Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (33 page)

We supped upon Christmas
furmety, a dish of wheat cakes seethed in milk with rich spices. I relished it
well, and did equal justice to the noble minced pyes served up with it.

Supper done, we trooped
to the library. Impeded by an armful of green stuff, Dr. Johnson came last,
edging his way to the door. On the threshold, as he sought to manoeuvre the
unmanageable branches through, the crookedest one fairly lifted his
fresh-powdered Christmas wig from his head, and as he clutched at it with a
start, precipitated it in a cloud of white onto the floor. I relieved him of
his awkward burden, and good-humouredly he recovered his head-covering and
clapped it back in its place, all awry.

In the library all was
bustle. It was my part to wreathe the mantel with green. Pretty Miss Fanny
lighted the Christmas candles, looking the prettier in their glow, her
sparkling eyes rivalling the brilliant at her breast. Thrale ignited the mighty
“Yule clog.”

Dr. Johnson was in great
expansion of soul, saluting his hostess gallantly under the mistletoe bough,
and expatiating on the old Christmas games of his boyhood.

“Do but be patient, Dr.
Johnson, we’ll shew you them all,” cried Thrale with unwonted vivacity. He was
busied over a huge bowl. In it heated wine mingled its fumes with orange peel
and spices, while whole roasted apples by the fire were ready to be set abob in
it. ’Twas the old-time
wassail bowl;
though
Dr. Johnson persisted in referring to its contents, in his Lichfield accent, as
poonch.

“Here we come
a-wassailing among the leaves so green,

 Here we come
a-wandering, so fair to be seen...”

The notes of the song
crept up on us gradually, coming from the direction of the common, till by the
time the second verse began, the singers stood in the gravel path before the
library windows; which we within threw up, the better to hear their song:

“We are not daily
beggars, that beg from door to door,But we are your neighbours’ children, whom
you have seen before...”

Past all doubt, so they
were. The servants had crowded to the door-step in the mild night, and merry
greetings were interchanged as they found friends among the waits. A light snow
was drifting down. The rusticks were fancifully adorned with ribands, and wore
greens stuck in their hats; they carried lanthorns on poles, and sang to the
somewhat dubious accompaniment of an ancient serpent and a small kit fiddle. In
the ring of listening faces I spied the surly visage of the one-legged sailor.
Belle the spaniel spied her enemy too. She escaped from the arms of Miss Fanny,
eluded the groom at the house-door, and dashed out into the mud to snap at his
heel. She came back with a satisfied swagger, the more as she had succeeded in
untying her riband and befouling it in the mud. Miss Fanny admonished her, and
restored the adornment:

“Now here’s to the
maid in the lily-white smock

 Who slipped to the
door and pulled back the lock,

 Who slipped to the
door and pulled back the pin

 For to let these
merry wassailers walk in.”

There was no suiting the
action to the word. Thrale passed the cup out at window, keeping the lower
orders still withoutside. The waits wiped their mouths on their sleeves, and
sang themselves off:

“Wassail, wassail
all over the town,

Our bread it is
white and our ale it is brown,

Our bowl it is made
of the green maple tree--

In our wassailing
bowl we’ll drink unto thee!”

Next the mummers came
marching. Like the waits, they had been recruited from the lads about
Streatham. Though every man was disguised in fantastick habiliments, among them
the canine instinct of Belle unerringly found out her friends. His own mother
would not have known the
Doctor,
he
presenting to the world but a high-bridged nose and a forest of whiskers; but
Belle licked his hand, the while he acknowledged the attention by scratching
her ear and making her riband straight. She fawned upon
St. George
(by which, “’Tis the butcher’s boy!”
discovered Mrs. Thrale) and put muddy foot-marks on the breeches of the
Old Man,
before her attentions were repelled. She came back
with her tongue out and her riband, once again, a-trail. Miss Fanny, defeated,
neglected to restore it. She crowded with the rest of the company in the window
as the link-boys lifted their torches, and upon the snowy sward the rusticks of
Streatham played the famous mumming play of
St. George and the Dragon.

“Pray, sir, take notice,”
said the pleased Dr. Johnson, “is not this a relique of great antiquity, the
hieratic proceedings of yonder sorcerous
Doctor
with his magick pill? Pray, my man—” out at window to
the
Doctor,
“how do you understand
these doings?”

“Nor I don’t, sir,” replied
the player huskily, and carried on his part to a chorus of laughter from
within.

“And God bless this good
company,” concluded
St. George
piously. He caught the heavy purse that Thrale threw him, weighed it, and added
in his own voice, “God bless ye, sir.”

The guests added their
largesse. Plumbe hurled a piece of gold; Dr. Johnson and I scattered silver;
even withered little Dr. Thomas must needs add his half crown. ’Twas scarce
worth the trouble he went to, first to fumble in his capacious pocket for the
destined coin, then to wrap it in a leaf from his pocket book, finally to aim
it precisely into the hands of
St. George.
His
heart was better than his marksmanship; his shot went wide, and a scramble
ensued.

“God bless all here,” chorused
the rusticks, and made off with their torches as we within closed windows and
clustered about the fire. Then the bowl was set ablaze, and we adventured our
fingers at snapdragon, catching at the burning raisins with merry cries.

“Fan, my love,” said the
Alderman suddenly, “where is thy Christmas box?”

Everybody looked at the
flushed girl, standing with a burned finger-tip between her pink lips like a
baby.

“The man,” she
half-whispered, “the man, Papa, he looked at it so, while the mummers played, I
was affrighted and slipped it into a place of safety.”

She indicated an
exquisite little French enamel vase.

“’Tis here, Papa.”

The Alderman snatched the
vase and turned it up. ’Twas empty. Miss Fanny’s Christmas box was gone.

The Alderman turned
purple.

“The servants—” he
roared.

“Pray, Mr. Plumbe, calm
yourself,” said Dr. Johnson, “we must look for Miss Fanny’s diamond within this
room.”

He pointed, first to the
snow now lightly veiling the ground beneath the window, then to the splotch of
powder on the threshold. In neither was there any mark of boot or shoe.

But, though the cholerick
Alderman turned out the chamber, and though every one present submitted to the
most thorough of searches, though Plumbe even sifted out the ashes of the Yule
clog, little Fanny’s Christmas box was not to be found.

“This is worse than Jack
Rice a thousand times,” sniggered her brother in my ear.

It was so. Poor pretty
Fanny was in disgrace.

“’Tis a mean thief,” cried
Dr. Johnson in noble indignation, “that robs a child, and be sure I’ll find him
out.”

Poor Fanny could only
sob.

’Twas enough to mar the
merriment of Christmas Day. Little Fanny kept her chamber, being there
admonished by good Dr. Thomas. The lout Ralph wandered about idly, teasing
Belle until the indignant spaniel nipped him soundly; upon which he retired
into the sulks. The Alderman and his lady were not to be seen. The master and
mistress of the house were busied doing honour to the day. I was by when they
dispensed their Christmas beef upon the door-step; pretty Sally handed the
trenchers about, and there in the crowd of rusticks, stolidly champing brawn, I
saw the one-legged sailor. He seemed quite at home.

Dr.
Johnson roamed restlessly from room to room.

BOSWELL:
“Pray, sir, what do you seek so earnestly?”

JOHNSON:
“Sir, a French dictionary.”

BOSWELL:
“To what end?”

JOHNSON:
“To
read yonder cypher aright; for sure ’tis the key to tell us, whither Fanny’s
brilliant has flown.”

BOSWELL:
“Why, sir, the words are plain;
’tis
but the interpretation that eludes us.”

JOHNSON:
“No, sir, the words are
not
plain; the words are somehow to be transposed. Now, sir,
could I but find a French dictionary printed in
two
columns, ’twould go hard but we
should find, in the
second
column, the words we seek, jig-by-jole with the meaningless words we now have.”

Upon this I joined the
search; but in twenty-four hours we advanced no further in reading the cypher.

After dinner the next day
I came upon Dr. Johnson conning it over by the fire, muttering the words to
himself:

“Te halle l’eau oui l’aune
ire te garde haine...”

I was scarce attending.
An idea had occurred to me.

“Yonder hollow willow
near the garden—” I began.

“How?” cried Dr. Johnson,
starting up.

“The hollow willow near
the garden—”

“You have it, Bozzy!”
cried my companion in excitement. “Te hollow willown ear te gard en.”

So strange was the accent
and inflection with which my revered friend repeated my words, that I could
only stare.

“Read it!” he cried. “Read
it aloud!”

He thrust the decyphered
message under my nose. I read it off with my best French accent, acquired in my
elegant grand tour.

“Can’t you see,” cried
Dr. Johnson, “when you speak it, the words are English—the hollow willow near
the garden! ’Twill be the miscreants’ post-office, ’tis clear to me now. See,
they had cause to distrust the maid who was go-between.”

He pointed to the last
words:
aille firent salle lit,
I
fear Sally.

“How did you do it,
Bozzy?”

“I, sir? Trust me, ’twas
the furthest thing from my mind. It had come into my head, perhaps by the alder
was meant yonder hollow willow—”

“No, sir,” returned Dr.
Johnson, “there came into your mind, a
picture
of
the hollow willow, because you heard, without knowing that you heard, the words
I uttered; and when you spoke the words,
I
recognized that you were
repeating mine. But come, sir; let us investigate this thieves’ post-office.”

He fairly ran out at the
door.

Coming suddenly about the
corner of the house, we surprized the sailor-man standing under the wall of the
kitchen garden; and I could have sworn that I caught the swirl of a skirt where
the wall turned. As we came up, the one-legged man finished knotting something
into his neckerchief, and made off with astonishing speed. He stumped his way
across the common in the direction of the ale-house on the other side.

“Shall we not catch him
up?” I cried.

“In good time,” replied
my friend. “First we must call for the post.”

Accordingly we lingered
to sound the hollow tree. Save for some grubs and beetles, and a quantity of
feathers, it was empty.

Our fortune was better
when we passed under the wall where the one-legged man had stood. There we
picked up the second of the strange messages that came under our eyes at
Streatham.