Ay, I know you have arsenic,
Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly,
Cinoper: I know all.--This fellow, Captain,
Will come in time to be a great distiller,
And give a say (I will not say directly,
But very near) at the philosopher's stone.
THE ALCHEMIST.
Tressilian and his attendants pressed their route with all dispatch.
He had asked the smith, indeed, when their departure was resolved on,
whether he would not rather choose to avoid Berkshire, in which he had
played a part so conspicuous? But Wayland returned a confident answer.
He had employed the short interval they passed at Lidcote Hall in
transforming himself in a wonderful manner. His wild and overgrown
thicket of beard was now restrained to two small moustaches on the
upper lip, turned up in a military fashion. A tailor from the village
of Lidcote (well paid) had exerted his skill, under his customer's
directions, so as completely to alter Wayland's outward man, and take
off from his appearance almost twenty years of age. Formerly, besmeared
with soot and charcoal, overgrown with hair, and bent double with the
nature of his labour, disfigured too by his odd and fantastic dress,
he seemed a man of fifty years old. But now, in a handsome suit of
Tressilian's livery, with a sword by his side and a buckler on his
shoulder, he looked like a gay ruffling serving-man, whose age might
be betwixt thirty and thirty-five, the very prime of human life.
His loutish, savage-looking demeanour seemed equally changed, into a
forward, sharp, and impudent alertness of look and action.
When challenged by Tressilian, who desired to know the cause of a
metamorphosis so singular and so absolute, Wayland only answered by
singing a stave from a comedy, which was then new, and was supposed,
among the more favourable judges, to augur some genius on the part of
the author. We are happy to preserve the couplet, which ran exactly
thus,-"Ban, ban, ca Caliban--
Get a new master--Be a new man."
Although Tressilian did not recollect the verses, yet they reminded
him that Wayland had once been a stage player, a circumstance which,
of itself, accounted indifferently well for the readiness with which
he could assume so total a change of personal appearance. The artist
himself was so confident of his disguise being completely changed, or
of his having completely changed his disguise, which may be the more
correct mode of speaking, that he regretted they were not to pass near
his old place of retreat.
"I could venture," he said, "in my present dress, and with your
worship's backing, to face Master Justice Blindas, even on a day of
Quarter Sessions; and I would like to know what is become of Hobgoblin,
who is like to play the devil in the world, if he can once slip the
string, and leave his granny and his dominie.--Ay, and the scathed
vault!" he said; "I would willingly have seen what havoc the explosion
of so much gunpowder has made among Doctor Demetrius Doboobie's retorts
and phials. I warrant me, my fame haunts the Vale of the Whitehorse long
after my body is rotten; and that many a lout ties up his horse, lays
down his silver groat, and pipes like a sailor whistling in a calm for
Wayland Smith to come and shoe his tit for him. But the horse will catch
the founders ere the smith answers the call."