ill-usage and pinching want? But the question must be asked; it
could not be avoided; so Hendon reined up, and called out–
“I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. Thy commands,
my liege!”
“To London!”
Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer–but
astounded at it too.
The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance.
But it ended with one. About ten o’clock on the night of the 19th
of February they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a
writhing, struggling jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose
beer-jolly faces stood out strongly in the glare from manifold
torches–and at that instant the decaying head of some former duke
or other grandee tumbled down between them, striking Hendon on the
elbow and then bounding off among the hurrying confusion of feet.
So evanescent and unstable are men’s works in this world!–the
late good King is but three weeks dead and three days in his
grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to
select from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. A
citizen stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the
back of somebody in front of him, who turned and knocked down the
first person that came handy, and was promptly laid out himself by
that person’s friend. It was the right ripe time for a free
fight, for the festivities of the morrow–Coronation Day–were
already beginning; everybody was full of strong drink and
patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a
good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of
so, and was become a riot. By this time Hendon and the King were
hopelessly separated from each other and lost in the rush and
turmoil of the roaring masses of humanity. And so we leave them.
Chapter XXX. Tom’s progress.
Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly
fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves
and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by
all impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright
side for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more
every day: in a very little while it was become almost all
sunshine and delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings
faded out and died; his embarrassments departed, and gave place to
an easy and confident bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to
ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his
presence when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when
he was done with them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed
to such performances. It no longer confused him to have these
lofty personages kiss his hand at parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and
dressed with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It
came to be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a
glittering procession of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms;
insomuch, indeed, that he doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms,
and made them a hundred. He liked to hear the bugles sounding
down the long corridors, and the distant voices responding, “Way
for the King!”
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector’s mouthpiece.
He liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains,
and listen to the affectionate messages they brought from
illustrious monarchs who called him brother. O happy Tom Canty,
late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his
four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled
them. The adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music
to his ears. He remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and
determined champion of all that were oppressed, and he made
tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon occasion, being offended,
he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and give him a look
that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal ‘sister,’ the