The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore, bart., M.P., formerly known as «Tommy Upmore». Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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СКАЧАТЬ it the sea, because you can't see it. Or if you do, you can't see anything else. I would much rather have a good London fog. Go to sleep, boy; and don't keep jerking at my legs so."

      My father had been out of sorts for some time, which had made it desirable that he should come away, even without any summons against him. His appetite was queer, and he wanted setting up. Before Mr. Windsor came urging him so, I heard him say to mother,

      "A leg of mutton goes twice with me now; and I call that a very serious sign."

      "Then be more free-handed with your money," answered mother.

      And now he was touchy, because poor Grip though accustomed to living in a tub at school, was aggrieved at the box which the Company provided for dogs on their travels, and expressed his grief in a howl, that out-howled the engine. His chest was capacious, and his lungs elastic, his heart also of the finest order; and for these gifts of nature, my father condemned him!

      "Now, rouse up, rouse up, everybody;" father shouted, as if we had all been asleep – which he alone had been, in spite of Grip– when the bus from the "Happystowe Road," (which was five or six miles from the genuine Happystowe) pulled up, in a ring of newly planted trees, and in front of a porch with square pillars to it. "Tommy, look sharp, and count all our boxes in. Put them down in Latin, if it comes more easy. Sophy, accept my arm, up the steps; never pretend to be younger than you are. Mrs. Roaker, we are come to spend a week with you if agreeable, and not too expensive."

      "Mr. Upmore!" said mother, in a tone of quiet dignity, such as she had heard Mrs. Windsor use; "as if a few pounds made any difference to you! We are out for the holidays, and we mean to have them."

      "Then the thing to begin with is a rattling good dinner," father answered, without any dignity at all; "bless my – something the dinner goes into, Mrs. Roaker, – if it isn't going on for seven o'clock! And nothing all the way, but hard boiled eggs, and a cold duck, and ham sandwiches. I never was so hungry in all my life; starving is the proper word for it. What can we have for dinner, ma'am, and what is the shortest time for it?"

      "Anything you please to name, sir;" said the landlady, who understood things; "and the time will naturally depend upon the nature of the plats you order."

      "No foreign kickshaws, and no French plates, for me, ma'am! A pair of fried soles, and a bit of roast mutton, hot from the fire, and a cold apple-pie. Sophy, can you think of anything else you want?"

      "Can we have a bedroom with a fine sea view?" My mother had been pensive all day, and religious, because of leaving home, and of the dangers of the train. "We have not seen the sea yet, Mrs. Roaker, to our certain knowledge. You must not suppose us to be any sort of Cockneys; and indeed we live quite outside of London, in a beautiful place, with green fields round it; still we are what you may call inlanders, and we feel a kind of interest in the sea."

      "Sophy, you had better order dinner, after that;" said my father, very shortly; "now, Tommy, you be off. I am not going out, till I've had my dinner. But I can't stand any more of your plague about the sea. Find somebody to show you where it is; or you ought to find it out, by the row it makes. I hear a noise now, like an engine with the steam slack. But don't tumble into it, when you find it; though you never were born to be drowned, that I'll swear."

      Without any answer to this cut at me, – which I did not deserve, as old Rum could have told him – I whistled for Grip, who was looking about, after running all the way from the station, for any dog anxious to insult him; and as soon as he came, and made a jump at me, we set off together without more ado, to find out where the sea was, by the noise it made; of which I was beginning now to read in Homer.

      CHAPTER IX.

      THALATTA!

      It was five years now, since I had first gone up, (without any intention of doing so) from the surface of the earth into the regions of the air, through the sudden expansion of my heart and system, at the thought of three days' holiday. In the interval, there had been times of elation and elevation, when it was difficult for me to keep down, and the mere shake of an elbow would have sent me up. And among them, I recollect one Christmas-eve, when there was a hard frost on, and the people at the Hampstead ponds were skating, and the ice was all green for boys to slide on, and the trees on the hill were all feathered with snow, and Jack Windsor came up to me, and said, "plum-pudding for dinner, at your house, Tommy; I smelled it, as I came up the Lane" – I was all on the flutter to fly, and astonish the people, who were putting skates on; and I could not have helped it – for there was nothing to lay hold of – if Grip (who was full of my bodily welfare) had not laid hold of me by the tails of the scarlet comforter, which mother had knotted so tightly, that I could not get it off.

      "Get away, you vile dog! Go up, Tommy," Jack Windsor cried, and would gladly have kicked Grip, if prudence had permitted it; "oh, Tommy, do go up; I have heard so much about it, and I'd give anything to see you fly!"

      For my part, I was not at all afraid; my feet were off the ground, and there is very little doubt, that I should have escaped from the comforter, and Grip, if Jack had not made such a stupid fuss about it.

      "Halloa there! What are you boys doing?" A heavy policeman came grumbling along, without any sense of the situation; "if you don't move on, and take that beast of a dog further, I'll walk you pretty quick to the station."

      "331 V.," answered Jack, who inherited his mother's lofty style, "if you knew who we are, you'd employ your cheek to keep your tongue in, and save me the trouble of reporting you."

      The constable pretended not to hear him; but the whole of my volatile power was gone – so sensitive has it always been – and instead of going up to the sky, I was glad to sit down upon the broad back of the faithful dog.

      And now, I can assure you, and you will readily believe it, that having been plagued so long by boys, (and grown-up people, quite as troublesome, at times) concerning what had happened to me, at an early age, and being rebuked, and jeered, and scoffed at – sometimes for having this gift, and sometimes for not making more of it, and sometimes for setting up a false claim to it – young as I was, I had thought a good deal, and made up my mind, in fifty different ways, about it.

      But though my conclusions perpetually varied, there was one grain of wisdom to be found in all. It had pleased Heaven, to afflict me with an unusually light corporeal part, and then to relieve that affliction, in some measure, by the gift of a buoyant and complacent mind; so that I was able – unless a bad cold, or measles, or mumps, or chilblains stopped me – to be hopeful that all would turn out for the best, and to keep my nature boyish, throughout a boyhood of some perplexity.

      Grip, though faithful, and sage, as almost all the patriarchs put together, might still be considered a juvenile dog, by those who dwell chiefly on the right side of things. To say that his heart was still in the right place, would be little less than an insult to him, and to the great race of which he was one; but it is not so wholly a matter of course, that his mind was still ardent, and his spirit lofty. Very few "Scientists" of any candour could have looked at Grip, when prepared for battle (with his ears pricked up, and his neck on the rasp, and his tail set with stiffening bulges) without finding a nobler result of evolution, and a likelier survival, than their own.

      His thankful spirit had not yet exhausted the joys of freedom from the Railway box; and perhaps – though it is not for me to say it – the Happystowe air was more mercurial than that of our works, which confined his meditations too persistently to one theme – bone. But let that pass; it is quite impossible to explain everything that happens; all I know is that Grip set off from the porch of the Twentifold Arms Hotel, with a flourish, and a scurry, and a gambol of delight. With a gentle breeze moving behind me, I started, to catch him and get the first СКАЧАТЬ