The trail of the serpent
how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have
chosen cowkeeping for his way of life, if he’d known as much about it
as he does now; how there’s many things in the milk business, such as
horses’ brains, warm water and treacle, and such-like, as goes against
his conscience; how he’s quite new to London and London ways, having
come up only lately from the country.
“Whereabouts in the country?” Mrs. Moper asks.
“Berkshire,” the young man replies.
“Lor’,” Mrs. Moper says, “never was any thing so remarkable. Poor Moper
come from Berkshire, and knowed every inch of the country, and so I
think do I, pretty well. What part of Berkshire, Mr.--Mr.----?”
“Volpes,” suggested the young man.
“What part of Berkshire, Mr. Volpes?”
Mr. Volpes looks, strange to say, rather at a loss to answer this very
natural and simple inquiry. He looks at Mrs. Moper, then at Liza, and
lastly at the pails. The pails seem to assist his memory, for he says,
very distinctly, “Burley Scuffers.”
It is Mrs. Moper’s turn to look puzzled now, and she exclaims
“Burley----”
“Scuffers,” replies the young man. “Burley Scuffers, market town,
fourteen miles on this side of Reading. The ‘Chicories,’ Sir Yorrick
Tristram’s place, is a mile and a half out of the town.”
There’s no disputing such an accurate and detailed description as this.
Mrs. Moper says it’s odd, all the times she’s been to Reading--“which I
wish I had as many sovereigns,” she mutters in parenthesis--never did
she remember passing through “Burley Scuffers.”
“It’s a pretty little town, too,” says the milkman; “there’s a
lime-tree avenue just out of the High Street, called Pork-butchers’
Walk, as is crowded with young people of a Sunday evening after church.”
Mrs. Moper is quite taken with this description; and says, the very
next time she goes to Reading to see poor Moper’s old mother, she will
make a point of going to Burley Scuffers during her stay.
Mr. Volpes says, he would if he were she, and that she couldn’t employ
her leisure time better.
They talk a good deal about Berkshire; and then Mrs. Moper relates
some very interesting facts relative to the late Mr. Moper, and her
determination, “which upon his dying bed it was his comfort so to
think,” never to marry again; at which the milkman looks grieved, and
says the gentlemen will be very blind indeed to their own interests
if they don’t make her change her mind some day; and somehow or
other (I don’t suppose servants often do such things), they get to
talking about their master and their mistress. The milkman seems quite
interested in this subject, and, forgetting in how many houses the
innocent liquid he dispenses may be required, he sits with his elbows
on the kitchen-table, listening to Mrs. Moper’s remarks, and now and
then, when she wanders from her subject, drawing her back to it with
an adroit question. She didn’t know much about the Count, she said,
for the servants was most all of ’em new; they only brought two people
with them from South America, which was Monsieur St. Mirotaine, the
_chef_, and the Countess’s French maid, Mademoiselle Finette. But
she thought Monsieur de Marolles very ’aughty, and as proud as he was
’igh, and that madame was very unhappy, “though it’s hard to know with
them furriners, Mr. Volpes, what is what,” she continues; “and madame’s
gloomy ways may be French for happiness, for all I knows.”
“He’s an Englishman, the Count, isn’t he?” asks Mr. Volpes.
“A Englishman! Lor’ bless your heart, no. They’re both French; she’s
of Spanish igstraction, I believe, and they lived since their marriage
mostly in Spanish America. But they always speaks to each other in
French, when they do speak; which them as waits upon them says isn’t
often.”
“He’s very rich, I suppose,” says the milkman.
“Rich!” cries Mrs. Moper, “the money as that man has got they say is
fabellous; and he’s a regular business man too, down at his bank every
day, rides off to the City as punctual as the clock strikes ten. Lor’,
by the bye, Mr. Volpes,” says Mrs. Moper suddenly, “you don’t happen to
know of a tempory tiger, do you?”
“A temporary tiger!” Mr. Volpes looks considerably puzzled.
“Why, you see, the Count’s tiger, as wasn’t higher than the kitchen
table I do believe, broke his arm the other day. He was a-hangin’ on
to the strap behind the cab, a-standin’ upon nothing, as them boys
will, when the vehicle was knocked agen an omnibus, and his arm bein’
wrenched sudden out of the strap, snapped like a bit of sealing-wax;
and they’ve took him to the hospital, and he’s to come back as soon as
ever he’s well; for he’s a deal thought on, bein’ a’most the smallest
tiger at the West-end. So, if you happen to know of a boy as would come
temporary, we should be obliged by your sending him round.”
“Did he know of a boy as would come temporary?” Mr. Budgen’s young
man appeared so much impressed by this question, that for a minute or
two he was quite incapable of answering it. He leaned his elbows on
the kitchen table, with his face buried in his hands and his fingers
twisted in his flaxen hair, and when he looked up there was, strange
to say, a warm flush over his pale complexion, and something like a
triumphant sparkle in his dark brown eyes.
“Nothing could fall out better,” he said; “nothing, nothing!”
“What, the poor lad breaking his arm?” asked Mrs. Moper, in a tone of
surprise.
“No, no, not that,” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, just a little
confused; “what I mean is, that I know the very boy to suit you--the
very boy, the very boy of all others to undertake the business. Ah,”
he continued in a lower voice, “and to go through with it, too, to the
end.”
“Why, as to the business,” replied Mrs. Moper, “it ain’t overmuch,
hangin’ on behind, and lookin’ knowin’, and givin’ other tigers as
good as they bring, when waitin’ outside the _Calting_ or the
_Anthinium_; which tigers as is used to the highest names in the
peerage familiar as their meat and drink, will go on contemptuous about
our fambly, callin’ the bank ‘the shop,’ and a-askin’, till they got
our lad’s blood up (which he had had his guinea lessons from the May
Fair Mawler, and were better left alone), when the smash was a-comin’,
or whether we meant to give out three-and-sixpence in the pound like
a honest house, or do the shabby thing and clear ourselves by a
compensation with our creditors of fourpence-farthing? Ah,” continued
Mrs. Moper, gravely, “many’s the time that child have come home with
his nose as big as the ’ead of a six-week old baby, and no eyes at all
as any one could discover, which he’d been that knocked about in a
stand-up fight with a lad three times his weight and size.”
“Then I can send the boy, and you’ll get him the situation?” said Mr.
Budgen’s young man, who did not seem particularly interested in the
rather elaborate recital of the exploits of the invalid tiger.
“He can have a character, I suppose?” inquired the lady.
“Oh, ah, to be sure. Budgen will give him a character.”
“You will impress upon the youth,” said Mrs. Moper, with great dignity,
“that he will not be able to make this his permanence ’ome. The pay is
good, and the meals is reg’lar, but the situation is tempory.”
“All right,” said Mr. Budgen’s assistant; “he doesn’t want a situation
for long. I’ll bring him round myself this evening--good afternoon;”
with which very brief farewell, the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed milkman
strode out of the kitchen.
“Hum!” muttered the cook, “his manners has not the London polish: I
meant to have ast him to tea.”
“Why, I’m blest,” exclaimed the scullerymaid suddenly, “if he haven’t
been and gone and left his yoke and pails behind him! Well, of all the
strange milkmen I ever come a-nigh, if he ain’t the strangest!”
She might have thought him stranger still, perhaps, this light-haired
milkman, had she seen him hail a stray cab in Brook Street, spring
into it, snatch off his flaxen locks, whose hyacinthine waves were in
the convenient form known by that most disagreeable of words, a wig;
snatch off also the holland blouse common to the purveyors of milk,
and rolling the two into a bundle, stuff them into the pocket of his
shooting-jacket, before throwing himself back into the corner of the
vehicle, to enjoy a meditative cigar, as his charioteer drives his
best pace in the direction of that transpontine temple of Esculapius,
Mr. Darley’s surgery. Daredevil Dick has made the first move in that
fearful game of chess which is to be played between him and the Count
de Marolles.
CHAPTER VI.
SIGNOR MOSQUETTI RELATES AN ADVENTURE.
ON the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard
Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and
Countess de Marolles attend a musical party--I beg pardon, I should,
gentle reader, as you know, have said a _soirée musicale_--at the
house of a lady of high rank in Belgrave Square. London was almost
empty, and this was one of the last parties of the season; but it is a
goodly and an impressive sight to see--even when London is, according
to every fashionable authority, a perfect Sahara--how many splendid
carriages will draw up to the awning my Lady erects over the pavement
before her door, when she announces herself “at home;” how many
gorgeously dressed and lovely women will descend therefrom, scenting
the night air of Belgravia with the fragrance wafted from their waving
tresses and point-d’Alençon-bordered handkerchiefs; lending a perfume
to the autumn violets struggling out a fading existence in Dresden
boxes on the drawing-room balconies; lending the light of their
diamonds to the gas-lamps before the door, and the light of their
eyes to help out the aforesaid diamonds; sweeping the autumn dust and
evening dews with the borders of costly silks, and marvels of Lyons and
Spitalfields, and altogether glorifying the ground over which they walk.
On this evening one range of windows, at least, in Belgrave Square is
brilliantly illuminated. Lady Londersdon’s Musical Wednesday, the last
of the season, has been inaugurated with _éclat_ by a scena from
Signora Scorici, of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the Nobility’s Concerts;
and Mr. Argyle Fitz-Bertram, the great English basso-baritono, and the
handsomest man in England, has just shaken the square with the buffo
duet from the Cenerentola--in which performance he, Argyle, has so
entirely swamped that amiable tenor Signor Maretti, that the latter
gentleman has serious thoughts of calling him out to-morrow morning;
which idea he would carry into execution if Argyle Fitz-Bertram were
not a crack shot, and a pet pupil of Mr. Angelo’s into the bargain.
But even the great Argyle finds himself--with the exception of being up
to his eyes in a slough of despond, in the way of platonic flirtation
with a fat duchess of fifty--comparatively nowhere. The star of the
evening is the new tenor, Signor Mosquetti, who has condescended to
attend Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday. Argyle, who is the best-natured
fellow as well as the most generous, and whose great rich voice wells
up from a heart as sound as his lungs, throws himself back into a
low easy-chair--it creaks a little under his weight, by the bye--and
allows the duchess to flirt with him, while a buzz goes round the room;
Mosquetti is going to sing. Argyle looks lazily out of his half-closed
dark eyes, with that peculiar expression which seems to say--“Sing
your best, old fellow! My _g_ in the bass clef would crush your
half-octave or so of falsetto before you knew where you were, or your
‘Pretty Jane’ either. Sing away, my boy! we’ll have ‘Scots wha hae’
by-and-by. I’ve some friends down in Essex who want to hear it, and the