CHAPTER XXIV.

NEMESIS IN PLAIN CLOTHES.

THE greatest men have their weaknesses: their little penchants and propensities. Thus the weakness of Inspector Millament was for reading cheap periodicals, and that of Sergeant South for studying play bills.

Our old acquaintance Mr. Sims, who has been very busy all this time, although you have not heard so much about him, used to be very partial to theatrical performances, and went to the play, in more senses than one, two or three times a week; but the dramatic fancy of Sergeant South took more of a theoretical than of a practical turn. If veluti in speculum were his motto, it was more to look in the window where the playbill hung than to gaze into the mirror of the proscenium. Now and then the Sergeant entered the doors of a theatre; but he went habitually behind the scenes, and eschewed the audience part of the house. It was said that Sergeant South had once passed three months of his existence as a supernumerary at one of our principal places of Thespian amusement, and that he went on the stage regularly every night, either accoutred in a plumed bonnet and red tights, and carrying a banner, or else arrayed in a tunic and buff boots, and bearing a tin javelin as one of the retainers of a ruthless baron. Humble as was his standing in that Theatre Royal, it did not prevent his holding frequent and secret conference with the manager; and at the end of the three months it so happened that Sergeant South disappeared without warning, and without troubling the "super-master" for his outstanding salary; and that two or three days afterwards he was constrained, through a keen sense of duty towards his country in general, and the ends of justice in particular, to give evidence at the Marlborough-Street Police-Court against one Mouchy, a felonious employé of the theatre, who had pilfered many articles of rich costume from the dressing-rooms. The Sergeant was highly complimented by the presiding magistrate on the astuteness and sagacity he had displayed in tracing the perpetrator of so many robberies.

But it was, after all, towards the playbills that Sergeant South displayed the most ardent and disinterested affection. He was always pondering over these black and red letter documents, and spelling over their contents with a solicitude that was more than affectionate : it was paternal. His hands in his pockets and his head on one side, Sergeant South would go through the entire contents, from the name of the theatre and the address of the manager and lessee to the Vivant Regina et Princeps and "No Money returned," at the bottom. He would bestow the same amount of attention on the bill of some transpontine saloon, with three monstrous and murderous melodramas per night, as upon the lordly proclamations of the Italian Opera, with their announcements of Don Giovanni “by command," or a grand ballet "by desire." Nothing in playbill literature came amiss to him. He did not disdain the placards of music-halls, of

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suburban gardens, of raree-shows, or dwarf and giant exhibitions, or niggersingers, or "drawing-room entertainments"-which last I take to be the very lowest kind of popular amusement that this, our present era of civilisation, has seen. Sergeant South had an eye for all these waifs and strays of recreation. He liked to linger at stationers' and tobacconists' shops and see his beloved playbill-boards reposing on the area-railings. He knew all the bill-stickers, and watched them at their work assiduously. There was a There was a large theatrical public-house which he specially affected, and of which not only the coffee-room, but the very walls of the bar were thickly covered with playbills. The inexpressibly dilapidated men and women-where do they all come from, and whither are they all going?-who sell programmes, "books of the Hopera," and "bills of the play" in the purlieus of our dramatic and lyric fanes were all known to Sergeant South. He was known, likewise, to all those gentry, and, to tell truth, a little feared by them.

He

Sergeant South, in age, was wavering between the thirties and the forties; but seemed unable to make up his mind towards the latter. was the youngest looking of middle-aged men, with a fresh blue eye, and chestnut hair, and a little pink spot on each cheek, and an almost downy whisker. But for thick-serried ranges of crow's-feet under his eyes, and some ominous lines about his mouth, he would have looked a mere boy; as it was, he had somewhat the appearance of a youth who had been stopping up rather late on the night-side of life. Sergeant South dressed with exquisite neatness, and not without a certain kind of elegance. His turn-down collar was irreproachably white; his scarf beautifully tied ; his horseshoe-pin quiet, but handsome. His hair was always well brushed. He wore a natty watchguard, and a neat signet-ring. If there was one particular in which he did not display taste, or elegance, or, indeed, neatness, it was in that of boots. Those leathern casings were very thick and clumsy, and had hobnails, and were but indifferently well polished. It is a curious fact, but you may in general recognise gentlemen of the profession of Sergeant South, and under what would otherwise be the most impenetrable of disguises, by their boots.

Sergeant South's stanch friend, confidential comrade, and superior, indeed, in the hierarchy to which both belonged, was Inspector Millament. He should have been mentioned first, perhaps; but there is yet time to make him full amends. Besides, he was a tranquil, peace-loving man, who never cared to thrust himself foremost. Give him but the Parlour Magazine, the Family Miscellany, the Backstairs Herald, all highly popular penny journals at that day, and he was satisfied. He waded through the endless romances published in his beloved serials with a calm and neverfailing delight. "To be continued in our next" were words of hope and joy to him. It is true that he habitually mixed up the plots of the novels he read into an inextricable jumble of perplexity; that the marquis in one story became dovetailed on to the gipsy-chief in the other, and the abducted heiress's adventures were frequently intertwined with those of the

much-wronged ballet-dancer. Inspector Millament vexed himself very little about such trifling incongruities. He read and read on, and wandered in a world of dormant peerages, of murderous baronets, and ladies of title addicted to the study of toxicology, of gipsies and brigand-chiefs, men with masks and women with daggers, of stolen children, withered hags, heartless gamesters, nefarious roués, foreign princesses, Jesuit fathers, grave-diggers, resurrection-men, lunatics, and ghosts. This was his ideal world. Just deducting the ghosts, I don't think that the world he really lived and played a very powerful and occult part in, was a world much less strange or much less terrible; but who regards the marvels that surround him? who takes account of the things that lie at his feet? who will believe that the events enacting under his eyes are History? We have all of us a horizon at the end of our noses; but we disdain to look so closely, and must strain our eyes far, far afield. Not many weeks since, a good friend was kind enough to remonstrate with me on the utter and glaring improbability, nay impossibility of some of the characters I have drawn in this story. In vain I strove to assure him that I had taken the world as I had found it, and painted (with a free brush, it might be) but from the very life. With great difficulty he granted Mrs. Armytage. I had something to show him which disarmed even his scepticism as to the verisemblance of that lady; but as for Mr. Sims, or for Ephraim Tigg the Rasper, he would not hear of them for a moment. And yet I think I know where to put my hand on people ten times stranger in their ways of life than Sims or Tigg, poor, common rogues as they are; and but a very few days after our controversy, my friend came well-nigh raving to me about the details of the "Northumberland-Street Tragedy." Tragedy! a wretched Coburg melodrama it was, at best; there are real five-act tragedies going on about us every day,-far more fearful, far more horrifying than that slaughter-house fray. The ladies are even more difficult to convince than the gentlemen. They won't have Mrs. Armytage. There was never any body like her, they say. Miss Salusbury also is to them simply an impossible character. Month after month these complaints, these protests, reach me. I am bidden to write a story all about purity and honesty and truth and the home-affections, and the rest of it. Well, I will try to do so; but you must not be surprised to find my portion of Temple Bar so many blank pages. It would be writing so many lines in white chalk on so many planes of virgin snow. If you want the lait d'ânesse fresh from the animal, you must go elsewhere. I have none to sell. Which is best, I wonder: to write namby-pamby historiettes of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy's love-passages; to describe monsters of innocence and loveliness; to paint a twopenny Garden of Eden, with no serpent in it more dangerous than a Jesuit priest, the poor Jesuits! they have never done half the harm that the people who go into frenzies of bigotry about them have done,―or to describe the world as it wags, not only in its good, but in its evil fashion? Do all the good books that are written about good people save their readers

⚫ from being covetous and lying and slanderous and sensual? Are the gentlefolks who come up to the Divorce Court quite ignorant of the nature of coldboiled-veal-without-salt novels (in three vols.)? And, finally, how would you like a newspaper in which there were no police-reports, no law or assize intelligence, no leading articles on any other subjects save missionary societies, governess institutions, the art of pickling onions, and the best means of obliterating freckles? While I live, and while I write, I shall just tell the stories of the people I have met, and of the lives they have led,—so far as I have known them,-in my own fashion; and when I begin to paint the Graces from imagination, and the Virtues from hearsay, it will be time for me to retire to the Asylum for Idiots at Earlswood, and gibber.

There is another kind of story-telling in which, perhaps, with some moderate faculty of humour and observation, and with a liver very much out of order, one might succeed. Shall I map out a world for you bounded on one side by Belgravia, and on the other by Russell Square: assume that all my acquaintances are in the habit of dining at seven o'clock, going to court, and keeping carriages and pair, and sneer at the unhappy wretches who have "plated side-dishes" at their feasts, call their eighteenpenny claret Laffitte, hire greengrocers to wait upon them on state occasions, and proceed to the Drawing Room at St. James's in a hired cab? or shall I be in a perpetual fume because people "go about saying things about me," because Jones accuses me of opium-eating, and Tompkins of having poisoned my grandmother, and Robinson of being a returned convict? Goodness gracious! what does it all matter? what harm is there in the greengrocer so long as he is an honest man, and has clean hands, and doesn't spill the lobster-sauce over our pantaloons? I would rather help myself from the table; but am I to quarrel with my neighbour for preferring the greengrocer and the grim ceremony of handing things round? And the eighteenpenny claret. Who does not tell fibs about his wine? Cambacérés, Talleyrand, were not always to be depended upon in their stories about their vintages. I have heard even teetotallers grow Munchausenesque about the virtues of strange pumps. There is a certain stage of good-fellowship when all men-to the most truthful—have a tendency towards glorifying themselves and telling lies. And the people who "go about saying things,"-a fico for them all! -have they got ninety-eight thousand pounds snugly lying in consols? Are they the only living descendants of Timour the Tartar, and Marino Faliero? Can they squeeze a pewter-pot flat between their fingers, or swallow a red-hot poker, or play the overture to Der Freischutz on their chins? I may have these powers and possessions, or I may not. Do you think that you can say more against me than I can against you? How about that eight-day clock? How about that little affair at Torquay? I knew the scale in a contested election turned once by this simple placard, "Ask Mr. A. (one of the candidates) about the widow of poor Mr. Smith." There had never been a widow of poor Mr. Smith, there had never been a

poor Mr. Smith at all; but the placard took amazingly; it was copied and repeated every where: the candidate was pursued by howling mobs demanding what he had done with poor Mr. Smith's widow; and in the end he was beaten by a humiliating majority. There is nothing like the "poor Mr. Smith" system of attack. Aha! traducer! Tu quoque: you're another! and the traitor Benedict Arnold used to confess that the accusation, perfectly unfounded, of having once "killed a man in a claretcoloured coat," sometimes lay heavier on his mind than the curses of his country and the blood of André.

It is so seldom, nowadays, that I allow myself a good hearty digression, that having once begun, I thought it as well to proceed until you were exasperated, and I was satiated. This agreeable state of things being, I conclude, attained, I will return to Inspector Millament and Sergeant South, promising not to digress again for a great many chapters.

A word as to the personal appearance of the Inspector. He was tall, like his attendant Sergeant, but he had long since given up all youthful vanities in attire. Inspector Millament assumed the imposing, the paternal, the venerable. He was stately in mien, of a grave countenance, rubicund, but abundant in white hair and whiskers, almost approaching the full beard. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and gold-rimmed spectacles. His manly chest was covered by a black-velvet waistcoat of comfortable, but austere cut. He wore gaiters. He was never seen without an umbrella with a crutched handle. From one of his side-pockets usually bulged a packet of his adored periodicals. There was about him an indefinable combination of the "heavy father" in a comedy and a retired military officer in real life.

Both Inspector Millament and Sergeant South were married. They had pretty little cottages at Camberwell, and were as close neighbours às they were close friends. At home they smoked their pipes and drank their social glass; and read-the Inspector his continuous romances, and the Sergeant the theatrical advertisements, in default of play-bills-in peace and comfort. Both had large families; and it may be mentioned as a somewhat curious feature in their respective domesticities, that neither Mrs. Inspector Millament nor Mrs. Sergeant South ever made the slightest disturbance if the liege lord of one or the other stopped out until the unholiest hours in the night-morning, or, leaving home for a quiet stroll, didn't come back again for a fortnight. They were quite accustomed to such vagaries.

Millament without South, or South without Millament, would have been trustworthy and efficient officers, I have no doubt; but they were seldom seen asunder. They hunted much better together. The newspapers always associated their names; nay, police-magistrates experienced a kind of pleasure when they were told that such or such an important case was under the management of Inspector Millament and Sergeant South.

It was about half-after one p.m. on the day when the distinguished party visited the Monmouth Chambers that the Inspector and his colleague