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_ "Banks, where is the captain?" I asked, as I entered the parlour the next
morning.
"Gone, sir, since seven o'clock," was the reply. Gone!" I exclaimed;
"gone where?"
"Faith, I did not ask his honour, sir."
I thought it strange, but reflected that John Paul was given to whims.
Having so little time before him, he had probably gone to see the sights
he had missed yesterday: the Pantheon, which was building, an account of
which had appeared in all the colonial papers; or the new Blackfriars
Bridge; or the Tower; or perhaps to see his Majesty ride out. The
wonders of London might go hang, for all I cared. Who would gaze at the
King when he might look upon Dorothy! I sighed. I bade Banks dress me
in the new suit Davenport had brought that morning, and then sent him off
to seek the shipping agent of the Virginia packet to get us a cabin. I
would go to Arlington Street as soon as propriety admitted.
But I had scarce finished my chocolate and begun to smoke in a pleasant
revery, when I was startled by the arrival of two gentlemen. One was
Comyn, and the other none less than Mr. Charles Fox.
"Now where the devil has your captain flown to?" said my Lord, tossing
his whip on the table.
"I believe he must be sight-seeing," I said. "I dare swear he has taken
a hackney coach to the Tower."
"To see the liberation of the idol of the people, I'll lay ten guineas.
But they say the great Mr. Wilkes is to come out quietly, and wishes no
demonstration," said Mr. Fox. "I believe the beggar has some sense, if
the--Greek--would only let him have his way. So your captain is a
Wilkite, Mr. Carvel?" he demanded.
"I fear you run very fast to conclusions, Mr. Fox," I answered, laughing,
tho' I thought his guess was not far from wrong.
"I'll lay you the ten guineas he has been to the Tower," said Mr. Fox,
promptly.
"Done, sir," said I.
"Hark ye, Richard," said Comyn, stretching himself in an arm-chair; "we
are come to take the wind out of your sails, and leave you without an
excuse for going home. And we want your captain, alive or dead.
Charles, here, is to give him a commission in his Majesty's Navy."
Then I knew why Dorothy had laughed when I had spoken of seeing her
again. Comyn--bless him!--had told her of his little scheme.
"Egad, Charles!" cried his Lordship, "to look at his glum face, one
might think we were a couple of Jews who had cornered him."
Alas for the perversity of the heart! Instead of leaping for joy,
as no doubt they had both confidently expected, I was both troubled and
perplexed by this unlooked-for news. Oak, when bent, is even harder to
bend back again. And so it has ever been with me. I had determined,
after a bitter struggle, to go to Maryland, and had now become used to
that prospect. I was anxious to see my grandfather, and to confront
Grafton Carvel with his villany. And there was John Paul. What would
he think?
"What ails you, Richard?" Comyn demanded somewhat testily.
"Nothing, Jack," I replied. "I thank you from my heart, and you, Mr.
Fox. I know that commissions are not to be had for the asking, and I
rejoice with the captain over his good fortune. But, gentlemen," I said
soberly, "I had most selfishly hoped that I might be able to do a service
to John Paul in return for his charity to me. You offer him something
nearer his deserts, something beyond my power to give him."
Fox's eyes kindled.
"You speak like a man, Mr. Carvel," said he. "But you are too modest.
Damn it, sir, don't you see that it is you, and no one else, who has
procured this commission? Had I not been taken with you, sir, I should
scarce have promised it to your friend Comyn, through whose interest you
obtain it for your protege."
I remembered what Mr. Fox's enemies said of him, and smiled at the
plausible twist he had given the facts.
"No," I said; "no, Mr. Fox; never that. The captain must not think that
I wish to be rid of him. I will not stand in the way, though if it is to
be offered him, he must comprehend that I had naught to do with the
matter. But, sir," I continued curiously, "what do you know of John
Paul's abilities as an officer?"
Mr. Fox and Comyn laughed so immoderately as to bring the blood to my
face.
"Damme!" cried the Junior Lord, "but you Americans have odd consciences!
Do you suppose Rigby was appointed Paymaster of the Forces because of his
fitness? Why was North himself made Prime Minister? For his abilities?
"And he broke down again. "Ask Jack, here, how he got into the service,
and how much seamanship he knows."
"Faith," answered Jack, unblushingly, "Admiral Lord Comyn, my father,
wished me to serve awhile. And so I have taken two cruises, delivered
some score of commands, and scarce know a supple jack from a can of flip.
Cursed if I see the fun of it in these piping times o' peace, so I have
given it up, Richard. For Charles says this Falkland business with Spain
will blow out of the touch-hole."
I could see little to laugh over. For the very rottenness of the service
was due to the miserable and servile Ministry and Parliament of his
Majesty, by means of which instruments he was forcing the colonies to the
wall. Verily, that was a time when the greatness of England hung in the
balance! How little I suspected that the young man then seated beside
me, who had cast so unthinkingly his mighty powers on the side of
corruption, was to be one of the chief instruments of her salvation!
We were to fight George the Third across the seas. He was to wage no
less courageous a battle at home, in the King's own capital. And the
cause? Yes, the cause was to be the same as that of the Mr. Wilkes he
reviled, who obtained his liberty that day.
At length John Paul came in, calling my name. He broke off abruptly at
sight of the visitors.
"Now we shall decide," said Mr. Fox. "Captain, I have bet Mr. Carvel ten
guineas you have been to the Tower to see Squinting Jack(John Wilkes) get
his liberty at last."
The captain looked astonished.
"Anan, then, you have lost, Richard," said he. "For I have been just
there."
"And helped, no doubt, to carry off the champion on your shoulders," said
Mr. Fox, sarcastically, as I paid the debt.
"Mr. Wilkes knows full well the value of moderation, sir," replied the
captain, in the same tone.
"Well, damn the odds!" exclaimed the Junior Lord, laughing. "You may
have the magic number tattooed all over your back, for all I care. You
shall have the commission."
"The commission?"
"Yes," said Fox, carelessly; "I intend making you a lieutenant, sir, in
the Royal Navy."
The moment the words were out I was a-tremble as to how he would take the
offer. For he had a certain puzzling pride, which flew hither and
thither. But there was surely no comparison between the situations of
the master of the Belle of the Wye and an officer in the Royal Navy.
There, his talents would make him an admiral, and doubtless give him the
social position he secretly coveted. He confounded us all by his answer.
"I thank you, Mr. Fox. But I cannot accept your kindness."
"Slife!" said Fox, "you refuse? And you know what you are doing?"
"I know usually, sir."
Comyn swore. My exclamation had something of relief in it.
"Captain," I said, "I felt that I could not stand in the way of this. It
has been my hope that you will come with me, and I have sent this morning
after a cabin on the Virginia. You must know that Mr. Fox's offer is his
own, and Lord Comyn's."
"I know it well, Richard. I have not lived these three months with you
for nothing." His voice seemed to fail him. He drew near me and took my
hand. "But did you think I would require of you the sacrifice of leaving
London now?"
"It is my pleasure as well as my duty, captain."
"No," he said, "I am not like that. Yesterday I went to the city to see
a shipowner whose acquaintance I made when he was a master in the West
India trade. He has had some reason to know that I can handle a ship.
Never mind what. And he has given me the bark 'Betsy', whose former
master is lately dead of the small-pox. Richard, I sail to-morrow."
In Dorothy's coach to Whitehall Stairs, by the grim old palace out of
whose window Charles the Martyr had walked to his death. For Dorothy had
vowed it was her pleasure to see John Paul off, and who could stand in
her way? Surely not Mr. Marmaduke! and Mrs. Manners laughingly
acquiesced. Our spirits were such that we might have been some honest
mercer's apprentice and his sweetheart away for an outing.
"If we should take a wherry, Richard," said Dolly, "who would know of it?
I have longed to be in a wherry ever since I came to London."
The river was smiling as she tripped gayly down to the water, and the
red-coated watermen were smiling, too, and nudging one another. But
little cared we! Dolly in holiday humour stopped for naught. "Boat,
your honour! Boat, boat! To Rotherhithe--Redriff? Two and six apiece,
sir." For that intricate puzzle called human nature was solved out of
hand by the Thames watermen. Here was a young gentleman who never heard
of the Lord Mayor's scale of charges. And what was a shilling to such as
he! Intricate puzzle, indeed! Any booby might have read upon the young
man's face that secret which is written for all,--high and low, rich and
poor alike.
My new lace handkerchief was down upon the seat, lest Dolly soil her
bright pink lutestring. She should have worn nothing else but the hue of
roses. How the bargemen stared, and the passengers craned their necks,
and the longshoremen stopped their work as we shot past them! On her
account a barrister on the Temple Stairs was near to letting fall his bag
in the water. A lady in a wherry! Where were the whims of the quality
to lead them next? Past the tall water-tower and York Stairs, the idlers
under the straight row of trees leaning over the high river wall; past
Adelphi Terrace, where the great Garrick lived; past the white columns of
Somerset House, with its courts and fountains and alleys and architecture
of all ages, and its river gate where many a gilded royal barge had lain,
and many a fine ambassador had arrived in state over the great highway of
England; past the ancient trees in the Temple Gardens. And then under
the new Blackfriars Bridge to Southwark, dingy with its docks and
breweries and huddled houses, but forever famous,--the Southwark of
Shakespeare and Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. And the shelf upon
which they stood in the library at Carvel Hall was before my eyes.
"Yes," said Dolly; "and I recall your mother's name written in faded ink
upon the fly-leaves."
Ah, London Town, by what subtleties are you tied to the hearts of those
born across the sea? That is one of the mysteries of race.
Under the pointed arches of old London Bridge, with its hooded shelters
for the weary, to where the massive Tower had frowned for ages upon the
foolish river. And then the forest of ships, and the officious throng of
little wherries and lighters that pressed around them, seeming to say,
"You clumsy giants, how helpless would you be without us!" Soon our own
wherry was dodging among them, ships brought hither by the four winds of
the seas; many discharging in the stream, some in the docks then
beginning to be built, and hugging the huge warehouses. Hides from
frozen Russia were piled high beside barrels of sugar and rum from the
moist island cane-fields of the Indies, and pipes of wine from the
sunny hillsides of France, and big boxes of tea bearing the hall-mark of
the mysterious East. Dolly gazed in wonder. And I was commanded to show
her a schooner like the Black Moll, and a brigantine like the John.
"And Captain Paul told me you climbed the masts, Richard, and worked like
a common seaman. Tell me," says she, pointing at the royal yard of a
tall East Indiaman, "did you go as high as that when it was rough?"
And, hugely to the boatman's delight, the minx must needs put her fingers
on the hard welts on my hands, and vow she would be a sailor and she were
a man. But at length we came to a trim-built bark lying off Redriff
Stairs, with the words "Betsy, of London," painted across her stern. In
no time at all, Captain Paul was down the gangway ladder and at the
water-side, too hand Dorothy out.
"This honour overwhelms me, Miss Manners," he said; "but I know whom to
thank for it." And he glanced slyly at me.
Dorothy stepped aboard with the air of Queen Elizabeth come to inspect
Lord Howard's flagship.
"Then you will thank me," said she. "Why, I could eat my dinner off your
deck, captain! Are all merchantmen so clean?"
John Paul smiled.
"Not all, Miss Manners," he said.
"And you are still sailing at the ebb?" I asked.
"In an hour, Richard, if the wind holds good."
With what pride he showed us over his ship, the sailors gaping at the
fine young lady. It had taken him just a day to institute his navy
discipline. And Dolly went about exclaiming, and asking an hundred
questions, and merrily catechising me upon the run of the ropes. All was
order and readiness for dropping down the stream when he led us into his
cabin, where he had a bottle of wine and some refreshments laid out
against my coming.
"Had I presumed to anticipate your visit, Miss Manners, I should have had
something more suitable for a lady," he said. "What, you will not eat,
either, Richard?"
I could not, so downcast had I become at the thought of parting.
I had sat up half the night before with him in restless argument and
indecision, and even when he had left for Rotherhithe, early that
morning, my mind had not been made. My conscience had insisted that I
should sail with John Paul; that I might never see my deaf grandfather on
earth again. I had gone to Arlington Street that morning resolved to say
farewell to Dorothy. I will not recount the history of that defeat, my
dears. Nay, to this day I know not how she accomplished the matter. Not
once had she asked me to remain, or referred to my going. Nor had I
spoken of it, weakling that I was. She had come down in the pink
lutestring, smiling but pale; and traces of tears in her eyes, I thought.
From that moment I knew that I was defeated. It was she herself who had
proposed going with me to see the Betsy sail.
"I will drink some Madeira to wish you Godspeed, captain," I said.
"What is the matter with you, Richard?" Dolly cried; "you are as sour as
my Lord Sandwich after a bad Newmarket. Why, captain," said she, "I
really believe he wants to go, too. The swain pines for his provincial
beauty."
Poor John Paul! He had not yet learned that good society is seldom
literal.
"Upon my soul, Miss Manners, there you do him wrong," he retorted, with
ludicrous heat; "you, above all, should know for whom he pines."
"He has misled you by praising me. This Richard, despite his frank
exterior, is most secretive."
"There you have hit him, Miss Manners," he declared; "there you have hit
him! We were together night and day, on the sea and on the road, and,
while I poured out my life to him, the rogue never once let fall a hint
of the divine Miss Dorothy. 'Twas not till I got to London that I knew
of her existence, and then only by a chance. You astonish me. You speak
of a young lady in Maryland?"
Dorothy swept aside my protest.
"Captain," says she, gravely, "I leave you to judge. What is your
inference, when he fights a duel about a Miss with my Lord Comyn?"
"A duel!" cried the captain, astounded.
"Miss Manners persists in her view of the affair, despite my word to the
contrary," I put in rather coldly.
"But a duel!" cried the captain again; "and with Lord Comyn! Miss
Manners, I fondly thought I had discovered a constant man, but you make
me fear he has had as many flames as I. And yet, Richard," he added
meaningly, "I should think shame on my conduct and I had had such a
subject for constancy as you."
Dorothy's armour was pierced, and my ill-humour broken down, by this
characteristic speech. We both laughed, greatly to his discomfiture.
"You had best go home with him, Richard," said Dolly. "I can find my way
back to Arlington Street alone."
"Nay; gallantry forbids his going with me now," answered John Paul; "and
I have my sailing orders. But had I known of this, I should never have
wasted my breath in persuading him to remain."
"And did he stand in need of much persuasion, captain?" asked Dolly,
archly.
Time was pressing, and the owner came aboard, puffing,--a round-faced,
vociferous, jolly merchant, who had no sooner got his breath than he lost
it again upon catching sight of Dolly.
While the captain was giving the mate his final orders, Mr. Orchardson,
for such was his name, regaled us with a part of his life's history. He
had been a master himself, and mangled and clipped King George's English
as only a true master might.
"I like your own captain better than ever, Richard," whispered Dolly,
while Mr. Orchardson relieved himself of his quid over the other side;
"how commanding he is! Were I to take passage in the Betsy, I know I
should be in love with him long before we got to Norfolk."
I took it upon myself to tell Mr. Orchardson, briefly and clearly as I
could, the lamentable story of John Paul's last cruise. For I feared it
might sooner or later reach his ears from prejudiced mouths. And I ended
by relating how the captain had refused a commission in the navy because
he had promised to take the Betsy. This appeared vastly to impress him,
and he forgot Dorothy's presence.
"Passion o' my 'eart, Mr. Carvel," cried he, excitedly,
"John Paul's too big a man, an' too good a seaman, to go into the navy
without hinflooence. If flag horfocers I roots of is booted haside to
rankle like a lump o' salt butter in a gallipot, 'ow will a poor Scotch
lieutenant win hadvancement an' he be not o' the King's friends? 'Wilkes
an' Liberty,' say I; 'forever,' say I. An' w'en I see 'im goin' to the
Tower to be'old the Champion, 'Captain Paul,' says I, 'yere a man arfter
my hown 'eart.' My heye, sir, didn't I see 'im, w'n a mere lad, take the
John into Kingston 'arbour in the face o' the worst gale I hever seed
blowed in the Caribbees? An' I says, 'Bill Horchardson, an' ye Never
'ave ships o' yere own, w'ich I 'ope will be, y'ell know were to look
for a marster.' An' I tells 'im that same, Mr. Carvel. I means no
disrespect to the dead, sir, but an' John Paul 'ad discharged the Betsy,
I'd not 'a' been out twenty barrels or more this day by Thames mudlarks
an' scuffle hunters. 'Eave me flat, if 'e'll be two blocks wi' liquor
an' dischargin' cargo. An' ye may rest heasy, Mr. Carvel, I'll not do
wrong by 'im, neither."
He told me that if I would honour him in Maid Lane, Southwark, I should
have as many pounds as I liked of the best tobacco ever cured in Cuba.
And so he left me to see that the mate had signed all his lighter bills,
shouting to the captain not to forget his cockets at Gravesend. Dolly
and I stood silent while the men hove short, singing a jolly song to the
step. With a friendly wave the round figure of Mr. Orchardson
disappeared over the side, and I knew that the time had come to say
farewell. I fumbled in my waistcoat for the repeater I had bought that
morning over against Temple Bar, in Fleet Street, and I thrust it into
John Paul's hand as he came up.
"Take this in remembrance of what you have suffered so unselfishly for my
sake, Captain Paul," I said, my voice breaking. "And whatever befalls
you, do not forget that Carvel Hall is your home as well as mine."
He seemed as greatly affected as was I. Tears forced themselves to his
eyes as he held the watch, which he opened absently to read the simple
inscription I had put there.
"Oh, Dickie lad!" he cried, "I'll be missing ye sair three hours hence,
and thinking of ye for months to come in the night watches. But
something tells me I'll see ye again."
And he took me in his arms, embracing me with such fervour that there was
no doubting the sincerity of his feelings.
"Miss Dorothy," said he, when he was calmer, "I give ye Richard for a
leal and a true heart. Few men are born with the gift of keeping the
affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest. But have no
fear of Richard Carvel."
Dorothy stood a little apart, watching us, her eyes that faraway blue of
the deepening skies at twilight.
"Indeed, I have no fear of him, captain," she said gently. Then, with a
quick movement, impulsive and womanly, she unpinned a little gold brooch
at her throat, and gave it to him, saying: "In token of my gratitude for
bringing him back to us."
John Paul raised it to his lips.
"I shall treasure it, Miss Manners, as a memento of the greatest joy of
my life. And that has been," gracefully taking her hand and mine, "the
bringing you two together again."
Dorothy grew scarlet as she curtseyed. As for me, I could speak never a
word. He stepped over the side to hand her into the wherry, and embraced
me once again. And as we rowed away he waved his hat in a last good-by
from the taffrail. Then the Betsy floated down the Thames. _
Read next: VOLUME 5: CHAPTER XXXI. "Upstairs into the World"
Read previous: VOLUME 5: CHAPTER XXIX. I meet a very Great Young Man
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