“You need n't take it so seriously as all that, Grog,” said Beecher, in a placable tone.
“Why, when I'm told that one of the hardest things to be laid to your charge is the knowing me, it's high time to be serious, I think; not but I might just throw a shell into the enemy's own camp. The noble Lord ain't so safe as he fancies. I was head-waiter at Smykes's,—the old Cherry-tree, at Richmond—the night Mat Fortescue was ruined. I could tell the names of the partners even yet, though it's a matter of I won't say how many years ago; and when poor Fortescue blew his brains out, I know the man who drove his phaeton into town and said, 'Fortescue never had a hand light enough for these chestnuts. I always knew what I could do with them if they were my own.'”
“Lackington never said that. I 'll take my oath of it he never did!” cried Beecher, passionately.
“Take your oath of it!” said Davis, with an insulting sneer. “Do you mind the day old Justice Blanchard—it was at the York assizes—said, 'Have a care, Mr. Beecher, what you are about to swear; if you persist in affirming that document, the consequences may be more serious than you apprehend?' And do you remember you did n't swear?”
“I 'll tell you what, Master Grog,” said Beecher, over whose face a sudden paleness now spread, “you may speak of me just as you like. You and I have been companions and pals for many a day; but Lackington is the head of my family, he has his seat in the Peers, he can hold up his head with the best in England, and I 'll not sit here to listen to anything against him.”
“You won't, won't you?” said Grog, placing a hand on either knee, and fixing his fiery gray eyes on the other's face. “Well, then, I 'll tell you that you shall! Sit down, sir,—sit down, I say, and don't budge from that chair till I tell you! Do you see that hand? and that arm,—grasp it, squeeze it,—does n't feel very like the sinews of a fellow that feared hard labor. I was the best ten stone seven man in England the year I fought Black Joe, and I 'm as tough this minute, so that Norfolk Island needn't frighten me; but the Hon. Annesley Beecher would n't like it, I 'll promise him. He 'd have precious pains in the shoulder-blades, and very sore feelings about the small of the back, after the first day's stone-breaking. Now, don't provoke me, that's all. When the world has gone so bad with a man as it has with me the last year or two, it's not safe to provoke him,—it is not.”
“I never meant to anger you, old fellow,” began Annesley.
“Don't do it, then,—don't, I say,” repeated the other, doggedly; and he resumed the letter, saying: “When you 're a-writing the answer to this here letter, just ask Grog Davis to give you a paragraph. Just say, 'Grog, old fellow, I 'm writing to my noble brother; mayhap you have a message of some kind or other for him,' and you 'll see whether he has or not.”
“You 're a rum one, Master Davis,” said Beecher, with a laugh that revealed very little of a heart at ease.
“I'm one that won't stand a fellow that doesn't run straight with me,—that's what I am. And now for the noble Viscount.” And he ran his eyes over the letter without reading aloud. “All this here is only saying what sums he has paid for you, what terrible embarrassment your debts have caused him. Lord love him! it's no new thing to hear of in this life that paying money is no pleasure. And then it finishes, as all the stories usually do, by his swearing he won't do it any more. 'I think,' he says, 'you might come round by a fortunate hit in marriage; but somehow you blundered in every case that I pointed out to you—'”