Merry-Garden and Other Stories Part 12

"A prize-fight? You'll tell us about it, sir?" ventured d.i.c.k eagerly.

"The Rector has heard the yarn before, I doubt?" said the old man, with a glance which told that he only needed pressing.

"That objection," the Rector answered tactfully, "has been lodged against certain of my sermons. I never let it deter me."

"There's a moral in it, too," said my grand-uncle, visibly rea.s.sured.

Well, as for the moral, I cannot say that I have ever found it, to swear by. But here is my grand-uncle's story.

If you want a seaman, they say, you must catch him young, and I will add that the first hour for him is the best. Eh? Young men have talked to me of the day when they first entered Oxford or Cambridge--of the moment, we'll say, when the London coach topped the Shotover rise in the early morning, and they saw all the towers and spires at their feet.

I am willing to believe it good. And the first kiss,--when you and she are young fools and over head and ears in love,--you'll know what I mean, you boys, when you grow to it, and I am not denying that it brings heaven down to earth and knocks their heads together. But for bliss--sheer undiluted bliss--match me the day when a boy runs upstairs and sees his midshipman's outfit laid out on the bed--blue jacket, bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, dirk, yes, and in my sea time a kind of top-hat that fined away towards the top, with a c.o.c.kade. I tell you I spent an hour looking at myself in my poor mother's cheval-gla.s.s, and then walked out across the common to show myself to my aunts,--rest their souls!--who inhabited a cottage about a mile from ours, and had been used hitherto, when entertaining me, to ask one another in French if the offer of a gla.s.s of beer would, considering my age, be permissible. I drank sherry with them that afternoon, and left them (I make no doubt) with a kind of tacit a.s.surance that, come what might, they were henceforward secure of protection.

The next day--though it blew a short squall of tears when I took leave of my mother and climbed aboard the coach--was scarcely less glorious.

I wore my uniform, and nursed my toasting-fork proudly across my knees; and the pa.s.sengers one and all made much of me, in a manner which I never allowed to derogate into coddling. At The Swan with Two Necks, Cheapside, when the coach set me down, I behaved as a man should; ordered supper and a bed; and over my supper discussed the prospects of peace with an affable, middle-aged bagman who shared my box. He thought well of the prospects of peace. For me, I knitted my brows and gave him to understand that circ.u.mstances might alter cases.

From The Swan with Two Necks I took coach next morning--proceeding from the bar to the door between two lines of smiling domestics--and travelled down to the Blue Posts, the famous Blue Posts, at Portsmouth. In the Blue Posts there was a smoking-room, and across the end of it ran a sofa on which (tradition said) you might count on finding a midshipman asleep.

I was not then aware of the tradition; but sure enough a midshipman reclined there when I entered the room. He was not asleep, but engaged in perusing something which he promptly, even hastily, stowed away in the breast of his tunic--a locket, I make no doubt. He sat up and regarded me; and I stared back at him, how long I will not say, but long enough for me to perceive that his jacket b.u.t.tons were as glossy as my own.

I noted this; but it conveyed little to me, for my imagination clothed in equal splendour everyone in his Majesty's service.

He appeared to be young, even delicately youthful; but I felt it necessary to a.s.sert my manhood before him, and rang for the waiter.

"A gla.s.s of beer, if you please," said I.

The waiter lifted his eyebrows and looked from me to the sofa.

"_One_ gla.s.s of beer, sir?" he asked.

"I hardly like to offer--" I began lamely, following his glance.

"It is more usual, sir. _In_ the Service. Between two young gentlemen as, by the addresses on their chestes, is both for the _Melpomeny_: and newly joined."

"Hulloa!" said I, turning round to the sofa, "are you in the same fix as myself?"

Reading in his face that it was so, I corrected my order, and waved the waiter to the door with creditable self-possession. As soon as he had withdrawn, "My name's Rodd," said I. "What's yours?"

"Hartnoll," he said; "from Norfolk."

"I come from the West--Devonshire," said I, and with an air of being proud of it; but added, on an afterthought, "Norfolk must be a fine county, though I've never seen it. Nelson came from there, didn't he?"

"His place is only six miles from ours," said Hartnoll. "I've seen it scores of times."

And with that he stuck his hands suddenly in his pockets, turned away from me, and stared very resolutely out of the dirty bow-window.

When the waiter had brought the drinks and retired again, Hartnoll confessed to me that he had never tasted beer. "You'll come to it in time," said I encouragingly: but I fancy that the tap at the Blue Posts was of a quality to discourage a first experiment. He tasted his, made a face, and suggested that I might deal with both gla.s.ses. I had, to begin with, ordered the beer out of bravado, and one gulp warned me that bravado might be carried too far. I managed, indeed--being on my mettle--to drain my own gla.s.s, and even achieved a noise which, with Hartnoll, might pa.s.s for a smacking of the lips: but we decided to empty his out of window, for fear of the waiter's scorn. We heaved up the lower sash--the effort it cost went some way to explaining the fustiness of the room--and Hartnoll tossed out the beer.

There was an exclamation below.

While we craned out to see what had happened, the waiter's voice smote on our ears from the doorway behind us, saying that young gentlemen would be young gentlemen all the world over, but a new beaver hat couldn't be bought for ten shillings. Everything must have a beginning, of course, but the gentleman below was annoyed, and threatened to come upstairs.

It wasn't perhaps exactly the thing to come to the Port Admiral's ears: but if we left it to _him_ (the waiter) he had a notion that ten shillings, with a little tact, might clear it, and no bones broken.

Hartnoll, somewhat white in the face, tendered the sum, and very pluckily declined to let me bear my share. "You'll excuse me, Rodd," said he politely, "but I must make it a point of honour." Pale though he was, I believe he would have offered to fight me had I insisted.

Our instructions, it turned out, were identical. We were to be called for at the Blue Posts, and a boat would fetch us off to the _Melpomene_ frigate. Her captain, it appeared, was a kind of second cousin of Hartnoll's: for me, I had been recommended to him by a cousin of my father's, a member of the Board of Admiralty. Captain the Hon. John Suckling treated us, nearly or remotely as we might be connected with him, with impartiality that night. No boat came off for us. We learned that the _Melpomene_ was lying at Spithead, waiting (so the waiter told us) to carry out a new Governor with his suite to Barbados; which possibly accounted for her captain's neglect of such small fry as two midshipmen.

The waiter, however, advised us not to trouble ourselves. He would make it all right in the morning.

So Hartnoll and I supped together in the empty coffee-room; compared notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers.

I remember crossing my knees, holding up my gla.s.s to the light, and remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows.

Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you took 'em. We lauded Norfolk and Devon as sporting counties, and somehow it was understood that they respectively owed much of their reputation to the families of Hartnoll and Rodd. Hartnoll even hinted at a love-affair: but here I discouraged him with a frown, which implied that as seamen we saw that weakness in its proper light. I have wondered, since then, to what extent we imposed upon one another: in fact, I daresay, very little; but in spirit we gave and took fire. We were two ardent boys, and we meant well.

"Here's to the Service!" said I, holding up my gla.s.s.

"To the Service!" echoed Hartnoll; drained his, set it down, and looked across at me with a flushed face.

"With quick promotion and a plenty of prize-money!" said a voice in the doorway. It was that diabolical waiter again, entering to remove the cloth: and for a moment I felt my ears redden. Recovering myself, I told him pretty strongly not to intrude again upon the conversation of gentlemen; but added that since he had presumed to take part in the toast, he might fetch himself a tankard of beer and drink to it. Whereupon he thanked me, begged my pardon for having taken the liberty, and immediately took another, telling me that anyone having _his_ experience of young gentlemen could see with half an eye that I was born to command.

"Tell you what," said I to Hartnoll when the waiter had left us, "that fellow has given me a notion, with his talk about prize-money.

I don't half like owing you my share of that ten shillings, you know."

"I thought we were agreed not to mention it again," said Hartnoll, firing up.

Said I, "But there's my view of it to be considered. Suppose now we put it on to our first prize-money--whoever makes the first haul to pay the whole ten shillings, and if we make it together, then each to pay five?"

"That won't do," said Hartnoll. "My head don't seem able to follow you very clearly, but if we make our first haul together, the matter remains where it is."

"Very well," I yielded. "Then I must get ahead of you, to get quits."

"You won't, though," said Hartnoll, pushing back his chair, and so dismissing the subject.

Now the evening being young, I proposed that we should sally forth together and view the town--in other words (though I avoided them) that we should flaunt our uniforms in the streets of Portsmouth. Hartnoll demurred: the boat (said he) might arrive in our absence. I rang for the waiter again, and took counsel with him. The waiter began by answering that the Blue Posts, though open day and night, would take it as a favour if gentlemen patronising the house would make it convenient to knock-in before midnight, and, if possible, retire to their rooms before that hour.

He understood our desire to see the town; "it was, in fact, the usual thing, under the circ.u.mstances." If I would not take it as what he might call (and did) call a libbaty, there was a good many bad characters knocking about Portsmouth, pickpockets included, and especially at fair-time.

"Fair-time?" I asked.

"At the back of the town--Kingston way--you will find it," said he, with a jerk of the thumb.

"But," said I, "the frigate might send off a boat for us."

"Not a chance of it to-night, sir," said the waiter. "The southerly breeze has been bringing up a fog these two hours past, and the inside of the harbour is thick as soup. More by token, I've already sent word to the chambermaid to fill a couple of warming-pans. You're booked with us, gentlemen, till to-morrow morning."

Sure enough, descending to the street, we found it full of fog; and either the fog was of remarkable density, or Portsmouth furnished with the worst street-lamps in the world, for we had not walked five hundred yards before it dawned on me that to find our hostelry again might not be an entirely simple matter. Maybe the port wine had induced a haze of its own upon my sense of locality. I fancied, too, that the fresh air was affecting Hartnoll, unless his gait feigned a sea-roll to match his uniform.

I felt a delicacy in asking him about it.

Another thing that surprised me was the emptiness of the streets. I had always imagined Portsmouth to be a populous town . . . but possibly its inhabitants were congregated around the fair, towards which we set ourselves to steer, guided by the tunding of distant drums. It mattered little If we lost our bearings, since everybody in Portsmouth must know the Blue Posts.

"Tell you what it is, Rodd," said Hartnoll, pulling up in a by-street and picking his words deliberately,--"tell you what accounts for it,"--he waved a hand at the emptiness surrounding us. "It's the press. Very night for it; and the men all hiding within doors."