"You will excuse me," I said to my companion, "for remarking that when you addressed the individual sitting on the porcelain stool, with his head in his lap, your ordinarily benevolent features"--(this I confess was a bouncer, for between ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking rascal than Mons. P. I have seldom set eyes on)--"your ordinarily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you went up to the cei--, pardon me, as I THOUGHT you did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers"; and I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble; I did not care to offend the man--I did not DARE to offend the man. I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of speaking to a policeman, but not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I COULD not get away from him. So, you see, I went on meanly conversing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence. I remember, when I was a little boy at school, going up fawning and smiling in this way to some great hulking bully of a sixth-form boy. So I said in a word, "Your ordinarily handsome face wore a disagreeable expression," &c.
"It is ordinarily VERY handsome," said he, with such a leer at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, "Oh, crickey, here's a precious guy!" and a child, in its nurse's arms, screamed itself into convulsions. "Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau, cerdainement," continued Mr. Pinto; "but you were right. That--that person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no love lost between us, as you say: and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. I hate him, voyez-vous? I hated him alife; I hate him dead. I hate him man; I hate him ghost: and he know it, and tremble before me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence--and why not?--I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was dressed?"
"In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder. He must have worn a pigtail--only--"
"Only it was CUT OFF! Ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Pinto cried, yelling a laugh, which I observed made the policeman stare very much. "Yes.
It was cut off by the same blow which took off the scoundrel's head--ho, ho, ho!" And he made a circle with his hook-nailed finger round his own yellow neck, and grinned with a horrible triumph. "I promise you that fellow was surprised when he found his head in the pannier. Ha! ha! Do you ever cease to hate those whom you hate?"--fire flashed terrifically from his glass eye as he spoke--"or to love dose whom you once loved? Oh, never, never!"
And here his natural eye was bedewed with tears. "But here we are at the 'Gray's-Inn CoffeeHouse.' James, what is the joint?"
That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in the bill of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork, and pease pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as anything else; though I remarked he only trifled with the pease pudding, and left all the pork on the plate. In fact, he scarcely ate anything.
But he drank a prodigious quantity of wine; and I must say that my friend Mr. Hart's port wine is so good that I myself took--well, I should think, I took three glasses. Yes, three, certainly. HE--I mean Mr. P.--the old rogue, was insatiable: for we had to call for a second bottle in no time. When that was gone, my companion wanted another. A little red mounted up to his yellow cheeks as he drank the wine, and he winked at it in a strange manner. "I remember," said he, musing, "when port wine was scarcely drunk in this country--though the Queen liked it, and so did Hurley; but Bolingbroke didn't--he drank Florence and Champagne. Dr. Swift put water to his wine. 'Jonathan,' I once said to him--but bah! autres temps, autres moeurs. Another magnum, James."
This was all very well. "My good sir," I said, "it may suit YOU to order bottles of '20 port, at a guinea a bottle; but that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have thirty-four and sixpence in my pocket, of which I want a shilling for the waiter, and eighteen pence for my cab. You rich foreigners and SWELLS may spend what you like" (I had him there: for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes man's); "but a man with a family, Mr. Whatd'you-call'im, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone."
"Bah!" he said. "Nunkey pays for all, as you say. I will what you call stant the dinner, if you are SO POOR!" and again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious crook-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But I was not so afraid of him now, for we were in a public place; and the three glasses of port wine had, you see, given me courage.
"What a pretty snuff-box!" he remarked, as I handed him mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me. "Yes; a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies--most ladies, carried a box--nay, two boxes--tabatiere and bonbonniere. What lady carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!--ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee then? Do I not see thee still?"
This was passing strange. My ancestress--but there is no need to publish her revered name--did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's, where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world.
