Oxford Street itself, indeed, bore a villainous reputation. It stretched somewhat on the borders of the town, with wild and wooded country going northwards from it, and was handy therefore to the gentry whose profession it was to cut purses from the skirts of civilization. Latterly, its heterogeneous domiciles had shown a tendency to increase and multiply, and, by adding to their number on either side the way, to extend the boundaries of the comparative security which obtained about the central regions of Westminster and Whitehall. But it was still a perilous district, the very expression and moral of which appeared epitomized in the sign which swung on a high gallows, beside a wooden water-trough, before the front of our inn, and which depicted a poor unhappy citizen bearing upon his suffering shoulders a drunken scold. In the neighbourhood of the building clustered, like disreputable relations, a knot of tenements, which included a pawnbroker’s and a gin-shop; and southwards from it zigzagged a muddy bridle-way—known appropriately as Hog Lane—which, traversing a motley course, half town, half rookery, debouched finally upon the village of Charing, where in an open place stood the monument with its gilt cross.
So, approximately, appeared this particle of our London in the year following that of the King’s Grace’s restoration, A.D. 1661. It is easier to explain a frog of to-day out of a Pliocene leviathan than it is to trace the growth of a huge metropolis from such paltry beginnings. The tendency of Nature is to reduce from the unwieldy to the workable, while that of man is to magnify his productions out of all proportion with the simple necessities they are wanted to supply. That is why towns increase while animals grow smaller.
The yard of “The Mischief” Inn was fairly crowded on that particular June morning which witnessed the encounter between its landlord and Mrs. Moll Davis. This young lady had come to town out of Wiltshire, by waggon, some fortnight or more earlier, and, putting up at the inn, had succeeded already in outstaying a welcome which was wont to be continued to such angels only as came franked with a sufficiency of their golden namesakes. In short, Mrs. Davis could not, or would not, pay her score; and, since she failed to quit the landlord, and he declined to release her without settlement, a state of deadlock had arisen between them, which seemed to promise no conclusion but through the better ability of one or the other to “throw” its adversary in a wrestle of wit—a contest in which the lady, at least, need expect no “law.” And it was at this juncture that Mr. George Hamilton appeared upon the scene.
He was a very agreeable young gentleman, of cavalier rank, debonair and smart to foppery, which as yet, however, stopped short of the extravagance which later came to characterize it. He wore his own long chestnut hair, and a lingering tone of sobriety marked his dress. The times, in fact, had not quite pulled free their damasked wings from the Puritan case which had enclosed them, though certain foreshadowed iridescences gave promise of the splendour to come; and, moreover, the gentleman had ridden in that morning from the country, and had been in no mind to stake his sweetest trappings against the habitual quagmires of Oxford Street. He dismounted at “The Mischief” for his morning draught, and, giving his horse to hold to his servant, sat down at a table in the yard, and hammered for the drawer.
George was a bold youth of his inches—which were sufficient—but quite immoral and unscrupulous. He fitted amiably into his age, which expected nothing better of a man than good company. That he supplied, and could have supplied in purer brand if good-fellowship had been its inevitable corollary. But there he lacked. Generally he wished no man good but where he saw his own profit of the sentiment; and he could be an inhuman friend. He had regular, rather full features, and a rolling brown eye which took in much that had been kindlier left unobserved; and, like most of his order, he was infernally pugnacious. While his ale was bringing, he sat, one arm akimbo, the other crossed on his knee, conning, as if they were cattle, the group about him, and humming an abstracted tune. There was no one who interested him much, or who touched a note of originality in all the commonplace crowd which surrounded him. Grooms, carters, local traders; a seedy rakehell or two; a lowering Anabaptist, sipping his ale with a toast in it, and furtively conscious the while of the scrutiny of a yellow trained-band Captain lolling by the tap door; a prowling pitcher-bawd, lean, red-eyed, and hugging his famine as he ogled about for custom—one and all they conformed to type, and presented nothing beyond it worth considering. George felt quarrelsome over the matter, as if he had been defrauded of a legitimate expectation. True, mankind in its ordinary habits and conversation could hardly be looked to at the best for more than diluted epigram; yet there should be a limit to the insipidity of things, and he felt it almost his duty to insist upon the fact. Possibly his brain was a little fevered from last night’s debauch.
The seedy Mohawks were his nearest neighbours. Said one to his fellow, in the words of Banquo’s murderer: “It will be rain to-night.”
Hamilton turned on him.
“Who says so, clout?”
“Sir!” exclaimed the young man, startled aback.
“I say, who says so?”