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So saying, he led the way, followed by Mistress Martha Trapbois, whose singular destiny, though it had heaped her with wealth, had left her, for the moment, no wiser counsellor, or more distinguished protector, than honest Richie Moniplies, a discarded serving-man.
Nigel was about to break the charm which had thus arrested old Trapbois, by shutting the lid of the casket, when his attention was withdrawn from him by the question of the messenger, who, holding out the letter, asked whether he was to leave it at Mr. Lowestoffe's chambers in the Temple, or carry it to the Marshalsea? "The Marshalsea?" repeated Lord Glenvarloch; "what of the Marshalsea?"
"Good-morrow to your lordship," said the greasy puncheon, cocking his single eye, and rolling it upon Nigel with a singular expression of familiar impudence; whilst his grim bull-dog, which was close at his heels, made a kind of gurgling in his throat, as if saluting, in similar fashion, a starved cat, the only living thing in Trapbois' house which we have not yet enumerated, and which had flown up to the top of the tester, where she stood clutching and grinning at the mastiff, whose greeting she accepted with as much good-will as Nigel bestowed on that of the dog's master.
This venerable personage was an usurer of notoriety, called Trapbois, and had very lately done the state considerable service in advancing a subsidy necessary to secure a fresh importation of liquors to the Duke's cellars, the wine-merchant at the Vintry being scrupulous to deal with so great a man for any thing but ready money.
The examination of the throat, often so difficult when children are ill, is attended with almost none, if while they are well they have been taught the little trick of opening their mouths to show their throat, and of allowing the introduction of a spoon to keep down the tongue, a proceeding which though certainly unpleasant they will almost always readily agree to, like Martha Trapbois, in the 'Fortunes of Nigel, 'for a consideration. The deposit on the throat may disappear of its own accord, and not be reproduced, and this even though no treatment has been adopted, and in two or three days the child may be pretty well again, though strength is in general regained less rapidly than might have been expected from the comparative mildness of the attack.
Well, well, we will not quarrel about the consideration, as old Trapbois would call it do you win and wear the dame; it will be no hard matter with your face and figure, and I will take care that no one interrupts you. I will have an edict from the Senate as soon as they meet for their meridiem." So saying, Duke Hildebrod took his leave.
"What, upon no con-si-de-ra-ti-on?" said the captain; and wherefore not, old Truepenny? she has not much time to lose in driving her bargain, methinks." "Captain," said Trapbois, "I was upon some little business with our noble friend here, Master Nigel Green ugh, ugh, ugh "
The daughter of Trapbois, who had by this time joined them, muffled up in a long dark hood and mantle, exclaimed to Lord Glenvarloch "Let them leave it if they will, let them leave it all; let us but escape from this horrible place."
Nigel accepted the careful sound of the bolts and bars as they were severally drawn by the trembling hand of old Trapbois, as an omen that the senior did not mean again to revisit him in the course of the evening, and heartily rejoiced that he was at length to be left to uninterrupted solitude.
The man of God bears my sign-manual too, but the Duke made us friends again, and it cost me more sack than I could carry, and all the Rhenish to boot, to pledge the seer in the way of love and reconciliation But, Caracco! 'tis a vile old canting slave for all that, whom I will one day beat out of his devil's livery into all the colours of the rainbow. Basta! Said I well, old Trapbois?
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