Stories of Comedy - - (best book club books of all time TXT) 📗
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As for Captain Blackbeard, his rage and indignation may be imagined; a wife robbed from him, his honor put in question by an odious, lanky, squinting lawyer! He fell ill of a fever incontinently; and the surgeon was obliged to take a quantity of blood from him, ten times the amount of which he swore he would have out of the veins of the atrocious Sly.
The announcement in "The Mercury," however, filled the widow with almost equal indignation. "The widow of the gallant Bluebeard," she said, "marry an odious wretch who lives in dingy chambers in the Middle Temple! Send for Dr. Sly." The doctor came; she rated him soundly, asked him how he dared set abroad such calumnies concerning her; ordered him to send his nephew back to London at once; and as he valued her esteem, as he valued the next presentation to a fat living which lay in her gift, to contradict everywhere, and in the fullest terms, the wicked report concerning her.
"My dearest madam," said the doctor, pulling his longest face, "you shall be obeyed. The poor lad shall be acquainted with the fatal change in your sentiments!"
"Change in my sentiments, Dr. Sly!"
"With the destruction of his hopes, rather let me say; and Heaven grant that the dear boy have strength to bear up against the misfortune which comes so suddenly upon him!"
The next day Sister Anne came with a face full of care to Mrs. Bluebeard. "O, that unhappy lover of yours!" said she.
"Is the captain unwell?" exclaimed the widow.
"No, it is the other," answered Sister Anne. "Poor, poor Mr. Sly! He made a will leaving you all, except five pounds a year to his laundress: he made his will, locked his door, took heart-rending leave of his uncle at night, and this morning was found hanging at his bedpost when Sambo, the black servant, took him up his water to shave. 'Let me be buried,' he said, 'with the pincushion she gave me and the locket containing her hair.' Did you give him a pincushion, sister? did you give him a locket with your hair?"
"It was only silver-gilt!" sobbed the widow; "and now, O Heavens! I have killed him!" The heart-rending nature of her sobs may be imagined; but they were abruptly interrupted by her sister.
"Killed him?—no such thing! Sambo cut him down when he was as black in the face as the honest negro himself. He came down to breakfast, and I leave you to fancy what a touching meeting took place between the nephew and the uncle."
"So much love!" thought the widow. "What a pity he squints so! If he would but get his eyes put straight, I might perhaps—" She did not finish the sentence: ladies often leave this sort of sentence in a sweet confusion.
But hearing some news regarding Captain Blackbeard, whose illness and blood-letting were described to her most pathetically, as well as accurately, by the Scotch surgeon of the regiment, her feelings of compassion towards the lawyer cooled somewhat; and when Dr. Sly called to know if she would condescend to meet the unhappy youth, she said in rather a distrait manner, that she wished him every happiness; that she had the highest regard and respect for him; that she besought him not to think any more of committing the dreadful crime which would have made her unhappy forever; but that she thought, for the sake of both parties, they had better not meet until Mr. Sly's feelings had grown somewhat more calm.
"Poor fellow! poor fellow!" said the doctor, "may he be enabled to bear his frightful calamity! I have taken away his razors from him, and Sambo, my man, never lets him out of his sight."
The next day, Mrs. Bluebeard thought of sending a friendly message to Dr. Sly's, asking for news of the health of his nephew; but, as she was giving her orders on that subject to John Thomas the footman, it happened that the captain arrived, and so Thomas was sent down stairs again. And the captain looked so delightfully interesting with his arm in a sling, and his beautiful black whiskers curling round a face which was paler than usual, that, at the end of two hours, the widow forgot the message altogether, and, indeed, I believe, asked the captain whether he would not stop and dine. Ensign Trippet came, too, and the party was very pleasant; and the military gentlemen laughed hugely at the idea of the lawyer having been cut off the bedpost by the black servant, and were so witty on the subject, that the widow ended by half believing that the bedpost and hanging scheme on the part of Mr. Sly was only a feint,—a trick to win her heart. Though this, to be sure, was not agreed to by the lady without a pang, for, entre nous, to hang one's self for a lady is no small compliment to her attractions, and, perhaps, Mrs. Bluebeard was rather disappointed at the notion that the hanging was not a bona fide strangulation.
However, presently her nerves were excited again; and she was consoled or horrified, as the case may be (the reader must settle the point according to his ideas and knowledge of womankind),—she was at any rate dreadfully excited by the receipt of a billet in the well-known clerk-like hand of Mr. Sly. It ran thus:—
"I saw you through your dining-room windows. You were hob-nobbing with Captain Blackbeard. You looked rosy and well. You smiled. You drank off the champagne at a single draught.
"I can bear it no more. Live on, smile on, and be happy. My ghost shall repine, perhaps, at your happiness with another,—but in life I should go mad were I to witness it.
"It is best that I should be gone.
"When you receive this, tell my uncle to drag the fish-pond at the end of Bachelor's Acre. His black servant Sambo accompanies me, it is true. But Sambo shall perish with me should his obstinacy venture to restrain me from my purpose. I know the poor fellow's honesty well, but I also know my own despair.
"Sambo will leave a wife and seven children. Be kind to those orphan mulattoes for the sake of
"Frederick."
The widow gave a dreadful shriek, and interrupted the two captains, who were each just in the act of swallowing a bumper of claret. "Fly—fly—save him," she screamed; "save him, monsters, ere it is too late! Drowned!—Frederick!—Bachelor's Wa—" Syncope took place, and the rest of the sentence was interrupted.
Deucedly disappointed at being obliged to give up their wine, the two heroes seized their cocked hats, and went towards the spot which the widow in her wild exclamations of despair had sufficiently designated.
Trippet was for running to the fish-pond at the rate of ten miles an hour.
"Take it easy, my good fellow," said Captain Blackbeard; "running is unwholesome after dinner. And, if that squinting scoundrel of a lawyer does drown himself, I sha'n't sleep any the worse." So the two gentlemen walked very leisurely on towards the Bachelor's Walk; and, indeed, seeing on their way thither Major Macabaw looking out of the window at his quarters and smoking a cigar, they went up stairs to consult the major, as also a bottle of Schiedam he had.
"They come not!" said the widow, when restored to herself. "O Heavens! grant that Frederick is safe! Sister Anne, go up to the leads and look if anybody is coming." And up, accordingly, to the garrets Sister Anne mounted. "Do you see anybody coming, Sister Anne?"
"I see Dr. Drench's little boy," said Sister Anne; "he is leaving a pill and draught at Miss Molly Grub's."
"Dearest Sister Anne, don't you see any one coming?" shouted the widow once again.
"I see a flock of dust—no! a cloud of sheep. Pshaw! I see the London coach coming in. There are three outsides, and the guard has flung a parcel to Mrs. Jenkins's maid."
"Distraction! Look once more, Sister Anne."
"I see a crowd,—a shutter,—a shutter with a man on it,—a beadle,—forty little boys,—Gracious goodness! what can it be?" and down stairs tumbled Sister Anne, and was looking out of the parlor-window by her sister's side, when the crowd she had perceived from the garret passed close by them.
At the head walked the beadle, slashing about at the little boys.
Two scores of these followed and surrounded
A SHUTTER carried by four men.
On the shutter lay Frederick! He was ghastly pale; his hair was draggled over his face; his clothes stuck tight to him on account of the wet; streams of water gurgled down the shutter-sides. But he was not dead! He turned one eye round towards the window where Mrs. Bluebeard sat, and gave her a look which she never could forget.
Sambo brought up the rear of the procession. He was quite wet through; and, if anything would have put his hair out of curl, his ducking would have done so. But, as he was not a gentleman, he was allowed to walk home on foot, and, as he passed the widow's window, he gave her one dreadful glance with his goggling black eyes, and moved on, pointing with his hands to the shutter.
John Thomas the footman was instantly despatched to Dr. Sly's to have news of the patient. There was no shilly-shallying now. He came back in half an hour to say that Mr. Frederick flung himself into Bachelor's Acre fish-pond with Sambo, had been dragged out with difficulty, had been put to bed, and had a pint of white wine whey, and was pretty comfortable. "Thank Heaven!" said the widow, and gave John Thomas a seven-shilling piece, and sat down with a lightened heart to tea. "What a heart!" said she to Sister Anne. "And O, what a pity it is that he squints!"
Here the two captains arrived. They had not been to the Bachelor's Walk; they had remained at Major Macabaw's consulting the Schiedam. They had made up their minds what to say. "Hang the fellow! he will never have the pluck to drown himself," said Captain Blackbeard. "Let us argue on that, as we may safely."
"My sweet lady," said he, accordingly, "we have had the pond dragged. No Mr. Sly. And the fisherman who keeps the punt assures us that he has not been there all day."
"Audacious falsehood!" said the widow, her eyes flashing fire. "Go, heartless man! who dares to trifle thus with the feelings of a respectable and unprotected woman. Go, sir, you're only fit for the love of a—Dolly—Coddlins!" She pronounced the Coddlins with a withering sarcasm that struck the captain aghast; and, sailing out of the room, she left her tea untasted, and did not wish either of the military gentlemen good night.
But, gentles, an' ye know the delicate fibre of woman's heart, ye will not in very sooth believe that such events as those we have described—such tempests of passion—fierce winds of woe—blinding lightnings of tremendous joy and tremendous grief—could pass over one frail flower and leave it all unscathed. No! Grief kills as joy doth. Doth not the scorching sun nip the rose-bud as well as the bitter wind? As Mrs. Sigourney sweetly sings:—
"Ah! the heart is a soft and a delicate thing;
Ah! the heart is a lute with a thrilling string;
A spirit that floats on a gossamer's wing!"
Such was Fatima's heart. In a word, the preceding events had
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