Erema - My Father's Sin, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [read me a book TXT] 📗

hands with us; "but, unless I am a very bad judge of faces, you will be called just what you please."

"And I please to be called what my father called me. It may be unlucky, as a gentleman told me, who did not know how to pronounce it. However, it will do very well for me. You wish to see me, then, to-morrow, Mr. Shovelin?"

"If you please; but later in the day, when I am more at leisure. I do not run away very early. Come at half past four to this door, and knock. I hear every sound at this door in my room; and the place will be growing quiet then."

He showed us out into a narrow alley through a heavy door sheathed with iron, and soon we recovered the fair light of day, and the brawl and roar of a London street.

"Now where shall we go?" the Major asked, as soon as he had found a cab again; for he was very polite in that way. "You kept early hours with your 'uncle Sam,' as you call Colonel Gundry, a slow-witted man, but most amusing when he likes, as slow-witted men very often are. Now will you come and dine with me? I can generally dine, as you, with virtuous indignation, found out at Southampton. But we are better friends now, Miss Heathen."

"Yes, I have more than I can ever thank you for," I answered, very gravely, for I never could become jocose to order, and sadness still was uppermost. "I will go where you like. I am quite at your orders, because Betsy Bowen is busy now. She will not have done her work till six o'clock."

"Well done!" he cried. "Bravo, Young America! Frankness is the finest of all good manners. And what a lot of clumsy deception it saves! Then let us go and dine. I will imitate your truthfulness. It was two words for myself, and one for you. The air of London always makes me hungry after too much country air. It is wrong altogether, but I can not help it. And going along, I smell hungry smells coming out of deep holes with a plate at the top. Hungry I mean to a man who has known what absolute starvation is--when a man would thank God for a blue-bottle fly who had taken his own nip any where. When I see the young fellows at the clubs pick this, and poke that, and push away the other, may I be d----d--my dear, I beg your pardon. Cabby, to the 'Grilled Bone and Scolloped Cockle,' at the bottom of St. Ventricle Lane, you know."

This place seemed, from what the Major said, to have earned repute for something special, something esteemed by the very clever people, and only to be found in true virtue here. And he told me that luxury and self-indulgence were the greatest sins of the present age, and how he admired a man who came here to protest against Epicureans, by dining (liquors not included) for the sum of three and sixpence.

All this, no doubt, was wise and right; but I could not attend to it properly now, and he might take me where he would, and have all the talking to himself, according to his practice. And I might not even have been able to say what this temple of bones and cockles was like, except for a little thing which happened there. The room, at the head of a twisting staircase, was low and dark, and furnished almost like a farmhouse kitchen. It had no carpet, nor even a mat, but a floor of black timber, and a ceiling colored blue, with stars and comets, and a full moon near the fire-place. On either side of the room stood narrow tables endwise to the walls, inclosed with high-backed seats like settles, forming thus a double set of little stalls or boxes, with scarcely space enough between for waiters, more urgent than New York firemen, to push their steaming and breathless way.

"Square or round, miss?" said one of them to me as soon as the Major had set me on a bench, and before my mind had time to rally toward criticism of the knives and forks, which deprecated any such ordeal; and he cleverly whipped a stand for something dirty, over something still dirtier, on the cloth.

"I don't understand what you mean," I replied to his highly zealous aspect, while the Major sat smiling dryly at my ignorance, which vexed me. "I have never received such a question before. Major Hockin, will you kindly answer him?"

"Square," said the Major; "square for both." And the waiter, with a glance of pity at me, hurried off to carry out his order.

"Erema, your mind is all up in the sky," my companion began to remonstrate. "You ought to know better after all your travels."

"Then the sky should not fall and confuse me so," I said, pointing to the Milky Way, not more than a yard above me; "but do tell me what he meant, if you can. Is it about the formation of the soup?"

"Hush, my dear. Soup is high treason here until night, when they make it of the leavings. His honest desire was to know whether you would have a grilled bone of mutton, which is naturally round, you know, or of beef, which, by the same law of nature, seems always to be square, you know."

"Oh, I see," I replied, with some confusion, not at his osteology, but at the gaze of a pair of living and lively eyes fastened upon me. A gentleman, waiting for his bill, had risen in the next low box, and stood calmly (as if he had done all his duty to himself) gazing over the wooden back at me, who thus sat facing him. And Major Hockin, following my glance, stood up and turned round to see to it.

"What! Cousin Montague! Bless my heart, who could have dreamed of lighting on you here? Come in, my dear follow; there is plenty of room. Let me introduce you to my new ward, Miss Erema Castlewood. Miss Castlewood, this is Sir Montague Hockin, the son of my lamented first cousin Sir Rufus, of whom you have heard so much. Well, to be sure! I have not seen you for an age. My dear fellow, now how are you?"

"Miss Castlewood, please not to move; I sit any where. Major, I am most delighted to see you. Over and over again I have been at the point of starting for Bruntsea Island--it is an island now, isn't it? My father would never believe that it was till I proved it from the number of rabbits that came up. However, not a desolate island now, if it contains you and all your energies, and Miss Castlewood, as well as Mrs. Hockin."

"It is not an island, and it never shall be," the Major cried, knocking a blue plate over, and spilling the salt inauspiciously. "It never was an island, and it never shall be. My intention is to reclaim it altogether. Oh, here come the squares. Well done! well done! I quite forget the proper thing to have to drink. Are the cockles in the pan, Mr. Waiter? Quite right, then; ten minutes is the proper time; but they know that better than I do. I am very sorry, Montague, that you have dined."

"Surely you would not call this a dinner; I take my true luncheon afterward. But lately my appetite has been so bad that it must be fed up at short intervals. You can understand that, perhaps, Miss Castlewood. It makes the confectioners' fortunes, you know. The ladies once came only twice to feed, but now they come three times, I am assured by a young man who knows all about it. And cherry brandy is the mildest form of tipple."

"Shocking scandal! abominable talk!" cried the Major, who took every thing at its word. "I have heard all that sort of stuff ever since I was as high as this table. Waiter, show me this gentleman's bill. Oh well, oh well! you have not done so very badly. Two squares and a round, with a jug of Steinberg, and a pint of British stout with your Stilton. If this is your ante-lunch, what will you do when you come to your real luncheon? But I must not talk now; you may have it as you please."

"The truth of it is, Miss Castlewood," said the young man, while I looked with some curiosity at my frizzling bone, with the cover just whisked off, and drops of its juice (like the rays of a lustre) shaking with soft inner wealth--"the truth of it is just this, and no more: we fix our minds and our thoughts, and all the rest of our higher intelligence, a great deal too much upon our mere food."

"No doubt we do," I was obliged to answer. "It is very sad to think of, as soon as one has dined. But does that reflection occur, as it should, at the proper time to be useful--I mean when we are hungry?"

"I fear not; I fear that it is rather praeterite than practical."

"No big words now, my dear fellow," cried the Major. "You have had your turn; let us have ours. But, Erema, you are eating nothing. Take a knife and fork, Montague, and help her. The beauty of these things consists entirely, absolutely, essentially, I may say, in their having the smoke rushing out of them. A gush of steam like this should follow every turn of the knife. But there! I am spoiling every bit by talking so."

"Is that any fault of mine?" asked Sir Montague, in a tone which made me look at him. The voice was not harsh, nor rough, nor unpleasant, yet it gave me the idea that it could be all three, and worse than all three, upon occasion. So I looked at him, which I had refrained from doing, to see whether his face confirmed that idea. To the best of my perception, it did not. Sir Montague Hockin was rather good-looking, so far as form and color go, having regular features, and clear blue eyes, very beautiful teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to "be helped to all the stuffing of the pumpkin," as dear Uncle Sam was fond of saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely, without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he was likely to please more people than he displeased at first on-sight.

The Major was now in the flush of goodwill, having found his dinner genial; and being a good man, he yielded to a little sympathetic anger with those who had done less justice to themselves. And in this state of mind he begged us to take note of one thing--that his ward should be christened in Bruntsea Church, as sure as all the bells were his, according to their inscriptions, no later than next Thursday week, that being the day for a good sirloin; and if Sir Montague failed to come to see how they could manage things under proper administration, he might be sure of one thing, if no more--that Major Hockin would never speak to him again.


CHAPTER XXVIII


A CHECK

So many things now began to open upon me, to do and