“Well,” exclaimed Lawless, after a short pause; “all the luck in this matter seem's to fall to your share; so the sooner I get out of it the better. It won't break my heart, that's one comfort;—if the young woman has the bad taste to prefer you to me, why, it can't be helped, you know;—but what did she say for herself, eh?”
“She sent you her forgiveness for one thing,” replied I; and I then proceeded to relate such particulars of the interview as I considered expedient; which recital, and our remarks thereupon, furnished conversation during the remainder of our drive.
CHAPTER XIX — TURNING THE TABLES
“'You should also make no noise in the streets.'
“'You may stay him.'
“'Nay, by're lady, that I think he cannot.'
“'Five shillings to one on't with any man that knows the
statutes, he may stay him. His wits are not so blunt as, God help, I
would desire they were. It is an offence to stay a man against
his will. Dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect
my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! but,
masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written
down, yet forget not that I am an ass.”
—Much Ado About Nothing.
ABOUT a week had elapsed after the events which I have just recorded, when one morning, shortly before my return to Cambridge, I received a letter from Coleman, detailing the finale of the bellringing affair. It ran as follows:—
"My Dear Frank—Doubtless you are, or ought to be, very anxious to hear how I contrived to get out of the scrape into which you and the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common misdemeanour. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by misfortune, and, as dangers thickened around me, I bore up against them bravely, like—like—(was it Julius Cæsar or Coriolanus who did that sort of thing?) but never mind—like a Roman brick, we'll say; the particular brick is quite immaterial, but I must beg you to believe the likeness was something striking. To descend to particulars.—Hostilities were commenced by that old ass, Mayor Dullmug, who took out a summons against me for creating a riot and disturbance in the town, and the first day the bench sat I was marched off by two policemen, and locked up in a little dirty room, to keep cool till their worships were ready to discuss me. Well, there I sat, kicking my heels, and chuckling over a heart-rending little scene I had just gone through with my mother, whose dread of the terrors of the law was greatly increased by the very vague ideas she possessed of the extent of its powers. The punishment she had settled in her own mind as likely to be awarded me was transportation, and her farewell address was as follows: 'If they should be cruel enough to order you to be transported for fourteen years, Freddy, my dear, I shall try to persuade your father (though he's just like a savage North American Indian about you) to get it changed “for life” instead, for they always die of the yellow fever for the sharks to eat them, when they've been over there three or four years; and four years are better than fourteen, though bad's the best, and I'm a miserable woman. I read all about it last week in one of Captain Marryat's books, and very shocking I thought it,'—Having ventured to hint that if I was carried off by the yellow fever at the end of a year or two, the length of my sentence would not signify much to me when I was dead, I was rebuked with 'Don't talk in that shocking way, Frederick, as if you were a heathen, in your situation, and I hearing you your collect every Sunday, besides Mrs. Hannah More, who might have been a saint if ever there was one, or anything else she liked, with her talents, only she was too good for this wicked world, and so she went to a better, and wrote that charming book Colebs in Search of a Wife'.—Oh! my poor dear mother's queer sentences! I was becoming shockingly tired of my own company, when it occurred to me that it would be the correct thing to carve my name on the Newgate stone à la Jack Sheppard; and I was just putting a few finishing strokes to the N of Coleman, wherewith, in characters at least six inches long, I had embellished a very conspicuous spot over the chimney-piece, when I was surprised 'with my chisel so fine, tra la,' (i.e., with a red-hot poker, which I had been obliged to put up with instead, it being the only implement attainable,) by the officials, who came to summon me, and who did not appear in the slightest degree capable of appreciating the beauties of my performance. By them I was straightway conducted into the awful presence of sundry elderly gentlemen, rejoicing in heads all more or less bald, and faces expressing various degrees of solemn stupidity, who in their proper persons constituted 'the bench'. Before these grave and reverend signiors did Master Dullmug and his satellites
“'Then and there,
Rehearse and declare'
all my heinous crimes, offences and misdemeanours; whereupon the aforesaid signiors did solemnly shake their bald heads, and appear exceedingly shocked and particularly puzzled. Well, at last I was called upon for my defence, and, having made up my mind for some time what line I would take, I cut the matter very short, by owning to have assisted in ringing the bells, which I confessed was an act of folly, but nothing more, and that the idea of its constituting an offence punishable by law was absurd in the extreme. This sent them to book, and, after turning over sundry ponderous tomes, and consulting various statutes of all sorts and sizes, besides whispering together, and shaking their heads once and again, till I began to fear that their necks would be dislocated, they arrived at the conclusion that I was right, or thereabouts. This fact the eldest, most bald, and most stupid of the party, chosen by common consent, doubtless in virtue of these attributes, as spokesman, proceeded to communicate to me in a very prosy harangue, to which he appended a lecture—a sort of stock article, which he evidently kept constantly on hand, with blanks which could be filled up to suit any class of offenders. In this harangue he pointed out the dangers of juvenile tricks, and the evils of dissipation, winding up with the assurance that, as I seemed deeply sensible of the error of my ways, they, the magistrates, would, on my making a suitable apology to that excellent public functionary, the Mayor of Hillingford, graciously deign to overlook my misconduct. During his long-winded address a new idea struck me, and when he had concluded I inquired, with all due respect, whether 'I was to understand that it was quite certain I had committed no offence punishable by law?' To this he replied, 'that I might set my mind completely at ease upon that point; that though, morally speaking, I had been guilty of a very serious misdemeanour, in the eye of the law I was perfectly innocent'. 'In that case, gentlemen,' replied I, 'the liberty of the subject has been infringed; I have been kept in illegal confinement for some hours, and I believe I have my remedy in an action for false imprisonment against Mr. Dullmug. Does not the law bear me out in what I state?' Again they had recourse to their books, and were unwillingly forced to confess that I was right.' Then,' continued I, 'so far from making any apology to Mr. Dullmug, unless that gentleman consents to beg my pardon, and gives me a written apology for the unjust and illegal prosecution to which he has subjected me, I shall at once take the necessary steps to proceed against him.' Oh! Frank, I would have given something to have had you there, old boy! when I announced this determination; there was such a shindy as I never before witnessed: old Dullmug was furious, and vowed he'd never apologise: I declared if he didn't, nothing should prevent me from bringing my action: the magistrates tried to persuade me, but I was inflexible; and (by Jove! I was very near forgetting the best part of it all) my governor, who was in court, the moment he found the law was on my side, turned suddenly round, swore I had been shamefully used, and that if it cost him every farthing he possessed in the world, he would see justice done me. So the end of it was that old Dullmug was forced to write the apology; it now lies in my writing-desk, and I look upon it as one of the proudest trophies man ever possessed. So, Master Frank, considering all things, I think I may reckon I got pretty well out of that scrape.
“Ever your affectionate,