TICK; OR, MEMOIRS OF AN OLD ETON BOY. BY CHARLES ROWCROFT, AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE COLONIES; Or THE ADVENTURES OF AN EMIGRANT." CHAPTER XXIX. I DON'T believe the jolly major had any hand in this nefarious proceeding; indeed I rather think he thought the better of me for my staunchness at the bottle-setting down the effect of my susceptible weakness on the occasion to my youth and inexperience which time and practice would remedy. The plot was Peter's; and unhappily for me it succeeded too well!-I was supported, as I have described, by his insidious help to the drawing-room, and having been placed on the sofa by the side of Miss McDragon, I was left to my own resources. I have heard say by some who have the malice to pry into the secrets of the human heart, that women sometimes like the men to be a little fresh; that is to say, on particular occasions, when it is desirable that the present bachelor and expectant Benedict should be supplied with sufficient courage to "pop the question;" and it is averred by close observers, that, in such cases, where a man has been shilly-shallying for a provoking long time in his hesitating courtship, the circumstance of a few extra glasses of wine has so braced up his nerves, that, in a moment of enthusiasm he has come to the point with a conclusive declaration, to the extreme relief of the lady and the satisfaction of the papa and the mamma. Such was my case; but with this important difference, that I had gone beyond the few glasses of "extra," and had arrived at the few glasses "too much;" and as the consequence of neglecting the Terentian rule of "ne quid nimis," (facetiously translated by the Rev. Mr. St. Simon "don't over-do it"), is as fatal in love as in wine, it was my fate on that evil night to suffer from my error in the one as well as in the other.What I said; what I did; how it was that I came to make love to the aunt as well as the niece; and what extravagances I committed, I have never been accurately informed, and it was a subject which, in after-times, I never had any particular inclination to recur to. But that I made a great fool of myself there is no reason to doubt; and it is equally certain that the wicked Miss McDragon and her artful colleague Peter, took special pains to draw me out, and to cause me to make myself as ridiculous as possible in the eyes of the shocked Lavinia and her reproving papa. I don't like to confess it; but, I am afraid the truth is, that I challenged both Peter and the major to fight that very night, with pistols, swords, or fists as might be preferred by each respectively, insisting on the old gentleman being my second, and clapping him on the back in a manner more vigorous than agreeable to encourage him to be hearty in my cause. But it is not necessary that I should expose further the follies of that wretched night! It was with difficulty that I was got to bed, where I was placed by the footman and the groom; Peter assisting in my disgrace exultingly, and the major declaring, as I was afterwards told, that I was a promising young fellow, and, in time, I should be as staunch a cock at the bottle as any man in his regiment; and further, that he would venture to swear that in a few years, I should never go to bed sober; all this being said good-naturedly in my praise to Lavinia and her father, the aunt and Peter chiming in by way of chorus; but I think I may say, I afterwards had my revenge-but I will not anticipate. It is impossible for me to describe the agony of my sensations when I awoke the next morning and came to a sense of my situation. The mental torture which I suffered was aggravated by my bodily sickness; I had a dreadful headache; and oblivious as I had been the night before, I had a provoking remembrance of some of the foolish acts which I had committed during my state of vinous perturbation. I felt so humiliated that I actually groaned aloud! To have been so exposed before her to whom of all others in the world I most desired to appear in the most favourable light! and before her father too!-I was undone ; utterly lost! And then came over me the abasing reflection that I had been outwitted too! outwitted by Peter-the creature whom I had despised! It was a plot; clearly a plot; that is, as clearly as my still confused senses would allow me to penetrate. I had gone forth to do battle, and the subtile Peter, by wile and stratagem, had circumvented-played with-vanquished me. It was I who had to exclaim in a vice-versary sense to that of the conqueror of Gaul, "veni, vidi, bibi!" Like Hector I pared myself vain-gloriously for the combat! and then!" quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore!" I had been cast down prostrate by my enemy and dragged by my heels to bed! jeered by the attempted witty observation of the would-be facetious Peter, that, "after all I was a very sober person, for whereas I had already been drowned in water, now I was drowned in wine which balanced the account per contra, so that, taking the average I had only been drinking wine-and-water!—Such was the shoppy witticism of the city brute. pre But my thoughts were at that time otherwise employed. What would Lavinia think of me? that was the tormenting thought! What did I think of myself? Should I hang myself, drown myself, or shoot myself? That was the question. Lavinia, I feared, was lost to me for ever! She never would forgive me! I never could forgive myself! What a fool I had been! And it had all happened from that confounded bill! Tick was at the bottom of it all! Was I for ever to be the victim of Tick! And there was that cursed bill to be paid still! But that humiliation was nothing compared to the present!-I had lost-I must have lost Lavinia's favour-and all else was nothing!-The world now had lost, for me, its salt and its savour! There was nothing henceforward left for me to do in it! Even to shoot Peter was now not worth while! What would it benefit me? Whether Peter was living or dead or I was living or dead—what did it matter now that Lavinia was dead to me! Humiliated confounded-racked with pain-and tortured with mental anguish indescribable, I lay for some time a prey to the bitterest repentance. But at last the shame of encountering the faces of the family at the hour of breakfast-and above all of meeting the cold-perhaps the disgusted countenance of the reproving Lavinia, roused me. I determined to make my way home before the inmates of the house were up. I tried to make out what o'clock it was-but my watch had stopped; by the gray light of the morning, however I knew it was early. I huddled on my clothes, as well as I could, and stole ignominiously out of the house; went to the stable, roused up a groom; was helped on a horse; and escaped. I said nothing at home of the reason of my early return; but I took occasion the same day-during the whole of which I was in mortal fear of a visit from the hateful Peter-to state to my father my excessive desire to return without delay to college in order to prepare myself for my degree; a resolution which he commended, "not," as he said, "that he ever knew a man to be the cleverer for having taken a degree-he had never taken the trouble to take one himself-but he saw no harm in it; and reading at least kept a young man out of mischief." SO The next day I set out.-I will confess to a weakness, if it was one, before I left the country; I took some bye ways to the vicinity of the green mound which has played its convenient part in this faithful history, with the hope of once more seeing Lavinia-even if it were only at a distance. I was not long in galloping to the spot; but Lavinia did not appear that all that I had to do was to sentimentalise a bit and trot prosaically back again. Still the scene which witnessed our first acquaintance dwelt fondly in my memory! and more than once before I rode away, I turned back to gaze on the spot which my obstinate heart cherished so dearly; to describe myself by a slight paraphrase of a line of Virgil Aspicit et dulces fugiens reminiscitur "agros!" The mellifluous sentiment of this celebrated verse, however, was quickly changed into a different feeling, when to my mortification, I beheld the visage of the aunt suddenly raised over the hedge as if to reconnoitre the approach of an expected enemy. I no sooner caught sight of those awful spectacles than I ignominiously fled; and, as Linden parodied the line which I have already quoted, Effugit et vitreis fugientem conspicit "Argus." Which, for my further improvement, and to cure me, as he said of my insufferable disposition to sentimentalism, he was pleased to render into the following unsympathising couplet : Just as the sighing swain gave love's last kick- CHAPTER XXX. It is curious how time mellows the severest griefs as it does old pictures, smoothing down the asperities of sorrow, and diminishing by distance the too prominent features of events which startle and shock the mind by their first roughness and proximity; the observation is not remarkably original, but I am induced to make it for the purpose of illustrating my own condition. My removal from the scene of my late disasters, by degrees, softened the painful feeling of humiliation and despair which at first possessed me. I had determined never to see Lavinia again for I felt that I could not brook her eye cast on me in scorn and coldness! but gradually that sensitiveness of anticipated repulsion wore away; and I began to view the matter in a different light and to consider, that, after all, my transgression was of a venial description. If my offence had been one of lèze majesté-against my allegiance to Lavinia-a breach of the exclusive devotion which in such cases is considered the right of the lady, the difficulty of accommodating matters would have been proportionably great; but, after all, as I said to myself, "what had I done?" I had been seduced-inveigled-into drinking a few extra glasses of wine! which the heat of the weather, and the particular state of my constitution (from the excessive cold-bath taken a short time previously) had produced an unfortunate effect on my system! There was not so much in that! And as to my challenging Peter and the major to fight-that, I argued, was only one of the secondary consequences of the offence already set down against me, and for which it was not fair to make me accountable. It was enough, as I endeavoured to persuade myself, to be amenable for the primary error without being made responsible for all its unpremeditated and accidental consequences. For, as I reasoned, take the case of a gentleman slightly overcome with wine, and who in consequence loses his balance and falls out of a window; in falling out of the window he smashes a fat gentleman and his wife passing accidentally beneath, falling partly on the one and partly on the other in nearly equal proportions. The fat gentleman and his wife are prostrated by the concussion to the damage of each respectively; but the consequences do not end there; they quarrel, each accusing the other of being the cause of the mishap; the husband swears that if the wife had not crawled on so slow (as she always did) they should have got past the spot before the collision; and the wife insists that if the husband had not galloped along so fast (which he always would do) the fall would have taken place before they had reached the spot, so that it was all his fault (as it always was). They dispute upon this, of course, all the way home; there, in the freedom of domestic privacy, the dispute grows warmer;-disputes between man and wife are always to be deprecated on their own account, although for some wise purpose (as a state of trial perhaps) to be revealed hereafter they do seem to occur more between parties in the matrimonial state of proximity than all others ;-the dispute continues after supper-(a simple repast-only toasted cheese and bottled stout)-each persists in his and her own opinion-that it was the other's fault; the one says she will die rather than give up her opinion-the other that he will be- -before he will give in; the contention waxes hotter and hotter; the husband gets into a tremendous passion-the wife goes into a fit; she bursts into an hysterical flood of tears-he bursts a bloodvessel. The coroner decides that it is a natural death; the jury (who are married men) agree that it is natural enough that man and wife should quarrel, and that the husband could not but be naturally enraged at his wife's obstinacy. The widow now mourns her lost husband with a grief unquestionably sincere (their income having consisted of a life-annuity which expired with the deceased), and mentally vows that should it please the Lord to send her another husband she will be very careful not to anger him, in the same way, again; in the mean time, as widows without jointures do, she mourns incessantly and takes to cherry-brandy. And all this from the circumstance of a gentleman having taken a few extra glasses of wine! But for all these secondary and remote consequences is the wine-drinker to be made responsible? If so, then, to carry out the argument to its legitimate extent, it would be his duty to marry the widow! a fate which the severest advocate of retributive justice would shrink from imposing on him. Now this was my own case: I had got a little tipsy; there was the offence; but that was the beginning and the ending of it; that was the offence for which I was to be judged; the vagaries which I after wards committed were the secondary consequences for which, as I logically demonstrated to myself, I could not be considered responsible. Then, as I argued, what was it after all? a trifle! nothing! it was what was done every day. A man who could not or would not take his glass occasionally, or his bottle (more or less), and be sociable and a good fellow like others, was a milksop. Now I was sure Lavinia would not like a milksop; I felt confident that such a character was not at all to her fancy; but, if she did not like a milksop, then, according to the rules of logic, she did like its opposite, and that antagonistic liking fitted me exactly. By this ingenious process of scholastic ratiocination, I arrived at the satisfactory conclusion, that, the act in question which I at first considered a fault, was, when properly stated, a merit; and I became more easy and comfortable in my mind accordingly. Thus reconciled to myself, the point next to be considered was how to re-open communications with Willow Lodge; to re-instate myself in the good graces of the papa; to circumvent the wily Peter; and to baffle the vigilance of the dragon who guarded the golden fruit in the modern garden of the Hesperides. CHAPTER XXXI. HAVING come to the satisfactory conclusion, which I have expressed in the last chapter, my thoughts began to dwell on the image of Lavinia with increased fervor; and as nothing cherishes the tender passion more than absence from the beloved object,-provided always that the absence is not too long, for then the heart, in its instinctive desire for some substantial attachment, is apt to turn to the comeliest or nearest object at hand,mine increased in intensity,-to make use of the technical language with which my worthy tutor endeavoured to familiarise me,-according "to the square of the distance;" in short, it was evident from various signs and tokens that the gentle youth, Leander, was, or fancied himself, violently in love. I grew pensive, solitary, and lack-a-daisical; the amusements in which I had been wont to take delight no longer interested me; boating, betting, shooting, and horse-racing had lost their charms. In a short time the complaint broke out in a copy of amatory verses, and there was danger of my falling into a decline of a desponding and poetical character. My effusions, however, were coloured with the irregularity and flightiness of my wayward imagination, which abundantly appeared in my diversified productions. For the information of the curious, I subjoin some of the effusions and confusions to which my love-sick state excited me; and which are so far instructive as to show the effect of the corporeal feelings over the intellectual-the melancholy influence, in this our mortal state, of matter over mind. I find some disjointed thoughts" on reading the 22nd Ode of the first book of Horace," which it seems were written during a temporary illness, when I was dieted on toast-and-water : Integer vitæ sceleris-que purus ;" That is, when vices don't wear virtue's hood ;- People would not be able to endure us ;— |