第53章 CHAPTER XIII.(12)
She continued in this state a month, and then, by God's mercy, she recovered her reason; but now the disease fell another step, and lighted upon her temper--a more athletic vixen was not to be found. She had spoiled Triplet for this by being too tame, so when the dispensation came they sparred daily. They were now thoroughly unhappy. They were poor as ever, and their benefactress was dead, and they had learned to snap. A speculative tour had taken this pair to Bristol, then the second city in England. They sojourned in the suburbs.
One morning the postman brought a letter for Triplet, who was showing his landlord's boy how to plant onions. (N. B.-- Triplet had never planted an onion, but he was one of your _a priori_ gentlemen, and could show anybody how to do anything.) Triplet held out his hand for the letter, but the postman held out his hand for a half crown first. Trip's profession had transpired, and his clothes inspired diffidence. Triplet appealed to his good feeling.
He replied with exultation, "That he had none left." (A middle-aged postman, no doubt.)
Triplet then suddenly started from entreaty to King Cambyses' vein. In vain!
Mrs. Triplet came down, and essayed the blandishments of the softer sex.
In vain! And, as there were no assets, the postman marched off down the road.
Mrs. Triplet glided after him like an assassin, beckoning on Triplet, who followed, doubtful of her designs. Suddenly (truth compels me to relate this) she seized the obdurate official from behind, pinned both his arms to his side, and with her nose furiously telegraphed her husband.
He, animated by her example, plunged upon the man and tore the letter from his hand and opened it before his eyes.
It happened to be a very windy morning, and when he opened the letter an inclosure, printed on much finer paper, was caught into the air and went down the wind. Triplet followed in kangaroo leaps, like a dancer making a flying exit.
The postman cried on all good citizens for help. Some collected and laughed at him; Mrs. Triplet explaining that they were poor, and could not pay half a crown for the freight of half an ounce of paper. She held him convulsively until Triplet reappeared.
That gentleman on his return was ostentatiously calm and dignified. "You are, or were, in perturbation about half a crown," said he. "There, sir, is a twenty-pound note, oblige me with nineteen pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence. Should your resources be unequal to such a demand, meet me at the 'Green Cat and Brown Frogs,' after dinner, when you shall receive your half-crown, and drink another upon the occasion of my sudden accession to unbounded affluence."
The postman was staggered by the sentence and overawed by the note, and chose the "Cat and Frogs," and liquid half-crown.
Triplet took his wife down the road and showed her the letter and inclosure. The letter ran thus:
"SIR--We beg respectfully to inform you that our late friend and client, James Triplet, Merchant, of the Minories, died last August, without a will, and that you are his heir.
"His property amounts to about twenty thousand pounds, besides some reversions. Having possessed the confidence of your late uncle we should feel honored and gratified if you should think us worthy to act professionally for yourself.
"We inclose twenty pounds, and beg you will draw upon us as far as five thousand pounds, should you have immediate occasion.
"We are, sir, "Your humble servants, "JAMES AND JOHN ALLMITT."
It was some time before these children of misfortune could realize this enormous stroke of compensation; but at last it worked its way into their spirits, and they began to sing, to triumph, and dance upon the king's highway.
Mrs. Triplet was the first to pause, and take better views. "Oh, James!" she cried, "we have suffered much! we have been poor, but honest, and the Almighty has looked upon us at last!"
Then they began to reproach themselves.
"Oh, James! I have been a peevish woman--an ill wife to you, this many years!"
"No, no!" cried Triplet, with tears in his eyes. "It is I who have been rough and brutal. Poverty tried us too hard; but we were not like the rest of them--we were always faithful to the altar. And the Almighty has seen us, though we often doubted it."
"I never doubted that, James."
So then the poor things fell on their knees upon the public road, and thanked God. If any man had seen them, he would have said they were mad.
Yet madder things are done every day by gentlemen with faces as grave as the parish bull's. And then they rose and formed their little plans.
Triplet was for devoting four-fifths to charity, and living like a prince on the remainder. But Mrs. Triplet thought the poor were entitled to no more than two-thirds, and they themselves ought to bask in a third, to make up for what they had gone through; and then suddenly she sighed, and burst into tears. "Lucy! Lucy!" sobbed she.
Yes, reader, God had taken little Lucy! And her mother cried to think all this wealth and comfort had come too late for her darling child.
"Do not cry. Lucy is richer, a thousand times, than you are, with your twenty thousand pounds."
Their good resolutions were carried out, for a wonder. Triplet lived for years, the benefactor of all the loose fish that swim in and round theaters; and, indeed, the unfortunate seldom appealed to him in vain. He now predominated over the arts, instead of climbing them. In his latter day he became an oracle, as far as the science of acting was concerned; and, what is far more rare, he really got to know _something_ about it.
This was owing to two circumstances: first, he ceased to run blindfold in a groove behind the scenes; second, he became a frequenter of the first row of the pit, and that is where the whole critic, and two-thirds of the true actor, is made.