CHAPTER VIII.—NORMAN’S REVENGE.
When the devil suggests some pleasant but wrong scheme to frail humanity, his dupes generally find him a most amiable and efficient patron at the beginning of the enterprise, however he may leave them in the lurch when the fatal catastrophe approaches. To give that much-abused personage his due, on the occasion to which we are about to allude, he adhered to his word like the gentleman Shakspere has declared him to be, for, as at seven o’clock the very small curtain of the very “minor” theatre at Tickletown drew up, and the limited orchestra, with a hoarse, eccentric, and ad libitum bass, left off playing, four distinguished-looking young gentlemen entered the stage-box, and arranged the drapery in such manner that, themselves unseen, they might alike be able to witness the performance and criticise the house, which, in virtue of its being the fascinating-Courtenay Trevanion’s (alias Jack Sprattly’s) benefit, was crowded by all the rank and fashion of Tickletown.
Any person who had very closely observed this same box, might have perceived peeping from under the corner of the red curtain nearest the stage, a little, eager, restless, excited face, watching with the deepest and most engrossing interest every trifle that occurred, as though it presented some great and striking novelty. Had the looker-on been of a speculative turn of mind, he might have wondered why this little, bright face, which ought naturally to have expressed nothing but childish delight and surprise, should have had this expression marred by an anxious, scared look, which occasionally passed across the boy’s intelligent features. To the reader, however, this evidence that Hugh Colville was feeling slightly ill-at-ease, even in the midst of his enjoyment, need present no mystery. But as the play proceeded, and Polly made her appearance, looking like a single angel, and singing like a whole covey of them, interest and delight overpowered conscience; and when Jack. Sprattly came on in jet black boots and moustachios, and bright red coat and cheeks, and swaggering about the stage as Macheath, and looking so charmingly impudent, sang in a rich rollicking tenor, “How happy could I be with either,” toll-derolling at the end with a devil-may-care joviality, which produced him three several encores, Hugh Colville’s delight waxed to such a pitch that he mentally decided, if the Doctor had suddenly appeared, armed with his stoutest cane, and then and there varied the performance by flogging him before the faces of the assembled audience, the exquisite pleasure he enjoyed would have been cheaply purchased at even that frightful cost. Then followed a pantomime! Hugh’s first pantomime!
Juvenile reader whose first pantomime is yet to come, mark my words, the words of one who speaks from experience! You look forward eagerly, no doubt, to the wonderful time when you shall be a grown-up man, and do as you please, which you firmly believe will involve always sitting up till three o’clock in the morning; riding a prancing horse all day; eating unlimited plum-pudding without uncomfortable consequences; and having that very pretty little girl next door, with whom you danced—and, in your small, unassuming way, flirted also—at the children’s ball last Christmas, grown up into a beautiful wife for you, who will always do exactly what you wish with her, and never go near Howell and James’s at any price. You have heard poets and other licensed story-tellers rave about there being
“Nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream;”
or prate of the delights of ambition; the charms of fame; the pleasures of hope and of memory; the satisfaction of a good conscience; or the inestimable blessings of domestic felicity—which, in a general way, means buying cradles, paying taxes, and settling bills:—you may have heard all this, and believed much or little of it, as your bump of veneration happens to be largely developed or otherwise. But what I am going to tell you is a “great fact;” and do you remember it, and act upon it accordingly. The happiest time of your life ought to be, and probably therefore will be, the glorious night on which you, a light-hearted, merry child, witness your first pantomime!—and you may go with my compliments to Papa and inform him that I say so.
At all events, Hugh Colville felt strongly that until he had seen a clown he had been ignorant of the real dignity of human nature, or the sublime heights to which, properly cultivated, it was capable of soaring. Columbine also (as enacted by that houri, Rosetta Matilda Slammock) impressed him with a deep sense of the sylph-like grace and ethereal purity of woman,—all but the very pink calves of her seraphic legs, in regard to which, beautiful and praiseworthy as they were, viewing them in the abstract as mere bounding, pirouetting, sliding, and gliding machines, he could not help indulging some scruples of conscience, mentally classing them with unpaid-for toffy, clandestine nine-pins on Sunday, and the few other examples of the “pleasant, but wrong” principle, which had come within the limits of his juvenile experience; and he was just considering that, if Heaven had vouchsafed to place him in the proud and enviable position of her elder brother, he should have mildly remonstrated against her making such a very prominent feature of her legs; when to his surprise and regret, Virtue suddenly triumphed amidst ablaze of fireworks, and Vice being punished in the person of the Lurid Wizard of the Forty-locked Murderer’s Cavern, who was dragged by three supernumerary fiends-to a naughty place under the stage, the curtain fell, and all was over.
The next phase of the evening was to Hugh one strange and uncomfortable scene of inexplicable confusion. Biggington, Norman, and his companions, went behind the scenes, under the auspices of Jack Sprattly, who did not look nearly so brave and glorious out of his scarlet coat; and Hugh followed them for fear of being lost, receiving at their hands much the same kind and degree of attention that a little dog would have met with.
Of all miserable, desolate, chaotic-looking places, the stage of a theatre in dishabille is one of the most forlorn. The incomprehensible machinery for scene-shifting, the frightful backs of all the brilliant effects, the dirt, the smell of the lamps, the ropes, the rubbish, the dangerous trap-doors, the tired, sleepy carpenters, the haggard, snobbish actors, and, worse than all, the pale, hollow-eyed actresses, with their forced, heartless laughter—a very mockery of mirth—of all places for destroying illusion, commend me to the region behind the-scenes as the most dismally effectual.
Biggington, Norman, and Stradwick, having disappeared somewhere within the mysterious precincts of the green-room where they remained long enough for Terry to jump over everything, and tumble down everywhere, and set wrong bells ringing in all kinds of unexpected places, and have a terrific combat with nobody in virtue of a “property” sword and buckler wherewith he had illegally armed himself—the party re-assembled, and without further delay proceeded to “The Bull.”
This remarkable quadruped must have been, in his interesting lifetime, a most rare and wonderful creature, at least, if he at all resembled his portrait, which hung creaking on a species of jovial gibbet in front of the hostelrie bearing his name. The picture certainly may have been a likeness, but as it represented the bovine original got up, regardless of expense, in richly-gilt hoofs and horns, with his tail twisted over his back in the shape of a horizontal figure of eight, ending in a bright golden flame, while such a cluster of Hyperion curls waved over his massive-brow, as involuntarily to suggest the idea of his wearing one of those false fronts, paraded by self-deluding old ladies in the forlorn hope of deceiving society on the score of their undesirable longevity, we can scarcely conceive the artist to have adhered to nature with a proper degree of pre-Raphaelite severity. Be this as it may, the present proprietor of the Bull had exerted all his energies to provide a supper commensurate with the dignity and gullibility of the givers of the feast; and Hugh Colville’s eyes sparkled with delight, when the goodly array of nice things first met his gaze; for, though by no means greedy, he was still almost a child, and was a hungry school-boy into the bargain—need we say more?
Then arrived Courtenay Trevanion (alias Jack Sprattly) and the young ladies, who from a strict sense of propriety, which was one of their marked characteristics, had refused to come unless they might be allowed to bring with them Mrs. Belvidera Fitz-Siddons as chaperone. This great lady, for such she was in every sense of the word, had done the heavy tragic business for many years with immense éclat, until latterly she had grown too heavy even for that, which fact had been painfully impressed upon her by reason of her constantly, at harrowing moments of heart-rending despair, disappearing suddenly from before the streaming eyes of the astonished audience down traps calculated to support mortals of moderate (but not immoderate) weight. Finding that these unexpected disappearances tended to impart a burlesque character to her acting, rather than to increase the pathos thereof, Mrs. B. Fitz-Siddons had wisely restricted herself to such parts as suited her advanced years; and now having, by the trifling addition of sixpence weekly to his salary, bribed the call-boy to chalk B. T. (beware traps!) upon all dangerous footing, she still shone in the elderly comic line, and played Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Backbite to delighted audiences. For the rest, this illustrious woman rejoiced in a pair of large, bold, uncomfortable black eyes; a man’s voice, slightly the worse for wear, and——and a little failing she had in regard to liquor; stiff horse-hair-like curls, which might have been her own only that she had a harmless scruple against wasting money on paying her bills; and a generally hooked outline, so essentially Israelitish, that her green-room cognomen of “Mother Moses” appeared by no means inappropriate. Of the young ladies we will only say that, like all young ladies, they were irresistible.
Just at first starting, matters appeared a little dull and unpromising; the fact being that the two elder Tickletonians, not finding, when put to the test, that they were quite such thorough men of the world as they imagined themselves, suffered under an uncomfortable inability to make small talk; while Jack Sprattly, possessing a most inconvenient appetite, was so engrossed with the good cheer before him, that conversation, under the circumstances, became a physical impossibility.
As the supper progressed, however, and more especially when the champagne (which really was not bad for Tickle-town) had made two or three rounds, affairs began to brighten. Mrs. Fitz-Siddons, unlike the voracious Macheath (which hungry highwayman still continued to demolish a supper more fitted for forty thieves than for one), was able to eat, drink, and talk at the same moment; and soon, by the cheerful, not to say jolly, style alike of the sentiments she expressed and of the manner in which she expressed them, succeeded in placing the “young people,” as she called them, upon a more friendly footing.
“Cora-lee, my love,” she began (and be it observed, parenthetically, that this, noble woman spoke with a slight Irish brogue—a philological fact to be accounted for only by the hypothesis, which she herself had started on a particular occasion, when she was suffering from a temporary nervous affection which confused her speech and imparted a slight unsteadiness to her gait, viz., that her mother must have been an Irishman), “Cora-lee, my love! don’t ye see Mr. Biggington waiting to take wine with ye; thank ye, sir, since you’re so very pressing I’ll not refuse; only up to my thumb, if you please, sir” (as she spoke, she, with delightful unconsciousness, ran her thumb up the glass as the wine advanced, until her digit and the champagne reached the brim simultaneously). “Your health, Mr. Norman, sir; O-phaliur, my darling, the same to the fortunes of the colville family. Go you;—it’s the cavalry you’re going into, Mr. Norman, they do tell me, and it’s an ornament you’ll be to the ridgimint—fine men they are, the Lancers. I’d a brother in them once; maybe you’ll have heard tell of Major Fitz-Siddons? Six feet six did he stand in his stocking-soles, till he fell gloriously leading a forlorn hope at the siege of—of—bless the name of the place! now I can’t for the life of me lay my tongue to it.”
“Troy, perhaps,” suggested Terry, politely.
“Belleisle, more likely,” put in Jack Sprattly; it was the first word he had uttered since they sat down, and he had a largish tartlet in his mouth as he spoke;—swallowing the morsel, he continued in a whisper to Biggington, next to whom he was seated—
“The major was no major at all, but only a private, and was drummed out of the regiment for stealing the captain’s shirts.”
Having once found his tongue, which was not until he had more than satisfied even his uncompromising appetite, Jack proceeded to make use (we can scarcely in conscience say, good use) of it, to relate all sorts of anecdotes, theatrical and otherwise, of which the wit was so small as scarcely to deserve the name, while what ought to have been the moral was rather the reverse.
Then, quite by accident, another gentleman connected with the theatre called to speak to Mr. Sprattly, so of course he was invited to join them, and proved a great acquisition to the party, as it was generally reported of him that there was no subject, grave or gay, human or divine, on which he could not perpetrate a bad pun; and certainly on that evening he did his best, or more correctly, his worst, to justify popular opinion. And thus a vast amount of nonsense was talked, and many bottles of wine drunk, until Norman conceived that the time was ripe for the execution of his project.
It has before been intimated that the apparent friendship existing between Biggington and Norman was based upon a most false and hollow foundation,—the truth being that the cock of the school, who was older than Norman, had, in times past, availed himself of his superior strength to bully, and impose insults and indignities upon, his junior, under which the proud spirit of the embryo lancer had chafed, until a deep thirst for revenge was excited, which he only waited a favourable opportunity to satisfy. During the previous year, a change had taken place in their relation to each other. Biggington having grown up, was, by the immutable laws of nature, prevented from growing any higher, while Norman, in obedience to the same laws, grew steadily after him until he also had attained the full stature of man; while, although of a slighter build, he had so strengthened his frame by athletic exercises, that he was now no contemptible antagonist even for the colossal Biggington. That the bully himself was aware of this fact, may be gathered from the extreme care with which he avoided giving Norman an opportunity of picking a quarrel with him—a line of policy which, until the evening in question, had proved most successful. Norman, although apparently enjoying himself to the utmost, and constantly hastening the circulation of the decanters, contrived to drink very little wine; Biggington, on the other hand, who was essentially animal in his tastes, indulged freely, until the effects became unmistakably apparent in his flushed cheeks and rapid, thick utterance. During the earlier part of the evening he had devoted his attentions to the amiable and accomplished Juliet Elphinstone (alias Betsy Slasher) as he found that young lady, who was of a singularly affable, not to say free and easy, disposition, least trouble to get on with; and Biggington hated trouble. But as Coralie’s diffidence vanished before the influence of the champagne, and the polished compliments which Norman from time to time addressed to her not unwilling ears, she laughed and displayed her white teeth and uttered piquant nothings in the prettiest broken English imaginable, till she appeared altogether so fascinating, that Biggington began to perceive he had made a mistake, which the wine he drank rendered him determined at all hazards to remedy.
Norman, who watched him closely, remarking this, redoubled his attentions to Coralie, and Biggington’s dissatisfaction and ill-temper became so unmistakable that they were observed even by Mrs. Fitz-Siddons, whose troublesome nerves were again beginning to inconvenience her, as was evinced by a slight disposition towards the unromantic spasmodic affection popularly termed winking, with which she punctuated (so to speak) her sentences. Feeling desirous that so agreeable an evening should end as harmoniously as it had begun, she tossed off a final bumper of claret (Mrs. Fitz-S. was great at claret), and, turning to the young ladies, began—
“Cora-lee, my love—O-phaliur, my darling, all that’s bright my dears, must (wink)—the fondest hearts must part; ‘parting is such sweet sorrow,’ you remember! Not another drop, I’m obleeged to ye, Mr. Biggington, sir—well, if you will have it so I suppose I must (wink); we weaker vessels you know—”
“Hold as much as the strong ones,” interposed Jack, “and carry it off a precious sight better too, and no mistake,” he added sotto voce to his punning friend, glancing towards Biggington as he spoke.
In the meantime, the young ladies having risen, were looking for their bonnets and mantles. Terry, whose strong point was activity, had discovered Miss Ophelia’s shawl, and, with many grimaces as of a polite monkey, had placed it over her shoulders; and Norman was about to perform the same friendly office by Coralie, when Biggington sprang to his feet, and advancing with a slight unsteadiness in his gait, exclaimed in a hoarse, angry voice—
“Give me that shawl directly, Norman; I intend to escort Miss Coralie home.”
“Excuse me,” was the quiet reply; “having found the shawl, I shall not yield the privilege of placing it over the fair owner’s shoulders, to you or any one.”
“Won’t you?” returned Biggington, with an oath; “we’ll soon see that!” and as he spoke he grasped the shawl with one hand, while he attempted to push Norman aside with the other.
Drawing back to avoid his grasp, Norman whispered to Terry, “Watch and see who strikes the first blow, and then lock the door and put the key in your pocket.”
Irritated at the tenacity with which Norman still retained his hold on the shawl, Biggington pressed angrily forward, when, by putting out his foot, Norman contrived to trip him up, while, by a slight push, he caused him to lose his balance, so that he reeled and would have fallen, had not Jack Sprattly caught him just at the critical moment. Rendered furious by the laugh which followed his discomfiture, and losing sight of his habitual caution from the effects of the wine he had drunk, Biggington’s savage nature blazed forth in all its full ferocity, and, springing forward with a bound like that of some wild animal, he aimed a blow at Norman’s head, which if it had taken effect as it was intended, would have ended the struggle at once.
But Norman was prepared for such a salute, and, dodging aside, received the blow on his shoulder, whence it glanced off innocuously; then, before his antagonist could recover his guard, he rushed in and planted a well-directed hit on his face, in a direction which was certain to render him the proprietor of a black eye for the next week to come, at the very least. Thereupon ensued a grand shindy. Terry, in obedience to Norman’s directions, having recorded in the tablet of his memory the fact that Biggington had struck the first blow, hastened to lock the door and secrete the key; having accomplished these feats, he called out, “A ring! a ring!” at the same time exhorting the combatants to take it sweetly and easily, and to fight fair, and like gentlemen of the sixth form.
The two girls, frightened out of their affectation, shrank into the farthest corner of the apartment, where they clung to each other in speechless terror. Mrs. Belvidera Fitz-Siddons, considerably flustered (no other word could express her exact state of mind so graphically), in trying to get out of the way, fell first over, and finally upon, a sofa, where, after making one or two abortive efforts to rise, she remained uttering incoherent ejaculations to which no one paid the slightest attention.
Jack Sprattly made a feeble and futile attempt to bring about a reconciliation; but his friend—who, from being invariably cast as the benevolent uncle, or philanthropic benefactor, in all the genteel comedies, had, by a not unnatural reaction, acquired a sanguinary and democratic habit of mind—drew him back, muttering in a theatrical whisper—
“Let the serpent-brood of haughty aristocrats prey upon each other, Jack; there will be more room in the world for the honest sons of labour.”
In the meantime, after a short but spirited rally, the combatants came to the ground together, when Terry picked up Norman and gave him a knee, while Stradwick, frightened out of his wits (the few he possessed), did the same by Biggington. Five or six rounds ensued; but as Norman, who was, to begin with, the most scientific pugilist, appeared perfectly cool and self-possessed, while Biggington was furious with rage, and excited and bewildered by the wine he had imbibed, each round terminated in Norman’s favour; he having escaped any disfiguring blow, while his antagonist’s countenance already showed marks of severe punishment. When the seventh round commenced, and Norman again succeeded in planting a well-directed hit on the bridge of his adversary’s nose, it became evident that the bully’s temporary courage was failing him, and that one or two more rounds would completely exhaust it.
By this time the landlord of the inn and his myrmidons had been aroused by the noise, and were clamouring at the door demanding admission; but so effectually had Terry hidden the key, that Jack Sprattly, unable to find it, was reduced to shout to them to burst the door open. This, however, was more easily said than done, for the door was made of stout oak, and he fastenings were strong and in good repair.
In the eighth round Biggington, rendered furious by pain, pressed so hard upon Norman that, in avoiding his blows, he entangled his foot in the carpet, and stumbled, while at the same moment a left-handed hit from his opponent catching him on the side of his head, brought him to the ground so violently that, when raised on his seconds knee, he stared wildly about him and scarcely appeared conscious where he was; but a few moments served to restore him, and when time was called, he sprang to his feet with an expression of countenance which showed he meant mischief.
Biggington, elated by his success, fought with more energy and spirit than he had shown in the last round or two; but in attempting to end the conflict by a tremendous hit, he overreached himself, and Norman, seizing his opportunity, drew back his arm, then flinging it out from the shoulder, with the force and rapidity of a sledge-hammer, caught his antagonist a crashing blow between the eyes, before which he went down like a shot, and when time was again called, he remained stunned and insensible. At the same moment the fastenings of the door suddenly gave way, and the landlord and his wife, supported by the entire dramatis personae of the establishment, appeared upon the scene of action in various attitudes of terror and amazement.