"Now, I wonder," reflected that kind soul, "which direction they will take. Personally, of course, I should prefer them to pa.s.s this window; but I hope I can subdue private inclination to public spirit, and for Troy"s sake I hope they will visit the Castle first.
The salubrity of the air, as well as the expansiveness of the view, would be certain to impress them favourably. Dear, dear! I wish I could advise them. Should they take the direction of the town, I know by experience they will be apt to meet with an effluvium of decaying fish, and I should _so_ like their stay among us to be begun under pleasant auspices."
But almost before Miss Limpenny had concluded these reflections, the strangers had determined on the direction. They turned neither towards the Town nor up the hill towards the Castle and the harbour"s mouth; but down the little road which led to Bower Slip and the Penpoodle Ferryboat.
"Gracious me!" exclaimed Miss Limpenny; "they are going to take a boat."
The words were scarcely out of her mouth, when she was seized with a sudden idea--an idea so alluring, yet so bold withal, that the blood flew from her cheeks. She made a step forward, paused, took another step, and returned to the window. The strangers had turned down the road and were out of sight.
For a full minute she stood there, tapping her foot.
"I will," she said, with sudden determination. "I will!" On Miss Limpenny"s maiden lip the words were as solemn as though she spoke them at the altar. "I will,--and--I don"t care what happens!"
Awful words! Awful in themselves, more awful from such lips, but surely most awful as making the second-step in the moral decadence of Troy!
Yet I would not have my readers too excited. They were words to shudder at, indeed; but the immediate consequences were not b.l.o.o.d.y-- they were only to a limited degree tragic. It must be remembered that the magnificence of all actions is relative to the performer, nor would I seek to exalt Miss Limpenny to the level of a Semiramis or a Dido; only, when I say that she bore a great soul in a little body, I say no more than that she was a Trojan.
In short, Miss Limpenny did not, as the reader may have expected, take a boat and pursue after the strangers. What she did was simply to descend swiftly to the front hall, take down from its stand an antique, bra.s.s-bound telescope of enormous proportions, and with it make her way swiftly to the back door.
The back gardens of Alma Villas ran parallel to each other, and were terminated by a high wall, with a quay-door apiece, a tall ladder leading from the door straight down to the water. At the end of the garden, and built against this wall, in each case a stone terrace with a flight of steps allowed any one who chose to climb, and even perform a limited promenade while enjoying a full view of the harbour beyond.
It was to this flight of steps that Miss Limpenny, with a prayer on her lips and the telescope under her arm, made her way.
Both terrace and steps were rickety to a degree. To help you to estimate her conduct at its full temerity I may mention that Miss Limpenny had never attempted the climb before in her life.
But whatever qualms she may have felt, they did not appear in her behaviour. Gingerly, but without hesitation, and clutching the telescope, which impeded her as an ice-axe the rock-climber, she essayed all the perils of this maiden ascent.
Five minutes" stiff climbing, as they say in the _Alpine Journal_, brought her to a point where she could take breath and look about her. Despite her terror, the excitement and the light breeze now blowing over the _arete_ of garden wall, had brought a flush to her cheek. But scarcely had she resumed and set her foot upon the summit, when the flush suddenly faded, and left her blanched as snow.
For there, not a foot to her right, and above the crest of the part.i.tion wall, rose another telescope, the exact counterpart of her own!
The Spectre on the Brocken was nothing to this.
She clutched at the rotten stones and panted for breath.
Slowly, very slowly, the rival telescope was tilted up against the harbour-wall; very slowly it rose in air. Then came a pair of hands--of blue cuffs--and then--the crimson face of Admiral Buzza soared into view, like the child"s head in _Macbeth_.
He did not see her yet, being absorbed in adjusting the telescope.
Terror-smitten, too fearful to advance or retreat, clinging to the telescope with one hand as a drowning mariner might grasp a spar, and clutching with the other at the crumbling wall, Miss Limpenny stood arrested, wildly staring, scarce venturing to breathe.
The Admiral"s telescope was tilted into position, and the Admiral half-turned his head before applying his eye to the hole.
She could not help it. In spite of all her efforts to repress it, a little gasping squeal of affright broke from her. The Admiral, with a start, withdrew his eye quickly from the gla.s.s, and looked over the wall.
"d.a.m.nation!" (This was the Admiral, by the way.)
What happened exactly at this moment will never be known. Whether a stone underfoot gave way, or whether the Admiral"s voice brought down a _serac_ of rotten wall, is not clear. There was a rumbling sound, an oath or two--and then both telescope and Admiral disappeared, with a crash, from view.
Miss Limpenny screamed, dropped her telescope, which went rattling down the steps, cowered desperately against the wall, shut her eyes, screamed again, trod on a tilting slab, hung for a moment, toppled, clutched wildly at s.p.a.ce, and shot, with a rush and shower of stones, straight to the very bottom.
Miss Lavinia Limpenny, who, startled by the screams, had rushed to the window and witnessed the last stages of the catastrophe, was out in a minute. Tenderly raising her sobbing sister, she a.s.sisted her back to the house, and attended to the bruises with a combination of arnica, vinegar, and brown paper. On the other side of the wall the Admiral lay for some time and bellowed for help, until his frightened family bore him in, and attempted to put him to bed.
But mark the heroism of the truly great. In spite of his late treatment at the hands of his fellow-citizens--treatment which still rankled--here was no Coriola.n.u.s to depart in a huff to Antium.
The Admiral had a duty to perform, a service due to this ungrateful Town, and on the subject of going to bed he was adamant.
"Cease, Emily. Your tears, your protestations are in vain.
Stop, I tell you! Get me my uniform."
Surely some desperate, some decisive step was contemplated when the Admiral ordered out that gold-laced coat and c.o.c.ked hat that once had shone in the Blue Squadron of Her Majesty"s Navy. What could this stern magnificence portend?
The Admiral had made up his mind. He was going to interview Mrs.
Snell, the charwoman.
It was a pretty fancy, and one not without parallel in the history of famous men, that inspired him at his crisis to a.s.sume his bravest attire. There is to my mind a flavour in the conceit--a bravado lifting the action above mere intrepidity into actual greatness.
Nor in this little Iliad are there many figures that I regard with more affection than that of Admiral Buzza at his garden gate waiting for Mrs. Snell.
When at length she issued from "The Bower" and came down the road, the effect of the gold lace was rather striking. She dropped her bundle and her lower jaw together.
"Lawks, sir! how you did frighten me, to be sure! I thought it was the devil!"
This was hardly what the Admiral had expected. He beckoned with his forefinger mysteriously. Mrs. Snell advanced as though not quite sure that her first fright was unfounded.
"Mrs. Snell," inquired the Admiral, in a whisper, "what are they like?" He pointed melodramatically towards "The Bower" as he asked the question.
Again the unexpected happened. Mrs. Snell burst into loud and hysterical sobbing.
"Don"t "ee, sir! don"t "ee! I can"t abear it. Not a thing can you do to please "em, an" the Honorubble Frederic a-dammin" about the "ouse fit to make your flesh creep. An" that though he might "ave ate his dinner off the floor, gold studs an" all, as I told "un at last.
For "twasn"t in flesh and blood, sir--not to be ordered this way an"
that by a whipper-snapper whose gran"mother I might "a been, though he _"as_ got three rows o" shiny b.u.t.tons on "is stummick, which is no cause for a proud carriage toward them as "asn"t, nor callin" "em slow-coaches and names which I won"t soil my tongue wi"--an" so I said. Aw dear! aw dear!" And here Mrs. Snell"s pa.s.sion again found vent in violent sobs and cries.
"Hush! Confound it! Hush! I tell you. You"ll have the whole town out."
"I beg your pardon, sir--boo-hoo!--but it isn"t in natur", sich wickedness in "igh places, an" pore Maria sick at "ome wi" the colic an" a leak in the roof you might put your c.o.c.ked "at through, an"
very fine it looks, sir, beggin" your parding agen, which is all vexashun o" sperrit on a shillin" a day an" your vittles, let alone bein" swore at "till you dunno whether you be "pon your "ed or your "eels."
With this Mrs. Snell picked up her bundle and marched off down the road. She was quite hopeless, the Admiral determined, as he watched her retreating figure and heard her sobs borne back to him on the evening air. Well, well! it had been another reverse--but not a defeat. His face cleared again as he turned to re-enter the house.
"Let me see: to-morrow is Sunday. They will probably be at church.
In the afternoon, though it involve the loss of my usual nap, I will consider. On Monday I will act."
Even the strangers themselves, as they walked up the aisle of St.
Symphorian"s Church, Troy, on the following morning, could not but perceive something of importance to be in the wind. That the church should be full was not unusual, for in those days Sunday Observance was the rule among Trojans. But on this particular day the Wesleyan and Bible Christian chapels must have been sadly depleted, so great was the crush; and, besides, there was the unwonted magnificence of dress, the stir caused by the simultaneous turning of some hundred bonnets as the Goodwyn-Sandys entered, the audible whispering as they took their seats, the nervousness of the Vicar, who twice dropped his spectacles over the reading desk and once over the pulpit. On this last occasion one of the gla.s.ses was broken, and the sermon in consequence became, towards the end, a trifle involved. All this made the service rather hysterical.
Tell me, my Muse, thou who sittest at the tea-table and rejoicest in the rattling of cups: Who were they that attended St. Symphorian"s Church on this Sunday morning? First, there were the Misses Limpenny, in black tabbinet dresses and lace shawls; a cameo brooch adorned the throat of each, and from her waist a reticule depended.
These first directed the gold-bound optic gla.s.s at the strangers"
pew. Behind them sat the Doctor and his wife, the one conspicuous for his black stock, the other for a shawl of Paisley workmanship.
Next, the Harbour-master, tall Mr. Stripp, with his daughters Tryphena and Tryphosa; nor would Mrs. Stripp have been absent had she not been buried some years before. Yellow-haired were both the daughters, and few knew better the prevailing fashion in dress; these whispered concerning Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys" costume. By them sat Mr.
Moggridge, the poet, good at the responses, and Sam Buzza, his friend, whom few Trojans excelled in casting glances at the female congregation. Then, most gorgeous and bravest of all, the Admiral: he wore again his gold-laced coat, but the c.o.c.ked-hat rested underneath the seat, and none could fathom the import of his gaze.
By him sat his three daughters, a-row, in straight-backed dresses of like cut and colour, and peeped over their prayer-books; and Mrs.
Buzza, timorous, in bright green satin. But of the throng of Trojan men and women, not though I had a hundred mouths, etc., etc.
"Her dress must have cost nine shillings a yard if it cost a penny,"