Humphrey Bold Part 7

Indeed, if you ask me, I say you'll get more from Mr. Huggins than from the lawyer. You'll have enough to do to keep yourself, without being saddled with a poor, forlorn old widow woman."

"But won't you come? I am going to live with Mr. Vetch."

"Live with the devil!" she screamed, lifting her hands with a gesture of utter despair. "It is downright wicked of you, Humphrey--and your poor father not a week in the grave. Sure the end of the world be coming, when the leopard and the kid shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox."

"And donkeys won't bray, I suppose," says I. "There, I don't mean you, Becky, though you are an old goose. Mr. Vetch wants a housekeeper, and you are to come with me and mother us both, he says, and he'll give you twenty pounds a year."

The good creature's look sent me into a fit of laughter. She stared solemnly at me for a while through her tears, saying never a word.

Then the drooping corners of her mouth lifted; she folded her hands across her plump person and said:

"Your father only gave me eighteen, Humphrey: are you sure 'twas twenty the lawyer said?"

"Quite sure. The devil isn't as black as he's painted, eh Becky?"

"Ah! you never know a man till yon've lived with him. Pennyquick was--but there, he's gone, poor soul, as we all must, and tis ill work saying anything against one as can't answer ye back: not that Pennyquick was ever much of a hand at that, poor soul!"

I heard no more vilification of Mr. Vetch. Becky recovered her old activity with surprising ease, and went about the house collecting such personal belongings of her own and mine as the lawyer told us we might remove without question. He himself came to the house on our last day, and made an inventory of the articles we removed, and having seen these safely bestowed in a pannier on the back of Ben Ivimey's son, who came to carry them away, we shut the doors of the old place, Mr. Vetch pocketed the keys, and we set off for the town.

Mistress Pennyquick shed a plenitude of tears, and I had a monstrous lump in my throat that threatened to choke me if I tried to speak. With a discretion that raised him mightily in Becky's esteem, Mr. Vetch fell behind, leaving us two together; and so with full hearts we took the road, going into our new life hand in hand.

Chapter 7: A Crown Piece.

This turn in our affairs was a nine days' wonder in Shrewsbury. And whether it was that some chord of sympathy was touched in our townsfolk, or that Mr. Vetch worsted his only rival, Mr. Moggridge, in a case of breach of covenant that was tried at the next a.s.sizes, I know not; but certain it is that my friend's business took a leap upward from that very time. Clients flocked to him; he soon had to employ an additional clerk; and Mistress Pennyquick, who was twice as tyrannical as before on the strength of her extra two pounds a year, declared privately to me one day that she wished for nothing now but that she might live to see me a partner with Mr. Vetch, in a house of my own, with a sensible wife and five pretty children.

But I have come to believe that as an Ethiopian can not change his skin, nor a leopard his spots, so a man can not alter the bent of mind he was born with, nor follow any course with success but the one to which his nature calls. I entered Mr. Vetch's office with the best will in the world to please him, and to master the principles of legal practice and procedure; but I found it hard to reconcile myself to the atmosphere of a stuffy room filled with musty tomes, and to the unvarying round of desk work--copying from morning to night agreements, deeds and other doc.u.ments bristling with a jargon unintelligible to me.

I soon tired of freehold and copyhold tenure, of manorial rights and customs, and the hundred and one legal fictions connected with actions at law and bills in chancery that const.i.tute the routine of an attorney's profession. I yearned to breathe an ampler air; and when one day I saw d.i.c.k Cludde, returned home on leave, strutting past with Mytton and other boon companions, in all the bravery of c.o.c.ked hat, laced coat and buckled shoes, I flung down my pen and donned my cap, and set off, with bitter rage and envy in my heart, to pour out my soul to my constant friend, Captain Galsworthy.

"Halt!" cried the captain, when I was in the midst of a tirade.

"We'll have a bout."

And forthwith we donned the gloves, and for a full quarter of an hour we sparred, he with the cool mastery that never deserted him, I with a blind rage and fury which had its natural end. In the third round I aimed a blow at my adversary's neck with my right hand, but failing in my reach, he returned it full swing with his left, and dealt me such a staggerer on my cheekbone that down I went like a ninepin and measured my length on the floor.

"Capital!" says the captain, sitting down (the old fellow was puffing not a little). "Capital! That was a settler, eh, my boy?

Now you can get up and talk sense."

I got up, rubbing my cheek, and grinning a rueful smile, as the captain told me. We remained long in talk; never had my old friend been wiser or more kindly. He listened to me with patience as I told him--quietly, for he had fairly knocked my rage out of me--how desperately sick I was of my occupation, and how I longed to stretch my limbs and do something.

"I knew it, my boy," he said. "I had seen it coming. I understand it. Haven't I been through it myself? I was bred for commerce: you might as well have harnessed a pig. One day--I was younger than you-I took French leave and a crown piece and trudged to London. I enlisted in old Noll's army, shipped to Flanders and served under Lockhart--he was a man, sir!--at the siege of Cambrai, deserted when the campaign was at an end, and roamed over half Europe; took service with the Emperor; fought with the Swedes against the Poles, and the Poles against the Swedes; fell in with Patrick Gordon, and was beguiled by him to Muscovy; and should have been with the Czar Peter at this day if he hadn't called me a fool when he was sober; we paid no heed to what he called us when he was drunk.

"Ah! I see your eyes glistening, you young dog. You were never born to be tied up with red tape."

This brief account of his life, and he never told me more, had indeed set my heart leaping. What would I not give, I thought, to see what he had seen, and do what he had done!

"But now to be practical," said the captain. "You want to go: very well, go. But you won't sneak off like Cyrus Vetch; you can't go with a commission like young Cludde. How much money have you got?"

"A few guineas I have saved."

"Well, keep them; you may be in a tight place some day, and find 'em handy. You have a hankering for the sea, you say. Then tramp to Bristowe, as your champion Joe Punchard did, and hitch on to John Benbow if you can find him. He'll work you hard, if all that's said about him is true; but he'll either make you or break you. That's my advice."

Advice that jumps with one's own inclinations hath ever a comfortable appearance of soundness. I told the captain that he had hit on the very scheme I had proposed to myself, adding, however, that I had thought to go a-horseback.

"A-horseback!" he cried. "What want you with a horse? You don't own a horse, and to hire one you would expend all your guineas and have nothing to feed either him or yourself. No, go on your shanks; there's a world of knowledge to be gained by footing it on the open road."

And so we settled that Captain Galsworthy should himself come to our house on Pride Hill and break the news to my good friends there. They were both downcast when they heard it, Mr. Vetch more than Mistress Pennyquick, which somewhat surprised me. He plied me with innumerable reasons for remaining with him, spoke of the long miles I should have to trudge before I reached the port, described the perils of the road, even foresaw that I should be arrested as a vagrant and clapped into jail! He conjured up dismal pictures of the seafaring life, and waxed quite eloquent in drawing a contrast between the bare windswept deck and the cosy fireside, the dangers from storm and pirates and the serenity of our quiet town. And then the captain broke in upon his speech with a great laugh.

"Gad, Mr. Attorney, you have o'ershot your bolt," he cried. "Mark you the sparkle in the boy's eyes and the catch in his breath? The bogies you raise are beacons to him. D'you think to frighten him as you would a girl? Spare your breath, man, to cool your porridge; what fellow of spirit would be deterred from a life of action by your vision of slippers and a basin of gruel?"

And indeed the lawyer's eloquence fell on deaf ears; or rather, as the captain said, all his reasons did but whet my eagerness until I fairly tingled with the imagined delight of matching myself against the hostility of the elements and man. And so he at last desisted, and gave a grudging compliance to my purpose; and Mistress Pennyquick concluded the discussion with a shot at Captain Galsworthy.

"This is all along o' you, Captain," she cried. "This is what comes of teaching little boys to fight. I knew years ago 't'ud have a bad end, and I told his poor father so, and I'm sure I hope you are satisfied."

"Abundantly, ma'am," says the captain, bobbing her a bow. "My pupil does me credit, and will do me more."

My preparations were soon made; indeed, I had nothing to prepare save a few garments, which poor Becky blessed with a copious baptism of tears. Then, one fine spring morning, when the buds on tree and hedge were bursting and the air was full of song, I set off on my long journey. Captain Galsworthy accompanied me for a few miles on the road--across English Bridge, past our old farmhouse (now held by a tenant of Sir Richard Cludde's), through the beautiful vale of Severn, till at Cressage my way led me southward from the river. Then he held me fast by the hand and looked me in the face.

"G.o.d bless you, Humphrey," he said. "Live clean, and--and--hit straight from the shoulder, my boy."

And then he turned away--not before I had seen a film of moisture gather in his eyes.

Now I was fairly started on my travels--in a customary suit of plain gray homespun, with worsted hose, knit for me by Mistress Pennyquick, a pair of stout shoes, a round hat, and a stout staff in my hand. I carried a few extra garments in a knapsack strapped to my back, and my few guineas were safely stowed in a wallet beneath my belt.

For a mile or two after leaving the captain I was in as black a fit of the dumps as ever beset a man. I was but halfway through my eighteenth year, and had as yet never gone more than ten miles from my native town, nor slept a night away from home. 'Tis true, no close ties of blood now bound me to Shrewsbury, but it held dear memories and kind friends, and I felt a natural heart sickness at thus cutting myself adrift from all and ranging forth alone into the great unknown world. But healthy youth can not long lie under such an oppression; my low spirits lasted just so long as it took me to gain the crest of the hill towards Harley, and when I had turned and taken a parting look behind--at the fields in their fresh green, and the spires of Shrewsbury beyond, and the Severn winding like a bright ribbon through the vale--when I had fed my eyes on this charming scene, and breathed a prayer that in good time I should behold it again, I set my face once more to the south, and stepped briskly down the slope that hid my home from sight and stood as the dividing line between my past and my future.

And as I trudged on between the bright hedgerows, and heard the song of birds all about me, and felt the warm sunbeams on my face, I began to exult in my youth and strength, and the words of a song from one of my father's play books came to my mind, and I hummed them aloud:

A merry heart goes all the day, A sad tires in a mile a.

About half a mile out of Harley, the road makes a long ascent to the market town of Much Wenlock. I was pretty warm by the time I arrived there, and mighty hungry, so I repaired to the inn where my father was wont to eat on market days, and where I had several times been with him, and ordered a dinner of bread and cheese and ale. The innkeeper, Mr. Appleby, was not a little surprised to see me, and was fairly staggered when I told him I was off to Bristowe to seek my fortune. To the stay-at-home folk of the countryside Bristowe was as distant as Brazil, and he would have heard that I was starting for the ends of the earth with but little more amazement.

"Betsy," he called through the half-open door into the little parlor behind, "here be young Master Bold a setting off to Bristowe."

"Bless us!" cried his wife, bustling out, and bringing with her an odor of roast meat that somewhat slacked my appet.i.te for bread and cheese. "Deary me! You doesn't say so now! Well, to be sure! 'Tis a fearsome long way, by all accounts; but there, you be growed a great big chap, Master Bold, and I'm sure I wish 'ee good luck.

Come away in, sir, dinner's just off the jack, and me and my man 'ud be main proud if you'd eat a morsel with us afore ye goes."

I was nothing loath, and found the roast of mutton a deal more to my liking than the frugal fare I had ordered. I was still but halfway through my second helping when there came through the door a great clatter of hoofs from the street, and then a loud voice crying "Appleby! here, sirrah, stir your stumps!" with an oath or two by way of seasoning.

My host got up in a hurry and ran to the outer door, and I laid down my knife and fork, and I think my cheeks must have gone a trifle pale, for Mistress Appleby asked me anxiously what was amiss. I hastened to rea.s.sure her, but begged her to close the door into the inn place which her husband had left open. She wonderingly complied, but was enlightened a moment afterwards, when she saw d.i.c.k Cludde swagger in, followed by the two naval captains whom his lady mother had been entertaining.

"I understand your feeling, sir," said the good wife. "'Tis a sin and a shame ye lost the farm, which was yours by right; but doan't 'ee let 'em spoil your dinner; I can't abear mutton half, cold."

A more important matter, however, than the cooling of my mutton was troubling me. I had heard Cludde call for wine and dice, from which it was clear that he did not intend to leave yet awhile. There was no way out except by going through the inn taproom, and I was not inclined to face d.i.c.k Cludde there, for he would of a certainty make some sneering or belittling remark, and my temper being not of the meekest I feared things might come to a brawl. Not that I cared a fig's end for Cludde, or feared any ill result from a personal encounter; but I knew the inn was a property of Sir Richard's, who would speedily find a new tenant if d.i.c.k got a broken head there.

There was nothing for it but to stay where I was, and bear with what patience I might the interruption to my scarcely begun journey. So I sat in my chair, and even through the closed door could hear the loud voices of the naval men and the rattle of the dice on the board. They called often for more wine, and grew more and more boisterous as their potations lengthened, giving me a hope that they would by and by be so fuddled as to make it possible for me to escape unrecognized. But this hope was soon dashed.

"Let's have another bottle!" cried one of the three; his speech was very thick. "Let's have another."