Half an hour was passed without any observation from our party, as the room gradually filled with the volumes of smoke, which wreathed and curled in graceful lines, as they ascended in obedience to the unchangeable laws of nature.
Hilton's pipe was first exhausted; he shook the ashes on the table. "A very melancholy business, indeed!" observed he, as he refilled. The rest nodded a grand assent; the pipe was relighted; and all was silent as before.
Another pipe is empty. "Looking at this inventory," said the curate, "I should imagine the articles to be of no great value. One fur cap, one round hat, one pair of plush breeches, one—; they are not worth a couple of pounds altogether," continued he, stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, which he relighted, and no more was said. Nicholas was the third in, or rather out. "It appears to me," observed he;—but what appeared is lost, as some new idea flitted across his imagination, and he commenced his second pipe without further remark.
Some ten minutes after this, Mr Spinney handed the pot of porter to the curate, and subsequently to the rest of the party. They all took largely, then puffed away as before.
How long this cabinet-council might have continued, it is impossible to say; but "Silence," who was in "the chair," was soon afterwards driven from his post of honour by the most implacable of his enemies, a "woman's tongue."
"Well, Mr Forster! well, gentlemen! do you mean to poison me? Have you made smell and dirt enough? How long is this to last, I should like to know?" cried Mrs Forster, entering the room. "I tell you what, Mr Forster, you had better hang up a sign at once, and keep an ale-house. Let the sign be a Fool's Head, like your own. I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself, Mr Curate; you that ought to set an example to your parishioners!"
But Mr Dragwell did not admire such remonstrance; so taking his pipe out of his mouth, he retorted—"If your husband does put up a sign, I recommend him to stick you up as the 'Good Woman;' that would be without your head—Ha, ha, ha!"
"He, he, he!"
"He, he, he! you pitiful 'natomy," cried Mrs Forster, in a rage, turning to the clerk, as she dared not revenge herself upon the curate. "Take that for your He, he, he!" and she swung round the empty pewter pot, which she snatched from the table, upon the bald pericranium of Mr Spinney, who tumbled off his chair, and rolled upon the sanded floor.
The remainder of the party were on their legs in an instant. Newton jerked the weapon out of his mother's hands, and threw it in a corner of the room. Nicholas was aghast; he surmised that his turn would come next; and so it proved—"An't you ashamed of yourself, Mr Forster, to see me treated in this way—bringing a parcel of drunken men into the house to insult me? Will you order them out, or not, sir?—Are we to have quiet or not?"
"Yes, my love," replied Nicholas, confused, "yes, my dear, by-and-bye as soon as you're—"
Mrs Forster darted towards her husband with the ferocity of a mad cat. Hilton, perceiving the danger of his host, put out his leg so as to trip her up in her career, and she fell flat upon her face on the floor. The violence of the fall was so great, that she was stunned. Newton raised her up; and, with the assistance of his father (who approached with as much reluctance as a horse spurred towards a dead tiger), carried her upstairs, and laid her on her bed.
Poor Mr Spinney was now raised from the floor. He still remained stupefied with the blow, although gradually recovering. Betsy came in to render assistance. "O dear, Mr Curate, do you think that he'll die?"
"No, no; bring some water, Betsy, and throw it in his face."
"Better take him home as he is," replied Betsy, "and say that he is killed; when Missis hears it, she'll be frightened out of her life. It will keep her quiet for some time at least."
"An excellent idea, Betty; we will punish her for her conduct," replied Hilton. The curate was delighted at the plan. Mr Spinney was placed in an arm-chair, covered over with a table-cloth, and carried away to the parsonage by two men, who were provided by Betsy before Nicholas or Newton had quitted the room where Mrs Forster lay in a deplorable condition; her sharp nose broken, and twisted on one side; her eyebrow cut open to the bone, and a violent contusion on her forehead. In less than half-an-hour it was spread through the whole town that Spinney had been murdered by Mrs Forster, and that his brains were bespattered all over the shop windows!
Chapter VII
"That she is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true, 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis, 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant her then; and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect."
Mr Dragwell has already made honourable mention of his wife; it will therefore only be necessary to add that he had one daughter, a handsome lively girl, engaged to a Mr Ramsden, the new surgeon of the place, who had stepped into the shoes and the good-will of one who had retired from forty years' practice upon the good people of Overton. Fanny Dragwell had many good qualities, and many others which were rather doubtful. One of the latter had procured her more enemies than at her age she had any right to expect. It was what the French term "malice," which bears a very different signification from the same word in our own language. She delighted in all practical jokes, and would carry them to an excess, at the very idea of which others would be startled; but it must be acknowledged that she generally selected as her victims those who from their conduct towards others richly deserved retaliation. The various tricks which she had played upon certain cross old spinsters, tattlers, scandal-mongers, and backbiters, often were the theme of conversation and of mirth: but this description of espièglerie contains a most serious objection; which is, that to carry on a successful and well-arranged plot, there must be a total disregard of truth. Latterly, Miss Fanny had had no one to practise upon except Mr Ramsden, during the period of his courtship—a period at which women never appear to so much advantage, nor men appear so silly. But even for this, the time was past, as latterly she had become so much attached to him that distress on his part was a source of annoyance to herself. When, therefore, her father came home, narrating the circumstances which had occurred, and the plan which had been meditated, Fanny entered gaily into the scheme. Mrs Forster had long been her abhorrence; and an insult to Mr Ramsden, who had latterly been designated by Mrs Forster as a "Pill-gilding Puppy," was not to be forgotten. Her active and inventive mind immediately conceived a plan which would enable her to carry the joke much further than the original projectors had intended. Ramsden, who had been summoned to attend poor Mr Spinney, was her sole confidant, and readily entered into a scheme which was pleasing to his mistress, and promised revenge for the treatment he had received; and which, as Miss Dragwell declared, would be nothing but retributive justice upon Mrs Forster.
Late in the evening, a message was received from Newton Forster, requesting that Mr Ramsden would attend his mother. He had just visited the old clerk, who was now sensible, and had nothing to complain of except a deep cut on his temple from the rim of the pewter-pot. After receiving a few parting injunctions from Miss Dragwell, Mr Ramsden quitted the parsonage.
"I am afraid it's a very bad business, Mr Forster," replied the surgeon to Newton, who had been interrogating him relative to the injury received by Mr Spinney.
"Evident concussion of the brain; he may live—or he may not; a few days will decide the point: he is a poor feeble old man."
Newton sighed as he reflected upon the disaster and disgrace which might ensue from his mother's violence of temper.
"Eh! what, Mr Ramsden?" said Nicholas, who had been for some time contemplating the battered visage of his spouse. "Did you say she'll die?"
"No, no, Mr Forster, there's no fear of Mrs Forster, she'll do well enough. She'll be up and about again in a day or two, as lively as ever."
"God forbid!" muttered the absent Nicholas.
"Mr Forster, see if I don't pay you off for that, as soon as I'm