CHAPTER XXI.
“A gin-sling, waiter! Strong, hot, and quick; none of your temperance mixtures for me; and waiter, here, a beef-steak smothered in onions; and waiter, some crackers and cheese, and be deuced quick about it, too. I’m not a man to be trifled with, as somebody besides you will find out, I fancy,” said Mr. Scraggs, hitching his heels to the mantel, as the waiter closed the door.
Mr. Scraggs was a plethoric, pursy, barrel-looking individual, with a peony complexion, pink, piggy eyes, and a nose sky-wardly inclined. His neck-cloth was flashy and greasy; his scarlet vest festooned with a mock chain; his shirt bosom fastened with green studs, and his nether limbs encased in a pair of snake-skin pantaloons. As the waiter closed the door to execute his order, he delivered himself of the following soliloquy, between the whiffs of his cigar:
“Ha-ha! pardoned out, was he? turned peddler, did he? fathered the little gal, and sold tape to pay her board, hey? put her to boarding-school, and went to New Orleans to seek his fortin’? got shipwrecked and robbed, and the Lord knows what, and then started for Californy for better luck, did he? Stuck to gold-digging like a mole—made his fortin’, and then came back to marry the little gal, hey? That’ll be as I say. She’s a pretty gal—may I be shot, if she ain’t; a deuced pretty gal—but she don’t come between me and my revenge. Not ’xactly! That blow you struck in the prison, my fine fellow, is not forgotten quite yet. John Scraggs has a way of putting them little things on file. Hang me if it don’t burn on my cheek yet. Your fine broadcloth suit don’t look much like your red and blue prison uniform, Mr. Percy Lee. Your crop of curly black hair is rather more becoming than your shaven crown; wonder what your pretty love would say if she knew all that? if she knew she was going to marry the man who killed her own mother? and, pretty as she is, by the eternal, she shall know it. But, patience—John Scraggs; a little more billing and cooing first; a little more sugar before the drop of gall brims over the cup. Furnish the fine house you have taken, Mr. Percy Lee, pile up the satin and damask, and picters, and statters, and them things—chuckle over the happiness you are not a going to have—for by the eternal, the gal may go the way the mother did, but my hand shall crush you; and yet, I ain’t got nothing agin the gal, neither: she’s as pretty a piece of flesh and blood as I’ve seen this many a day. A delicate mate for a jail-bird, ha—ha.”
“Waiter! waiter another gin-sling; hotter and stronger than the last; ’gad—fire itself wouldn’t be too strong for me to swallow to-day. Percy Lee’s wedding-day, is it? We shall see!
“He will curl his fine hair, don his broad-cloth suit, satin vest and white gloves; look at his watch, and be in a devil of a hurry, won’t he? ha—ha. He will get into a carriage with his dainty bride, and love her all the better for her blushing and quivering; he will look into her pretty face till he would sell his very soul for her; he will lead her by the tips of her little white gloved fingers into church; then they’ll kneel before the parson, and he will promise all sorts of infernal lies. Then the minister will say, ‘if any one present knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in the holy state of matrimony, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace.’
“Then is your time, John Scraggs—leap to his side like ten thousand devils; hiss in the gal’s ear that her lover is a jail-bird—that he’s her mother’s murderer—laugh when she shrinks from his side in horror, and falls like one stone dead; for by the eternal, John Scraggs is the man to do all that—and yet I ain’t got nothing agin the gal either.
“But, stay a bit; that will be dispatching the rascal too quick. I’ll make slower work of it. I’ll prolong his misery. I’ll watch him writhe and twist like a lion in a net. I’ll let the marriage go on—I’ll not interrupt it; and then I’ll make it the hottest hell! The draught shall be ever within reach of his parched lips, and yet, he shall never taste it; for his little wife shall curse him. She shall be ever before him, in her tempting, dainty beauty, and yet a great gulf shall separate them. That’s it—slow torture; patience—I won’t dispatch him all at once. I’ll lop off first a hand, then a foot, pluck out an eye, touch up a quivering nerve, maim him—mangle him—let him die a thousand deaths in one. Good! I’ll teach the aristocrat to fell me to the earth like a hound. A jail-bird—ha, ha; salt pork and mush, instead of trout cooked in claret; water in a rusty tin cup, instead of old Madeira, and Hock, and Sherry, and Champagne. Mush and salt pork—ha, ha. Too cursed good, though, for the dainty dog. I wish I’d been warden of the Bluff Hill prison. I’d have lapped up his aristocratic blood, drop by drop.”