The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ months before, when Swishtail was in the custom of belabouring him with his great cane.

      Jack’s talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: how he had ridden a steeplechase with Captain Boldero, and licked him at the last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel with Sir George Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a ball. ‘I soon made the baronet know what it was to deal with a man of the N—th,’ said Jack. ‘Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my barkers, and talked of fighting across the mess-room table, Grig turned as pale as a sheet, or as——’

      ‘Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up,’ piped out little Hicks, the foundation-boy.

      It was beneath Jack’s dignity to thrash anybody now but a grown-up baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general titter which was raised at his expense. However, he entertained us with his histories about lords and ladies, and So-and-so ‘of ours,’ until we thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty’s service, and until the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, we got our books together, and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you he revenged himself on us for Jack’s contempt of him. I got that day at least twenty cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet Attwood, of the N—th Dragoons.

      When we came to think more coolly over our quondam school-fellow’s swaggering talk and manners, we were not quite so impressed by his merits as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great friends, had been close companions: I was Jack’s form-fellow (we fought with amazing emulation for the last place in the class); but still I was rather hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our former intimacy, in his steeplechases with Captain Boldero and his duel with Sir George Grig.

      Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came down to C——, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of his customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers and jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some magnificent rumour would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore away, Jack’s image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or to think about my college chum.

      A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the Estaminet du Grand Balcon, an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking, thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite to me, at the little marble table, and called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence or the appearance of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose to examine me. At last he thrust a great greasy hand across the table, and said, ‘Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?’

      I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to see us at C—— school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionaire, or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands; recollect how you shook Lord Dash’s hand the other day, and how you shook off poor Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you.

      

      However, the genial influence of the hollands speedily dissipated anything like coolness between us; and, in the course of an hour’s conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking all the play-banks in Europe—a great number of old tricks;—and a vast quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact, did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.—Only, on the next morning I did not possess a certain five-pound note, which on the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest drawing, by the way, in the collection); but there, instead, was a strip of paper, thus inscribed:

      ‘IOU

       Five Pounds. John Attwood, Late of the N—th Dragoons.’

      I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances, the note was of much more consequence to me.

      As I lay, cursing my ill-fortune, and thinking how on earth I should manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little garret—his face strangely flushed—singing and shouting as if it had been the night before. ‘Titmarsh,’ cried he, ‘you are my preserver!—my best friend! Look here, and here, and here!’ And at every word Mr. Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than either silver or gold;—he had won thirteen thousand francs after leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before, although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for cheating me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better for him had he never seen a shilling of it.

      However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin; and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to settling my share of the reckoning.

      Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs and boarding-houses of the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudry, and Madame la Comtesse de Don Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who keep a société choisie, and condescend to give dinners at five francs a head, vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the wing of the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the place at the écarté table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur d’Albion. Jack’s society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor, in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, dare-devil, Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each arm.

      It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but for some time, his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower, seemed always to maintain СКАЧАТЬ