Peveril of the Peak by Walter Scott (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📕

your service—not permitting it to retrograde to the perpendicular. Nay, take it off before the bubble bursts on the rim, and the zest is gone.”

“You do me honour, sir,” said Peveril, taking the second glass. “I wish you a better office than that of my cup-bearer.”

“You cannot wish Will Smith one more congenial to his nature,” said Ganlesse. “Others have a selfish delight in the objects of sense, Will thrives, and is happy by imparting them to his friends.”

“Better help men to pleasures than to pains, Master Ganlesse,” answered Smith, somewhat angrily.

“Nay, wrath thee not, Will,” said Ganlesse; “and speak no words in haste, lest you may have cause to repent at leisure. Do I blame thy social concern for the pleasures of others? Why, man, thou dost therein most philosophically multiply thine own. A man has but one throat, and can but eat, with his best efforts, some five or six times a day; but thou dinest with every friend that cuts a capon, and art quaffing wine in other men’s gullets, from morning to night—et sic de cæteris.”

“Friend Ganlesse,” returned Smith, “I prithee beware—thou knowest I can cut gullets as well as tickle them.”

“Ay, Will,” answered Ganlesse carelessly; “I think I have seen thee wave thy whinyard at the throat of a Hogan-Mogan—a Netherlandish weasand, which expanded only on thy natural and mortal objects of aversion,—Dutch cheese, rye-bread, pickled herring, onion, and Geneva.”

“For pity’s sake, forbear the description!” said Smith; “thy words overpower the perfumes, and flavour the apartment like a dish of salmagundi!”

“But for an epiglottis like mine,” continued Ganlesse, “down which the most delicate morsels are washed by such claret as thou art now pouring out, thou couldst not, in thy bitterest mood, wish a worse fate than to be necklaced somewhat tight by a pair of white arms.”

“By a tenpenny cord,” answered Smith; “but not till you were dead; that thereafter you be presently embowelled, you being yet alive; that your head be then severed from your body, and your body divided into quarters, to be disposed of at his Majesty’s pleasure.—How like you that, Master Richard Ganlesse?”

“E’en as you like the thoughts of dining on bran-bread and milk-porridge—an extremity which you trust never to be reduced to. But all this shall not prevent me from pledging you in a cup of sound claret.”

As the claret circulated, the glee of the company increased; and Smith placing the dishes which had been made use of upon the side-table, stamped with his foot on the floor, and the table sinking down a trap, again rose, loaded with olives, sliced neat’s tongue, caviare, and other provocatives for the circulation of the bottle.

“Why, Will,” said Ganlesse, “thou art a more complete mechanist than I suspected; thou hast brought thy scene-shifting inventions to Derbyshire in marvellously short time.”

“A rope and pullies can be easily come by,” answered Will; “and with a saw and a plane, I can manage that business in half a day. I love the knack of clean and secret conveyance—thou knowest it was the foundation of my fortunes.”

“It may be the wreck of them too, Will,” replied his friend.

“True, Diccon,” answered Will; “but, dum vivimus, vivamus,—that is my motto; and therewith I present you a brimmer to the health of the fair lady you wot of.”

“Let it come, Will,” replied his friend; and the flask circulated briskly from hand to hand.

Julian did not think it prudent to seem a check on their festivity, as he hoped in its progress something might occur to enable him to judge of the character and purposes of his companions. But he watched them in vain. Their conversation was animated and lively, and often bore reference to the literature of the period, in which the elder seemed particularly well skilled. They also talked freely of the Court, and of that numerous class of gallants who were then described as “men of wit and pleasure about town;” and to which it seemed probable they themselves appertained.

At length the universal topic of the Popish Plot was started; upon which Ganlesse and Smith seemed to entertain the most opposite opinions. Ganlesse, if he did not maintain the authority of Oates in its utmost extent, contended, that at least it was confirmed in a great measure by the murder of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, and the letters written by Coleman to the confessor of the French King.

With much more noise, and less power of reasoning, Will Smith hesitated not to ridicule and run down the whole discovery, as one of the wildest and most causeless alarms which had ever been sounded in the ears of a credulous public. “I shall never forget,” he said, “Sir Godfrey’s most original funeral. Two bouncing parsons, well armed with sword and pistol, mounted the pulpit, to secure the third fellow who preached from being murdered in the face of the congregation. Three parsons in one pulpit—three suns in one hemisphere—no wonder men stood aghast at such a prodigy.”

“What then, Will,” answered his companion, “you are one of those who think the good knight murdered himself, in order to give credit to the Plot?”

“By my faith, not I,” said the other; “but some true blue Protestant might do the job for him, in order to give the thing a better colour.—I will be judged by our silent friend, whether that be not the most feasible solution of the whole.”

“I pray you, pardon me, gentlemen,” said Julian; “I am but just landed in England, and am a stranger to the particular circumstances which have thrown the nation into such a ferment. It would be the highest degree of assurance in me to give my opinion betwixt gentlemen who argue the matter so ably; besides, to say truth, I confess weariness—your wine is more potent than I expected, or I have drunk more of it than I meant to do.”

“Nay, if an hour’s nap will refresh you,” said the elder of the strangers, “make no ceremony with us. Your bed—all we can offer as such—is that old-fashioned Dutch-built sofa, as the last new phrase calls it. We shall be early stirrers tomorrow morning.”

“And that we may be so,” said Smith, “I propose that we do sit up all this night—I hate lying rough, and detest a pallet-bed. So have at another flask, and the newest lampoon to help it out—

‘Now a plague of their votes Upon Papists and Plots, And be d—d Doctor Oates. Tol de rol.’”

“Nay, but our Puritanic host,” said Ganlesse.

“I have him in my pocket, man—his eyes, ears, nose, and tongue,” answered his boon companion, “are all in my possession.”

“In that case, when you give him back his eyes and nose, I pray you keep his ears and tongue,” answered Ganlesse. “Seeing and smelling are organs sufficient for such a knave—to hear and tell are things he should have no manner of pretensions to.”

“I grant you it were well done,” answered Smith; “but it were a robbing of the hangman and the pillory; and I am an honest fellow, who would