Old Copenhagen’s most notable ran-dans were after he had demitted office as musician, out of patience at last with the “torment.” They were such guileless, easily induced excesses, so marked by an incongruous propriety, that I hesitate to speak of them as more than innocent exhilarations. ’Twas then his surtout was most spick and span, his manner most urbane and engaging. The poorest gangrel who addressed him on the highway then was “sir” to Copenhagen, and a boy had but to look at him to be assured of a halfpenny. His timber leg went tapping over the causeways then with an illusive haste, for it was Copenhagen’s wish to be thought a man immersed profoundly in affairs. He spoke in his finest English (reserved for moments of importance) of the Admiralty, and he never entered the inn without having in his hand a large packet of blue envelopes tied with a boot-lace, to suggest important and delicate negotiations with some messenger from the First Lord. Once, I remember, he came out of the inn with a suspicious-looking bulge in the tail-pocket of his surtout. As he passed the Beenickie and Jock Scott and me standing at the factor’s corner, and punctiliously returned the naval salute he always looked for from his own old pupils, a “Glenorchy pint” (as it was called) fell out of his pocket in the street, without suffering any damage. He never paused a moment or looked round, and the Beenickie cried after him, “You have dropped something, Mr Bain.” “It is just a trifle, lads,” he answered without looking back; “I will get it when I return,” and pursued his way to his house, six miles away. He was ashamed, I suppose, of the exposure.
Another time—on the night of St John’s, when the local Freemasons had their flambeau march, and every boy who carried a torch got threepence on production of its stump the following day (which induced some to cut their stumps in two, and so get sixpence)—I saw old Copenhagen falling down an outside stair. I hastened to his assistance, suffering sincere alarm and pity for my ancient dominie. He was, luckily, little the worse. “I was coming down in any case, John,” said he benignly. “Man! I am always vexed I never learned you the fencing with the cutlass, for you were a promising lad.” “I am sorry too, Mr Bain,” said I, though indeed I could not see that a clerk in a law office would find the accomplishment in question of much use to him. “I knew your Uncle Jamie,” he added. “Him and me was pretty chief. You will say nothing about my bit of a glide, John: I was coming down at any rate, I assure you.”