.
IBID.

It was a little more than four years after the events of the last chapter, that one evening the apothecary, mentioned above, was sauntering listlessly along the smooth flags of the market-place at Mayton. He had been lately more than ever puzzled how to pass his time, for he had lost his former boon companion, the attorney. The fact was, that, in one of their jovial bouts, in despair at the world’s continued blindness to their respective merits, they had, in an affectionate fit of inebriety, mutually sworn professionally to employ each other. This was a bargain, of which the advantage was clearly on the side of the doctor. He was not a rich man, and therefore was no food for the lawyer, who, after he had drawn his will, and had recorded in the most technical manner his medical friend’s bequest of a few empty phials to himself, had done his worst. But the attorney was not a healthy man, and, therefore, he afforded at least practice for his friend. At last the lawyer took to his bed, where his physical Pylades still followed him: and, whether in consequence of the effects of the many draughts of which they had previously partaken together, or of the last which the doctor only prescribed,--the attorney died, and his medical friend was left alone to wander up and down the streets of Mayton, and watch the regular arrival and departure of the public conveyances, in the vain hope of some such other lucky accident as once happened in the lifetime of his companion.

On this evening, as he strolled by the “Queen’s Head,” he was surprised to see a hack chaise, without horses, drawn up before the door. Now, as it has been stated above, that the “Queen’s Head” was not an inn of rank enough to reciprocate such modes of conveyance, it was an unusual act of condescension for a vehicle of that kind to be upon visiting terms with it.

This was, therefore, quite event enough to make the apothecary inquisitive, and, as he strutted back again by the windows of the little ground-floor parlour, where it was recorded in the last chapter he had met Farmer Darnell, he peeped through an hiatus in the blind, which he well knew of, and saw a young man sitting by himself at the table, writing, with his back rather turned towards him.

“That’s the person it brought, and it’s not a wedding after all,” thought he, obliged to give up the idea of the merry-making which his first speculations had included. He, however, strolled into the kitchen to inquire, and there finding the hostess said,

“So you’ve got some post-chaise company to-day, Mrs. Westbury: I thought at first it had been a wedding? Perhaps it’s a husband for yourself at last, widow. I often wonder whom you’ve been waiting so long for.”

“For your first patient, doctor; only then I’m afraid you’d soon make me a widow again.”

“Quite the contrary, perhaps, widow. I might promote population, ‘_in utrumque paratus_.’”

The pedantic conclusion of this rejoinder on the part of the doctor, who had been originally a man of grammar-school education, prevented its being understood, or in consequence resented by the widow.

“And the person who came in the chaise is--?”

“A very civil-spoken sort of a decent young man,” interrupted the widow. “I should at first almost have taken him for a great gentleman, by the whiteness of his hands and the fineness of his linen, for all his clothes were not over new or smart, and I might have bustled about and made a to-do for him; but he told me at once, without making believe to be what he was not, to take care of a large book tied round with strings, full of drawings and paintings, for that he lived by the sale of them, and he wanted to take some more likenesses of the coast not far off from here.”

“And Jack brought him from the Cock at Moreby?--How d’ye do, Jack?” turning to a post-boy whom Sally had just been supplying with a beefsteak and a mug of ale. “What, I suppose with little blood chesnut mare and bay gelding, I saw at the Angel, when you and Joe Simmons brought Sir North in an hour and a quarter from Moreby. But how come you at this house; the widow’s beefsteaks good, eh?”

“Why he said himsen, that he wouldn’t gang tift first inn, and when he’d be gettin here he’d dun wi’ posting; and so I told un, if he’d loike to bide a bit, the widow would keep in well, thof she couldn’t forward un.”

“And he came in the same way to your house in which he left it?”

“He come’d in’t same way, but soa did another wid un, a much smarter nor he, and yet the tother put all this’uns things in’t chaise for him, and stood at door looking after him, till I driv off.”

“He’s been asking me about Morden Bay,” interrupted the widow, “and I’m sure I didn’t know much about it myself; but I told him to-morrow was market-day, and Richard Darnell would be sure to be here, and he’d hear all about it from him; and he said that would just do, and he would wait till then.”

“Let me go and talk to him,” said the Doctor, “I dare say I shall do just as well as the farmer; and have a bottle of your oldest port ready, in case I ask for it. You’re out of lemons, I’m afraid?”

The Doctor went, but returned sooner than he expected, evidently disappointed, though at first he said nothing, but walked about, took up the anticipated bottle of port, which had already at his desire mounted thus far from the cellar, and was waiting at this half-way-house, with the decanter by its side, in which it was to pursue its journey to the parlour. He brushed off the sawdust, held it wistfully to the light, and then told the landlady she might carry it back again; but, “One word first, widow,” said the Doctor: “You know I’ve a regard for you; look to your spoons, that’s all. A very suspicious-looking person, believe me. When a man shuns good company, it’s a very bad sign. I introduced myself in the civilest way, saying that I understood he wanted to dispose of some drawings, and that I might have an opportunity of recommending them in the course of my professional practice. And when I was undoing the strings to look at them, he took them from me, and said that they were already disposed of. I then talked of Morden Bay, and began describing it at random, like any other bay; and then he interrupted me by asking if I had ever been there; and when I said, not that I could remember, he said he thought as much; and just as I was chatting on about something else, he told me that he was writing, and that if I considered that a public room, he would ask for a private one. Depend upon it, when a chap of that kind comes Captain Grand over one, and wants to be as dull as a lord, he has some reason for it. It’s a very suspicious story altogether. Who was that swell confidant Jack says he left at Moreby? Who knows? they may be French spies, taking a survey of the coast, and the portfolio he was so afraid I should see, may be chuck full of treason.”

“But you forget, Doctor, we are at peace now, and have been for some time; and I don’t know, whether he be French or English, that there is any harm in his painting a few trees, whether they grow near the sea or not.”

“I have it,” said the Doctor, but apparently the last suspicion was too weighty to drop lightly, and, buttoning up his coat, he only added, “A few days will show whether I am right,” muttering to himself as he went out, “General Ludd, General Ludd, General Ludd!”

But few years have passed since the Doctor pronounced that then awful name, and many of my readers have never heard of “General Ludd,” at that time the dreaded object of the ephemeral fears of every loyal Englishman. His fame, too recent for the stores of history, too obsolete for the currency of conversation, is now less alive than that of many a brother general, who swells the half-pay list under the grateful denomination of “dead weight.”

Whatever suspicions the Doctor had at that moment instilled into the mind of the Widow Westbury, they appeared to have been obliterated, in a long conversation which she had the next morning with the stranger; for when her friend the Farmer arrived, she told him there was a _nice_ young man, who was very anxious to board at his house for a few weeks, whilst he sketched the surrounding scenery. She told the Farmer he must not be hard upon him for terms, for that he said he was as poor as need be, though just able to earn a decent subsistence by the labours of his pencil.

The Farmer, who had no objection to the daily presence of a stranger, who he hoped would rather restrain his family discomforts, did not anticipate much objection on the part of his wife, who, as she had every year become more fond of money, and liked the coin itself, rather than the comfort it could purchase, would welcome the pittance of the stranger, however small; determined, at the same time, not to augment, in any respect, the expenses on his account. One difficulty only occurred to the Farmer: what in days of yore had been called the “spare room,” was now tenanted by the hams hung up to dry. But there was George’s room vacant, which had been empty ever since he left it; he therefore made acquaintance with the stranger, and the bargain was concluded between them with the facility which might be expected from two easy people, mutually eager to be accommodating. One thing only kept alive a sort of suspense in the hostess’s mind against the stranger; whilst talking with her, he had folded up and directed the letter he had been so long writing, and which she observed to be a bulky packet. She had offered to put it in the post for him herself, and, approaching it for that purpose with rather a curious feminine eye, he had hastily turned the direction downwards, and declined her services, saying, that he would put it in himself, which, accordingly, he had stopped to do, whilst riding out of the town with Farmer Darnell.