This was worse than a heavy blow at single-stick; and the mayor was the more wrath as he had no argument ready to meet it. After looking angry for a moment, a bright thought struck him.
“Ay, ay, sir! You will not, I hope, teach a mayor either fact or duty. We know, sir, what the king (God bless him!) patronizes. His majesty does not patronize strollers. He goes regularly to an established church, sir, and to an established theatre; and so, sir, I, as mayor, support only establishments. Good heavens! what would become of the throne and the altar, if a Mayor of Sarum were to do otherwise?”
As Mr. Farren did not well know, he could not readily tell; and as he stood mute, the mayor continued to pour down upon the player and his vocation, a shower of obloquy. At every allusion which he made to his predilection for amusements that were respectable and instructive, the single-stick player and his man drew themselves up, cried “Hear! hear!” and looked down upon the actors with an air of burlesque contempt. The actors, men and women, returned the look with a burst of uncontrollable laughter. The mayor took this for deliberate insult, aimed at himself and at what he chose to patronize. His protégés looked the more proud, and became louder than ever in their self-applauding “Hear! hear!” The players, the while, shrieked with laughter. Even Mr. Farren and Lizzy could not refrain from risibility, for the stick-player and his man were really members of the company. The former was Mr. Frederick Fitzmontague, who was great in Hamlet. His man was the ruffian in melodramas, and the clown in pantomimes, and as he did a little private business of his own by accepting an engagement from a religious society, during the dull season of the year, to preach on the highways against theatricals, Mr. Osmond Brontere was usually known by the cognomen of Missionary Jack.
The magisterial refusal to license this wandering company to play in Salisbury, was followed by altercation; and altercation by riot. The multitude took part with the actors, and they hooted the mayor; and the latter, viewing poor Farren as the cause and guilty mover of all that had occurred, summarily ordered his arrest; and, in spite of all remonstrance, resistance, or loudly-expressed disgust, the manager was ultimately lodged in the cage. The mob, then, satisfied at having had a little excitement, and caring nothing more about the matter, at length separated, and repaired to their respective homes. They went all the quicker that the rain had begun to descend in torrents; and they took little notice of poor Lizzy, who went home in the dusk, weeping bitterly, and led by the hands of the matronly Ophelia and Missionary Jack.
Ere morning dawned, a change had come over the scene. The rain had ceased. A hard frost had set in. All Salisbury looked as if it were built upon a frozen lake. The market-place itself was a mer de glace. Christmas-day was scarcely visible when a boy of early habits, standing at the door of an upholsterer’s shop, which bore above it the name of Burroughs, fancied he saw something moving with stealthy pace across the market-place; and he amused himself by watching it through the gloom. It was developed, after a while, into the figure of a thinly-clad girl, bearing in her arms a bowl of hot milk. She trod cautiously, and looked, now down at her feet, now across the wide square, to measure the distance she had yet to go. Each little foot was put forward with hesitation, and so slowly was progress made, that there was good chance of the boiling milk being frozen, before it had been carried half-way to its destination.
The girl was Lizzy Farren, and in the bowl, which between her arms looked as graceful as urn clasped by Arcadian nymph, lay the chief portion of a breakfast destined, on this sad Christmas morning, for her captive sire in the cage.
“She’ll be down!” said young Burroughs, as he saw her partially slip. Lizzy, however, recovered herself; but so alarmed was she at her situation, so terrified when she measured the distance she had to accomplish by that which she had already traversed, that she fairly stood still near the centre of the market-place, and wept aloud over the hot bowl and her cold position. It was then that the young knight recognised the crisis when he was authorized to interfere. He made a run from the door, shot one leg in advance, drew the other quickly after him, and went sliding, with express-train speed, close up to Lizzy’s feet. She no sooner saw the direful prospect of collision than she shrieked with an energy which roused all the rooks in the close.
“Hold hard!” exclaimed the merry-faced boy; “hold hard! that’s myself, you Lizzy, and the milk. Hold hard!” he continued, as he half held her up, half held on to her. “Hold hard! or we shall all be down together.”
“Oh, where do you come from? and how do you know my name is Lizzy?”
“Well! Mr. Fitzmontague lodges in our house, and he told us all about you, last night. And he said, as sure as could be, you would be awake before anybody in Salisbury. And sure enough, here you are, almost before daylight.”