LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 154, 1 December 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

TOM BRLMS'S INDIAN PRINCES. In Two Chapters. (I< 7 rom Chambers's Journal.) ( Concluded.') On the following morning, he had a little recovered his wits. He said he had thought things over. He should remain with the princes till they returned to London. He tad brought them down into the provinces, and he would see them safe back ; but once they were again in the capital, the Indian Office might take the responsibilty of them. He had been insulted enough. The wealth of India should not bribe him to do what was derogatory to an Englishman. He was not going to weaken her Majesty's hold over the empire in that way. Now that Tom Brims had become a little more reasonable, their Highnesses seemed themselves to have taktn to sulking. It was past their usual hour for stirring, still they remained invisible. A little group of their servants crouched, noiseless, motionless, before the inner door, patiently waiting for the signal to enter. After lounging about for some time, Tom seemed to construe the delay into a fresh insult. By way of shewing that he had a proper spirit, he started out for a walk in the town, leaving me to assort a fresh batch of accounts, brought by that morning's post. I think rather more than an hour had elapsed, when I heard a hasty yet light footstep enter the room in which I was writing. Turning my head, I saw Brims with a newspaper in his hand. His face was of the most sickly hue, and the wayin which he distorted his features into a ghastly grin only made his look more startling. ' Are their Highnesses stirring ?' he asked, in a thin, hollow chuckle, looking eagerty towards the inner door. ' This is a London newspaper—-just come in,' flourishing it towards me. 'lt is an excellent joke. The princes will all laugh at it.' I dropped my pen in the middle of a very large total, getting up and going towards him. ' What is the matter ?' I asked.

' The princes are made to be—ha, ha ! —in two places at once. A Times telegram says they have landed at Marseilles. Isn't it good? There, where I met them. Vv T as there ever anything so ridiculous ? Ha, ha! I must shew it them.' He addressed himself, in their own language, to the servants crouching before the inner door. They could not tell him what he wanted; in reply, they shook their heads. His whiteness increased; drops of perspiration started on his large features. Bidding me come with him, lie unceremoniously pushed them aside. The atmosphere of the inner room was as hot as a furnace when we entered ; the gaslights were burning just as they were overnight. On each of the three carpets lay a turbaned white heap. Tom, holding his newspaper before him, advanced towards the central figure, bowing respectfully. He went nearer, nearer still; he stooped, and touched the prince.

' As I live, it is true !' he called out, holding up a 'white robe with no prince in it. It was the same with the other carpets. A flowing robe and the coils of an endless turban lay upon each ; but the garments were unoccupied. The princes had vanished ! The hotel was in an uproar instantly at the alarm Tom made. The premises were searched thoroughly; but, as it was clear, from subsequent information, that their Highnesses left the hotel one by one, during the absence of Tom Brims and myself on the previous evening, it ceased to be wonderful that they were not to be found. In a very short time after this, Tom Brims, I, and the five native servants forming the suite were in the hands of the Liverpool police, in pursuance of instructions received from London, on the charge of aiding in the imposition. Tom Brims's princes were not the real ones; they were not princes at all!

The true Indian princes, who, with much pomp, had just now reached Europe, had come down to Bombay three months before to make the previously announced journey, but, at the last moment of embarking, one of them was seized with a sudden illness, making an immediate return up country necessary, The daring impostors, who had been years resident in Upper India and acquired the language, sailed for Marseilles, and there assumed their Highnesses' names and titles, carrying out the rest of the programme, but giving it a commercial turn, which the real princes had not dreamed of. They must have had accomplice? who never appeared with them publicly. These had not only informed them of the movements of the great personages they were counterfeiting, but had travelled on their heels from place to place, and, armad with the authorisations to that effect, had possessed themselves of the unpaid stores of goods of all kinds, removing them, and turning them into money elsewhere at any sacrifice. A very handsome sum had bean realised ; though doubtless it would have been still more if the genuine nabobs had deferred their arrival a little longer. The impostors had managed, not unskilfully, to wind up their scheme at Liverpool, where foreigners of all complexions and styles were in plenty, and where there were such facilities for getting out of the country. No traces of them could be found; it was not likely. If Tom Brims and myself had met them in any other costume than robes and turbans, the chances are we could not have sworn to them. I don't care to dwell upon the indignities Tom Brims and I had to go through. He surrendered his three diamonds to the authorities at once; which, upon being tested, were duly pronounced to be ]>aste ! Eight days elapsed before I sheepfacedly crept back into the office ill Fenchurch street ; it was nearly a month before Tom Brims was allowed to leave England and to rejoin his maiden aunt in France. Nothing could be satisfactorily made out of the five natives. Whether they were in the secret or not, was never known. After they had been detained here for some time, they were reshipped back to Bombay. It cost us clerks in the Fenchurch Street office one shilling and twopence-halfpenny apiece to have, unknown to the principals, a new mahogany top fitted to the desk Brims once occupied. But even now there are reminders of the matter. The junior member of the firm, in sauntering through our room, will sometimes say : ' 1 thought there was an inscription somewhere here to an eminent Englishman who became interpreter to Indian princes !' Instead of any explanation being given, silence reigns at all the desks, broken only by the more rapid scratching of the pens upon the paper. It is not a pleasant topic, Tom Brim's Indian Princes. " DOLLY." A Story of the London "Sans-Souci." [From Bclgravia.] "My Dolly appears with a smile on her face." Charlotte Temple. Yes, sir, I'm the cabby ! That's how you remembers my face and features. But I knew you, sir, when you was putting up at the hotel over against the rank. I knew your father too, sir, and the family down in York—many's the boss my master bought of him. No, I ain't in my driving costume, as you call it, to day. I'm a-hanging about the Court—leastwiz in this ' pub ' by the Court —so as to be ready at a call. I'm a witness, sir, about this unfor'nit tragedy in Sir Philip Sidney square. I'm a principled witness, Mr Sidewhisker says. Yes, the young lady is young —that's undoubted ; that she's a lady, now I won't go to maintain. I do lailly think I know more about that gel than anybody who will be called up in Court this day. When she was rising one year, she lived up our mews. Father never know'd of—mother ailing and carrying out to her day's work a cough fit to shake a church. She was always a-running into our room—swarmin' up the steps outside the door like a lamplighter, never falling, never bumping her head—wonderous how she done it. The missus was werry fond of that little gel, uncommon ; and if ever I see a little tidbit—Avhat we called in the country a ' top-off'-—on a plate permiscus after dinner, I didn't want no tellin' that that 'ere were a treat for the little uu next door. First, to begin with, me bcin' a ' nighter,' she was rayther a shyer from me, shrinking up like, for times were hard on us, and I wasn't the smoothest, softest-coated man in the mews. But all of a suddent, one day, there come a turn in her conduck—she began to speak to me quite free, and whenever I led the hoss round to the wetterrinary surgeon's, or such-like, nothing would satisfy that gel but to ride on the boss's back. Remarkable fond of bosses she was from a child, that gel Dolly ! Well, running up and down the rough stones of the mews, climbing the ladder-like steps, playing hide-and-seek in the cabs, that's how she grew up. No schooHn', not a wink, sir, and the first thing I knew—me bein' home only at night now—she was off to work every morning, and coming back reg'lar as a timekeeper to the busses, jest about half-past eight, when I turned in oil' the streets myself. Sometimes I'd happen to meet her and give her a lift; and looking in behind me through the glass, I would see her sitting up like a queen, and you'd think it was the Lord Mayor's coach and belonged to her. She was working at a bookbinder's, it appears, folding up books, but with never no time to look at the print; and so she never got much larnin' from that, neither. A pretty gel then, as pretty for a child as she is for a gel this minute. The young men of the mews, especially the driver of the swell 'ansom, who had been the Earl of Shootinbox's own wally—l do assure you, sir, them youngsters spruced up quite a sight to behold. You'd 'a took 'em lorthegents of Dasherhaber and Company's on a Sunday, only more spicier about the necktie, you know. And however late they had been out the ■lay before, their helpers had standin' orders to rouse them up in time to be at the winder and squint at Dolly goin' to work in the mornin', with her cocky little hat and feather, and her hair down her back, which it wasn't the fashion then, and her dinner in a paper parcel sticking out of her pocket. Saturday evenin' in 'ot weather wo used to have it jolly in our mews. There was a

German band that would come to the Whip anrl Snaffle to reckon up the money they had collected in the terrace, an' a werry good waltz, considerin', they could jerk out. Prehaps a little less drumbone an' picklelo would 'a' been an improvement, but it come cheap, an' we hadn't any 'casion to grumble. 0' course, all the youngsters would dance, the children with babbies as big as themselves, the gels with the gels and the boys with themselves, bein' young and sheepish. I don't railly believe there was a neater dancer for her size than Dolly had got to be. It was nateral for her to pick up the steps, for where was she to get the larnin' ? If they had brought down into our mews one of them cellybrated dansises, which I've seen the pictur's of, coloured fine, in gen'lemen's rooms in the Albany, our Dolly would 'a' got most bread-and-cheese. We'd 'a' proberly chaffed the Siggynora off her 'nut' into the bargin, I think I can see Dolly this moment, sir, with her shining hair floating all about her round chubby face, and her mouth opening to show her teeth, white and small as a rat's, and her big gray eyes a-changing all colors like a piece of fireworks, she was worth makin' a pictur' of, I do assure you, sir, for the Academy or the room you can see from the box in ' the Horizontal.' Well, sir, all seemed life and merriness with her, when, quite abrupt, Dolly had a serious lit. She used to borrer books and read 'em of a summer evening, a-sitting on top of the stairs leading up over the stable where her mother lived. To be continued.