CHAPTER LCAPTAIN BOLD
I have mentioned that Slap-Jack, too, while he rode perforce so rapidly homewards, was pursued by a black Care of his own, waiting for a momentary halt to leap up behind. Even with a foretopman, though, perhaps, no swain ought to have a better chance, the course of true love does not always run smooth. There was a pebble now ruffling Slap-Jack’s amatory stream, and that pebble was known at the “Hamilton Arms” as Captain Bold.
He might have had a score of other designations in a score of other places; in fact, he was just the sort of gentleman whom one name would suffice less than one shirt; but here, at least, he was welcomed, and, to a certain extent, trusted under that title.
Now Captain Bold, if he ever disguised himself for the many expeditions in which he boasted to have been engaged, must have done considerable violence to his feelings by suppressing the three peculiarities for which he was most conspicuous, and in which he seemed to take the greatest pride. These specialities were the Captain’s red nose, his falsetto voice, and his bay mare. The first he warmed and comforted with generous potations at all hours, for though not a deep, he was a frequent drinker; the second, he exercised continually in warbling lyrics tending to the subversion of morals—in shrieking out oaths denoting a fertile imagination, with a cultivated talent for cursing—and in narrating interminable stories over his cups, of which his own triumphs in love and war formed the groundwork; the third—he was never tired of riding toand fro over the moor, of going to visit in the stable, or of glorifying in the tap-room for the edification of all comers, expatiating on her shape, her qualities, her speed, her mettle, and her queer temper, amenable to no authority but his own.
The captain’s first acquaintance with Mrs. Dodge dated some two months back, when he entered the hostelry one stormy evening, and swaggered about the stable-yard and premises as if thoroughly familiar with the place. This did not astonish the landlady, who, herself a late arrival, concluded he was some old customer of her predecessor’s; but, hazarding that natural supposition to an ancient ostler, who had been at the “Hamilton Arms” from a boy, and never slept out of the stable since he could remember, she was a little surprised to learn old Robin had no recollection whatever of the captain, though he was perfectly well acquainted with the mare. That remarkable animal had been fed and dressed over by his own hands, he declared, only last winter, and was then the property of a Quaker from the East Riding, a respectable-looking gentleman as ever he clapped eyes on—warm, no doubt, for the mare was in first-rate condition, and her master paid him from a purse full of broad pieces—awetQuaker, old Robin thought, by reason of his smelling so strong of brandy when he mounted before daylight in the morning.
Mrs. Dodge, conversing with her guest of the wonderful mare, mentioned her old servant’s reminiscences.
“Right!” exclaimed the captain, with his accustomed flourish—“right as my glove! or, I should say, my dear madam, right as your own bodice! A Quaker—very true! A man about my own size, with a—well, aprominentnose. Pale, flaxen-haired; would have been a good-looking chap with a little more colouring; and respectable—most respectable! Oh, yes! that’s the Quaker I bought her of and a good bargain I made. We’ll drink the Quaker’s health, if you please. A very good bargain!”
And the captain laughed heartily, though Mrs. Dodge could not, for the life of her, see the point of his jest.
But, while she reprobated his profane conversation, and entertained no very profound respect for his general character, the captain was yet a welcome guest in Mrs.Dodge’s sanctum. His anecdotes were so lively—his talk was so fluent—he took off his glass with so gallant a flourish to her own and her niece’s health, paying them, at the same time, such extravagant compliments of the newest town mode—that it was impossible to damp this genial spirit with an austerity which must have been assumed, or rebukes uttered by lips endeavouring to repress a smile.
But with Alice it was not so; she held the captain in a natural abhorrence, and shrank from him as people sometimes do from a toad or other reptile, when she happened to meet him in passages, staircases, or out-of-the-way corners, never permitting him to approach her unless protected by the company of her aunt.
Mrs. Dodge, however, would sometimes spend an hour and more in certain household duties upstairs, leaving Alice to mind the bar during her absence. The girl was singing over her needlework, according to custom, thinking, in all probability, of Slap-Jack, when, much to her annoyance, the captain’s red nose protruded itself over the half-door, followed, in due course, by his laced coat, his jack-boots, and the rest of his gaudy, tarnished, and somewhat dissipated person.
Seeing Alice alone, he affected to start with pleasure, made a feint of retiring, and then insinuated himself towards the fireplace, with a theatrical gallantry that was to her, of all his airs and graces, the most insupportable.
“Divine Alice!” he exclaimed, flourishing his dirty hand, adorned with rings, “alone in her bower, and singing over her sampler like a siren. The jade Fortune owed honest Jack Bold this turn. Strike him blind if she didn’t! He comes for a vulgar drain, and lo! a cordial—the elixir of life—the rosy dew of innocence—the balmy breath of beauty!”
“What d’ye lack, sir?” asked Alice, contemptuously ignoring this rhodomontade, and stretching her pretty hand towards a shelf loaded with divers preparations of alcohol well known to the visitor.
“What I lacked, my sweetest,” said the unabashed captain, “when I entered this bower of bliss and bastion of beauty, was a mere mortal’s morning draught—a glass of strong waters, we will say, with a clove in it, or perhaps amouthful of burnt brandy, to keep out the raw moorland air. What I lack now, since I have seen your lovely lips, seems to be the chaste salute valour claims from beauty. We will take the brandy and cloves afterwards!”
So speaking, the captain moved a little round table out of his way, and, taking off his cocked hat with a flourish, advanced the red nose and forbidding face very close to Alice, as if to claim the desired salute. In his operations, the skirt of his heavily laced coat brought work, work-box, thimble, and all to the ground.
Alice stooped to pick them up. When she rose again her colour was very bright, possibly from the exertion, and she pointed once more to the bottles.
“Give your orders, sir,” said she, angrily, “and go! I am sure I never—I never expected to be rude to a customer, but—there—it’s too bad—I won’t stand it, I won’t—not if I go up to my aunt in her bedroom this very minute!”
Poor Alice was now dissolved in tears, but, true to her instincts, filled the captain his glass of brandy all the same.
The latter drank it slowly, relishing every drop, and, keeping his person between Alice and the half-door, seemed to enjoy her confusion, which, obviously, from the conceited satisfaction of his countenance, he attributed to an unfortunate passion for himself. Suddenly her face brightened, a well-known footstep hastened up the passage, and the next moment Slap-Jack entered the bar.
Alice dashed away her tears, the captain assumed an attitude of profound indifference, and the new arrival looked from one to the other with a darkening brow.
“What, again?” said he, turning fiercely on the intruder, and approaching very close, in that aggressive manner which is almost equivalent to a blow. “I thought as I’d givenyouwarning already to let this here young woman be. You think as you’re lying snug enough, may be, in smooth water, with your name painted out and a honest burgee at your truck; but I’ll larn you better afore I’ve done with you, if you comes cruising any more in my fishing-ground. There’s some here as’ll make you show your number, and we’ll soon see who’s captain then!”
Honest Jack Bold, as he called himself, was not deficient in self-command. Sipping his brandy with the utmost coolness, he turned to Alice, and, motioning towards Slap-Jack, boiling over within six inches of him, observed, in his high-quavering voice:
“Favoured lover, I presume! Visits here, I hope, with our good aunt’s sanction. Seems a domestic servant by his dress, though I gather, from the coarseness of his language, he has served before the mast!—a sad come-down, sweet Alice! for a girl with your advantages. These seaman, I fancy, are all given to liquor. Offer your bachelor something to drink, and score it, if you please, to my account. A sad come-down!—a sad come-down! Why burn me, Mistress Alice, with your good looks, you might almost have married a gentleman—you might, indeed! Sink me to the lowest depths of matrimonial perdition, if you might not!”
Slap-Jack could have stood a good deal, but to be offered a dram by a rival in this off-hand way, through the medium of his own sweetheart, was more than flesh and blood could swallow. In defiance of Alice’s entreaties, who was horribly frightened at the prospect of a quarrel, and as pale now as she had been flushed a few minutes back, he shook a broad serviceable fist in the captain’s face, and burst out—
“A gentleman! you swab! What doyouknow about gentlemen? All the sort asyou’veseen is them that hangs at Tyburn; and look, if you’re not rove up there yourself some fine morning, my saucy blade, with your night-cap over your ears, and a bunch of rue in your hand. Gentlemen indeed! Now look you here, Captain John Bold, or whatever otheraliasyour papers may show when they’re overhauled, if ever I catches of you in here alone, a parsecutin’ of my Alice, or even hears o’ your so much as standing’ off-and-on, a watchin’ for her clearin’ out, or on the open moor, or homeward bound, or what not, I’ll smash that great red nose of yours as flat as a Port-Royal jelly-fish, you ugly, brandy-faced, bottle-nosed, lop-sided son of a gun!”
The captain had borne with considerable equanimity his adversary’s quarrelsome gestures and threats of actualviolence, keeping very near the door, corporeally, indeed, and entrenching himself morally, as it were, in the dignity of his superior position, but at these allusions to his personal appearance he lost all self-control. His face grew livid, his very nose turned pale, his eyes blazed, and his hand stole to the short cutlass or hanger he carried at his side. Something in Slap-Jack’s face, whose glance followed the movement of his fingers, checked any resort to this weapon, and even in his fury, the captain had the presence of mind to place himself outside the half-door of the bar; but when there he caught hold of it with both hands, for he was trembling all over, and burst forth—
“You think the sun is onyourside of the hedge, my fine fellow, I dare say, but you’ll know better before a week’s out. Ay, you may laugh, but you’ll laugh the other side of your mouth when the right end is uppermost, as uppermost it will be, and I take you out on the terrace with a handkerchief over your eyes, and a file of honest fellows, with carbines loaded, who are in my pay even now. Ay, you’ll sing small then, I think, for all your blare and bluster to-day. You’ll sing small, d’ye hear? on the wet grass under the windows at Hamilton Hill, and your master’ll sing small with his feet tied under his horse’s belly, riding down the north road and on his way to Tyburn, under a warrant from King Ja— Well, a warrant from the king; and that Frenchified jade, your missus’ll sing small—”
But here the captain sprang to the door, at which his mare was standing ready, leaped to the saddle, and rode off at a gallop, cursing his tongue the while, which, in his exasperation, he had suffered to get so entirely the better of his discretion.
It was high time; Slap-Jack, infuriated at the allusion to his lady, had broken from the gentle grasp of Alice, and in another moment would have been upon him. He even followed the mare for a few paces and shook his fist at the retreating figure fleeting away over the moor like the wind; then he returned to his sweetheart, and drowned his wrath in a flagon of sound ale drawn by her sympathising hands.
He soon ceased to think of his opponent’s threats, for when the excitement of action was over, the seaman boreno malice and nursed no apprehensions; but Alice, who, like many silent, quiet women, was of a shrewd and reflective turn of mind, pondered them deeply in her heart. She seemed to see the shadow of some great danger threatening her lover and the family whose bread he ate.