Springhaven, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [finding audrey TXT] 📗

have enjoyed, and how much better I have got on than I had any right in the world to hope for."

"Yes, to be the Commander of a beautiful ship, little more than a year from the date of your commission. Captain Stubbard is in such a rage about it!"

"I don't mean about that--though that of course is rare luck--I mean a much more important thing; I mean about getting on well with you. The first time I saw you in that fine old school, you did not even want to shake hands with me, and you thought what a queer kind of animal I was; and then the first time or two I dined at the Hall, nothing but fine hospitality stopped you from laughing at my want of practice. But gradually, through your own kind nature, and my humble endeavours to be of use, I began to get on with you better and better; and now you are beginning almost to like me."

"Not almost, but altogether," she answered, with quite an affectionate glance. "I can tell you there are very few, outside of my own family, that I like half so well as I like you. But how can it matter to you so much?"

She looked at him so that he was afraid to speak, for fear of spoiling everything; and being a very good-natured girl, and pleased with his deep admiration, she sighed--just enough to make him think that he might hope.

"We are all so sorry to lose you." she said; "and no one will miss you so much as I shall, because we have had such pleasant times together. But if we can carry out our little plot, we shall hear of you very often, and I dare say not very unfavourably. Faith and I have been putting our heads together, and for our own benefit, and that of all the house, if we can get you to second it. My father jumped at the idea, and said how stupid we were not to think of it before. You know how very little he can be at home this summer, and he says he has to sacrifice his children to his country. So we suggested that he should invite Lady Scudamore to spend the summer with us, if she can be persuaded to leave home so long. We will do our very utmost to make her comfortable, and she will be a tower of strength to us; for you know sometimes it is very awkward to have only two young ladies. But we dare not do anything until we asked you. Do you think she would take compassion upon us? A word from you perhaps would decide her; and Faith would write a letter for you to send."

Scudamore reddened with delight, and took her hand. "How can I thank you? I had better not try," he answered, with some very tender play of thumb and fore-finger, and a strong impulse to bring lips too into action. "You are almost as clever as you are good; you will know what I mean without my telling you. My mother will be only too glad to come. She knows what you are, she has heard so much from me. And the reality will put to shame all my descriptions."

"Tell me what you told her I was like. The truth, now, and not a word of afterthought or flattery. I am always so irritated by any sort of flattery."

"Then you must let me hold your hands, to subdue your irritation; for you are sure to think that it was flattery--you are so entirely ignorant of yourself, because you never think of it. I told my dear mother that you were the best, and sweetest, and wisest, and loveliest, and most perfect, and exquisite, and innocent, and unselfish of all the human beings she had ever seen, or heard, or read of. And I said it was quite impossible for any one after one look at you to think of himself any more in this world."

"Well done!" exclaimed Dolly, showing no irritation, unless a gleam of pearls inside an arch of coral showed it. "It is as well to do things thoroughly, while one is about it. I can understand now how you get on so fast. But, alas, your dear mother will only laugh at all that. Ladies are so different from gentlemen. Perhaps that is why gentlemen never understand them. And I would always a great deal rather be judged by a gentleman than a lady. Ladies pick such a lot of holes in one another, whereas gentlemen are too large-minded. And I am very glad upon the whole that you are not a lady, though you are much more gentle than they make believe to be. Oh dear! We must run; or the ladies will never forgive us for keeping them starving all this time."


CHAPTER XLI


LISTENERS HEAR NO GOOD

"Not that there is anything to make one so very uneasy," said Mr. Twemlow, "only that one has a right to know the meaning of what we are expected to put up with. Nothing is clear, except that we have not one man in the Government who knows his own mind, or at any rate dares to pronounce it. Addington is an old woman, and the rest--oh, when shall we have Pitt back again? People talk of it, and long for it; but the Country is so slow. We put up with everything, instead of demanding that the right thing shall be done at once. Here is Boney, a fellow raised up by Satan as the scourge of this island for its manifold sins; and now he is to be the Emperor forsooth--not of France, but of Europe, continental Europe. We have only one man fit to cope with him at all, and the voice of the nation has been shouting for him; but who pays any attention to it? This state of things is childish--simply childish; or perhaps I ought to say babyish. Why, even the children on the sea-shore know, when they make their little sand walls against the tide, how soon they must be swept away. But the difference is this, that they don't live inside them, and they haven't got all that belongs to them inside them. Nobody must suppose for a moment that a clergyman's family would fail to know where to look for help and strength and support against all visitations; but, in common with the laity, we ask for Billy Pitt."

"And in another fortnight you will have him," replied Captain Stubbard, who was dining there that day. "Allow me to tell you a little thing that happened to my very own self only yesterday. You know that I am one of the last people in the world to be accused of any--what's the proper word for it? Mrs. Stubbard, you know what I mean--Jemima, why the deuce don't you tell them?"

"Captain Stubbard always has more meaning than he can well put into words," said his wife; "his mind is too strong for any dictionary. Hallucination is the word he means."

"Exactly!" cried the Captain. "That expresses the whole of what I wanted to say, but went aside of it. I am one of the last men in the world to become the victim of any--there, I've lost it again! But never mind. You understand now; or if you don't, Mrs. Stubbard will repeat it. What I mean is that I see all things square, and straight, and with their own corners to them. Well, I know London pretty well; not, of course, as I know Portsmouth. Still, nobody need come along with me to go from Charing Cross to St. Paul's Church-yard; and pretty tight I keep all my hatches battened down, and a sharp pair of eyes in the crow's-nest--for to have them in the foretop won't do there. It was strictly on duty that I went up--the duty of getting a fresh stock of powder, for guns are not much good without it; and I had written three times, without answer or powder. But it seems that my letters were going the rounds, and would turn up somewhere, when our guns were stormed, without a bit of stuff to make answer."

"Ah, that's the way they do everything now!" interrupted Mr. Twemlow. "I thought you had been very quiet lately; but I did not know what a good reason you had. We might all have been shot, and you could not have fired a salute, to inform the neighbourhood!"

"Well, never mind," replied the Captain, calmly; "I am not complaining, for I never do so. Young men might; but not old hands, whose duty it is to keep their situation in life. Well, you must understand that the air of London always makes me hungry. There are so many thousands of people there that you can't name a time when there is nobody eating, and this makes a man from the country long to help them. Anyhow, I smelled roast mutton at a place where a little side street comes up into the Strand; and although it was scarcely half past twelve, it reminded me of Mrs. Stubbard. So I called a halt, and stood to think upon a grating, and the scent became flavoured with baked potatoes. This is always more than I can resist, after all the heavy trials of a chequered life. So I pushed the door open, and saw a lot of little cabins, right and left of a fore and aft gangway, all rigged up alike for victualling. Jemima, I told you all about it. You describe it to the Rector and Mrs. Twemlow."

"Don't let us trouble Mrs. Stubbard," said the host; "I know the sort of thing exactly, though I don't go to that sort of place myself."

"No, of course you don't. And I was a little scared at first, for there was sawdust enough to soak up every drop of my blood, if they had pistolled me. Mrs. Twemlow, I beg you not to be alarmed. My wife has such nerves that I often forget that all ladies are not like her. Now don't contradict me, Mrs. Stubbard. Well, sir, I went to the end of this cockpit--if you like to call it so--and got into the starboard berth, and shouted for a ration of what I had smelled outside. And although it was far from being equal to its smell--as the character is of everything--you might have thought it uncommon good, if you had never tasted Mrs. Stubbard's cooking, after she had been to the butcher herself. Very well. I don't care for kickshaws, even if I could afford them, which has never yet been my destiny. So I called for another ration of hot sheep--beg your pardon, ladies, what I mean is mutton--and half a dozen more of baked potatoes; and they reminded me of being at home so much that I called for a pint of best pine-apple rum and a brace of lemons, to know where I was--to remind me that I wasn't where I couldn't get them."

"Oh, Adam!" cried Mrs. Stubbard, "what will you say next? Not on weekdays, of course, but nearly every Sunday--and the samples of his powder in his pocket, Mr. Twemlow!"

"Jemima, you are spoiling my story altogether. Well, you must understand that this room was low, scarcely higher than the cabin of a fore-and-after, with no skylights to it, or wind-sail, or port-hole that would open. And so, with the summer coming on, as it is now--though a precious long time about it--and the smell of the meat, and the thoughts of the grog, and the feeling of being at home again, what did