Frank Fairlegh | Page 2

nought so laudable an established precedent, and to expose my own degeneracy. But the truth must be told at all hazards. The only feeling I experienced, beyond a vague sense of loneliness and desolation, was one of great personal discomfort. It rained hard, so that a small stream of water, which descended from the roof of the coach as I entered it, had insinuated itself between one of the flannel waistcoats, which formed so important an item in the maternal valediction, and my skin, whence, endeavouring to carry out what a logician would call the "law of its being," by finding its own level, it placed me in the undesirable position of an involuntary disciple of the cold-water cure taking a "sitz-bad". As to my thoughts, the reader shall have the full benefit of them, in the exact order in which they flitted through my brain.
First came a vague desire to render my position more comfortable, ending in a forlorn hope that intense and continued sitting might, by some undefined process of evaporation, cure the evil. This suggested a speculation, half pleasing and half painful, as to what would be my mother's feelings could she be aware of the state of things; the pleasure being the result of that mysterious preternatural delight which a boy always takes in everything at all likely to injure his health, or endanger his existence, and the pain arising from the knowledge that there was now no one near me to care whether I was comfortable or not. Again, these speculations merged into a sort of dreamy wonder, as to why a queer little old gentleman opposite (my sole fellow-traveller) was grunting like a pig, at intervals of about a minute, though he was wide awake the whole time; and whether a small tuft of hair, on a mole at the tip of his nose, could have anything to do with it. At this point my meditations were interrupted by the old gentleman himself, who, after a louder grunt than usual, gave vent to his feelings in the following speech, which was partly addressed to me and partly a soliloquy.
"Umph! going to school, my boy, eh?" then, in a lower tone, "Wonder why I called him my boy, when he's no such thing: just like me, umph!"
I replied by informing him that I was not exactly going to school--(I was nearly fifteen, and the word "school" sounded derogatory to my dignity)--but that, having been up to the present time educated at home by my father, I was now on my way to complete my studies under the care of a private tutor, who only received six pupils, a very different thing from a school, as I took the liberty of insinuating.
"Umph! different thing? You will cost more, learn less, and fancy yourself a man when you are a boy; that's the only difference I can see:" then came the aside--"Snubbing the poor child, when he's a peg too low already, just like me; umph!"
After which he relapsed into a silence which continued uninterrupted until we reached London, save once, while we were changing horses, when he produced a flask with a silver top, and, taking a sip himself, asked me if I drank brandy. On my shaking my head, with a smile caused by what appeared to me the utter wildness and desperation of the notion, he muttered:--
"Umph! of course he doesn't; how should he?--just like me".
In due course of time we reached the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, where the coach stopped, and where my trunk and myself were to be handed over to the tender mercies of the coachman of the Rocket, a fast coach (I speak of the slow old days when railroads were unknown) which then ran to Helmstone, the watering-place where my future tutor, the Rev. Dr. Mildman, resided. My first impressions of London are scarcely worth recording, for the simple reason that they consisted solely of intense and unmitigated surprise at everything and everybody I saw and heard; which may be more readily believed when I add the fact that my preconceived notions of the metropolis had led me to imagine it perhaps might be twice the size of the town nearest to my father's house; in short, almost as large as Grosvenor Square.
Here, then, I parted company with my fellow-traveller, who took leave of me thus:--
"Umph! well, good-bye; be a good boy--good man, you'd like me to say, I suppose; man, indeed! umph! don't forget what your parents told you"; then adding, "Of course he will, what's the use of telling him not? just like me";--he dived into the recesses of a hackney-coach, and disappeared.
Nothing worthy of note occurred during my journey to Helmstone, where we arrived at about half-past four in the afternoon. My feelings of surprise and