“SAY IT WAS ME.”
“Jem! you rascal, get up! get up, and be hanged to you, sir; don’t you hear somebody hammering and pelting away at the street-door knocker, like the ghost of a dead postman with a tertian ague! Open it! see what’s the matter, will you?”
“Yes, sir!” responded the tame tiger of the excited and highly respectable Adolphus Casay, shiveringly emerging from beneath the bed-clothes he had diligently wrapped round his aching head, to deaden the incessant clamour of the iron which was entering into the soul of his sleep. A hastily-performed toilet, in which the more established method of encasing the lower man with the front of the garment to the front of the wearer, was curiously reversed, and the capture of the left slipper, which, as the weakest goes to the wall, the right foot had thrust itself into, was scarcely effected, ere another series of knocks at the door, and batch of invectives from Mr. Adolphus Casay, hurried the partial sacrificer to the Graces, at a Derby pace, over the cold stone staircase, to discover the cause of the confounded uproar. The door was opened—a confused jumble of unintelligible mutterings aggravated the eager ears of the shivering Adolphus. Losing all patience, he exclaimed, in a tone of thunder—
“What is it, you villain? Can’t you speak?”
“Yes, sir, in course I can.”
“Then why don’t you, you imp of mischief?”
“I’m a-going to.”
“Do it at once—let me know the worst. Is it fire, murder, or thieves?”
“Neither, sir; it’s A1, with a dark lantern.”
“What, in the name of persecution and the new police, does A1, with a dark lantern, want with me?”
“Please, sir, Mr. Brown Bunkem has give him half-a-crown.”
“Well, you little ruffian, what’s that to me?”
“Why, sir, he guv it him to come here, and ask you—”
Here policeman A1, with the dark lantern, took up the conversation.
“Jist to step down to the station-’us, and bail him therefrom—”
“For what!”
“Being werry drunk—uncommon overcome, surely—and oudacious obstropelous.” continued the alphabetically and numerically-distinguished conservator of the public peace.
“How did he get there?”
“On a werry heavily-laden stretcher.”
“The deuce take the mad fool,” muttered the disturbed housekeeper; then added, in a louder tone, “Ask the policeman in, and request him to take—”
“Anything you please, sir; it is rather a cold night, but as we’re all in a hurry, suppose it’s something short, sir.”
Now the original proposition, commencing with the word “take,” was meant by its propounder to achieve its climax in “a seat on one of the hall chairs;” but the liquid inferences of A1, with a dark lantern, had the desired effect, and induced a command from Mr. Adolphus Casay to the small essential essence of condensed valetanism in the person of Jim Pipkin, to produce the case-bottles for the discussion of the said A1, with the dark lantern, who gained considerably in the good opinion of Mr. James Pipkin, by requesting the favour of his company in the bibacious avocation he so much delighted in.
A1 having expressed a decided conviction that, anywhere but on the collar of his coat, or the date of monthly imprisonments, his distinguishing number was the most unpleasant and unsocial of the whole multiplication table, further proceeded to illustrate his remarks by proposing glasses two and three, to the great delight and inebriation of the small James Pipkin, who was suddenly aroused from a dreamy contemplation of two policemen, and increased service of case-bottles and liquor-glasses, by a sound box on the ear, and a stern command to retire to his own proper dormitory—the one coming from the hand, the other from the lips, of his annoyed master, who then and there departed, under the guidance of A1, with the dark lantern. After passing various lanes and weary ways, the station was reached, and there, in the full plenitude of glorious drunkenness, lay his friend, the identical Mr. Brown Bunkem, who, in the emphatic words of the inspector, was declared to be “just about as far gone as any gentleman’s son need wish to be.”
“What’s the charge?” commenced Mr. Adolphus Casay.
“Eleven shillings a bottle.—Take it out o’that, and d—n the expense,” interposed and hiccoughed the overtaken Brown Bunkem.
“Drunk, disorderly, and very abusive,” read the inspector.
“Go to blazes!” shouted Bunkem, and then commenced a very vague edition of “God save the Queen,” which, by some extraordinary “sliding scale,” finally developed the last verse of “Nix my Dolly,” which again, at the mention of the “stone jug,” flew off into a very apocryphal version of the “Bumper of Burgundy;” the lines “upstanding, uncovered,” appeared at once to superinduce the opinion that greater effect would be given to his performance by complying with both propositions. In attempting to assume the perpendicular, Mr. Brown Bunkem was signally frustrated, as the result was a more perfect development of his original horizontal recumbency, assumed at the conclusion of a very vigorous fall. To make up for this deficiency, the suggestion as to the singer appearing uncovered, was achieved with more force than propriety, by Mr. Brown Bunkem’s nearly displacing several of the inspector’s front teeth, by a blow from his violently-hurled hat at the head of that respectable functionary.
What would have followed, it is impossible to say; but at this moment Mr. Adolphus Casay’s bail was accepted, he being duly bound down, in the sum of twenty pounds, to produce Mr. Brown Bunkem at the magistrate’s office by eleven o’clock of the following forenoon. This being settled, in spite of a vigorous opposition, with the assistance of five half-crowns, four policemen, the driver of, and hackney-coach No. 3141, Mr. Brown Bunkem was conveyed to his own proper lodgings, and there left, with one boot and a splitting headache, to do duty for a counterpane, he vehemently opposing every attempt to make him a deposit between the sheets.—Seven o’clock on the following morning found Mr. Adolphus Casay at the bedside of the violently-snoring and stupidly obfuscated Brown Bunkem. In vain he pinched, shook, shouted, and swore; inarticulate grunts and apoplectic denunciations against the disturber of his rest were the only answers to his urgent appeals as to the necessity of Mr. Brown Bunkem’s getting ready to appear before the magistrate. Visions of contempt of court, forfeited bail, and consequent disbursements, flitted before the mind of the agitated Mr. Adolphus Casay. Ten o’clock came; Bunken seemed to snore the louder and sleep the sounder. What was to be done? why, nothing but to get up an impromptu influenza, and try his rhetoric on the presiding magistrates of the bench.
Influenced by this determination, Mr. Adolphus Casay started for that den of thieves and magistrates in the neighbourhood of Bow-street; but Mr. Adolphus Casay’s feelings were anything but enviable; though by no means a straitlaced man, he had an instinctive abhorrence of anything that appeared a blackguard transaction. Nothing but a kind wish to serve a friend would have induced him to appear within a mile of such a wretched place; but the thing was now unavoidable, so he put the best face he could on the matter, made his way to the clerk of the Court, and there, in a low whisper, began his explanation, that being “how Mr. Brown Bunkem”—at this moment the crier shouted—
“Bunkem! Where’s Bunkem?”
“I am here!” said Mr. Adolphus Casay; “here to”—
“Step inside, Bunkem,” shouted a sturdy auxiliary; and with considerable manual exertion and remarkable agility, he gave the unfortunate Adolphus a peculiar twist that at once deposited him behind the bar and before the bench.
“I beg to state,” commenced the agitated and innocent Adolphus.
“Silence, prisoner!” roared the crier.
“Will you allow me to say,”—again commenced Adolphus—
“Hold your tongue!” vociferated P74.
“I must and will be heard.”
“Young man,” said the magistrate, laying down the paper, “you are doing yourself no good; be quiet. Clerk, read the charge.”
After some piano mumbling, the words “drunk—abusive—disorderly—incapable—taking care of self—stretcher—station-house—bail,” were shouted out in the most fortissimo manner.
At the end of the reading, all eyes were directed to the well-dressed and gentlemanly-looking Adolphus. He appeared to excite universal sympathy.
“What have you to say, young man?”
“Why, your worship, the charge is true; but”—
“Oh! never mind your buts. Will you ever appear in the same situation again?”
“Upon my soul I won’t; but”—
“There, then, that will do; I like your sincerity, but don’t swear. Pay one shilling, and you are discharged.”
“Will your worship allow me”—
“I have no time, sir. Next case.”
“But I must explain.”
“Next case. Hold your jaw!—this way!”—and the same individual who had jerked Mr. Adolphus Casay into the dock, rejerked him into the middle of the court. The shilling was paid, and, amid the laughter of the idlers at his anti-teetotal habits, he made the best of his way from the scene of his humiliation. As he rushed round the corner of the street, a peal of laughter struck upon his ears, and there, in full feather, as sober as ever, stood Mr. Brown Bunkem, enjoying the joke beyond all measure. Indignation took possession of Mr. Adolphus Casay’s bosom; he demanded to know the cause of this strange conduct, stating that his character was for ever compromised.
“Not at all,” coolly rejoined the unmoved Bunkem; “we are all subject to accidents. You certainly were in a scrape, but I think none the worse of you; and, if it’s any satisfaction, you may say it was me.”
“Say it was you! Why it was.”
“Capital, upon my life! do you hear him, Smith, how well he takes a cue? but stick to it, old fellow, I don’t think you’ll be believed; but—say it was me.”
Mr. Brown Bunkem was perfectly right. Mr. Adolphus Casay was not believed; for some time he told the story as it really was, but to no purpose. The indefatigable Brown was always appealed to by mutual friends, his answer invariably was—
“Why, Casay’s a steady fellow, I am not; it might injure him. I defy report; therefore I gave him leave to—say it was me!”
And that was all the thanks Mr. Adolphus Casay ever got for bailing friend.
FUSBOS