Peveril of the Peak

CHAPTER XXVII

——This is some creature of the elements,
Most like your sea-gull. He can wheel and whistle
His screaming song, e'en when the storm is loudest—
Take for his sheeted couch the restless foam
Of the wild wave-crest—slumber in the calm,
And daily with the storm. Yet 'tis a gull,
An arrant gull, with all this.

—THE CHAMPION.

'And here is to thee,' said the fashionable gallant whom we have described, 'honest Tom; and a cup of welcome to thee out of Looby-land. Why, thou hast been so long in the country, that thou hast got a bumpkinly clod-compelling sort of look thyself. That greasy doublet fits thee as if it were thy reserved Sunday's apparel; and the points seem as if they were stay-laces bought for thy true-love Marjory. I marvel thou canst still relish a ragout. Methinks now, to a stomach bound in such a jacket, eggs and bacon were a diet more conforming.'

'Rally away, my good lord, while wit lasts,' answered his companion; 'yours is not the sort of ammunition which will bear much expenditure. Or rather, tell me news from Court, since we have met so opportunely.'

'You would have asked me these an hour ago,' said the lord, 'had not your very soul been under Chaubert's covered dishes. You remembered King's affairs will keep cool, and entre-mets must be eaten hot.'

'Not so, my lord; I only kept common talk whilst that eavesdropping rascal of a landlord was in the room; so that, now the coast is clear once more, I pray you for news from Court.'

'The Plot is nonsuited,' answered the courtier—'Sir George Wakeman acquitted—the witnesses discredited by the jury—Scroggs, who ranted on one side, is now ranting on t'other.'

'Rat the Plot, Wakeman, witnesses, Papists, and Protestants, all together! Do you think I care for such trash as that?—Till the Plot comes up the Palace backstair, and gets possession of old Rowley's own imagination, I care not a farthing who believes or disbelieves. I hang by him will bear me out.'

'Well, then,' said the lord, 'the next news is Rochester's disgrace.'

'Disgraced!—How, and for what? The morning I came off he stood as fair as any one.'

'That's over—the epitaph[12] has broken his neck—and now he may write one for his own Court favour, for it is dead and buried.'

'The epitaph!' exclaimed Tom; 'why, I was by when it was made; and it passed for an excellent good jest with him whom it was made upon.'

'Ay, so it did amongst ourselves,' answered his companion; 'but it got abroad, and had a run like a mill-race. It was in every coffee-house, and in half the diurnals. Grammont translated it into French too; and there is no laughing at so sharp a jest, when it is dinned into your ears on all sides. So disgraced is the author; and but for his Grace of Buckingham, the Court would be as dull as my Lord Chancellor's wig.'

'Or as the head it covers.—Well, my lord, the fewer at Court, there is the more room for those that can bustle there. But there are two mainstrings of Shaftesbury's fiddle broken—the Popish Plot fallen into discredit— and Rochester disgraced. Changeful times—but here is to the little man who shall mend them.'

'I apprehend you,' replied his lordship; 'and meet your health with my love. Trust me, my lord loves you, and longs for you.—Nay, I have done you reason.—By your leave, the cup is with me. Here is to his buxom Grace of Bucks.'

'As blithe a peer,' said Smith, 'as ever turned night to day. Nay, it shall be an overflowing bumper, an you will; and I will drink it super naculum.—And how stands the great Madam?'[13]

'Stoutly against all change,' answered the lord—'Little Anthony[14] can make nought of her.'

'Then he shall bring her influence to nought. Hark in thine ear. Thou knowest——' (Here he whispered so low that Julian could not catch the sound.)

'Know him?' answered the other—'Know Ned of the Island?—To be sure I do.'

'He is the man that shall knot the great fiddle-strings that have snapped. Say I told you so; and thereupon I give thee his health.'

'And thereupon I pledge thee,' said the young nobleman, 'which on any other argument I were loath to do— thinking of Ned as somewhat the cut of a villain.'

'Granted, man—granted,' said the other,—'a very thorough-paced rascal; but able, my lord, able and necessary; and, in this plan, indispensable.—Pshaw!—This champagne turns stronger as it gets older, I think.'

'Hark, mine honest fellow,' said the courtier; 'I would thou wouldst give me some item of all this mystery. Thou hast it, I know; for whom do men entrust but trusty Chiffinch?'

'It is your pleasure to say so, my lord,' answered Smith (whom we shall hereafter call by his real name of Chiffinch) with such drunken gravity, for his speech had become a little altered by his copious libations in the course of the evening,—'few men know more, or say less, than I do; and it well becomes my station. Conticuere omnes, as the grammar hath it—all men should learn to hold their tongue.'

'Except with a friend, Tom—except with a friend. Thou wilt never be such a dogbolt as to refuse a hint to a friend? Come, you get too wise and statesman-like for your office.—The ligatures of thy most peasantly jacket there are like to burst with thy secret. Come, undo a button, man; it is for the health of thy constitution—Let out a reef; and let thy chosen friend know what is meditating. Thou knowest I am as true as thyself to little Anthony, if he can but get uppermost.'

'If, thou lordly infidel!' said Chiffinch—'talk'st thou to me of ifs? —There is neither if nor and in the matter. The great Madam shall be pulled a peg down—the great Plot screwed a peg or two up. Thou knowest Ned?—Honest Ned had a brother's death to revenge.'

'I have heard so,' said the nobleman; 'and that his persevering resentment of that injury was one of the few points which seemed to be a sort of heathenish virtue in him.'

'Well,' continued Chiffinch, 'in manoeuvring to bring about this revenge, which he hath laboured at many a day, he hath discovered a treasure.'

'What!—In the Isle of Man?' said his companion.

'Assure yourself of it.—She is a creature so lovely, that she needs but be seen to put down every one of the favourites, from Portsmouth and Cleveland down to that threepenny baggage, Mistress Nelly.'

'By my word, Chiffinch,' said my lord, 'that is a reinforcement after the fashion of thine own best tactics. But bethink thee, man! To make such a conquest, there wants more than a cherry-cheek and a bright eye—there must be wit—wit, man, and manners, and a little sense besides, to keep influence when it is gotten.'

'Pshaw! will you tell me what goes to this vocation?' said Chiffinch. 'Here, pledge me her health in a brimmer.—Nay, you shall do it on knees, too.—Never such a triumphant beauty was seen—I went to church on purpose, for the first time these ten years—Yet I lie, it was not to church neither—it was to chapel.'

'To chapel!—What the devil, is she a Puritan?' exclaimed the other courtier.

'To be sure she is. Do you think I would be accessory to bringing a Papist into favour in these times, when, as my good Lord said in the House, there should not be a Popish manservant, nor a Popish maid-servant, not so much as dog or cat, left to bark or mew about the King!'[15]

'But consider, Chiffie, the dislikelihood of her pleasing,' said the noble courtier.—'What! old Rowley, with his