Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr. Riccabocca had accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall.
“There will be no one there but the family,” said Riccabocca. “Poor Giacomo, a little chat in the servants’ hall will do you good; and the squire’s beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and minnows. It will lengthen your life.”
“The padrone jests,” said Jackeymo, statelily; “as if any one could starve in his service.”
“Um,” said Riccabocca. “At least, faithful friend, you have tried that experiment as far as human nature will permit;” and he extended his hand to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between servant and master in the usages of the Continent. Jackeymo bent low, and a tear fell upon the hand he kissed.
“Cospetto!” said Dr. Riccabocca, “a thousand mock pearls do not make up the cost of a single true one! The tears of women—we know their worth; but the tears of an honest man—Fie, Giacomo!—at least I can never repay you this! Go and see to our wardrobe.”
So far as his master’s wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing to Jackeymo; for the doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed since they left the tailor’s hands. But when Jackeymo came to examine the state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably longer. It was not that he was without other clothes than those on his back,—quantity was there, but the quality! Mournfully he gazed on two suits, complete in three separate members of which man’s raiments are composed: the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a veteran stretched by pious hands after death; the other brought piecemeal to the invidious light,—the torso placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from Jackeymo’s melancholy arm. No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts! For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel, more profusus sui, than his master. In the earliest days of their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for dinner,—it was a respect due to the padrone,—and that habit had lasted till the two habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard service they had breathed their last.
The doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to Jackeymo than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the servant reflects on the dignity of the master, “Giacomo, thou wantest clothes; fit thyself out of mine!”
And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been accepted; but the fact was that that same fitting out was easier said than done. For though-thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks and minnows—both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state which the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame,—namely, skin and bone,—yet the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo spread out latitudinally. And you might as well have made the bark of a Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak—in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease—as have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca. Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the generosity of his master. He had a sort of religious sentiment, too, about those vestments of the padrone. The ancients, we know, when escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in which they had struggled through the wave. Jackeymo looked on those relics of the past with a kindred superstition. “This coat the padrone wore on such an occasion. I remember the very evening the padrone last put on those pantaloons!” And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted, and carefully restored to their sacred rest.
But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person to the eyes of the squire’s butler in habiliments discreditable to himself and the padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, and he went down into the parlour.
Riccabocca was standing on the hearth under his symbolical representation of the “Patriae Exul.”