Chapter Thirteen.
From Real Life.
“Co-o-o-o-me orn,” said Cabby, as we sat by his side on the box—“Co-o-o-me orn. Nice sorter day this here, sir. Thanky, sir; I do draw a bit, and never sez ‘no’ to a cigar. Arter you with the light, sir. ‘Queer fares,’ sir? Ah! I gets some queer sorter fares sometimes—rum ’uns. All sorts and sizes, as the sayin’ is. Taking a poor gal to Bedlam ain’t pleasant—they do screech so. Blest if I couldn’t ha’ pitched into the keeper sometimes when I’ve heerd the poor creetur crying out as she wasn’t mad, and beggin’ and praying of him to let her go. It all seems agin natur, ’ticklar when a fellow’s a bit soft-like. It’s now a year come Martlemas as one night a flunkey comes up to the stand and picks me out, and werry glad I was, for I’d had a awful bad day. I used to drive a mare then as I called ‘Bagged Sal,’ cos of her tail; for she hadn’t got no tail—leastwise, none to speak on. She’d been a ’tillery ’oss out in the Crimee—one of them as stood in the front rank and got all the hair nibbled off, and the roots gnawed so as to spile the cemetery for the future. But she could go, she could, and get over the ground differun to this. Coome orn, will yer; that ain’t nothing! That’s one of her games, sir. She pulls up short every now and then, if I ain’t watchin’ her, jest as if she wanted to pick up suthin’ in the road. Well, sir, as I was a-saying, flunkey seems to know a horse as could go, or else he wouldn’t ha’ choosed mine, for she worn’t at all ansum as you may suppose, besides bein’ a wherritty beast, allus twitchin’ her stump of a tail outer the crupper, and laying her ears back and biting. Flunkey hails me, and I pulls outer the rank and picks him up.
“‘Drive to Cavendish Square,’ sez he.
“Now, he wasn’t a reg’lar thoroughbred flunkey, all white gloves, stockings and powder, with a long cane and crestys on his buttons, but one o’ yer pepper-an’-salt doctor’s men, all white choker and cheek, and not arf so affable as a real footman. He was one of them chaps as keeps the patients waiting in the back parly till they tips him, and then he finds out all of a sudden as the doctor ain’t engaged. Lord, sir, I’ve waited hours in Saville-Row for poor innercent creeturs as didn’t know the wally of a trifle, and so spent a hextry five shillings in cab fare.
“‘Drive to Cavendish Square,’ sez he, as big as yer please and then he begins a-whistling, and a-staring at all the gals as we passes. My lord hadn’t a word to say to me, yer know, being only a kebby, and not up to his social spear in society; but I begins to pump him a little—movin’ the handle quite gentle like at first, for he wouldn’t suck a bit; but bimeby I works him round, and out flows such a bright stream of eloquence, and he begins to tell me where we was a-going to and who we was a-going to take; and then I finds as it was a young lady to a private asylum, for she was allus a-trying to kill herself, and all through love.
“Well, we pulls up at a door with a werry large brass plate, and the doctor’s name on it in big letters, and there I waited for half an hour; when the door opens and I hears a screech as goes through me like a knife, and then they carries out a young gal with a face a’most like an angel, only all drawed and frightened looking.
“The poor thing stares quite wild, first this way and then that way; calls out ‘Hernest—Hernest—help!’ and skreeked again as they pulled up the glasses of the keb, and then Pepper-and-salt jumps up alongside me, as it might be you, sir, and ‘Drive on fast,’ he says, ‘along ’Ammersmith Road to Chiswick’—through Kensington, you know.