SWASH-BUCKLER. Bilboe's the word—PIERROT. It hath been too often, The spell hath lost its charm—I tell thee, friend, The meanest cur that the street, will turn, And against your proffer'd bastinado. SWASH-BUCKLER. 'Tis art shall do it, then—I will dose the mongrels—Or, in plain terms, I'll use the private knife 'Stead of the brandish'd falchion. Old Play.
The noble Captain Colepepper or Peppercull, for he was known by both these names, and some others besides; had a and a swashing , which, on the present occasion, was rendered yet more , by a patch covering his left eye and a part of the cheek. The sleeves of his thickset jerkin were polished and shone with grease,—his buff gloves had huge tops, which reached almost to the elbow; his sword-belt of the same materials extended its breadth from his haunchbone to his small , and supported on the one side his large black-hilted back-sword, on the other a of like proportions He paid his compliments to Nigel with that air of predetermined , which announces that it will not be by any coldness of reception, asked Trapbois how he did, by the familiar title of old Peter , and then, seizing upon the black-, emptied it off at a , to the health of the last and youngest freeman of Alsatia, the noble and loving master Nigel Grahame.
When he had set down the empty and his breath, he began to the liquor which it had lately contained.—“Sufficient single beer, old Pillory—and, as I take it, at the rate of a nutshell of malt to a of Thames—as dead as a , too, and yet it went down my throat—bubbling, by Jove, like water upon hot iron.—You left us early, noble Master Grahame, but, good faith, we had a to your honour—we heard butt ring hollow ere we parted; we were as loving as inkle-weavers—we fought, too, to finish off the gawdy. I bear some marks of the parson about me, you see—a note of the sermon or so, which should have been addressed to my ear, but missed its mark, and reached my left eye. The man of God bears my sign-manual too, but the Duke made us friends again, and it cost me more sack than I could carry, and all the Rhenish to boot, to pledge the seer in the way of love and reconciliation—But, Caracco! 'tis a old canting slave for all that, whom I will one day beat out of his devil's livery into all the colours of the rainbow.—Basta!—Said I well, old Trapbois? Where is thy daughter, man?—what says she to my suit?—'tis an honest one—wilt have a soldier for thy son-in-law, old Pillory, to the soul of martial honour with thy thieving, miching, petty-larceny blood, as men put bold brandy into muddy ale?”
“My daughter receives not company so early, noble captain,” said the usurer, and concluded his speech with a dry, emphatical “ugh, ugh.”
“What, upon no con-si-de-ra-ti-on?” said the captain; “and wherefore not, old Truepenny? she has not much time to lose in driving her bargain, methinks.”
“Captain,” said Trapbois, “I was upon some little business with our noble friend here, Master Nigel Green—ugh, ugh, ugh—”
“And you would have me gone, I warrant you?” answered the ; “but patience, old Pillory, thine hour is not yet come, man—You see,” he said, pointing to the casket, “that noble Master Grahame, whom you call Green, has got the decuses and the .”
“Which you would willingly rid him of, ha! ha!—ugh, ugh,” answered the usurer, “if you knew how—but, lack-a-day! thou art one of those that come out for wool, and art sure to go home shorn. Why now, but that I am sworn against laying of , I would risk some consideration that this honest guest of mine sends thee home penniless, if thou darest venture with him—ugh, ugh—at any game which gentlemen play at.”
“Marry, thou hast me on the there, thou old miserly cony-catcher!” answered the captain, taking a bale of from the sleeve of his coat; “I must always keep company with these damnable doctors, and they have made me every baby's cully, and my purse into an ; but never mind, it passes the time as well as aught else—How say you, Master Grahame?”
The fellow paused; but even the of his could scarcely hardly withstand the cold look of utter contempt with which Nigel received his proposal, returning it with a simple, “I only play where I know my company, and never in the morning.”
“Cards may be more agreeable,” said Captain Colepepper; “and, for knowing your company, here is honest old Pillory will tell you Jack Colepepper plays as truly on the square as e'er a man that trowled a die—Men talk of high and low dice, Fulhams and , topping, knapping, , stabbing, and a hundred ways of rooking besides; but me like a rasher of bacon, if I could ever learn the trick on 'em!”
“You have got the vocabulary perfect, sir, at the least,” said Nigel, in the same cold tone.
“Yes, by mine honour have I,” returned the Hector; “they are phrases that a gentleman learns about town.—But perhaps you would like a set at tennis, or a game at balloon—we have an indifferent good court hard by here, and a set of as gentleman-like blades as ever banged leather against brick and .”
“I beg to be excused at present,” said Lord Glenvarloch; “and to be plain, among the valuable privileges your society has conferred on me, I hope I may reckon that of being private in my own apartment when I have a mind.”
“Your servant, sir,” said the captain; “and I thank you for your civility—Jack Colepepper can have enough of company, and thrusts himself on no one.—But perhaps you will like to make a match at skittles?”
“I am by no means that way disposed,” replied the young nobleman,
“Or to leap a flea—run a snail—match a wherry, eh?”
“No—I will do none of these,” answered Nigel.
Here the old man, who had been watching with his little peery eyes, pulled the bulky Hector by the skirt, and whispered, “Do not vapour him the huff, it will not pass—let the play, he will rise to the hook presently.”
But the bully, in his own strength, and probably mistaking for timidity the patient scorn with which Nigel received his proposals, also by the open casket, began to assume a louder and more threatening tone. He drew himself up, his brows, assumed a look of professional ferocity, and continued, “In Alsatia, look ye, a man must be neighbourly and companionable. Zouns! sir, we would any nose that was turned up at us honest fellows.—Ay, sir, we would slit it up to the gristle, though it had smelt nothing all its life but , ambergris, and court-scented water.—Rabbit me, I am a soldier, and care no more for a lord than a lamplighter!”
“Are you seeking a quarrel, sir?” said Nigel, calmly, having in truth no desire to engage himself in a discreditable broil in such a place, and with such a character.
“Quarrel, sir?” said the captain; “I am not seeking a quarrel, though I care not how soon I find one. Only I wish you to understand you must be neighbourly, that's all. What if we should go over the water to the garden, and see a bull hanked this fine morning—'sdeath, will you do nothing?”
“Something I am strangely to do at this moment,” said Nigel.
“Videlicet,” said Colepepper, with a swaggering air, “let us hear the temptation.”
“I am tempted to throw you headlong from the window, unless you presently make the best of your way down stairs.”
“Throw me from the window?—hell and furies!” exclaimed the captain; “I have confronted twenty sabres at Buda with my single rapier, and shall a chitty-faced, beggarly Scots lordling, speak of me and a window in the same breath?—Stand off, old Pillory, let me make collops of him—he dies the death!”
“For the love of Heaven, gentlemen,” exclaimed the old , throwing himself between them, “do not break the peace on any consideration! Noble guest, forbear the captain—he is a very Hector of Troy—Trusty Hector, forbear my guest, he is like to prove a very Achilles-ugh-ugh——”
Here he was interrupted by his , but, nevertheless, continued to interpose his person between Colepepper (who had unsheathed his whinyard, and was making vain passes at his ) and Nigel, who had stepped back to take his sword, and now held it undrawn in his left hand.
“Make an end of this foolery, you scoundrel!” said Nigel—“Do you come hither to your noisy oaths and your bottled-up valour on me? You seem to know me, and I am half ashamed to say I have at length been able to you—remember the garden behind the ordinary,—you dastardly ruffian, and the speed with which fifty men saw you run from a drawn sword.—Get you gone, sir, and do not put me to the vile labour of cudgelling such a cowardly down stairs.”
The bully's grew dark as night at this unexpected recognition; for he had thought himself secure in his change of dress, and his black patch, from being discovered by a person who had seen him but once. He set his teeth, his hands, and it seemed as if he was seeking for a moment's courage to fly upon his antagonist. But his heart failed, he his sword, turned his back in gloomy silence, and spoke not until he reached the door, when, turning round, he said, with a deep oath, “If I be not of you for this ere many days go by, I would the had my body and the devil my spirit!”
So saying, and with a look where spite and made his features fierce, though they could not overcome his fear, he turned and left the house. Nigel followed him as far as the gallery at the head of the staircase, with the purpose of seeing him depart, and ere he returned was met by Mistress Martha Trapbois, whom the noise of the quarrel had summoned from her own apartment. He could not resist saying to her in his natural displeasure—“I would, madam, you could teach your father and his friends the lesson which you had the goodness to on me this morning, and prevail on them to leave me the unmolested privacy of my own apartment.”
“If you came hither for quiet or , young man,” answered she, “you have been advised to an evil retreat. You might seek mercy in the Star-, or holiness in hell, with better success than quiet in Alsatia. But my father shall trouble you no longer.”
So saying, she entered the apartment, and, fixing her eyes on the casket, she said with emphasis—“If you display such a loadstone, it will draw many a steel knife to your throat.”
While Nigel hastily shut the casket, she addressed her father, him, with small , for keeping company with the cowardly, hectoring, murdering , John Colepepper.
“Ay, ay, child,” said the old man, with the cunning leer which intimated perfect satisfaction with his own superior address—“I know—I know—ugh—but I'll crossbite him—I know them all, and I can manage them—ay, ay—I have the trick on't—ugh-ugh.”
“You manage, father!” said the damsel; “you will manage to have your throat cut, and that ere long. You cannot hide from them your gains and your gold as .”
“My gains, wench? my gold?” said the usurer; “alack-a-day, few of these and hard got—few and hard got.”
“This will not serve you, father, any longer,” said she, “and had not served you thus long, but that Bully Colepepper had a cheaper way of your house, even by means of my self.—But why do I speak to him of all this,” she said, checking herself, and shrugging her shoulders with an expression of pity which did not fall much short of scorn. “He hears me not—he thinks not of me.—Is it not strange that the love of gold should survive the care to preserve both property and life?”
“Your father,” said Lord Glenvarloch, who could not help respecting the strong sense and feeling shown by this poor woman, even amidst all her rudeness and severity, “your father seems to have his alert when he is in the exercise of his ordinary pursuits and functions. I wonder he is not sensible of the weight of your arguments.”
“Nature made him a man senseless of danger, and that insensibility is the best thing I have from him,” said she; “age has left him shrewdness enough to tread his old beaten paths, but not to seek new courses. The old blind horse will long continue to go its rounds in the mill, when it would stumble in the open meadow.”
“Daughter!—why, wench—why, housewife!” said the old man, out of some dream, in which he had been and in imagination, probably over a successful piece of roguery,—“go to chamber, wench—go to chamber—draw bolts and chain—look sharp to door—let none in or out but worshipful Master Grahame—I must take my cloak, and go to Duke Hildebrod—ay, ay, time has been, my own warrant was enough; but the lower we lie, the more are we under the wind.”
And, with his wonted chorus of muttering and coughing, the old man left the apartment. His daughter stood for a moment looking after him, with her usual expression of discontent and sorrow.
“You ought to persuade your father,” said Nigel, “to leave this evil neighbourhood, if you are in reality for his safety.”
“He would be safe in no other quarter,” said the daughter; “I would rather the old man were dead than publicly . In other quarters he would be and pursued, like an which ventures into sunshine. Here he was safe, while his comrades could avail themselves of his talents; he is now squeezed and fleeced by them on every . They consider him as a on the , from which each may snatch a ; and the very which they entertain respecting him as a common property, may perhaps induce them to guard him from more private and daring assaults.”
“Still, methinks, you ought to leave this place,” answered Nigel, “since you might find a safe retreat in some distant country.”
“In Scotland, doubtless,” said she, looking at him with a sharp and suspicious eye, “and enrich strangers with our rescued wealth—Ha! young man?”
“Madam, if you knew me,” said Lord Glenvarloch, “you would spare the suspicion implied in your words.”
“Who shall assure me of that?” said Martha, sharply. “They say you are a and a gamester, and I know how far these are to be trusted by the unhappy.”
“They do me wrong, by Heaven!” said Lord Glenvarloch.
“It may be so,” said Martha; “I am little interested in the degree of your or your ; but it is plain, that the one or the other has conducted you hither, and that your best hope of peace, safety, and happiness, is to be gone, with the least possible delay, from a place which is always a sty for swine, and often a .” So saying, she left the apartment.
There was something in the ungracious manner of this female, amounting almost to contempt of him she spoke to—an to which Glenvarloch, notwithstanding his poverty, had not as yet been personally exposed, and which, therefore, gave him a transitory feeling of painful surprise. Neither did the dark hints which Martha threw out concerning the danger of his place of refuge, sound by any means agreeably to his ears. The bravest man, placed in a situation in which he is surrounded by suspicious persons, and removed from all counsel and assistance, except those afforded by a heart and a strong arm, experiences a sinking of the spirit, a consciousness of abandonment, which for a moment chills his blood, and depresses his natural gallantry of .
But, if sad reflections arose in Nigel's mind, he had not time to indulge them; and, if he s............