LITMIR.BIZ

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to do. Well, the evening he arrived, he dined in his own apartment, nobody with him but – ’

      “Just at this instant the landlord entered, with a most obsequious face and an air of great secrecy.

      “‘I beg pardon, gentlemen,’ said he; ‘but there’s a carriage come over from Chats worth, and the footman won’t give the name of the gentleman he wants.’

      “‘Quite right, – quite right,’ said the Duke, waving his hand. ‘Let the carriage wait. Come, Raggs, you seem to have nothing before you.’

      “‘Bless your Grace,’ said I, ‘I ‘m at the end of my third tumbler.’

      “‘Never mind, – mix another;’ and with that he pushed the decanter of brandy towards me, and filled his own glass to the brim.

      “‘Your health, Raggs, – I rather like you. I confess,’ continued he, ‘I’ve had rather a prejudice against your order. There is something d – d low in cutting about the country with patterns in a bag.’

      “‘We don’t,’ said I, rather nettled; ‘we carry a pocket-book like this.’ And here I produced my specimen order; but with one shy of his foot the Duke sent it flying to the ceiling, as he exclaimed, —

      “‘Confound your patchwork! – try to be a gentleman for once!’

      “‘So I will, then,’ said I. ‘Here’s your health, Devonshire.’

      “‘Take care, – take care,’ said he, solemnly. ‘Don’t dare to take any liberties with me, – they won’t do;’ and the words made my blood freeze.

      “I tossed off a glass neat to gain courage; for my head swam round, and I thought I saw his Grace sitting before me, in his dress as Knight of the Garter, with a coronet on his head, his ‘George’ round his neck, and he was frowning at me most awfully.

      “‘I did n’t mean it,’ said I, pitifully. ‘I am only a bagman, but very well known on the western road, – could get security for three hundred pounds, any day, in soft goods.’

      “‘I am not angry, old Raggs,’ said the Duke. ‘None of my family ever bear malice. Let us have a toast, – “A speedy return to our rightful position on the Treasury benches.”’

      “I pledged his Grace with every enthusiasm; and when I laid my glass on the table, he wrung my hand warmly and said, —

      “‘Raggs, I must do something for you.’

      “From that moment I felt my fortune was made. The friendship – and was I wrong in giving it that title? – the friendship of such a man was success assured; and as I sipped my liquor, I ran over in my mind the various little posts and offices I would accept of or decline. They ‘ll be offering me some chief-justiceship in Gambia, or to be port-surveyor in the Isle of Dogs, or something of that kind; but I won’t take it, nor will I go out as bishop, nor commander of the forces, nor collector of customs to any newly discovered island in the Pacific Ocean. ‘I must have something at home here; I never could bear a sea-voyage,’ said I, aloud, concluding my meditation by this reflection.

      “‘Why, you are half-seas-over already, Raggs,’ said the Duke, as he sat puffing his cigar in all the luxury of a Pacha. ‘I say,’ continued he, ‘do you ever play a hand at écarté, or vingt-et-un, or any other game for two?’

      “‘I can do a little at five-and-ten,’ said I, timidly; for it is rather a vulgar game, and I did n’t half fancy confessing it was my favorite.

      “‘Five-and-ten!’ said the Duke; ‘that is a game exploded even from the housekeeper’s room. I doubt if they’d play it in the kitchen of a respectable family. Can you do nothing else?’

      “Pope-joan and pitch-and-toss were then the extent of my accomplishments; but I was actually afraid to own to them; and so I shook my head in token of dissent.

      “‘Well, be it so,’ said he, with a sigh. ‘Touch that bell, and let us see if they have a pack of cards in the house.’

      “The cards were soon brought, a little table with a green baize covering – it might have been a hearth-rug for coarseness – placed at the fire, and down we sat. We played till the day was beginning to break, chatting and sipping between time; and although the stakes were only sixpences, the Duke won eight pounds odd shillings, and I had to give him an order on a house in Leeds for the amount. I cared little for the loss, it is true. The money was well invested, – somewhat more profitably than the ‘three-and-a-halfs,’ any way.

      “‘Those horses,’ said the Duke, – ‘those horses will feel a bit cold or so by this time. So I think, Raggs, I must take my leave of you. We shall meet again, I ‘ve no doubt, some of these days. I believe you know where to find me in town?’

      “‘I should think so,’ said I, with a look that conveyed more than mere words. ‘It is not such a difficult matter.’

      “‘Well, then, good-bye, old fellow,’ said he, with as warm a shake of the hand as ever I felt in my life. ‘Goodbye. I have told you to make use of me, and, I repeat it, I ‘ll be as good as my word. We are not in just now; but there ‘s no knowing what may turn up. Besides, whether in office or out, we are never without our influence.’

      “What extent of professions my gratitude led me into, I cannot clearly remember now; but I have a half-recollection of pledging his Grace in something very strong, and getting a fit of coughing in an attempt to cheer, amid which he drove off as fast as the horses could travel, waving me a last adieu from the carriage window.

      “As I jogged along the road on the following day, one only passage of the preceding night kept continually recurring to my mind. Whether it was that his Grace spoke the words with a peculiar emphasis, or that this last blow on the drum had erased all memory of previous sounds; but so it was, – I continued to repeat as I went, ‘Whether in office or out, we have always our influence.’

      “This sentence became my guiding star wherever I went. It supported me in every casualty and under every misfortune. Wet through with rain, late for a coach, soaked in a damp bed, half starved by a bad dinner, overcharged in an inn, upset on the road, without hope, without an ‘order,’ I had only to fall back upon my talisman, and rarely had to mutter it twice, ere visions of official wealth and power floated before me, and imagination conjured up gorgeous dreams of bliss, bright enough to dispel the darkest gloom of evil fortune; and as poets dream of fairy forms skipping from the bells of flowers by moonlight, and light-footed elves disporting in the deep cells of water-lilies or sailing along some glittering stream, the boat a plantain-leaf, so did I revel in imaginary festivals, surrounded by peers and marquises, and thought I was hobnobbing with ‘the Duke,’ or dancing a cotillon with Lord Brougham at Windsor.

      “I began to doubt if a highly imaginative temperament, a richly endowed fancy, a mind glowing with bright and glittering conceptions, an organization strongly poetical, be gifts suited to the career and habits of a commercial traveller. The base and grovelling tastes of manufacturing districts, the low tone of country shopkeepers, the mean and narrow-minded habits of people in the hardware line, distress and irritate a man with tastes and aspirations above smoke-jacks and saucepans. He may, it is true, sometimes undervalue them; they never, by any chance, can understand him. Thus was it from the hour I made the Duke’s acquaintance, – business went ill with me; the very philosophy that supported me under all my trial seemed only to offend them; and more than once I was insulted, because I said at parting, ‘Never mind, – in office or out, we have always our influence.’ The end of it was, I lost my situation; my employers coolly said that my brain did n’t seem all right, and they sent me about my business, – a pleasant phrase that, – for when a man is turned adrift upon the world, without an object or an occupation, with nowhere to go to, nothing to do, and, mayhap, nothing to eat, he is then said to be sent about his business. Can it mean that his only business then is to drown himself? Such were not my thoughts, assuredly. I made my late master a low bow, and, muttering my old refrain ‘In office or out,’ etc., took my leave and walked off. For a day or two I hunted the coffee-houses to read all the newspapers,

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