The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous Volume II Part 2

"Let him dry and dress himself," I said, in Dudgeon; "and if he be not civil to a Countryman, who is as good as he, I will kick him back to his Inn, and you too."

"A desperate youth!" murmured the Clergyman, as he handed his Patron a great bundle of towels; "and very meanly clad."

I walked away a few paces while the gentleman dried and dressed himself.

Had I obeyed the Promptings of Pride, I should have gone on my ways and left him to his likings; but I was exceedingly Poor, and thought it Foolish to throw away the chance of receiving what his Generosity might bestow upon me. The Bathing-Man, who had been already paid his Fee, had the impudence to come up and ask for more "Geld,"--for minding the gentleman's clothes, as I gathered from the speech of the clergyman, who understood Flemish. He was, however, indignantly refused, and, not relis.h.i.+ng, perchance, the likelihood of a scuffle with three Englishmen, straightway decamped.

By and by the Gentleman was dressed, and a very smart appearance he made in a blue s.h.a.g frock laced with silver, a yellow waistcoat bound with black velvet, green paduasoy breeches, red stockings, gold buckles, an ivory hilt to his sword, and a white feather in his hat. I have no mind to write out Taylor's accompts, but I do declare this to be the exact Schedule of his Equipment. Under the hat, which had a kind of Sunday Marylabonne c.o.c.k to it, there bulged forth a mighty White Periwig of fleecy curls, for all the world like the coat of a Bologna Poodle Dog, and in the middle of his Wig there peeped out a little hatchet face with lantern jaws, and blue gills, and a pair of great black eyebrows, under which glistened a pair of inflamed eyes. He was not above five feet three inches, and his fingers, very long and skinny, went to and fro under his Point ruffles like a Lobster's Feelers. The Chaplain, who waited upon him as a Maid would on a lardy-dardy woman of Fas.h.i.+on, handed my Gentleman a very tall stick with a golden k.n.o.b at the end on't, and with this, and a laced handkerchief and a long cravat, which he had likely bought at Mechlin, and a Snuff-box in the lean little Paw that held not the cane, he looked for all the world like one of my Grandmother's Footmen who had run away and turned Dancing Master.

"This, young man," said the Chaplain, making a low bow as he spoke to the comical Image before him, "is Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, of Hampstead. Make your reverence, sirrah!"

"Make a reverence to a Rag-doll!" I answered, with a sneer. "He hath left his twin brother beyond sea. I know him, and he is a Barbary Ape."

"The rogue is insolent," says B. Pinchin, Esq., clutching tighter at his tall cane, but turning very white the while. "I must batoon him into better manners."

"WHAT!" I cried in a great voice, making a step towards him, for my blood was up. I would but have tweaked the little creature's Ears; but he, for a surety, thought I had a mind to Murder him. I do aver that he fell upon his knees, and with most piteous Accents and Protestations entreated me, for the sake of his Mamma, to spare his life, and he would give me all I asked.

I was quite bewildered, and turning towards the Parson, asked if his master was Mad; to which he made answer with some Heat, that he was no Master of his, but his Honoured Friend and Gracious Patron; whereupon the little Spark must go up to him, whimpering and cuddling about him, and beseeching him to save him from the Tall Rogue, meaning me.

"Body o' me, man," I exclaimed, scarcely able to keep from laughing, "I mean you no harm. I am a young Englishman, lately come from the Plantations, and seeking employment. I see you struggling yonder, and likely to give up the ghost, and I pull you out; and then you call me Rogue and charge me with striking of you. Was it cramp or cowardice that made you bawl so? Give me something to drink better manners to you, and I will leave you and this reverend gentleman alone."

The Parson bowed his head with a pleased look when I called him Reverend and a Gentleman, and, in an under-tone, told his Patron that I was a civilly behaved youth, after all. But the Poltroon with the white wig was not out of his Pother yet. He had risen to his feet with a patch of sand on each knee, and as the Chaplain wiped it off with a kerchief, he blubbered out that I wanted to rob him.

The Clergyman whispered in his ear--perhaps that I was a Dangerous looking Fellow, and might lose my temper anon to some tune: for my Whippersnapper approaches me, and, in a manner Civil enough, tells me that he is much obliged for what I had done for him. "And you will take this," says he. I will be shot if he did not give me an English groat.

"You can readily get English coin changed in the town," he observed with a smirk, as in sheer bewilderment I gazed upon this paltry doit.

I was desperately minded to Fling it at him, knock him and the Chaplain down, and leave the precious pair to pick themselves up again, but I forebore. "Well," I said, "if that's the value you put upon your life, I can't grumble at your Guerdon. I suppose that shrivelled little carca.s.s of yours isn't worth more than fourpence. I'll e'en change it in town, and buy fourpennyworth of Dutch cheese, and you shall have the parings for nothing to send to your Mamma as a gift from foreign parts. Good morning to you, my n.o.ble Captain." And so saying I walked away in a Fume of Wrath and Contempt.

I was idling, that same afternoon, along the Main street of Ostend very much in the Dumps, and thinking of going down to the Port to seek a cook's place from some s.h.i.+p Master, for I was not yet Qualified to engage as an Able-bodied Mariner, when I met the Chaplain again, this time alone, and coming out of a pastryman's shop. I would have pa.s.sed him, as holding both him and his master in Disdain, but he Arrested me, and beckoned me into an Entry, there to have some Speech.

"My Patron is somewhat quick and hasty, and was uncommonly fl.u.s.tered by his mischance this morning," quoth the Rev. Mr. Hodge. "Nor perhaps did he use you as liberally as he should have done. Here is a golden guilder for you, honest man."

I thanked him, and as I pouched it told him that I would have taken no Money at all for a service which every man is bound to render to his Fellow-creature, but that I was sorely pressed for Money. On this, he asked my name and belongings. The name I gave him, at the which he winced somewhat; but of my history I did not care to enlighten him further beyond broadly stating that I had come from the Plantations, where I had been used to keep Accompts, and that I was an Orphan, and had no friends in England, even if I possessed the means to return thither.

"I think I can find you a place," the chaplain replied, when I had finished. "'Twill not be a very handsome one, but the work is little and light. Would it meet your purpose, now, to attend on a gentleman?"

"It depends," I replied, "on what kind of a Gentleman he is."

"A Gentleman of landed Estate," quoth the parson, quite pat. "An English gentleman, now travelling for his Diversion, but will, in good time, settle down in England, to live on his Acres in a Handsome manner, and be a justice of peace, and of the Quorum."

"Do you mean your Squire of Hampstead, yonder?" I answered, pointing my thumb over my shoulder, as though in the direction where I had met his Reverence and his Patron that morning.

"I do," responds Mr. Hodge.

"Bartholomew Pinchin, of Hampstead, Esquire, eh?" I continued.

"Exactly so."

"Then," I went on, raising my voice, and giving a furious glance at my companion, "I'll see Bartholomew Pinchin boiled, and I'll see Bartholomew Pinchin baked, and his Esquires.h.i.+p to boot, before I'll be his servant. He, a mean, skulking, pinchbeck hound! Tell him I'm meat for his master, and that he has no service, body or lip, of mine."

"Tut, tut, you foolish lad," said Mr. Hodge, not in the least offended.

"What a wild young colt it is, and how impatient! For all your strapping figure, now, I doubt whether you are twenty years of age."

I answered, with something like a Blush, that I was not yet seventeen.

"There it is,--there it is," the Chaplain took me, chuckling. "As I thought. A mere boy. A very lad. Not come to years of discretion yet, and never will, if he goes on raging in this manner. Hearken to me, youngster. Don't be such a fool as to throw away a good chance."

"I don't see where it is yet," I observed sulkily yet sheepishly; for there was a Good-natured air about the Chaplain that overcame me.

"But I do," he rejoined. "The good chance you have is of getting a comfortable place, with a smart livery--"

"I won't wear a livery," I cried, in a heat. "I'll be no man's lacquey; I'm a gentleman."

"So was Adam," retorted Mr. Hodge, "and the very first of the breed; but he had to wear a livery of fig-leaves for all that, and so had his wife, Eve. Come, 'tis better to don a land-jerkin, and a hat with a ribbon to 't, and be a Gentleman's Gentleman, with regular Wages and Vails, and plenty of good Victuals every day, than to be starving and in rags about the streets of a Flemish town."

"I'm not starving; I'm not in rags," I protested, with my Proud stomach.

"But you will be the day after to-morrow. The two things always go together. Come, my young friend, I'll own that Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, is not generous."

"Generous!" I exclaimed; "why, he's the meanest little hunks that ever lanced a paving stone to find blood for black puddings in it. Didn't he give me fourpence this morning for saving his life?"

"And didn't you tell him that his life wasn't worth more than a groat?"

asked the Chaplain, with a sly grin; "besides insulting him on the question of Dutch cheese (to which he has an exquisite aversion), into the bargain?"

"That's true," I replied, vanquished by the Parson's logic.

"There, then," his Reverence went on. "Bartholomew Pinchin Esquire's more easily managed than you think for. Do you prove a good servant, and it shall be my duty to make him show himself a good master to you. But I must have no further parley with you here, else these Papistical Ostenders will think that you are some Flemish lad (for indeed you have somewhat of a foreign air), and I a Lutheran Minister striving to convert you. Get you back to your Inn, good youth. Pay your score, if you have one, and if you have not, e'en spend your guilder in treating of your companions, and come to me at nine of the clock this evening at the Inn of the Three Archd.u.c.h.esses. Till then, fare you well."

It must be owned that his Reverence's proposals were fair, and that his conversation was very civil. As I watched him trotting up the Main Street, his Ca.s.sock bulging out behind, I agreed with myself that perhaps the most prudent thing I could do just at present would be to put my gentility in my pocket till better times came round. There was a Spanish Don, I believe, once upon a time, who did very nearly the same thing with his sword.

At the appointed time I duly found myself at the sign of the Three Archd.u.c.h.esses, which was the bravest Hostelry in all Ostend, and the one where all the Quality put up. I asked for Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, in the best French that I could muster; whereupon the drawer, who was a Fleming, and, I think, spoke even worse French than I did, asked me if I meant the English Lord who had the grand suite of apartments looking on the courtyard. I was fit to die of laughing at first to hear the trumpery little Hampstead squire spoken of as a lord; but Prudence came to my aid again, and I answered that such was the personage I came to seek; and, after not much delay, I was ushered into the presence of Mr.

Pinchin, whose Esquiredom--and proud enough he was of it--I may now as well Drop. I found him in a very handsome apartment, richly furnished, drinking Burgundy with his chaplain, and with a pack of cards alongside the bottles, and two great wax candles in sconces on either side. But, as he drank his Burgundy, he ceased not to scream and whimper at the expense he was being put to in having such a costly liquor at his table, and scolded Mr. Hodge very sorely because he had not ordered some thin Bordeaux, or light Rhine wine. "I'm drinking guineas," he moaned, as he gulped down his Goblets; "it'll be the ruin of me. A dozen of this is as bad as a Mortgage upon my t.i.tmouse Farm. What'll my mamma say? I shall die in the poor-house." But all this time he kept on drinking; and it was not gla.s.s and gla.s.s about with him, I promise you, for he took at least three b.u.mpers full to his Chaplain's one, and eyed that reverend personage grudgingly as he seized his opportunity, and brimmed up the generous Red Liquor in his tall-stemmed gla.s.s. Yet the Chaplain seemed in no way discountenanced by his scanty allowance, and I thought that, perchance, his Reverence liked not wine of Burgundy.

They were playing a hand of piquet when I was introduced; and they being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence.

"I can't pay it, I can't pay it," he said, making a most rueful countenance. "I'm eaten out of house and home, and sharped at cards besides. It's a shame for a Parson to play foul,--I say foul, Mr. Hodge.

It's a disgrace to the cloth to bring your wicked card-cheating practices to devalise an English gentleman who is travelling for his diversion."

"We'll play the game over again, if you choose, Worthy Sir," the Chaplain answers quite quietly.

"Yes, and then you'll win seven s.h.i.+llings of me. You've sworn to bring me to beggary and ruin. I know you swore it when my mamma sent you abroad with me. Oh, why did I come to foreign parts with a wicked, guzzling, gambling, chambering Chaplain, that's in league with the very host and the drawers of this thieving inn against me--that burns me a guinea a night in wax candles, and has had a freehold farm out of me in Burgundy wine."

"I've have had but two gla.s.ses the entire evening," the Chaplain pleaded, in a voice truly that was meek; but I thought that, even at the distance I stood from him, I could see the colour rising in his cheek.

"Oh, you have, you have," went on Squire Bartholomew, who, if not half Mad, was certainly more than three parts Muzzy; "you've ruined me, Mr.

Hodge, with your cards and your candles and your Burgundy, and Goodness only knows what else besides."

The Chaplain could stand it no longer; and rose in a Rage.