Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 6

These and other small frailties were forgotten as the new Sir Thomas and his spouse took possession and proceeded in a few weeks to turn the place inside out, dismissing five of the stable-boys, cutting down the garden staff by one-third, and carrying havoc into the housekeeper's apartments, the dairy, the still-room.

In these dismissals I have no doubt that Sir Thomas and Lady Caroline hit (as justice is done in this world) upon the chief blackguards.

But the two boys, asking one another why So-and-so had been marked down while This-other had been spared, and observing that the So-and-so's included an overbalancing number of their own cronies, found malice in the discrimination, and a malice directed with intent upon themselves.

Young Oliver, as soon as Harry was convalescent, discussed this vehemently with him. Harry, weak with illness, took it pa.s.sively.

He was destined for the Navy. To him already the sea meant everything: as a child of three, on his voyage home in the _Mogul_ East Indiaman, he had caught the infection of it; on it, as offering the only career fit for a grown man, his young thoughts brooded, and these annoyances were to him but as chimney-pots and pantiles falling about the heads of folks ash.o.r.e. But he agreed that Di's conduct needed explaining. She had taken a demure turn, and was not remonstrating with her parents as she ought--not playing fair, in short. "It must be pretty difficult for her," said Harry. "I don't see," said Oliver.

The two boys went back to Westminster together. They spent the Christmas holidays with their Uncle Frederick, the barrister, who practised very little at the law either in court or in chambers, hut dwelt somewhat luxuriously in the Inner Temple and lived the life of a man-about-town. Their summer vacation was to be spent at Carwithiel; but, as it happened, they were not to see Carwithiel again, for before summer came news of their father's death at Calcutta. He had ama.s.sed a fortune which, translated out of rupees, amounted to 400,000 pounds.

To his widow, in addition to her jointure, he left a life interest of a thousand pounds _per annum_; a sum of 20,000 pounds was set aside for Harry, to acc.u.mulate until his twenty-first birthday; while the magnificent residue in like manner acc.u.mulated for young Oliver, the heir.

Lady Jane returned to England, to live in decent affluence at Bath; and at Bath, of course, Oliver and Harry spent their subsequent holidays, while their Uncle Frederick continued by occasional dinners and gifts of pocket money, by outings down the river to Greenwich, by seats at the theatre or at state shows and pageants, to mitigate the rigours of school. Had it occurred to Oliver Vyell in later life to set down his "Reflections" in the style of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he might have begun them in some such words as these: "From my mother, Lady Jane Vyell, I learned to be proud of good birth, to esteem myself a gentleman, and to regulate my actions by a code proper to my station in life. This code she reconciled with the Gospels, and indeed, she rested it on the rock of Holy Scripture. From my Uncle Frederick I learned that self-interest was the key of life; that the teachings of the priest-hood were more or less conscious humbug; that all men could be bought; that their G.o.d was vanity, and the Great Revolution the n.o.blest event in English history. . . ."

The sane infusion of Father Neptune in Master Harry's blood preserved him from these doctrines, and before long indeed removed him out of the way of hearing them. Soon after his fifteenth birthday he sailed to learn his profession s.h.i.+pping (by a fiction of the service), as "cabin boy" under his mother's brother. Lord Robert Soules, then commanding the _Merope_ frigate.

Oliver proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and thence (without waiting for a degree) to make the Grand Tour; in the course of which and in company with his cousin, d.i.c.k Pelham, and a Mr. Batty Langton, a Christ Church friend, he visited Florence, Rome, Naples, Athens, and Constantinople, returning through Rome again and by way of Venice, Switzerland, Paris. He reached home to find that his mother, who believed in keeping young men employed, had procured him a cornetcy in Lord Lomond's Troop of Horse. He was now in possession of an ample fortune. He would certainly succeed to the baronetcy, and to the Vyell acres, which were mostly entailed.

But the grave itself could not give lessons in greed to a true Whig family of that period. Lady Jane had it in her blood, every tradition of it. Her son (though within a few months he rose to command of a troop) detested all military routine save active service. He despised the triumphs of the Senate. To keep him out of mischief--or, rather, as you shall hear, to extricate him from it--the good dame made application to the Duke of Newcastle; and so in the year 1737, at the age of twenty-one, Captain Oliver Vyell was appointed to the lucrative post of Collector to the port of Boston.

He had held it, now, for close upon seven years.

Chapter VII.

A SABBATH-BREAKER.

Now, in his twenty-eighth year, Oliver Vyell, handsome of face, standing six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron const.i.tution, might fairly be called a sensual man, but not fairly a sensualist. The distinction lay in his manliness. He was a man, every inch of him.

He enjoyed hard riding even more than hard gaming, and far more than hard drinking; courted fatigue as a form of bodily indulgence; would tramp from twenty to thirty miles in any weather on a chance of sport; loved the bite of the wind, the shock of cold water; and was a bold swimmer in a generation that shunned the exercise.

He awoke next morning to find the sun s.h.i.+ning in on his window after a boisterous night. He looked at his watch and rang a small bell that stood on the table by his bed. Within ten seconds Mana.s.seh appeared, and was commanded first to draw up the blind and then, though the hour was early, to bring shaving-water with all speed.

While the negro went on his errand Captain Vyell arose, slipped on his dressing-gown, and strolled to the window. It looked upon the ocean, over a clean stretch of beach that ran north-west, starting from the pier-head of the harbour and fringing the town's outskirt. Half a dozen houses formed this outskirt or suburb--decent weather-boarded houses standing in their own gardens along a curved cliff overlooking the beach. The beach was of hardest sand, and just beneath the Collector's window so level that it served for a second bowling-green, or ten-pin-alley. Thus it ran out for some twenty rods and then shelved abruptly. Captain Vyell, who had an eye for such phenomena, judged that this bank had formed itself quite recently, since the building of the pier.

A heavy sea was running, and evidently with a strong undertow. When Mana.s.seh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he would bathe before taking his chocolate.

"Yo' Hon'ah will bathe befor' shaving?"

"You d----d fool, did you ever know me do _any_thing before shaving?"

Mana.s.seh chose a razor, stropped it, and worked the shaving soap into a lather.

"Beggin' yo' Hon'ah's pardon," said he, "it bein' de Lawd's Day, an'

these Port Na.s.sau people dam' ig'orant--"

"Hand me the _peignoir_," commanded his master sharply.

He sat, and was shaved. Then, having sponged his chin, he ordered Mana.s.seh to lay out his bathing-dress, retire, find a back way to the beach and, having opened all doors, attend him below. He indued himself in his bathing-dress very deliberately, standing up for a minute stark naked in the suns.h.i.+ne flooding through the open window--a splendid figure, foretasting battle with the surf.

Then, having drawn on his bathing-dress and thrust his feet into sand-shoes, he cast his dressing-gown again over him and went down the stairs at a run. The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro awaited him in the right att.i.tude of "attention." To him he tossed his wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles have run to be clasped by the Sea-G.o.ddess his mother.

Through the shallow wavelets he ran, stepping high and delicately splas.h.i.+ng merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more than head high, hissing along its ridge. There, as it overarched him, he launched his body forward and shot through the transparent green, emerging beyond the white smother with a thrill and a laugh of sheer physical delight. Thrice he repeated this,--

"Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave, Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. . ."

pa.s.sed the fourth wave, gained deep water, and thrust out to sea with a steady breast-stroke, his eyes all the while on the great embracing flood which, stretch as it might from here to Europe, for the moment he commanded.

Mana.s.seh watched him from the beach. From the cliff above two scandalised householders calling to one another across their gardens'

boundary pointed seaward and summoned their families to the windows to note the reprobate swimmer and a Sabbath profaned.

The eyes of a long-sh.o.r.e population are ever on the sea from which comes their livelihood, and nothing on the sea escapes them long.

The Collector's head by this time was but a speck bobbing on the waves, but ere he turned back for sh.o.r.e maybe two hundred of Port Na.s.sau's population were watching, from various points. The Port Na.s.sauers, whatever their individual frailties, were sternly religious--nine-tenths of them from conviction or habit, the rest in self-defence--and Sabbatarians to a man. The sight of that heathen slave, Mana.s.seh, waiting on the beach with a bath-gown over his arm, incensed them to fury. Growls were uttered, here and there, that if the authorities knew their business this law-breaker--for Sabbath-breaking was an indictable offence--should be seized on landing, haled naked to justice, and clapped in the town stocks; but fortunately this indignation had no concert and found, for the moment, no leader.

The Collector, having swum out more than half a mile, turned and sped back, using a sharp side-stroke now with a curving arm that cleft the ridges like the fin of a fish. His feet touched earth, and he ran up through the pursuing breakers--a fleet-footed Achilles again, glittering from the bath. Mana.s.seh hurried down to throw his mantle over the G.o.dlike man.

"Towel me here," was the panting command. And, lo! slipping off his bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea. Captain Vyell was towelled under the eyes of Port Na.s.sau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him. On this question the Muse declines to take sides. For certain his naked body, after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he mounted again to his Olympian chamber. There he allowed Mana.s.seh to wash out his locks in fresh water (the Collector had a fine head of hair, of a waved brown, and detested a wig), to anoint them, and tie them behind with a fresh black ribbon. This done, he took his clothes one by one as Mana.s.seh handed them, and arrayed himself, humming the while an air from Opera, and thus unconsciously committing a second offence against the Sabbath.

He descended to find d.i.c.ky already seated at table, awaiting him.

d.i.c.ky had slept like a top in spite of the strange bed; and awaking soon after daybreak, had lain cosily listening to the boom of the sea.

To him this holiday was a glorious interlude in the regime of Miss Quiney. His handsome father did not kiss him, but merely patted him on the shoulder as he pa.s.sed to his chair; and to d.i.c.k (though he would have liked a kiss) it seemed just the right manly thing to do.

They talked merrily while Mana.s.seh brought in the breakfast dishes--for Master d.i.c.ky bread-and-milk followed by a simple steak of cod; a bewildering succession of chowder, omelet, devilled kidneys, cold ham, game pie, and fruit for the Collector, who professed himself keen-set as a hunter, and washed down the viands with a tankard of cider.

He described his bathe, and promised d.i.c.ky that he should have his first swimming lessons next summer. "I must talk about you to your Uncle Harry. Craze for the sea? At your age if he saw a puddle of water he must stick his toes in it. He's cruising just now, off South Carolina, keeping a look-out for guarda-costas. He'll render an account of them, you may be sure. He writes that he may be coming up Boston way any time now. Oh, I can swim, but for diving you should see your Uncle Harry-- off the yard-arm--body taut as a whip--nothing like it in any of the old Greeks' statues. Plenty of talk about bathing; but diving? No. In the east, must go south to the Persian Gulf to see diving. The G.o.d Hermes descending on Ogygia--if you could imagine that, you had Uncle Harry-- the shoot outwards, the delicate curve to a straight slant, heels rising above rigid body while you counted, begad! holding your breath.

Then the plumb drop, like a gannet's--"

d.i.c.ky listened, glorious vistas opening before him. With the fruit Mana.s.seh brought coffee; and still the boy sat entranced while his father chatted, glowing with exercise and enjoying a breakfast at every point excellent.

It was in merest thoughtlessness, no doubt, that having arranged for d.i.c.ky's morning walk, and after smoking a tobacco leaf rolled with an art of which Mana.s.seh possessed the secret, the Collector so timed his message to the stables that his groom brought the horse Bayard around to the Inn door just as the Sabbath bells began tolling for divine wors.h.i.+p.

For as a sceptic he was careless rather than militant; ridiculing religion only in his own set, and when occasion arose, and then without fanaticism. For such piety as his mother's he had even a tolerant respect; and in any event had too much breeding to affront of set purpose the G.o.dly townsfolk of Port Na.s.sau. At the first note of the bells he frowned and blamed himself for not having started earlier.

But he had already made appointment by letter to meet the Surveyor and the a.s.sistant Surveyor at noon on the headland, to measure out and discuss the site of the proposed fortification; and he was a punctilious man in observing engagements.

It may be asked how, if civil to other men's scruples, he had come to make such an appointment for the Sabbath. He had answered this and (as he hoped) with suitable apologies in his letter to the surveyor, Mr. Wapshott: explaining that as His Majesty's business was bringing him to Port Na.s.sau, so it obliged him to be back at Boston by such-and-such a date. He was personally unacquainted with this Mr. Wapshott, who had omitted the courtesy of calling upon him at the Bowling Green, and whom by consequence he was inclined to set down as a person of defective manners. But Mr. Wapshott was, after all, in the King's service and would understand its exigencies.

He mounted therefore and rode up the street. The roadway was deserted; but along the side-walk, sober families, marching by twos and threes, turned their heads at the sound of Bayard's hoofs on the cobbles.

The Collector set his face and pa.s.sed them with a grave look, as of one absorbed in affairs of moment. Nevertheless, coming to the whitewashed Church where the streams of wors.h.i.+ppers converged and choking the porchway overflowed upon the street, he added the courtesy of doffing his hat as he rode by. He did this still with a set face, looking straight between Bayard's ears; but with the tail of his eye caught one glimpse of a little comedy which puzzled and amused him.

A small rotund, red-gilled man, in bearing and aspect not unlike a turkey-c.o.c.k, was mounting the steps of the portico. Behind this personage sailed an ample lady of middle age, with a bevy of younger damsels--his spouse and daughters doubtless. Suddenly--and as if, at sight of the Collector, a whisper pa.s.sed among them--the middle-aged lady shot out a hand, arrested her husband by the coat-tail and drew him down a step, while the daughters ranged themselves in semicircle around him, spreading their skirts and together effacing him from view, much as a hen covers her offspring.

The Collector laughed inwardly as he replaced his hat, and rode on speculating what this bit of by-play might mean. But it had pa.s.sed out of his thoughts before he came to the outskirts of the town.

Chapter VIII.

ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.