The Holly-Tree

Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of "Christmas Stories"

by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE HOLLY-TREE--THREE BRANCHES

FIRST BRANCH--MYSELF

I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man.

Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did

suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I

have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places

I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or

received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely

because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But I

will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in

the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and

beast I was once snowed up.

It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela

Leath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that

she preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freely

admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though

I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural,

and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that I

resolved to go to America--on my way to the Devil.

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving

to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and

forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post

when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,--I

say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I

could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held

dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for

ever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, of

course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general

all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually

found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of

the Temple! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, as

if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; the

bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers,

trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and

warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such

customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the

wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face

like a steel whip.

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The

Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool,

weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the

intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and

had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on

the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having

first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was

gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my

expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before

my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried into

full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner,

lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars

by-and-by--took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were

stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some

other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a

very serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of

these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my

portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington,

where I was to join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, who

carried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, told me about the huge

blocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river,

having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens

over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether the

box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my

unhappiness. I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so

far gone as to wish to be frozen to death.

When I got up to the Peacock,--where I found everybody drinking hot purl,

in self-preservation,--I asked if there were an inside seat to spare. I

then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gave

me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since

that coach always loaded particularly well. However, I took a little

purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I was

seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of

making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey.

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, pale,

uncertain ghosts of houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then it

was hard, black, frozen day. People were lighting their fires; smoke was

mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling for

Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of

iron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to have

grown old and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and

homesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards. Out-door work was abandoned,

horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged

about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires

inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to

like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their

chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary

coach going by. I don't know when the snow begin to set in; but I know

that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark,

"That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-

day." Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. I

was warm and valiant after eating and drinking,--particularly after

dinner; cold and depressed at all other times. I was always bewildered

as to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses. The

coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a

moment's intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatest

regularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with

a precision that worried me to death. While we changed horses, the guard

and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes

in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves

without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it

darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses

tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,--which was the

pleasantest variety _I_ had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and snowed,

and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we went

on in this manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North

Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again. And it snowed

and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought

to have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, and

that our case was growing worse every hour. The drift was becoming

prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the

fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us,

we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might

sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still

the coachman and guard--who kept together on the box, always in council,

and looking well about them--made out the track with astonishing

sagacity.

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large

drawing on a slate, with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the

churches and houses where the snow lay thickest. When we came within a

town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with

snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were

overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball;

similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end,

turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys

of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us

was a snowy Sahara. One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding

which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed,

and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns

and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of

birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst

from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and

moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I found that

we were going to change.

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as

white as King Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this?"

"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.

"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and

coachman, "that I must stop here."

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and

all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-

eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on.

The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through

it,"--meaning by Her the coach,--"if so be as George would stand by him."

George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by

him. So the helpers were already getting the horses out.

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement

without preparation. Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being

smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful

man, I should have had the confidence to make it. As it was, it received

the approval even of the guard and coachman. Therefore, with many

confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to

another, that the gentleman could go for'ard by the mail to-morrow,

whereas to-night he would only be froze, and where was the good of a

gentleman being froze--ah, let alone buried alive (which latter clause

was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was extremely

well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body;

did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them good-night

and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for

leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and

waiter of the Holly-Tree up-stairs.

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they

showed me. It had five windows, with dark red curtains that would have

absorbed the light of a general illumination; and there were

complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering

about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked for a smaller

room, and they told me there was no smaller room.

They could screen me in, however, the landlord said. They brought a

great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in

a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole

before an immense fire.

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the

end of a long gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a

bashful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs. It was the

grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture,

from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was

tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, in my sitting-room,

if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I

stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick.

The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass--what I may

call a wavy glass--above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my

anterior phrenological developments,--and these never look well, in any

subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the

fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on

being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten

curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a

nest of gigantic worms.

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other

men of similar character in _themselves_; therefore I am emboldened to

mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately

want to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl

and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my

arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight.

Fly at nine. Two horses, or, if needful, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In cases of

nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the

reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had _I_

to do with Gretna Green? I was not going _that_ way to the Devil, but by

the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all

night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that spot on

the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by

labourers from the market-town. When they might cut their way to the

Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmas-eve. I should have had a dismal Christmas-time of

it anywhere, and consequently that did not so much matter; still, being

snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for. I

felt very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and

landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it--very

much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate.

Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be

observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were

bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal

myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last

degree disconcerting to them.

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked

what books there were in the house. The waiter brought me a _Book of

Roads_, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating in a

collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd volume of

_Peregrine Pickle_, and the _Sentimental Journey_. I knew every word of

the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum

all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the

jokes,--in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted to my state of

mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and

mastered the papers. The latter had nothing in them but stock

advertisements, a meeting about a county rate, and a highway robbery. As

I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night;

it was exhausted by tea-time. Being then entirely cast upon my own

resources, I got through an hour in considering what to do next.

Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any means

to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my

experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me. I stirred the

fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen,--not daring to

go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could

hear it growling,--and began.

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I

went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the

knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green

gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the

roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until

it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them

into pies. For the better devotion of himself to this branch of

industry, he had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed;

and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this wicked

landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the

other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which

purpose he had coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and

rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night. Yet even he was not

insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to sleep

without being heard to mutter, "Too much pepper!" which was eventually

the cause of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner disposed of

this criminal than there started up another of the same period, whose

profession was originally house-breaking; in the pursuit of which art he

had had his right ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously

getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the

aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always

mysteriously implied to be herself). After several years, this brave and

lovely servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn; which

landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a silk

nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off. At last, one

night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his

silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon

which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who

had married her with the intention of putting her to death. She

immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she was

taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of

royalty on her great discretion and valour. This same narrator, who had

a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the

utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her

own experience, founded, I now believe, upon _Raymond and Agnes, or the

Bleeding Nun_. She said it happened to her brother-in-law, who was

immensely rich,--which my father was not; and immensely tall,--which my

father was not. It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my

clearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of

disparaging contrast. The brother-in-law was riding once through a

forest on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house),

attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog),

when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened

the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there. She answered

yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where

there were two dark men. While he was at supper, a parrot in the room

began to talk, saying, "Blood, blood! Wipe up the blood!" Upon which

one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he was fond of

roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the

morning. After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall

brother-in-law went up to bed; but he was rather vexed, because they had

shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the

house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking,

when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door.

He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came

softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in the corner

which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and

disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that moment the candle

went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door,

saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that

long (about five feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a

spade. Having no remembrance of the close of this adventure, I suppose

my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of

it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of

an hour.

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree

hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with

a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the

portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four

incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated,--coloured

with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's

complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and,

smearing itself off into the next division, became rum in a bottle. Then

I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller's

bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he

was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation that he had

indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been

stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler,

years afterwards, owned the deed. By this time I had made myself quite

uncomfortable. I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long

as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen,

and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in

the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had

pleasanter recollections about it than any of these. I took it next. It

was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see

parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an

ecclesiastical sign,--the Mitre,--and a bar that seemed to be the next

best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's

youngest daughter to distraction,--but let that pass. It was in this Inn

that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a

black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly-Tree night,

for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me

yet.

"To be continued to-morrow," said I, when I took my candle to go to bed.

But my bed took it upon itself to continue the train of thought that

night. It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place

(though still in England), and there, alighting from a stage-coach at

another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I

repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there. More

than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at

that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death. Every night

since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes

as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to

comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, never in

association with any approach to fear or distress. It was at a lonely

Inn in a wide moorland place, that I halted to pass the night. When I

had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the

moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter. I had always,

until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night

of the dear lost one. But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the

circumstance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether

the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, travel-tired, and

in that remote place. No. I lost the beloved figure of my vision in

parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in

sixteen years, but once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake),

the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I

entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof

of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future

Life. My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I

heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep

stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray for the

souls of the dead; it being All Souls' Eve.

To return to the Holly-Tree. When I awoke next day, it was freezing

hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow. My breakfast cleared

away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting

so much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my

Inn remembrances.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of

the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on

the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my

lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on

at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to

have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye

always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who

seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the

horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many

ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count

the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them;

likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then

stood in the centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous

apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I

suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following: He

was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly

discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what

he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some

conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a

little pony. Having followed this object for some distance without

gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any

answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with

it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated

into a wingless state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture

him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the

bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither,

threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west. This

weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker

or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the

dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I

paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible

precipitation.

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn

in Switzerland, while I was staying there. It was a very homely place,

in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went

in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the

dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms;

which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,--like

rough packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling

street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine

forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. A young man belonging to

this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and was

supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for

a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village

street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done

it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no

movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, "Louis,

where is Henri?" They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him

up. Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every

dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to

the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest

house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed, while they were

looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the

Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this

wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing,

until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks went

on,--six weeks,--and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic

affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes

out of his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had become

inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one

morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a little

window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a

great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and

bring him down dead. Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her

mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good

climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the

summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, "Seize

Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the body!" I saw

the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-

Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable

litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting

to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A

heavy animal,--the dullest animal in the stables,--with a stupid head,

and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been,

within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small

moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of

putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed

next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that

they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him

once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the

headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this

murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold

in a little market-place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with

quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust

of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder

was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left

unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous sickle.

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest

landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the

apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately

joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger's hind legs

and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear,

moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard. I

made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc

Mount Blank,--except one good-humoured gentleman, of a very sociable

nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it

familiarly as "Blank;" observing, at breakfast, "Blank looks pretty tall

this morning;" or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening,

whether there warn't some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would

make out the top of Blank in a couple of hours from first start--now!

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was

haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a

fort,--an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed

idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the

table. After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I

considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of

glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as

into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always

in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as

before. At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim

of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink

under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully

as large as the musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra.

Human provision could not have foreseen the result--but the waiter mended

the pie. With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the

triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland expedition

beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window. Here I

was driven back by stress of weather. Arrived at my winter-quarters once

more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great annual Miners' Feast

was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions

presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing

before it by torchlight. We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony

morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the

unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the

present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging

about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart

of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman

will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which

that post-horse will tread on his conductor's toes. Over and above

which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him,

will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner

incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part. With

such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this

Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was

full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-

horse,--though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my

fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much

of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the

jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and

mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed

his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and

punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean

houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all

parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host

was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames,

altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on

perches. Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at

supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity

of his position, and instantly disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an

attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my

frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five

times by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I

began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was

dug out. I might be a week here,--weeks!

There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I

once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border. In

a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed

by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the

other. After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other

constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though

as to all other respects in its old state. The story ran, that whosoever

slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far

off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an

impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon

the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he

was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one. This

went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the

disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,--bed, hangings, and all. The

strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but

never changed afterwards. The occupant of that room, with occasional but

very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a

forgotten dream he had had in the night. The landlord, on his mentioning

his perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of

which, as he very well knew, was the true subject. But the moment the

landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!" He

never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of

the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the

women in their round hats, and the harpers with their white beards

(venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I

took my dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with

the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from the

loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at

hand) the Athol brose. Once was I coming south from the Scottish

Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the

bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with

mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the

whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their

own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought

of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the Anglers' Inns

of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of angling by lying in

the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the

greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual

towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science),

and to the pleasant white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those

inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the

church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the pearless Emma with the

bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural

grace that would have converted Blue-Beard. Casting my eyes upon my

Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of

a score or more of those wonderful English posting-inns which we are all

so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which

were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion. He

who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or

even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their

perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and

wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the

rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to

Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking beer-shop

shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for

firewood, having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received

punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged,

brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway. What could I next see in

my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the

dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air

and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no

business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall?

Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four

pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of

ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody's mind or body

but your own, and the not-too-much-for-dinner, considering the price.

Next to the provincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower rising

above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the

street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, which

are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting

exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become

so. Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all

the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your

anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face in

summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can,

and forget what you can't: where I should again like to be boiling my tea

in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old

palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same

bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you

may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of

heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with

their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous

streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility. So to the

close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants,

and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So to the immense

fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he

skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular little

bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay

there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next

I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your

going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for

everybody else's getting up; and where, in the table-d'hote room at the

end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other

end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely

dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, _will_

remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that

flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine

woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my

brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of

course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to

the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of

hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected

periods of the repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming

glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student

beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of

America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine

hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the

bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.

Again I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five

minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life

with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three

Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,--again,

I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the

resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir;

ladies' morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-

room, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-

room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and

the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the

first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five

hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of

thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the

establishment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I

drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my

friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians

all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have

descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and

great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my

mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject. What was

I to do? What was to become of me? Into what extremity was I

submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out

for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by

training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I

might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow,

that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the

prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken

back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous

drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I

should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it

fast. Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me

from the landlord's table and the company I might find there, as to call

up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,--and something in a liquid

form,--and talk to me? I could, I would, I did.

SECOND BRANCH--THE BOOTS

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the

question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless

you, he had been everything you could mention a'most!

Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could

assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his

way. Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he

hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.

What was the curiousest thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He

couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen--unless

it was a Unicorn, and he see _him_ once at a Fair. But supposing a young

gentleman not eight year old was to run away with a fine young woman of

seven, might I think _that_ a queer start? Certainly. Then that was a

start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the

shoes they run away in--and they was so little that he couldn't get his

hand into 'em.

Master Harry Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away

by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon. He was a

gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he

walked, and had what you may call Fire about him. He wrote poetry, and

he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and

he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry

as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a

gentleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, and that would

be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine

bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy

books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or

hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and

When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the

command over the child, and the child _was_ a child, and it's to be

wished more of 'em was!

How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being

under-gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always

about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and

sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting

acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry

hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you

spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then began cutting it in print all

over the fence.

He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that;

but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the place

together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your soul,

he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves,

and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and

she had been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her, where

Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, "Cobbs," he

says, "I like _you_." "Do you, sir? I'm proud to hear it." "Yes, I do,

Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?" "Don't know, Master

Harry, I am sure." "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs." "Indeed, sir?

That's very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better than millions

of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah." "Certainly, sir."

"You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?" "Yes, sir." "Would you like

another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it was a

good Inn." "Then, Cobbs," says he, "you shall be our Head Gardener when

we are married." And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under

his arm, and walks away.

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a

play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their

sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the

garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they

was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes they

would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms

round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading

about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and the

king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them planning about having

a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk

and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry

say, "Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or

I'll jump in head-foremost." And Boots made no question he would have

done it if she hadn't complied. On the whole, Boots said it had a

tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself--only he didn't

exactly know who with.

"Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the

flowers, "I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my

grandmamma's at York."

"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going

into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here."

"Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs?"

"No, sir. I haven't got such a thing."

"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?"

"No, sir."

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and

then said, "I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,--Norah's going."

"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful

sweetheart by your side."

"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about it,

when I can prevent them."

"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility,--"wasn't so meant."

"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're going

to live with us.--Cobbs!"

"Sir."

"What do you think my grandmamma gives me when I go down there?"

"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."

"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."

"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry."

"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,--couldn't

a person, Cobbs?"

"I believe you, sir!"

"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they

have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being

engaged,--pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!"

"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human natur."

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with

his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-night,

Cobbs. I'm going in."

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a-going to leave that

place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me. He

did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways

inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change.

That's what he wanted,--change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he gave

him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says, "have you

anythink to complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find that any

of my people really has anythink to complain of, I wish to make it right

if I can." "No, sir," says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I find myself as

well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth is, sir,

that I'm a-going to seek my fortun'." "O, indeed, Cobbs!" he says; "I

hope you may find it." And Boots could assure me--which he did, touching

his hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his present

calling--that he hadn't found it yet.

Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry,

he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady would have given

that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so

wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do,--for Infant you may call

him and be within the mark,--but cut away from that old lady's with his

Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!

Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several

times since to better himself, but always come back through one thing or

another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the

coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, "I don't

quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman's words

was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman gets out;

hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our

Governor, "We're to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two

bedrooms will be required. Chops and cherry-pudding for two!" and tucks

her, in her sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much

bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was,

when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into

the Angel,--much more so, when he, who had seen them without their seeing

him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon.

"Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself to

York, and quiet their friends' minds. In which case you must keep your

eye upon 'em, and humour 'em, till I come back. But before I take these

measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves whether your

opinion is correct." "Sir, to you," says Cobbs, "that shall be done

directly."

So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on

a e-normous sofa,--immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of

Ware, compared with him,--a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-

hankecher. Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and

it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how small them

children looked.

"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cries Master Harry, and comes running to him,

and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on

t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump

for joy.

"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs. "I thought it was you. I

thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure. What's the

object of your journey, sir?--Matrimonial?"

"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy.

"We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits,

Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."

"Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good

opinion. _Did_ you bring any luggage with you, sir?"

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the

lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold

buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,--seemingly a

doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a

knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprising small,

a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.

"What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir?" says Cobbs.

"To go on," replied the boy,--which the courage of that boy was something

wonderful!--"in the morning, and be married to-morrow."

"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to

accompany you?"

When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "Oh,

yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!"

"Well, sir," says Cobbs. "If you will excuse my having the freedom to

give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted

with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would

take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you

approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I

am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow,

but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth

your while. As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to find

yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a part

proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over."

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy

again, and called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across him

to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt

himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.

"Is there anything you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs, mortally

ashamed of himself.

"We should like some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding

his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, "and two

apples,--and jam. With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water.

But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at

dessert. And so have I."

"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he

had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half-a-dozen rounds

with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished with

all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could

make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy ever afterwards.

However, as it couldn't be, he went into the Governor's plans, and the

Governor set off for York in half an hour.

The way in which the women of that house--without exception--every one of

'em--married _and_ single--took to that boy when they heard the story,

Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep 'em

from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of

places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of

glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds

about him and his bold spirit.

In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple

was getting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the

lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired

and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.

"Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs.

"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and

she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could bring a

biffin, please?"

"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs. "What was it you--?"

"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of

them."

Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought

it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and

took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross.

"What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber candlestick?" The

gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the great staircase;

the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the

gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own

apartment, where Boots softly locked him up.

Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he

was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-

and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony. It

really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to

look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old

father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying

like a Trojan about the pony. He told 'em that it did so unfortunately

happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that he couldn't be

taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside. But

that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that

to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would be ready. Boots's

view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs.

Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in. She hadn't had her hair

curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to brushing it

herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out

Master Harry. He sat behind his breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the

jelly, as if he had been his own father.

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed

soldiers,--at least, he knows that many such was found in the fire-place,

all on horseback. In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the

bell,--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,--and said, in a

sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood?"

"Yes, sir," says Cobbs. "There's Love Lane."

"Get out with you, Cobbs!"--that was that there boy's expression,--"you're

joking."

"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And

a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and

Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."

"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to

see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go

there with Cobbs."

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that

young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they

had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head-

gardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could

have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallowed

him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and

believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he

could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there

Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting

out a water-lily for her,--but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they

was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as

tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the

children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.

Boots don't know--perhaps I do,--but never mind, it don't signify either

way--why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two

pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming

half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake. But,

Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you

have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor

sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or

else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where it is!

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty

clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's, temper was

on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he

"teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry

tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"

A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up

a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me, to

have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning of

herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble

heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk,

and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per

yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise,

along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and

very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much indebted

to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can

never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma'am, where is my boy?" Our

missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show

Forty!" Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see _you_! I

understood you was here!" And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir. Your most

obedient, sir."

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me

that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs. "I beg your pardon,

sir," says he, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with

Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you

credit and honour." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's

father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then

was, he thinks he should have "fetched him a crack," and taken the

consequences.

But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!"

And, the door being opened, goes in.

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to

the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face. Then

he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they

do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he gently shakes the

little shoulder.

"Harry, my dear boy! Harry!"

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is

the honour of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has

brought him into trouble.

"I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come

home."

"Yes, pa."

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when he

has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a

looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet

image of him.

"Please may I"--the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept

his rising tears down!--"please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I go?"

"You may, my child."

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the

candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is

seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast

asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays

his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor

unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to

him,--a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the

door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But this

chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one. Not

that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.

Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the

chaise, having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady and Mrs.

Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long

afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots

put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there

are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent

of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good

thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could

only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.

THIRD BRANCH--THE BILL

I had been snowed up a whole week. The time had hung so lightly on my

hands, that I should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece

of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the

document in question was my bill. It testified emphatically to my having

eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering

branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.

I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to improve itself,

finding that I required that additional margin of time for the completion

of my task. I had ordered my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to

be at the door, "at eight o'clock to-morrow evening." It was eight

o'clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travelling writing-desk in

its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of

course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to

the icicles which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse

where I had first seen Angela. What I had to do was to get across to

Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and

embark. It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour too much time

to do it in.

I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends--almost, for the time

being, of my bashfulness too--and was standing for half a minute at the

Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which

tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards

the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded with snow that no wheels were

audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming

on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been

heaped up on either side of the track. The chambermaid instantly divined

how the case stood, and called to the ostler, "Tom, this is a Gretna

job!" The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a marriage,

or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, "Next four

out!" and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was

beloved; and therefore, instead of driving off at once, I remained at the

Inn door when the fugitives drove up. A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a

mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me. He turned to

apologise, and, by heaven, it was Edwin!

"Charley!" said he, recoiling. "Gracious powers, what do you do here?"

"Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do _you_ do here?" I

struck my forehead as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light

seemed to shoot before my eyes.

He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it

and no poker), where posting company waited while their horses were

putting to, and, shutting the door, said:

"Charley, forgive me!"

"Edwin!" I returned. "Was this well? When I loved her so dearly! When

I had garnered up my heart so long!" I could say no more.

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel

observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much to

heart.

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him. "My

dear, dear Charley," said he, "don't think ill of me, I beseech you! I

know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have

ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness is intolerable to

me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake."

He and his dear girl! It steeled me.

"You have observed it for my sake, sir?" said I, wondering how his frank

face could face it out so.

"Yes!--and Angela's," said he.

I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring,

humming-top. "Explain yourself," said I, holding on by one hand to an

arm-chair.

"Dear old darling Charley!" returned Edwin, in his cordial manner,

"consider! When you were going on so happily with Angela, why should I

compromise you with the old gentleman by making you a party to our

engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret

intention? Surely it was better that you should be able honourably to

say, 'He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word

of it.' If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support

she could--God bless her for a precious creature and a priceless wife!--I

couldn't help that. Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than

we told you. And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the

same good reason, and no other upon earth!"

Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with her. Had been brought up with

her. Was her father's ward. Had property.

"Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!" said I, embracing him with

the greatest affection.

"My good fellow!" said he, "do you suppose I should be going to Gretna

Green without her?"

I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my

arms, I folded her to my heart. She was wrapped in soft white fur, like

the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely. I put their

leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound note apiece, I

cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as hard as

I could pelt.

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back

to London, and I married Angela. I have never until this time, even to

her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the

mistaken journey into which it led me. When she, and they, and our eight

children and their seven--I mean Edwin and Emmeline's, whose oldest girl

is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her

mother in it--come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall

hardly fail to be found out at last. Never mind! I can bear it. I

began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas

time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some

care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded. I hope

that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is

the worse for it. And I say, May the green Holly-Tree flourish, striking

its roots deep into our English ground, and having its germinating

qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world!