At Molesey I had friends who knew every item of what happened there; and they soon convinced me that no young woman weeping for her father’s recent loss was likely to have quitted that good village, east or west, at the time in question. Therefore Phil Moggs had been deceived, whether by his passenger or others, as to that part of the story.
I was greatly surprised to find how little the general mind of Molesey seemed to be concerned about my case. Few seemed even to have heard of it; and the few who did know something knew it all amiss, or had put it so, by their own imaginations. Indeed I could scarcely have guessed that the story, as recounted there, had aught to do with my poor humble self. Even Uncle Corny—great in fame at Sunbury, and even Hampton,—was but as a pinch of sand flung from a balloon, to these heavy dwellers in Surrey!
CHAPTER XLIX.
CRAFTY, AND SIMPLE.
Does it lighten a man’s calamities, or does it increase their burden, to know that they are spread abroad and talked of by his fellow-men? No man wishes to be famous for his evil fortune; and as for pity, he is apt to be alike resentful, whether it is granted or denied. But that is quite another point. Without a bit of selfishness, and looking at their own interests only, I certainly had a right to complain that an outrage which must move the heart of every honest husband, and thrill the gentler bosom of his faithful wife, had scarcely stirred a single pulse at Molesey; just because the river ran between us. None of the papers (except one that we subscribed to, at an outlay of four and fourpence per annum) had taken up my case with any fervour; as sometimes they do, when there is nothing in it, like a terrier shaking a skull-cap. This depends on chance; and all chances hitherto had crossed their legs against me, so that I could bring forth no sound counsel.
When I told my uncle of my last suspicion, and that I could go no further with it, because of the stubbornness of Phil Moggs he became so enraged that I saw he was right.
“What!” he exclaimed—“that old hunks dare to refuse any further information! I wonder you did not take him by the neck, and hoist him clean over the tail of his Duchess. No doubt you would have done it without the young lady. He would never dare to try it on with me. Why I knew him when he dug lob-worms at the Hook. He has forgotten me, I daresay. Well, I’ll remind him. You shall pull me up there to-morrow morning. One way or the other, we’ll crack his eggshell. I could never have believed it of him.”
It did not concern me to inquire; but so far as I could make out what my uncle meant, he was not at all pleased with Mr. Moggs for having got on in the world so well. No man can satisfy his friends in that respect; unless he makes so big a jump that he can lift them also, and even so he never does it to their satisfaction.
“To think of that fellow,” my dear uncle grumbled, all the way to Shepperton, “owning half a dozen boats, and calling one of them the Duchess! Why, I gave him an old pair of breeches once, that he might not be had up for indecency. And now he calls my nephew, ‘Mr. What’s your name!’ Do you know who his wife was? No, of course you don’t. But I do. Why, she was in the stoke-holes at old Steers’, the pineapple grower at Teddington. And no one knew whether she was a boy or a girl, with a sack and four holes in it, for her arms and legs. But what a lot of money they made then! He sold all his pines at five guineas apiece to George the Fourth, and sometimes he got the money. Ah, there will never be such days again. You must scrimp and scrape, and load back from the mews, and pay a shilling, where they used to pay you to take it. But here we are! Let him try his tricks with me.”
Unluckily my uncle got no chance of terrifying Mr. Moggs, as he intended. We landed at a very pretty slab-faced cottage, covered with vines and Virginia creepers, and my uncle began to shout—“Moggs, Phil Moggs!” quite as if he were a Thames Commissioner. But no Moggs answered, nor did any one appear, till my uncle seized a boat-hook, and thundered at the door. Then a very respectable-looking woman, with a pleasant face and fine silver hair, came and asked who we were, and showed us in. She seemed to know my uncle very well, though he was not at all certain about her.