LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2054, 23 September 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

TBUMPS, BT JINGO. [Abridged from •• Truth.'] We were travelling in a train on the Great Western line between Windsor and Beading, and thinking of a coming run with Lord Bedesdale'a honnds, when I noticed a particularly spruce-looking man In front of me. He may have been abont fifty, bat it was a hale and florid fifty, that looked fall five years younger. His get-up was capital, and it was easy to tee that he, too, was a noble sportsman, whose hunters were welJ up to their work, and would carry him as straight as the crow flies. He had the sort of face one sees at good clubs and at the best country houses, not a a Court face, but an open countenance, with money and independence visible in every varying expression of it. It was the year of poor Frank Mildred's smash, and one of us spoke of him as a gone coon. ' Oh, no!' observed the smart-looking gentleman, nodding to Tom Ollivier, who was in our set, and with whom he seemed to have an acquaintance, ' Ob, dear me, no ; life is full of ohanoes.' 'That maybe,' said Jim Croker, of the Blues, ' but not when » man has got such a facer as Frank.' * Humph ! ' said the smart-looking gentleman, lighting a cigar, and tbe train stopped. The smart-looking man had a dog-cart with an even-going mare, as clever as anything I had seen for a long time, in she shafts; and as my servant was, as nsnal, behind time with my cover hack, I accepted his offer to tool me to the meet. ' What's your name T' he asked briskly, when he had pulled the rug snugly over our knees. •Poulet,' I answered, taking out my cigsr case, 'John Poulet.' p" ' Not Poulet of Bamsroost, in Pomersetshire ? ' shouted the smart man, with awakened interest. * Same,' said I, dryly. * Well, then, I'll be hanged if I am not your first cousin,' said he; 'my name is Partridge; Wm. Partridge, of Fern Dell, and Copsewood, in Devon.' 'What, not little Bi'lee, surely?' I replied, coloring all over for no reason in particular, as I looked np at my relative, and saw he measured a clean six feet in his stockings. ' yes,' he resumed, laughing, 'little Billee of the Diplomatic service, and elsewhere, who has come home at last after thirty years of travel and tomfoolery in a gold coat.' ' Ha !' said I, changing the subject, 'that's a nice mare; what's her time ?' I did not care where he had been or what he had been doing. I wss thinking of the hunt breakfast then waiting for us at Carnavan'e. ' Mile in three minutes, or thereabouts, when she's put to it,' replied Mr Partridge, equating his elbows. 'She's not very fast, but her action is a cure for weak eyes. Got anything clever down your way ? I would give a long figure for her match. She would make a showy leader in a team I want to manufacture, and I have been one short these three months. Fact is, if all your horses are not of the same temper, when they run riot they saw your arms off. Even one a little freer than the other spoils the music of their going.' ' Frank's was the drag in London last year,' I remarked with an appearance of dolefulness we all assumed when speaking of Mildred, then supposed to be in the penal settlement of Boulogne, or some other of the coast towns where he oould look wistfully at England. ' Let us hope he will have as good a one next year, or a better," rejoined Little Billee ; ' a man gets finer jungment in his cattle as he grows older.' 'I see you don't know about Frank,' said 1, putting on my longest face; 'he has run an immortal mucker, poor boy, and been obliged to throw no his commission. He has not a sixpence under the sun. and the mete mention of his name at the Horse Guards is like flourishing a red flag before the bull—the adjutant-general, I mean.' 'What of that!' asked Mr Partridge, breezily. ' About five years ago, egad ! —I was then forty-seven—l had a difference of opinion with old Meddler, who made sunshine and fine weather at the Foreign Office, and of course that highly-reßpectsd permanent person flew straight at my pocket. One way and another he contrived to fine me about thirty thousand pounds before he had done with me, and, as I was a younger son, he made a mouse of me, instead of a man, before I knew whether I was standing on my head or my heels. Peace to his manes, he is dead now. But for a cool, vicious, pigbeaded fellow when he was alive I never saw his equal. I had to bolt at last. I had not, of course, saved a penny while figuring about at the courts of Europe, and when Mr Meddler had thoroughly done for me I possessed nothing which I could call my own but my skin. If I had been a soldier or a Bailor I could have gone like Dundonald or Val Baker into foreign service, and turned up quite radiant as a South American admiral or a Turkish pasha with pay and tails. But none of the foreign governments in our days will employ a British diplomatist our-at-elbows Talk about a facer! If ever any man got one I did ; and I was floored. Knocked flat as a pancake. Bowled over.'

' About three weeks after I had tumbled headlong down in the manner above mentioned, I was mooning about in Paris, thinking that my last card was really played cut. I had no profession. I understood no trade. I was an exile and an outlaw. lam not often in a despondent mood ; no healthy person is ; but I fancied that I ought to feel more gloomy than I did, for really my outlooks were as bad as they well could be. I had nothing—nothing bet my watch, which was a valuable one. It had, however, belonged to my father, whom 1 loved very dearly, and it was the only thing I had been able to keep in memory of him. Still, I was hungry, and the necessity of eating becomes urgent under that condition, so I took my watch to the Monte de Piete (the pawnshop), hoping to redeem it in more monied days, which I felt oonvinced would return. French pawnbroking is a Government monopoly, and I could get no advance en my father's watch, because it bore his coronet and cypher, and the pawnbroking mind of Paris could not understand the endless Ins and outs of British noble patronymics.

' I paced the boulevard with an empty stomach till nightfall, taking much leea delight in looking at the Bhop windows than usual, though they made me still half forget my troubles ; and then a luminous thought occurred to me. In the times when I was living on my unexhausted property, I had rendered rather an important servioe to a Captain Jenkins, of the Eoyal Navy—at least he thought bo, for he wrote me some letters full of very warm expressions of gratitude. He was then a small man, poorer than I, and almost unknown ; hut since he had had an astonishing run of luok. One of his womenkind had done an amazing fine business in the marriage market, and thereafter Jenkins had gone off like a rocket tiil his head was in the clouds and never came down again. He became Sir James Jenkins, K.C.8., and finally the Bight Honourable Lord Jenkins, of Plushlands, G.C.8., P.C., and the rest of it ; then he died, but his bod, the present Jenkins, who had inherited all his father's good luck, and more, was flourishing in Paris like a bay tree, or I had seen him. Ho appeared to me jiy dead-beat condition, like a god on horseback. I wrote a note to the present Jenkin who was also a G. 0.8. of great renown, and told him how I stood, thioking, as an old ally and chum of his governor, he would stretch out a hand to me. I Bent him my father's watch, too, and asked him to keep it till hotter times, that he might not lose by his good nature, of which I doubted nothing. Jenkins, G.C.8., however, was wise in his g'neration. He had the faar of Meddler before his eyes, and he sent me back my poor tiinket broken. He had, I heard afterwards, pitched it from one end of his Kom to the other, and it had smashed against a wall. Then he hawked about my latter, putting a bold face on his behaviour, »nd made a little capital amongst old acquaintances out of the strry. It was talked about at the table d'hotes, too, having been made common gossip, and some people approved of Jenkins ; some didn't. • I knew it was talked about at the table d' 7iotes, for a few days after I got an unexpected windfall. It was not ranch, but I determined to make the most of it, and set myself seriously to consider how I should, or rather how I could earn my livelihood when my last visible resources were exhausted. All at once I remembered that a man of some note who had come to grief not long before me had served as an hotel waiter in New York,

and I resolved to study the qualifications necessary for this profession at the principal hotels while my money lasted. It was lucky that Providence had mercy on my innocence; fori conld have no more got my bread as a waiter than as a chemist. I had been hitherto proud of my name; proud of a life which had not been without its triumphs ; and I had honestly tried, as far as was in me, to put aside all mean or unworthy things. Heaven and earth! my very walk, the voice and language habitual to me, my gait and bearing, would have been a melancholy burlesque of the waiter's profession. I lost courage for the first time when I felt how helpless I was. I had had the best eduoation known in my time. I had been at school and college. I had been engaged till my hair had whitened in a liberal profession, and when it was taken from me I was worth nothing. I cauld be of use to no human being. I could make nothing, do nothing—except, perhaps, ran about on errands—a slipshod, red-nosed old fellow, who wonld have to stand for hire at some street corner, perhaps,by and by. 'lt was partly to raise my spirits, and partly because I felt desperate and did not care how soon the end came; or, still more likely, it was because one of the kindlier spirits who look down pitifully on human sorrow had taken compassion on me, that I was moved by an irresistible impulse to dine &t the Cafe Angle!s ; and I ordered the house dinner, regardless of the irremediable hole it would make in my pooket.' There were a few travellers, principally Russian, and several attaches to the different missions in Paris, ocatteree about the room in groups and parties. An Austrian secretary of legation, who was dining with his wife, nodded to me to join them, and half an hour afterwards I had forgotten that there is such a thing cs ruin in the world.

We were, indeed, particularly entertained by a large, vulgar man, with dyed hair and a fearful quantity of jewellery, who sat at an adjoining table, and whose dinner seemed to be exclusively composed of the mo3t expensive things he oould order. ' I have seen that follow before somewhere,' I said, speaking to Count Rudolf Widsky, * bnt I cannot recolleot who he is, or what he is.'

' I know, replied his wife, archly ; she had been a beautiful Jewess, and belonged to what is called the second society of Vienna; ' that is Baron Bi . kindorf; he can neither read nor write; bat he contracted for the last Hungarian loan, and is as rich as Crceus; ndeed. a great deal richer, 1 believe.' ' Will you come with ns to the opera, Mr Partridge ? my sister has given me [a message for you.' ' To the opera we went, and I took leave of my old friends at the doer of a pretty hotel they had taken in one of the streets leading out of the Champs Elysee. Then I walked towards my own lodging, which waa an attic at a third-rate inn on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. Presently I became conscious that I was being followed, and I inwardly chuckled over the disappointment that a footpad would feel on turning out_ my pockets, for my heart was obstinately light, and I waa quite nnable to realise my position that evening. I seemed to myself like a man who is playing with children, and pretends to be put into a corner, but cannot, for the life and soul of him, carry the game so far ai to fancy it is dark. Looking round, nevertheless, to take the measure of my attendant, I saw to my amaz lment that it was the great loan contractor, Baion Bilkindorf. He stopped when I stopped, and made a feint of turning back ; but before I had gone twenty yards I heard his stealthy waddle again behind me. I had no concern with him, as he obviously wished to avoid to me, but was still partly amused and partly annoyed to see that he had followed me to my mean quarters, and that he went in after me and spoke to the concierga while I was going up to my attic. As I was still wondering what this could mean, the concierge, who v?as for some occult reason in high good humor, tapped at my door and gave me a letter. It was a thick, clumsy missive in a canvas envelope, like that used by bankers. I opened it and read these words : ' On Her Sir, i robed u hov sum thinks wot I porned. Hear hitis haid inter rust from yer umble serving 2 ko mand. • sined Ahdonimoss * Noty beany yer boddy servins nam was Wilkins but mum's his wurd beein a barren. 'lt was trumps, by jingo ! I recollected well enough that a very \:ute valet I had had some ten years before was with me when I had lost some valuable jewels; but I never suspected him of having stolen them. "When he himself eonfessed it. however, I had no scrapie in taking the value of my own property back again ; and I have often thought that this robbery was one of the moat fortunate events that ever happened to me, though I made more than enorgh fusa about it at the time. I now knew " Baron Bilkindorf " also. Now, what with my dear aunt Mary's death, and some other inheritances which have dropped in, I have bought back one of the family estates, which my elder brother sold, and am better off than ever I was. Frank Mildred will come all right, too, in good time ; bat, hullo ! Here we are at Newbury.'