Where are all his fine airs before a real danger? Love, intrigue, diplomacy, were all driven from his mind; for he beheld that approaching, which is the greatest peril and disaster known to social man. He saw a bore coming into the room!
In a wild thirst for novelty, Pomander had once penetrated to Goodman's Fields Theater; there he had unguardedly put a question to a carpenter behind the scene; a seedy-black poet instantly pushed the carpenter away (down a trap, it is thought), and answered it in seven pages, and in continuation was so vaguely communicative, that he drove Sir Charles back into the far west.
Sir Charles knew him again in a moment, and at sight of him bolted. They met at the door. “Ah! Mr. Triplet!” said the fugitive, “enchanted—to wish you good-morning!” and he plunged into the hiding-places of the theater.
“That is a very polite gentleman!” thought Triplet. He was followed by the call-boy, to whom he was explaining that his avocations, though numerous, would not prevent his paying Mr. Rich the compliment of waiting all day in his green-room, sooner than go without an answer to three important propositions, in which the town and the arts were concerned.
“What is your name?” said the boy of business to the man of words.
“Mr. Triplet,” said Triplet.
“Triplet? There is something for you in the hall,” said the urchin, and went off to fetch it.
“I knew it,” said Triplet to himself; “they are accepted. There's a note in the hall to fix the reading.” He then derided his own absurdity in having ever for a moment desponded. “Master of three arts, by each of which men grow fat, how was it possible he should starve all his days!”
He enjoyed a natural vanity for a few moments, and then came more generous feelings. What sparkling eyes there would be in Lambeth to-day! The butcher, at sight of Mr. Rich's handwriting, would give him credit. Jane should have a new gown.
But when his tragedies were played, and he paid! El Dorado! His children should be the neatest in the street. Lysimachus and Roxalana should learn the English language, cost what it might; sausages should be diurnal; and he himself would not be puffed up, fat, lazy. No! he would work all the harder, be affable as ever, and, above all, never swamp the father, husband, and honest man in the poet and the blackguard of sentiment.