Chapter V

WHAT STORY IT WAS THAT HUMPY HARLOW TOLD AT JACK GINGER’S.

At three o’clock on the day after the dinner, Antony Harrison and I found ourselves eating bread and cheese—part of the cheese—at Jack Ginger’s. We recapitulated the events of the preceding evening, and expressed ourselves highly gratified with the entertainment. Most of the good things we had said were revived, served up again, and laughed at once more. We were perfectly satisfied with the parts which we had respectively played, and talked ourselves into excessive good-humour. All on a sudden Jack Ginger’s countenance clouded. He was evidently puzzled; and sat for a moment in thoughtful silence. We asked him, with Oriental simplicity of sense, “Why art thou troubled?” and till a moment he answered—

“What was the story which Humpy Harlow told us about eleven o’clock last night, just as Bob Burke was teeming the last jug?”

“It began,” said I, “with ‘Humphries told me.’”

“It did,” said Antony Harrison, cutting a deep incision into the cheese.

“I know it did,” said Jack Ginger; “but what was it that Humphries had told him? I cannot recollect it if I was to be made Lord Chancellor.”

Antony Harrison and I mused in silence, and racked our brains, but to no purpose. On the tablet of our memories no trace had been engraved, and the tale of Humphries, as reported by Harlow, was as if it were not, so far as we were concerned.

While we were in this perplexity, Joe Macgillicuddy and Bob Burke entered the room.

“We have been just taking a hair of the same dog,” said Joe. “It was a pleasant party we had last night. Do you know what Bob and I have been talking of for the last half-hour?”

We professed our inability to conjecture.

“Why, then,” continued Joe, “it was about the story that Harlow told last night.”

“The story begins with ‘Humphries told me,’” said Bob.

“And,” proceeded Joe, “for our lives we cannot recollect what it was.”

“Wonderful!” we all exclaimed. “How inscrutable are the movements of the human mind.”

And we proceeded to reflect on the frailty of our memories, moralising in a strain that would have done honour to Dr Johnson.

“Perhaps,” said I, “Tom Meggot may recollect it.”

Idle hope! dispersed to the winds almost as soon as it was formed. For the words had scarcely passed “the bulwark of my teeth,” when Tom appeared, looking excessively bloodshot in the eye. On inquiry, it turned out that he, like the rest of us, remembered only the cabalistic words which introduced the tale, but of the tale itself, nothing.

Tom had been educated at Edinburgh, and was strongly attached to what he calls metapheesicks; and, accordingly, after rubbing his forehead, he exclaimed—

“This is a psychological curiosity, which deserves to be developed. I happen to have half a sovereign about me” (an assertion which, I may remark in passing, excited considerable surprise in his audience), “and I’ll ask Harlow to dine with me at the Rainbow. I’ll get the story out of the Humpy rascal—and no mistake.”

We acquiesced in the propriety of this proceeding; and Antony Harrison, observing that he happened by chance to be disengaged, hooked himself on Tom, who seemed to have a sort of national antipathy to such a ceremony, with a talent and alacrity that proved him to be a veteran warrior, or what, in common parlance, is called an old soldier.

Tom succeeded in getting Harlow to dinner, and Harrison succeeded in making him pay the bill, to the great relief of Meggot’s half sovereign, and they parted at an early hour in the morning. The two Irishmen and myself were at Ginger’s shortly after breakfast; we had been part occupied in tossing halfpence to decide which of us was to send out for ale, when—Harrison and Meggot appeared. There was conscious confusion written in their countenances. “Did Humpy Harlow tell you that story?” we all exclaimed at once.

“It cannot be denied that he did,” said Meggot. “Precisely as the clock struck eleven, he commenced with ‘Humphries told me.’”

“Well—and what then?”

“Why, there it is,” said Antony Harrison, “may I be drummed out if I can recollect another word.”

“Nor I,” said Meggot.

The strangeness of this singular adventure made a deep impression on us all. We were sunk in silence for some minutes, during which Jerry Gallagher made his appearance with the ale, which I omitted to mention had been lost by Joe Macgillicuddy. We sipped that British beverage, much abstracted in deep thought. The thing appeared to us perfectly inscrutable. At last I said, “This never will do—we cannot exist much longer in this atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty. We must have it out of Harlow to-night, or there is an end of all the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent. I have credit,” said I, “at the widow’s, in St Martin’s Lane. Suppose we all meet there to-night, and get Harlow there if we can?”

“That I can do,” said Antony Harrison, “for I quartered myself to dine with him to-day, as I saw him home, poor little fellow, last night. I promise that he figures at the widow’s to-night at nine o’clock.”

So we separated. At nine every man of the party was in St Martin’s Lane, seated in the little back parlour; and Harrison was as good as his word, for he brought Harlow with him. He ordered a sumptuous supper of mutton kidneys, interspersed with sausages, and set to. At eleven o’clock precisely, the eye of Harlow brightened, and putting his pipe down, he commenced with a shrill voice—

“Humphries told me——”

“Ay,” said we all, with one accord, “here it is—now we shall have it—take care of it this time.”

“What do you mean?” said Humpy Harlow, performing that feat which by the illustrious Mr John Keeve is called “flaring up.”

“Nothing,” we replied, “nothing, but we are anxious to hear that story.”

“I understand you,” said our broken-backed friend. “I now recollect that I did tell it once or so before in your company, but I shall not be a butt any longer for you or anybody else.”

“Don’t be in a passion, Humpy,” said Jack Ginger.

“Sir,” replied Harlow, “I hate nicknames—it is a mark of a low mind to use them—and as I see I am brought here only to be insulted, I shall not trouble you any longer with my company.”

Saying this, the little man seized his hat and umbrella, and strode out of the room.

“His back is up,” said Joe Macgillicuddy, “and there’s no use of trying to get it down. I am sorry he is gone, because I should have made him pay for another round.”

But he was gone, not to return again—and the story remains unknown. Yea, as undiscoverable as the hieroglyphical writings of the ancient Egyptians. It exists, to be sure, in the breast of Harlow; but there it is buried, never to emerge into the light of day. It is lost to the world—and means of recovering it, there, in my opinion, exist none. The world must go on without it, and states and empires must continue to flourish and to fade without the knowledge of what it was that Humphries told Harlow. Such is the inevitable course of events.

For my part, I shall be satisfied with what I have done in drawing up this accurate and authentic narrative, if I can seriously impress on the minds of my readers the perishable nature of mundane affairs—if I can make them reflect that memory itself, the noblest, perhaps the characteristic, quality of the human mind, will decay, even while other faculties exist—and that, in the words of a celebrated Lord of Trade and Plantations, of the name of John Locke, “we may be like the tombs to which we are hastening, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the imagery is defaced, and the inscription is blotted out for ever!”