The Two Admirals Part 59

"My life on it, d.u.c.h.ess, he has not raised your expectations too high.

The poor girl is still dwelling in her cottage, the companion of her reputed mother; but it is time, Wychecombe, that you had claimed your bride."

"I expect to find her and Mrs. Dutton at the Hall, on my return, Sir Gervaise; it having been thus arranged between us. The sad ceremonies through which we have lately been, were unsuited to the introduction of the new mistress to her abode, and the last had been deferred to a more fitting occasion."

"Let the first visit that Lady Wychecombe pays, be to this place," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "I do not command it, Sir Wycherly, as one who has some slight claims to her duty; but I solicit it, as one who wishes to possess every hold upon her love. Her mother was an _only_ sister; and an _only_ sister's child must be very near to one."

It would have been impossible for the d.u.c.h.ess of Glamorgan to have said as much as this before she saw the young Virginian; but, now he had turned out a person so very different from what she expected, she had lively hopes in behalf of her niece.

Wycherly returned to Wychecombe, after this short visit to Mildred's aunt, and found his lovely bride in quiet possession, accompanied by her mother. Dutton still remained at the station, for he had the sagacity to see that he might not be welcome, and modesty enough to act with a cautious reserve. But Wycherly respected his excellent wife too profoundly not to have a due regard to her feelings, in all things; and the master was invited to join the party. Brutality and meanness united, like those which belonged to the character of Dutton, are not easily abashed, and he accepted the invitation, in the hope that, after all, he was to reap as many advantages by the marriage of Mildred with the affluent baronet, as if she had actually been his daughter.

After pa.s.sing a few weeks in sober happiness at home, Wycherly felt it due to all parties, to carry his wife to the Park, in order that she might make the acquaintance of the near relatives who dwelt there. Mrs.

Dutton, by invitation, was of the party; but Dutton was left behind, having no necessary connection with the scenes and the feelings that were likely to occur. It would be painting the d.u.c.h.ess too much _en beau_, were we to say that she met Mildred without certain misgivings and fears. But the first glimpse of her lovely niece completely put natural feelings in the ascendency. The resemblance to her sister was so strong as to cause a piercing cry to escape her, and, bursting into tears, she folded the trembling young woman to her heart, with a fervour and sincerity that set at naught all conventional manners. This was the commencement of a close intimacy; which lasted but a short time, however, the d.u.c.h.ess dying two years later.

Wycherly continued in the service until the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, when he finally quitted the sea. His strong native attachments led him back to Virginia, where all his own nearest relatives belonged, and where his whole heart might be said to be, when he saw Mildred and his children at his side. With him, early a.s.sociations and habits had more strength, than traditions and memorials of the past. He erected a s.p.a.cious dwelling on the estate inherited from his father, where he pa.s.sed most of his time; consigning Wychecombe to the care of a careful steward. With the additions and improvements that he was now enabled to make, his Virginian estate produced even a larger income than his English, and his interests really pointed to the choice he had made. But no pecuniary considerations lay at the bottom of his selection. He really preferred the graceful and courteous ease of the intercourse which characterized the manners of James' river. In that age, they were equally removed from the coa.r.s.e and boisterous jollity of the English country-squire, and the heartless conventionalities of high life. In addition to this, his sensitive feelings rightly enough detected that he was regarded in the mother-country as a sort of intruder. He was spoken of, alluded to in the journals, and viewed even by his tenants as the _American_ landlord; and he never felt truly at home in the country for which he had fought and bled. In England, his rank as a baronet was not sufficient to look down these little peculiarities; whereas, in Virginia, it gave him a certain _eclat_, that was grateful to one of the main weaknesses of human nature. "At home," as the mother-country was then affectionately termed, he had no hope of becoming a privy councillor; while, in his native colony, his rank and fortune, almost as a matter of course, placed him in the council of the governor. In a word, while Wycherly found most of those worldly considerations which influence men in the choice of their places of residence, in favour of the region in which he happened to be born, his election was made more from feeling and taste than from any thing else. His mind had taken an early bias in favour of the usages and opinions of the people among whom he had received his first impressions, and this bias he retained to the hour of his death.

Like a true woman, Mildred found her happiness with her husband and children. Of the latter she had but three; a boy and two girls. The care of the last was early committed to Mrs. Dutton. This excellent woman had remained at Wychecombe with her husband, until death put an end to his vices, though the close of his career was exempt from those scenes of brutal dictation and interference that had rendered the earlier part of her life so miserable. Apprehension of what might be the consequences to himself, acted as a check, and he had sagacity enough to see that the physical comforts he now possessed were all owing to the influence of his wife. He lived but four years, however. On his death, his widow immediately took her departure for America.

It would be subst.i.tuting pure images of the fancy for a picture of sober realities, were we to say that Lady Wychecombe and her adopted mother never regretted the land of _their_ birth. This negation of feeling, habits, and prejudices, is not to be expected even in an Esquimaux. They both had occasional strictures to make on the _climate_, (and this to Wycherly's great surprise, for _he_ conscientiously believed that of England to be just the worst in the world,) on the fruits, the servants, the roads, and the difficulty of procuring various little comforts. But, as this was said good-naturedly and in pleasantry, rather than in the way of complaint, it led to no unpleasant scenes or feelings. As all three made occasional voyages to England, where his estates, and more particularly settlements with his factor, compelled the baronet to go once in about a l.u.s.trum, the fruits and the climate were finally given up by the ladies. After many years, even the slip-shod, careless, but hearty attendance of the negroes, came to be preferred to the dogged mannerism of the English domestics, perfect as were the latter in their parts; and the whole subject got to be one of amus.e.m.e.nt, instead of one of complaint. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the traveller who pa.s.ses _once_ through a country, with his home-bred, and quite likely _provincial_ notions thick upon him, is competent to describe, with due discrimination, even the usages of which he is actually a witness. This truth all the family came, in time, to discover; and while it rendered them more strictly critical in their remarks, it also rendered them more tolerant. As it was, few happier families were to be found in the British empire, than that of Sir Wycherly Wychecombe; its head retaining his manly and protecting affection for all dependent on him, while his wife, beautiful as a matron, as she had been lovely as a girl, clung to him with the tenacity of the vine to its own oak.

Of the result of the rising in the north, it is unnecessary to say much.

The history of the _Chevalier's_ successes in the first year, and of his final overthrow at Culloden, is well known. Sir Reginald Wychecombe, like hundreds of others, played his cards so skilfully that he avoided committing himself; and, although he lived and eventually died a suspected man, he escaped forfeitures and attainder. With Sir Wycherly, as the head of his house, he maintained a friendly correspondence to the last, even taking charge of the paternal estate in its owner's absence; manifesting to the hour of his death, a scrupulous probity in matters of money, mingled with an inherent love of management and intrigue, in things that related to politics and the succession. Sir Reginald lived long enough to see the hopes of the Jacobites completely extinguished, and the throne filled by a native Englishman.

Many long years after the events which rendered the week of its opening incidents so memorable among its actors, must now be imagined. Time had advanced with its usual unfaltering tread, and the greater part of a generation had been gathered to their fathers. George III. had been on the throne not less than three l.u.s.trums, and most of the important actors of the period of '45, were dead;--many of them, in a degree, forgotten. But each age has its own events and its own changes. Those colonies, which in 1745 were so loyal, so devoted to the house of Hanover, in the belief that political and religious liberty depended on the issue, had revolted against the supremacy of the parliament of the empire. America was already in arms against the mother country, and the very day before the occurrence of the little scene we are about to relate, the intelligence of the battle of Bunker Hill had reached London. Although the gazette and national pride had, in a degree, lessened the characteristics of this most remarkable of all similar combats, by exaggerating the numbers of the colonists engaged, and lessening the loss of the royal troops, the impression produced by the news is said to have been greater than any known to that age. It had been the prevalent opinion of England--an opinion that was then general in Europe, and which descended even to our own times--that the animals of the new continent, man included, had less courage and physical force, than those of the old; and astonishment, mingled with the forebodings of the intelligent, when it was found that a body of ill-armed countrymen had dared to meet, in a singularly b.l.o.o.d.y combat, twice their number of regular troops, and that, too, under the guns of the king's shipping and batteries. Rumours, for the moment, were rife in London, and the political world was filled with gloomy antic.i.p.ations of the future.

On the morning of the day alluded to, Westminster Abbey, as usual, was open to the inspection of the curious and interested. Several parties were scattered among its aisles and chapels, some reading the inscriptions on the simple tablets of the dead which ill.u.s.trate a nation, in ill.u.s.trating themselves; others listening to the names of princes who derived their consequence from their thrones and alliances; and still other sets, who were wandering among the more elaborate memorials that have been raised equally to ill.u.s.trate insignificance, and to mark the final resting-places of more modern heroes and statesmen. The beauty of the weather had brought out more visiters than common, and not less than half-a-dozen equipages were in waiting, in and about Palace Yard. Among others, one had a ducal coronet. This carriage did not fail to attract the attention that is more than usually bestowed on rank, in England. All were empty, however, and more than one party of pedestrians entered the venerable edifice, rejoicing that the view of a duke or a d.u.c.h.ess, was to be thrown in, among the other sights, gratuitously. All who pa.s.sed on foot, however, were not influenced by this vulgar feeling; for, one group went by, that did not even cast a glance at the collection of carriages; the seniors of the party being too much accustomed to such things to lend them a thought, and the juniors too full of antic.i.p.ations of what they were about to see, to think of other matters. This party consisted of a handsome man of fifty-odd, a lady some three or four years his junior well preserved and still exceedingly attractive; a young man of twenty-six, and two lovely girls, that looked like twins; though one was really twenty-one, and the other but nineteen. These were Sir Wycherly and Lady Wychecombe, Wycherly their only son, then just returned from a five years'

peregrination on the continent of Europe, and Mildred and Agnes, their daughters. The rest of the family had arrived in England about a fortnight before, to greet the heir on his return from the _grand tour_, as it was then termed. The meeting had been one of love, though Lady Wychecombe had to reprove a few innocent foreign affectations, as she fancied them to be, in her son; and the baronet, himself, laughed at the sc.r.a.ps of French, Italian, and German, that quite naturally mingled in the young man's discourse. All this, however, cast no cloud over the party, for it had ever been a family of entire confidence and unbroken love.

"This is a most solemn place to me," observed Sir Wycherly, as they entered at the Poets' corner, "and one in which a common man unavoidably feels his own insignificance. But, we will first make our pilgrimage, and look at these remarkable inscriptions as we come out. The tomb we seek is in a chapel on the other side of the church, near to the great doors. When I last saw it, it was quite alone."

On hearing this, the whole party moved on; though the two lovely young Virginians cast wistful and curious eyes behind them, at the wonders by which they were surrounded.

"Is not this an extraordinary edifice, Wycherly?" half whispered Agnes, the youngest of the sisters, as she clung to one arm of her brother, Mildred occupying the other. "Can the whole world furnish such another?"

"So much for hominy and James' river!" answered the young man, laughing--"now could you but see the pile at Rouen, or that at Rheims, or that at Antwerp, or even that at York, in this good kingdom, old Westminster would have to fall back upon its little tablets and big names. But Sir Wycherly stops; he must see what he calls his land-fall."

Sir Wycherly had indeed stopped. It was in consequence of having reached the head of the _ch[oe]ur_, whence he could see the interior of the recess, or chapel, towards which he had been moving. It still contained but a single monument, and that was adorned with an anchor and other nautical emblems. Even at that distance, the words "RICHARD BLUEWATER, REAR-ADMIRAL OF THE WHITE," might be read. But the baronet had come to a sudden halt, in consequence of seeing a party of three enter the chapel, in which he wished to be alone with his own family. The party consisted of an old man, who walked with tottering steps, and this so much the more from the circ.u.mstance that he leaned on a domestic nearly as old as himself, though of a somewhat st.u.r.dier frame, and of a tall imposing-looking person of middle age, who followed the two with patient steps. Several attendants of the cathedral watched this party from a distance with an air of curiosity and respect; but they had been requested not to accompany it to the chapel.

"They must be some old brother-officers of my poor uncle's, visiting his tomb!" whispered Lady Wychecombe. "The very venerable gentleman has naval emblems about his attire."

"_Do_ you--_can_ you forget him, love? 'Tis Sir Gervaise Oakes, the pride of England! yet how changed! It is now five-and-twenty years since we last met; still I knew him at a glance. The servant is old Galleygo, his steward; but the gentleman with him is a stranger. Let us advance; _we_ cannot be intruders in such a place."

Sir Gervaise paid no attention to the entrance of the Wychecombes. It was evident, by the vacant look of his countenance, that time and hard service had impaired his faculties, though his body remained entire; an unusual thing for one who had been so often engaged. Still there were glimmerings of lively recollections, and even of strong sensibilities about his eyes, as sudden fancies crossed his mind. Once a year, the anniversary of his friend's interment, he visited that chapel; and he had now been brought here as much from habit, as by his own desire. A chair was provided for him, and he sat facing the tomb, with the large letters before his eyes. He regarded neither, though he bowed courteously to the salute of the strangers. His companion at first seemed a little surprised, if not offended at the intrusion; but when Wycherly mentioned that they were relatives of the deceased, he also bowed complacently, and made way for the ladies.

"This it is as what you wants to see, Sir Jarvy," observed Galleygo, jogging his master's shoulder by way of jogging his memory. "Them 'ere cables and hanchors, and that 'ere mizzen-mast, with a rear-admiral's flag a-flying, is rigged in this old church, in honour of our friend Admiral Blue, as was; but as is now dead and gone this many a long year."

"Admiral of the Blue," repeated Sir Gervaise coldly. "You're mistaken, Galleygo, I'm an admiral of the white, and admiral of the fleet in the bargain. I know my own rank, sir."

"I knows that as well as you does yourself, Sir Jarvy," answered Galleygo, whose grammar had rather become confirmed than improved, by time, "or as well as the First Lord himself. But Admiral Blue was once your best friend, and I doesn't at all admire at your forgetting him--one of these long nights you'll be forgetting _me_."

"I beg your pardon, Galleygo; I rather think not. I remember _you_, when a very young man."

"Well, and so you mought remember Admiral Blue, if you'd just try. I know'd ye both when young luffs, myself."

"This is a painful scene," observed the stranger to Sir Wycherly, with a melancholy smile. "This gentleman is now at the tomb of his dearest friend; and yet, as you see, he appears to have lost all recollection that such a person ever existed. For what do we live, if a few brief years are to render our memories such vacant spots!"

"Has he been long in this way?" asked Lady Wychecombe, with interest.

The stranger started at the sound of her voice. He looked intently into the face of the still fair speaker, before he answered; then he bowed, and replied--

"He has been failing these five years, though his last visit here was much less painful than this. But are our own memories perfect?--Surely, I have seen that face before!--These young ladies, too--"

"Geoffrey--_dear_ cousin Geoffrey!" exclaimed Lady Wychecombe, holding out both her hands. "It is--it must be the Duke of Glamorgan, Wycherly!"

No further explanations were needed. All the parties recognised each other in an instant. They had not met for many--many years, and each had pa.s.sed the period of life when the greatest change occurs in the physical appearance; but, now that the ice was broken, a flood of recollections poured in. The duke, or Geoffrey Cleveland, as we prefer to call him, kissed his cousin and her daughters with frank affection, for no change of condition had altered his simple sea-habits, and he shook hands with the gentlemen, with a cordiality like that of old times. All this, however, was unheeded by Sir Gervaise, who sat looking at the monument, in a dull apathy.

"Galleygo," he said; but Galleygo had placed himself before Sir Wycherly, and thrust out a hand that looked like a bunch of knuckles.

"I knows ye!" exclaimed the steward, with a grin. "I know'd ye in the offing yonder, but I couldn't make out your number. Lord, sir, if this doesn't brighten Sir Jarvy up, again, and put him in mind of old times, I shall begin to think we have run out cable to the better end."

"I will speak to him, duke, if you think it advisable?" said Sir Wycherly, in an inquiring manner.

"Galleygo," put in Sir Gervaise, "what lubber fitted that cable?--he has turned in the clench the wrong way."

"Ay--ay, sir, they _is_ great lubbers, them stone-cutters, Sir Jarvy; and they knows about as much of ships, as ships knows of them. But here is _young_ Sir Wycherly Wychecombe come to see you--the _old_ 'un's nevy."

"Sir Wycherly, you are a very welcome guest. Bowldero is a poor place for a gentleman of your merit; but such as it is, it is entirely at your service. What did you say the gentleman's name was, Galleygo?"

"Sir Wycherly Wychecombe, the _young_ 'un--the _old_ 'un slipped the night as we moored in his house."

"I hope, Sir Gervaise, I have not entirely pa.s.sed from your recollection; it would grieve me sadly to think so. And my poor uncle, too; he who died of apoplexy in your presence!"

"_Nullus, nulla, nullum._ That's good Latin, hey! Duke? _Nullius, nullius, nullius._ My memory _is_ excellent, gentlemen; nominative, _penna_; genitive, _pennae_, and so on."

"Now, Sir Jarvy, since you're veering out your Latin, _I_ should likes to know if you can tell a 'clove-hitch' from a 'carrick-bend?'"

"That is an extraordinary question, Galleygo, to put to an old seaman!"

"Well, if you remembers _that_, why can't you just as reasonably remember your old friend, Admiral Blue?"

"Admiral of the blue! I do recollect _many_ admirals of the blue. They ought to make me an admiral of the blue, duke; I've been a rear-admiral long enough."

"You've _been_ an admiral of the blue _once_; and that's enough for any man," interrupted Galleygo, again in his positive manner; "and it isn't five minutes since you know'd your own rank as well as the Secretary to the Admiralty himself. He veers and hauls, in this fashion, on an idee, gentlemen, until he doesn't know one end of it from t'other."

"This is not uncommon with men of great age," observed the duke. "They sometimes remember the things of their youth, while the whole of later life is a blank. I have remarked this with our venerable friend, in whose mind I think it will not be difficult, however, to revive the recollection of Admiral Bluewater, and even of yourself, Sir Wycherly.

Let _me_ make the effort, Galleygo."

"Yes, Lord Geoffrey," for so the steward always called the quondam reefer, "you does handle him more like a quick-working boat, than any on us; and so I'll take an hopportunity of just overhauling our old lieutenant's young 'uns, and of seeing what sort of craft he has set afloat for the next generation."

"Sir Gervaise," said the Duke, leaning over the chair, "here is Sir Wycherly Wychecombe, who once served a short time with us as a lieutenant; it was when you were in the Plantagenet. You remember the Plantagenet, I trust, my dear sir?"