Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 19

In this agreeable and profitable occupation was I engaged; when the same imposing tread and heavy footstep I had heard the previous evening entered the adjoining room and approached my door. The lock turned, and the ill.u.s.trious captain himself appeared. And here let me observe, that if grave censure be occasionally bestowed on persons who, by the a.s.sumption of voice, look, or costume, seek to terrorize over infant minds, a no less heavy sentence should be bestowed on all who lord it over the frail faculties of sickness by any absurdity in their personal appearance. And that I may not seem captious, let me describe my friend.

The captain, who was somewhere about the forties, was a full-faced, chubby, good-looking fellow, of some five feet ten or eleven inches in height; his countenance had been intended by nature for the expression of such emotions as arise from the enjoyment of turtle, milk punch, truffled turkeys, mulled port, mullagatawny, stilton, stout, and pickled oysters; a rich, mellow-looking pair of dark-brown eyes, with large bushy eyebrows meeting above the nose, which latter feature was a little "on the snub and off the Roman;" his mouth was thick-lipped, and had that peculiar mobility which seems inseparable wherever eloquence or imagination predominate; in color, his face was of that uniform hue painters denominate as "warm, "--in fact, a rich sunset Claude-Lorrainish tint that seemed a compound, the result of high-seasoned meats, plethora, punch, and the tropics; in figure, he was like a huge pudding-bag, supported on two short little dumpy pillars, that from a sense of the superinc.u.mbent weight had wisely spread themselves out below, giving to his lower man the appearance of a stunted letter A; his arms were most preposterously short, and for the convenience of locomotion he used them somewhat after the fashion of fins. As to his costume on the morning in question, it was a singularly dirty and patched dressing-gown of antique silk, fastened about the waist by a girdle, from which depended a scymitar on one side and a meerschaum on the other; a well-worn and not over clean-looking shawl was fastened in fashion of a turban round his head; a pair of yellow buskins with faded gold ta.s.sels decorated legs which occasionally peeped from the folds of the _robe-de-chambre_ without any other covering.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tom Receives a Strange Visitor 132]

Such was the outward man of him who suddenly stopped short at the doorway, while he held the latch in his hand, and called out,--

"Burke, Tom Burke! don't be violent, don't be outrageous; you see I'm armed! I'd cut you down without mercy if you attempt to lift a finger!

Promise me this,--do you hear me?"

That any one even unarmed could have conceived fear from such a poor weak object as I was seemed so utterly absurd that I laughed outright; an emotion on my part that seemingly imparted but little confidence to my friend the captain, who retreated still closer to the door, and seemed ready for flight. The first use I could make of speech, however, was, to a.s.sure him that I was not only perfectly calm and sensible, but deeply grateful for kindness which I knew not how, nor to whom, I became indebted.

"Don't roll your eyes there; don't look so d.a.m.ned treacherous!" said he. "Keep down your hands; keep them under the bedclothes. I 'll put a bullet through your skull if you stirred!"

I again protested that any manifestation of quietness he asked for I would immediately comply with, and begged him to sit down beside me and tell me where I was and how I had come hither. Having established an outwork of a table and two chairs between us, and cautiously having left the door ajar to secure his retreat, he drew the scymitar and placed it before him, his eyes being fixed on me the entire time.

"Well," said he, as he a.s.sumed a seat, and leaned his arm on the table, "so you are quiet at last. Lord, what a frightful lunatic you were!

n.o.body would approach your bed but me. The stoutest keeper of Swift's Hospital fled from the spot; while I said, 'Leave him to me, the human eye is your true agent to humble the pride of maniacal frenzy.'"

With these words he fixed on me a look such as the chief murderer in a melodrama a.s.sumes at the moment he proceeds to immolate a whole family.

"You infernal young villain, how I subdued you! how you quailed before me!"

There was something so ludicrous in the contrast of this bravery with his actual terror, that again I burst out a-laughing; upon which he sprang up, and brandishing his sabre, vowed vengeance on me if I stirred. After a considerable time spent thus, I at last succeeded in impressing him with the fact, that if I had all the will in the world to tear him to pieces, my strength would not suffice to carry me to the door,--an a.s.surance which, however sorrowfully made by me, I perceived to afford him the most unmixed satisfaction.

"That's right, quite right," said he; "and mad should he be indeed who would measure strength with me. The red men of Tuscarora always called me the 'Great Buffalo.' I used to carry a bark canoe with my squaw and nine little black devils under one arm, so as to leave the other free for my tomahawk. 'He, how, he!' that 's the war step."

Here he stooped down to his knees, and then sprang up again, with a yell that actually made me start, and brought a new actor on the scene in the person of Anna Maria, whose name I had so frequently heard the night before.

"What is the matter?" said the lady, a short, squablike woman, of nearly the captain's age, but none of his personal attractions. "We can't have him screaming all day in that fashion."

"It isn't he; it was I who was performing the war dance. Come, now, let down your hair, and be a squaw,--do. What trouble is it? And bring in Saladin; we'll get up a combat scene. Devilish fine thought that!"

The indignant look of the lady in reply to this modest proposal again overpowered me, and I sank back in my bed exhausted with laughter,--an emotion which I was forced to subdue as well as I might on beholding the angry countenance with which the lady regarded me.

"I say, Burke," cried the captain, "let me present you to my sister, Miss Anna Maria Bubbleton."

A very dry recognition on Miss Anna Maria's part replied to the effort I made to salute her; and as she turned on her heel, she said to her brother, "Breakfast's ready," and left the room.

Bubbleton jumped up at this, rubbed his mouth pleasantly with his hand, smacked his lips; and then dropping his voice to a whisper, muttered, "Excuse me, Tom; but if I have a weakness it is for Yarmouth bloaters, and anchovy toast, milk chocolate, marmalade, hot rolls, and reindeer tongue, with a very small gla.s.s of pure white brandy as a qualifier." So saying, he whisked about and made his exit.

While my host was thus occupied, I was visited by the regimental surgeon, who informed me that my illness had now been of some weeks'

duration; severe brain fever, with various attending evils, and a broken arm, being the happy results of my evening's adventure at the Parliament House.

"Bubbleton is an old friend of yours," continued the doctor. And then, without giving me time to reply, added, "Capital fellow,--no better; a little given to the miraculous, eh? but nothing worse."

"Why, he does indeed seem to have a strong vein for fiction," said I, half timidly.

"Bless your heart, he never ceases. His world is an ideal thing, fall of impossible people and events, where he has lived at least some centuries, enjoying the intimacies of princes, statesmen, poets, and warriors. He has, in his own estimation, unlimited wealth and unbounded resources, the want of which he is never convinced of till pressed for five shillings to buy his dinner."

"And his sister," said I; "what of her?"

"Just as strange a character in the opposite direction. She is as matter of fact as he is imaginative. To all his flights she as resolutely enters a dissentient; and he never inflates his balloon of miracles without her stepping forward to punch a hole in it. But here they come."

"I say. Pepper, how goes your patient? Spare no pains, old fellow,--no expense; only get him round. I've left a cheque for you for five hundred in the next room. This is no regimental case; come, come! it 's my way, and I insist upon it."

Pepper bowed with an air of the deepest grat.i.tude, and actually looked so overpowered by the liberality that I began to suspect there might be less truth in his account of Bubbleton than I thought a few minutes before.

"All insanity has left him,--that's pleasant. I say, Tom, you must have had glorious thoughts, eh? When you were mad, did you ever think you were an anaconda bolting a goat, or the Eddystone Lighthouse when the foundation began to shift?"

"No, never."

"How odd! I remember being once thrown on my head off a drag. I was breaking in a pair of young unicorns for the Queen of--"

"No!" said Anna Maria, in a voice of thunder, holding up her finger, at the same moment, in token of reproof.

The captain became mute on the instant, and the very word he was about to utter stuck in his throat, and he stood with his mouth open, like one in enchantment.

"You said a little weak tea, I think," said Miss Bubbleton, turning towards the doctor.

"Yes; and some dry toast, if he liked it; and, in a day or two; a half gla.s.s of wine and water."

"Some of that tokay old Pippo Esterhazy sent us."

"No," said the lady again, in the same tone of menace.

"And perhaps, after a week, the open air and a little exercise in a carriage."

"The barouche and the four ponies," interrupted Bubbleton.

"No!" repeated Miss Anna Maria, but in such a voice of imperious meaning that the poor captain actually fell back, and only muttered to himself, "What would be the use of wealth, if one could n't contribute to the enjoyment of one's friends?"

"There's the drum for parade," cried the doctor; "you'll be late, and so shall I."

They both bustled out of the room together; while Miss Anna Maria, taking her work out of a small bag she carried on her arm, drew a chair to the window and sat down, having quietly intimated to me that, as conversation was deemed injurious to me, I must not speak one syllable.

CHAPTER XIII. AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR.

All my endeavors to ascertain the steps by which I came to occupy my present abode were fruitless, inasmuch as Captain Bubbleton contrived to surround his explanation with such a mist of doubtful if not impossible circ.u.mstances, that I gave up the effort in despair, and was obliged to sit down satisfied with the naked fact, that it was by some soldiers of his company I was captured, and by them brought to the guard-house.

Strangely enough, too, I found, that in his self-mystification the worthy captain had invested me with all the honors of a stanch loyalist who had earned his cracked skull in defence of the soldiery against the mob; and this prevailing impression gave such a tone to his narrative, that he not only set to work to trace back a whole generation of Burkes famed for their attachment to the House of Hanover, but also took a peep into the probable future, where he saw me covered with rewards for my heroism and gallantry.

Young as I was, I hesitated long how far I dare trust him with the real state of the case. I felt that in so doing I should either expose him to the self-reproach of having harbored one he would deem a rebel; or, by withdrawing from me his protection, give him perhaps greater pain by compelling him to such an ungracious act. Yet how could I receive attention and kindness under these false colors? This was a puzzling and difficult thing to resolve; and a hundred times a day I wished I had never been rescued by him, but taken my chance of the worst fortune had in store for me.

While, therefore, my strength grew with every day, these thoughts hara.s.sed and depressed me. The continual conflict in my mind deprived me of all ease, and scarcely a morning broke in which I had not decided on avowing my real position and my true sentiments; and still, when the moment came, the flighty uncertainty of Bubbleton's manner, his caprice and indiscretion, all frightened me, and I was silent. I hoped, too, that some questioning on his part might give me a fitting opportunity for such a disclosure; but here again I was deceived. The jolly captain was far too busy inventing his own history of me, to think of asking for mine; and I found out from the surgeon of the regiment, that according to the statement made at the mess-table, I was an only son, possessed of immense estates,--somewhat enc.u.mbered, to be sure (among other debts, a large jointure to my mother); that I had come up to town to consult the Attorney-General about the succession to a t.i.tle long in abeyance in my family, and was going down to the House in Lord Castlereagh's carriage, when, fired by the ruffianism of the mob I sprang out, and struck one of the ringleaders, etc.

How this visionary history had its origin, or whether it had any save in the wandering fancies of his brain, I know not; but either by frequent repet.i.tion of it, or by the strong hold a favorite notion sometimes will take of a weak intellect, he so far believed it true that he wrote more than one letter to Lord Castlereagh to a.s.sure him that I was rapidly recovering, and would be delighted to receive him; which, whether from a knowledge of the captain's character, or his indifference as to my fate, the Secretary certainly never took any notice of whatever.