Chapter Twenty Six.
A reconciliation—A walk planned, and a man planted—The latter found to grow impatient—Ralph at length rigged out as a Reefer.
For two days Mr Rip and myself were not upon speaking terms. On the third day, a Master Barnard brings me up a slate-full of plusses, minusses, x, y, z’s, and other letters of the alphabet, in a most amiable algebraical confusion.
“Take it to Mr Riprapton,” said I. The lad took it, and the mathematical master looked over it with a perplexed gravity, truly edifying. “Take it to Master Rattlin—I have no time,” was the result of his cogitations.
It was brought to me again. “Take it to the usher,” said I.
“It is of no use; he don’t know anything about it.”
“Take it then to Monsieur Cherfeuil, and tell him so.”
This advice was overheard by the party most concerned, and he called the boy to him, who shortly returned to me with a note, full of friendship, apology, and sorrow; ending with an earnest request that I would again put him right with Mrs Causand, as well as the sum on the slate. I replied, for I was still a little angry, that he was very ungrateful, but that, as we were so soon to part, perhaps for ever, I accepted the reconciliation. So far was well. I told Mrs Causand what had passed, and then interceded with her for her forgiveness; for her anger debarred him from many comforts, as it obliged him to take his solitary tea and supper in the schoolroom. She consented, as she did to almost everything that I requested of her; and that afternoon I brought up to her the penitent hand-presser. Her natural good temper, and blandness of manner, soon put him again at his ease, and his love-speeches flowed as fluently as ever.
We proposed a walk; and, accompanied by some half-dozen of the elder boys, we began to stroll upon the common. By some gaucherie the conversation took a disagreeable turn on our late misunderstanding, and I could not help repeating what I had said in my note, that Mr Rip had proved himself ungrateful, considering the many difficulties from which I had extricated him. At this last assertion before the lady, he took fire, and flatly denied it. I was too proud to enumerate the many instances of scholastic assistance that he had received at my hands, so I became sullen and silent, my opponent in an equal degree brisk and loquacious. My fair companion rather enjoyed the encounter, and began to tally me.
“Come, come,” said I, “I’ll lay him a crown that he will beg me to extricate him from some difficulty before the week’s over.”
The wager was accepted with alacrity, and Mrs Causand begged to lay an equal stake against me, which I took. I then purposely turned the conversation; and after some time, when we were fairly in the hollow made by the surrounding hills, I exclaimed, “Rip, if you’ll give me five-and-twenty yards, I’ll run you three hops and a step, a hundred yards, for another crown.”
“Done, done!” exclaimed the usher, joyously, chuckling with the idea of exhibiting so triumphantly his prowess before the blooming widow. The ground was duly stepped, and the goal fixed, whilst my antagonist, all animation and spirits, was pouring his liquid nonsense into the lady’s ear. I took care that, in about the middle of the distance, our race-ground should pass over where some rushes were growing. Now Riprapton had a most uncommon speed in this manner of progressing. He would, with his leg of flesh, take three tremendous hops, and then step down with his leg of wood one, and then three live hops again, and one dead step, the step being a kind of respite from the fatigue of the hops.
All the preliminaries being arranged, off we started, I taking, of course, my twenty-five yards in advance. The exhibition and the gait were so singular, that Mrs Causand could scarcely stand for laughter, whilst the boys shouted, “Go it, Ralph!”—“Well done, peg!”—“Dot-and-go-one will beat him.”
In the midst of these exhilarating cries, what I had calculated upon happened. Rip, before we had gone half the distance, was close behind me; but lo! after three of his gigantic hops, that seemed to be performed with at least one seven-leagued boot turned into a slipper, he came down heavily upon his step with his wood among the rushes. The stiff clay there being full of moisture and unsound, he plunged up to his hip nearly, in the adhesive soil, and there he remained, as much a fixture, and equally astonished, as Lot’s wife. First of all, taking care to go the distance, and thus win the wager, we, all frantic with laughter, gathered round the man thus firmly attached to his mother earth. Whilst the tears ran down Mrs Causand’s cheeks, and proved that her radiant colour was quite natural, she endeavoured to assume an air of the deepest commiseration, which was interrupted, every moment, by involuntary bursts of laughter. For himself, no wretch in the pillory ever wore a more lugubrious aspect, and his sallow visage turned first to one, and then to another, with a look so ridiculously imploring that it was irresistible.
“I am sorry, very sorry,” said the lady, “to see you look so pale—I may say, so livid—but poor man, it is but natural, seeing already that you have one foot in the grave.”
The mender of pens groaned in the spirit.
“I say,” said the school-boy wag of the party, applying an old Joe Miller to the occasion, “why is Mr Riprapton like pens, ink, and paper?”
“Because he is stationary,” vociferated five eager voices, at once, in reply.
The caster-up of sums cast a look at the delinquent, the tottle of the whole of which was, “you sha’n’t be long on the debit side of our account.”
“But what is to be done?” was now the question.
“I am afraid,” said I, “we must dig him up like a dead tree, or an old post.”
“It is, I believe, the only way,” said the tutor, despondingly; “I was relieved once that way before in the bog of Ballynawashy.”
“O, then you are from Ireland after all,” said the lady.
“Only on a visit, madam!” said the baited fixture, with much asperity.
“But really,” said she, “if I may judge from the present occasion, you must have made a long stay.”
“I hope he won’t take cold in his feet,” said a very silly, blubber-lipped boy.
His instructor looked hot with passion.
“But really, now I think of it,” chimed in the now enraptured widow, “a very serious alarm has seized me. Suppose that the piece of wood, so nicely planted in this damp clay, were to take root and throw out fibres. Gracious me! only suppose that you should begin to vegetate. I do declare that you look quite green about the eyes already!”
“Mercy me!” whispered the wag, “if he should grow up, he’ll certainly turn to a plane tree; for really, he is a very plain man.”
The wielder of the ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual as it was violent.
“But don’t you think, Ralph,” said his tormentor, “as the evening is drawing in, that something should be done for the poor gentleman; he will most certainly take cold if he remain here all night; couldn’t you and your school-fellows contrive to build a sort of hut over him? I am sure I should be very happy to help to carry the boughs—if the man won’t go to the house, the house must go to the man.”
“What a fine cock-shy he would make!” said Master Blubberlips.
“O, I should so like to see it,” said the lady. “It will be the first time he has been made shy in his life.”
He was certainly like an Indian bound to the stake, and made to suffer mental torture—but he did not bear it with an Indian’s equanimity. As a few stragglers had been drawn to the funny scene, and more might be expected, I, and I only, of all the spectators, began to feel some pity for him; the more especially, as I heard a stout, grinning chaw-bacon say to the baker’s boy of the village, who asked him what was the matter, “Whoy, Jim, it ben’t nothink less than Frenchman’s usherman, ha’ drawn all Thickenham common on his’n left leg for a stocking loike.”
“Come,” thought I, “it’s quite time, after that, for the honour of the academy, to beat a retreat, or we shall be beaten hollow by this heavy-shod clodpole. Mr Riprapton,” said I, “I don’t bear you any malice—but I recollect my wager. If I extricate you out of the difficulty, will you own that I have won it?”
“Gladly,” said he, very sorrowfully.
“Come here, my lads, out knives and cut away the turf.” We soon removed the earth as far down as to where the hole of the wooden leg joined to the shank. “Now, my lads,” said I, “we must unscrew him.” Round and round we twirled him, his outstretched living leg forming as pretty a fairy-ring on the green sod, with its circumgyrations, as can be imagined. At last, after having had a very tolerable foretaste of the pillory, we fairly unscrewed him, and he was once more disengaged from his partial burial-place. I certainly cannot say that he received our congratulations with the grace of a Chesterfield, but he begged us to continue our exertions to recover for him his shank, or otherwise he would have to follow Petruchio’s orders to the tailor—to “hop me over every kennel home.” For the sake of the quotation, we agreed to assist; and, as many of us catching hold of it as could find a grip, we tugged, and tugged, and tugged. Still the stiff clay did not seem at all inclined to relinquish the prize it had so fairly won. At length, by one tremendous and simultaneous effort, we plucked it forth; but, in doing so, those who retained the trophy in their hands were flung flat on their backs, whilst the newly-gained leg pointed upwards to the zenith. Having first wiped a little of the deep yellow adhesion away from it, we joined the various parts of the man together; and, he taking singular care to avoid those spots where rushes grew, we all reached our home, with one exception, in the highest glee—as to the two wagers, he behaved like a gentleman, and acknowledged the debt—which was a great deal more than I ever expected.
After having worked some fifty problems out of Hamilton Moore, of blessed memory, and having drawn an infinity of triangles with all possible degrees of incidence, with very neat little ships, now upon the base, now upon the hypothenuse, and now upon the perpendicular, my erudite usher pronounced me to be a perfect master of the noble science of navigation in all its branches, for the which he glorified himself exceedingly. As I had made many friends, there was no difficulty in procuring for me a ship, and I was to have joined the Sappho, a first-class brig of war, as soon as she arrived, and she was expected almost immediately. However, as at that particular time we were relieving the Danes from the onerous care of their navy, the sloop was sent, directly she arrived, to assist in the amiable action.
Having many who interested themselves about me, some apparent and others hidden, a ship was soon found for me, but by what chain of recommendation I could never unravel. As far as the ship was concerned, I certainly had nothing to complain of. She was a fine frigate, and every way worthy to career over the ocean, that was, at that time, almost completely an English dominion. The usual quantity of hopes and wishes were expressed, and my final leave was taken of all my village friends. Mr R enjoined me to correspond with him on every opportunity, gave me his blessing, and some urgent advice to eschew poetry, and prophesied that he should live to see me posted. There was nothing outwardly very remarkable in the manner of Mrs Cherfeuil on the eve of my departure. I went to bed a school-boy, and was to rise next morning an officer—that is to say, I was to mount my uniform for the first time. I believe that I was already on the ship’s books; for at the time of which I am writing, the clerk of the cheque was not so very frequent in his visits, and not so particular when he visited, as he is at present. Notwithstanding the important change that was about to take place in everything connected with myself, I did sleep that night, though I often awoke,—there was a female hovering round my bed almost the whole of the night.