darling! But, my dear Ward, a wife with a loose slate! a mother, perhaps, with a bee in her bonnet! and the infant family taking after her!”
Ward was moved—but only to laughter. He would not listen to my advice. We parted. It was arranged that I was to act as his solicitor in the matter of the marriage settlement, but my assisting at the wedding was to remain an open question.
I had an appointment in the city at three, and hurried away to keep it. Cheapside was more than normally crowded. Near Bow Church there was great obstruction: a throng of persons nearly blocked up the footway altogether. An elderly gentleman was quarrelling with a cabman. I thought I recognised a shiny hat and a flaxen wig. I forced my way through the crowd, and found Captain Brigham, bright and glossy as usual in apparel, but palpably excited in manner.
“Where’s the use?” cried the cabman. “Don’t talk of pulling a fellow up: you know that ain’t the question at all. Tell me where to go, and I’ll drive you fast enough—fast as you like.”
“No. I object to be driven by you—I object to be driven by a man not in his right mind!”
“O, gammon!” said the cabman: “jump in.”
“No, cabman, you’re mad!” replied Captain Brigham. “I pity you: you ought not to be trusted out with a cab.”
“Why, I’ve druv a cab for fourteen year—leastwise a omnibus.”
“I’ll not be driven by you. Legally, I’m not bound to pay you: but I’ll give you sixpence. Mind, it’s not your right, but I give it you.”
“Brayvo, old ’un!” from the crowd.
“Here, my man, take your sixpence.”
“Sha’n’t! why the fare’s eighteenpence.”
City Policeman, No. 123, cut his way through.
“What’s this here about? Cabby, why don’t you take what the gent offers?”
“Oh! ah! Here I’ve druv the old beggar all the way from the Burlington Arcade; and he shoving me in the back till I’m sore with his walking-stick, and crying out that I’m mad: ain’t it enough to aggrawate a feller? and then he offers sixpence! He oughtn’t to ride in cabs—he oughtn’t.”
“The fare’s eighteenpence, sir,” said No. 123.
“Policeman, I won’t be driven by a cabman who is a raging maniac. I tell you I will not. What! Now I look again, policeman, you’d better go home; you’re mad, sir, quite mad. I can see it in your eyes, sir; aye, and in your whiskers.”
“Three cheers for the old ’un!” proposed by an Electric Telegraph boy, seconded by a Blacking Brigade ditto, carried unanimously, and given by the crowd.
I paid the cabman his fare; and, aided by the policeman, carried off Captain Brigham. A crowd followed us for a short distance, but gradually fell away.
“You’re not in your right mind,” said Captain Brigham to me, when I had brought him as far as St. Paul’s Churchyard, “but your interference was kindly meant, and for a confirmed lunatic, as of course you are, was really a sensible thing. I thank you for it. Don’t you find your insanity interfere rather with your professional pursuits?”
I began to think I had been mistaken about Fanny Brigham’s malady.
At my office I found a letter:
Bethlehem House, Isleworth.
My Dear Sir,—I have sent you a client. He is one of my most difficult customers—a rational lunatic—too lunatic to be at large, too rational to be confined. What can we do? He wants to take law proceedings to lock up his daughter; I believe, to indict me for conspiracy; all sorts of things. Listen to him—talk to him—humour him—and do just nothing. His name is Brigham. He has been in the Navy. He was wounded on the head in some slave squadron fight off the coast of Guinea, and has never been quite right since. He is not at all dangerous, only a little difficult to manage. When are you coming to see me? I dine every day at six, &c. &c.
Yours faithfully,
George Johnston, M.D.
On a subsequent day Captain Brigham called on me.
“I find,” he said, “that I shall be relieved from all difficulty in my daughter’s case. I am pleased that it is so. A man of the name of Ward has proposed to marry her. Of course I could not contemplate such a thing for one moment without his being fully apprised of her melancholy state. I laid bare to him the whole matter. But he is mad, sir—stark mad; he would go on in spite of me. He takes her with all her imperfections on her head, and she him. It is hard to say which has the worst of it.”
In due time little Ned Ward was made happy, I should say supremely happy. I owned that he had beaten me utterly. Fanny Brigham looked almost as exquisite in her veil and orange blossoms as in her puce bonnet on the occasion of her one visit to my office in Essex Street. Ned Ward was very great in his superfine, double extra, blue Saxony frock coat. He looked so kindly and lovingly on his dear little bride, that I almost fancied at last that he deserved his good fortune, though a moment before I thought I should have fainted when I heard that deliciously touching answer, “I will,” steal from those rosy lips. People said that they formed a charming couple. They seemed to me a sort of statuette group of a happy pair. For myself, I signed the church books: I proposed healths: I made speeches: I drank champagne at unwholesome hours: I threw the old shoe. I made myself hopelessly and conspicuously ridiculous; went through a wonderfully exhilarating course of events, and then home, utterly wretched and desponding. The delighted couple repaired to Baden. I secluded myself for a fortnight in Essex Street, and was seen by no mortal eye.
Some time afterwards I paid a visit to my old friend Dr. Johnston, at Isleworth.
“Here’s a gentleman I think you know,” he said. It was Captain Brigham. He recognised me at once.
“Ah! my dear friend, my mad lawyer!” he cried out, shaking me cordially by the hand. “I’m delighted to see you. Yes, thank you, I am extremely comfortable here. A number of gentlemen, who, like myself, are of opinion that the world is mad, sir, quite mad, have established