The squire vainly pressed his hospitality by a.s.suring him of perfect secresy on our part, as regarded my aunt, and offering him Sewis and one of the footmen to lift him to bed. "You are very good, squire," said the captain; "nothing but a sense of duty restrains me. I am bound to convey the information to my brother that the coast is clear for him."
"Well, then, fall light, and for"ard," said the squire, shaking him by the hand. Forty years ago a gentleman, a baronet, had fallen on the back of his head and never recovered.
"Ay, ay, launch stern foremost, if you like!" said the captain, nodding; "no, no, I don"t go into port pulled by the tail, my word for it, squire; and good day to you, sir."
"No ill will about this bothering love-business of yours, William?"
"On my soul, sir, I cherish none."
Temple and I followed him out of the house, fascinated by his manners and oddness. He invited us to jump into the chariot beside him. We were witnesses of the meeting between him and his brother, a little sniffling man, as like the captain as a withered nut is like a milky one.
"Same luck, William?" said Squire Gregory.
"Not a point of change in the wind, Greg," said the captain.
They wrenched hands thereupon, like two carpet-shakers, with a report, and much in a similar att.i.tude.
"These young gentlemen will testify to you solemnly, Greg, that I took no unfair advantage," said the captain; "no whispering in pa.s.sages, no appointments in gardens, no letters. I spoke out. Bravely, man! And now, Greg, referring to the state of your cellar, our young friends here mean to float with us to-night. It is now half-past eleven A.M. Your dinner-hour the same as usual, of course? Therefore at four P.M. the hour of execution. And come, Greg, you and I will visit the cellar. A dozen and half of light and half-a-dozen of the old family--that will be about the number of bottles to give me my quietus, and you yours--all of us! And you, young gentlemen, take your guns or your rods, and back and be dressed by the four bell, or you "ll not find the same man in Billy Bulsted."
Temple was enraptured with him. He declared he had been thinking seriously for a long time of entering the Navy, and his admiration of the captain must have given him an intuition of his character, for he persuaded me to send to Riversley for our evening-dress clothes, appearing in which at the dinner-table, we received the captain"s compliments, as being gentlemen who knew how to attire ourselves to suit an occasion. The occasion, Squire Gregory said, happened to him too often for him to distinguish it by the cut of his coat.
"I observe, nevertheless, Greg, that you have a black tie round your neck instead of a red one," said the captain.
"Then it came there by accident," said Squire Gregory.
"Accident! There"s no such thing as accident. If I wander out of the house with a half dozen or so in me, and topple into the brook, am I accidentally drowned? If a squall upsets my ship, is she an accidental residue of spars and timber and old iron? If a woman refuses me, is that an accident? There"s a cause for every disaster: too much cargo, want of foresight, want of pluck. Pooh! when I"m hauled prisoner into a foreign port in time of war, you may talk of accidents. Mr. Harry Richmond, Mr.
Temple, I have the accidental happiness of drinking to your healths in a tumbler of hock wine. Nominative, hic, haec, hoc."
Squire Gregory carried on the declension, not without pride. The Vocative confused him.
"Claret will do for the Vocative," said the captain, gravely; "the more so as there is plenty of it at your table, Greg. Ablative hoc, hac, hoc, which sounds as if the gentleman had become incapable of speech beyond the name of his wine. So we will abandon the declension of the article for a dash of champagne, which there"s no declining, I hope. Wonderful men, those Romans! They fought their ships well, too. A question to you, Greg. Those heathen Pagan dogs had a religion that encouraged them to swear. Now, my experience of life p.r.o.nounces it to be a human necessity to rap out an oath here and there. What do you say?"
Squire Gregory said: "Drinking, and no thinking, at dinner, William."
The captain pledged him.
"I "ll take the opportunity, as we"re not on board ship, of drinking to you, sir, now," Temple addressed the captain, whose face was resplendent; and he bowed, and drank, and said,
"As we are not on board ship? I like you!"
Temple thanked him for the compliment.
"No compliment, my lad. You see me in my weakness, and you have the discernment to know me for something better than I seem. You promise to respect me on my own quarter-deck. You are of the right stuff. Do I speak correctly, Mr. Harry?"
"Temple is my dear friend," I replied.
"And he would not be so if not of the right stuff! Good! That "s a way of putting much in little. By Jove! a royal style."
"And Harry"s a royal fellow!" said Temple.
We all drank to one another. The captain"s eyes scrutinized me speculatingly.
"This boy might have been yours or mine, Greg," I heard him say in a faltering rough tone.
They forgot the presence of Temple and me, but spoke as if they thought they were whispering. The captain a.s.sured his brother that Squire Beltham had given him as much fair play as one who holds a balance.
Squire Gregory doubted it, and sipped and kept his nose at his winegla.s.s, crabbedly repeating his doubts of it. The captain then remarked, that doubting it, his conscience permitted him to use stratagems, though he, the captain, not doubting it, had no such permission.
"I count I run away with her every night of my life," said Squire Gregory. "Nothing comes of it but empty bottles."
"Court her, serenade her," said the captain; "blockade the port, lay siege to the citadel. I"d give a year of service for your chances, Greg.
Half a word from her, and you have your horses ready."
"She"s past po"chaises," Squire Gregory sighed.
"She"s to be won by a bold stroke, brother Greg."
"Oh, Lord, no! She"s past po"chaises."
"Humph! it"s come to be half-bottle, half-beauty, with your worship, Greg, I suspect."
"No. I tell you, William, she"s got her mind on that fellow. You can"t po"chay her."
"After he jilted her for her sister? Wrong, Greg, wrong. You are muddled. She has a fright about matrimony--a common thing at her age, I am told. Where"s the man?"
"In the Bench, of course. Where"d you have him?"
"I, sir? If I knew my worst enemy to be there, I"d send him six dozen of the best in my cellar."
Temple shot a walnut at me. I pretended to be meditating carelessly, and I had the heat and roar of a conflagration round my head.
Presently the captain said, "Are you sure the man"s in the Bench?"
"c.o.c.k," Squire Gregory replied.
"He had money from his wife."
"And he had the wheels to make it go." Here they whispered in earnest.
"Oh, the Billings were as rich as the Belthams," said the captain, aloud.
"Pretty nigh, William."
"That"s our curse, Greg. Money settled on their male issue, and money in hand; by the Lord! we"ve always had the look of a pair of highwaymen lurking for purses, when it was the woman, the woman, penniless, naked, mean, dest.i.tute; nothing but the woman we wanted. And there was one apiece for us. Greg, old boy, when will the old county show such another couple of Beauties! Greg, sir, you"re not half a man, or you"d have carried her, with your opportunities. The fellow"s in the Bench, you say? How are you c.o.c.ksure of that, Mr. Greg?"
"Company," was the answer; and the captain turned to Temple and me, apologizing profusely for talking over family matters with his brother after a separation of three years. I had guessed but hastily at the subject of their conversation until they mentioned the Billings, the family of my maternal grandmother. The name was like a tongue of fire shooting up in a cloud of smoke: I saw at once that the man in the Bench must be my father, though what the Bench was exactly, and where it was, I had no idea, and as I was left to imagination I became, as usual, childish in my notions, and brooded upon thoughts of the Man in the Iron Mask; things I dared not breathe to Temple, of whose manly sense I stood in awe when under these distracting influences.
"Remember our feast in the combe?" I sang across the table to him.
"Never forget it!" said he; and we repeated the tale of the goose at Rippenger"s school to our entertainers, making them laugh.