Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume II Part 11

"'Who can counsell a thirstie soule, With patience to forbeare the offred bowle?'"

"That is the pure well of English undefiled, old fellows, and so here goes--'The La.s.s we Love!'

TUNE--'_Duncan Davison._'

"Come, fill your gla.s.s, my trusty friend, And fill it sparkling to the brim-- A flowing b.u.mper, bright and strong-- And push the bottle back again; For what is man without his drink?

An oyster prison'd in his sh.e.l.l; A rushlight in the vaults of death; A rattlesnake without his tail.

CHORUS.

This world, we know, is full of cares, And sorrow darkens every day; But wine and love shall be the stars To light us on our weary way.

Beyond yon hills there lives a la.s.s, Her name I dare not even speak; The wine that sparkles in my gla.s.s Was ne'er so rosy as her cheek.

Her neck is clearer than the spring That streams the water lilies on; So, here's to her I long have loved-- The fairest flower in Albion.

Let knaves and fools this world divide, As they have done since Adam's time; Let misers by their h.o.a.rds abide, And poets weave their rotten rhyme; But ye, who, in an hour like this, Feel every pulse to rapture move, Fill high! each lip the goblet kiss-- The pledge shall be--'The La.s.s we Love!'"

After a good deal of roaritorious applause, the young gentlemen began to act upon the hint contained in the song, and each to give, as a toast, the lady of his heart. When it came to Elliot's turn, he declared he was unable to fulfil the conditions of the toast, as there was not a woman in the world for whom he had the slightest predilection.

"Why, thou personified s...o...b..ll! thou human icicle!" cried Whitaker.

"Say an avalanche," interrupted Frank; "for, when once my heart is shaken, it will be as irresistible in its course as one of these 'thunderbolts of snow.'"

"Still, it's nothing but cold snow, for all that," cried Harry.

"Who talks of Frank Elliot and love in the same breath?" cried Rhimeson; "why, his heart is like a rock, and love, like a torpid serpent, enclosed in it."

"True," replied Frank; "but, you know, these same serpents sting as hard as ever when once they get into the open air; besides, love, as the shepherd in Virgil discovered, is an inhabitant of the rocks."

"Confound the fellow! he's a walking apothegm--as consequential as a syllogism!" muttered Harry; "but come now, Frank, let us have the inexpressive she, without backing and filling any longer."

"Upon my word, Harry, it is out of my power; but, in a few weeks, I hope to"----said Elliot.

"Hope, Frank, hope, my good fellow, is a courtier very pleasant and agreeable in his conversation, but very much given to forget his promises. But I'll tell you, Frank, since you won't give a toast, I will, because I know it will punish you--so, gentlemen"----

The toast was only suited for the meridian of the place in which it was given, and we will, therefore, be excused from repeating it. But Whitaker had judged rightly that he had punished his friend, who, from the strictness of his education, and a certain delicacy in his opinions respecting women, could never tolerate the desecration of these opinions by the libertine ribaldry which forms so great a part of the conversation of many men after the first bottle. Frank's brow darkened, his keen eye turned with a glance of indignation to Harry; and he was prevented only by the circ.u.mstance of being in his own house, from instantly kicking him out of the room.

"Look at Frank now, gentles," continued the young sailor, when the mirth had subsided; "his face is as long as a ropewalk, while every one of yours is as broad as the main hatchway. He has a reverence for women as great as I have for my own tight, clean, sprightly craft; but because a fellow kicks one of my loose spars, or puts it to a base use, I'm not to quarrel with him, as if he had called my vessel a collier, eh? Frank, my good fellow, you're too sober; you're thinking too much of yourself; you're looking at the world with convex gla.s.ses; and thus the world seems little--you yourself only great; but, recollect, everybody looks through a convex gla.s.s; and that's vanity, Frank:--there, now! the murder's out."

"Nay, Harry," cried Rhimeson, good-naturedly; for he saw Elliot's nether lip grow white with suppressed pa.s.sion; "don't push Frank too hard, for charity's sake."

"Charity, to be sure!" interrupted Harry; "but consider what I must have suffered if I had not got that dead weight pitched overboard. I was labouring in the trough, man, and would have foundered with that spite in my hold. Charity begins at home."

"'Tis a pity that the charity of many persons ends there too," said Frank drily.

"Frank's wit is like the King of Prussia's regiment of death," said the young seaman--"it gives no quarter. But come now, my lads, rig me out a female craft fit for that snow-blooded youngster to go captain of in the voyage of matrimony; do it shipshape, and bear a hand. I would try it myself; but the room looks, to my eyes, as it were filled with dancing logarithms; and then he's so cold, slow, misty-hearted"----

"That if," cried Rhimeson, interrupting him, "he addresses a lady as cold, slow, and misty-hearted as himself, they may go on courting the whole course of their natural lives, like the a.s.symptotes of a hyperbola, which approach nearer and nearer, _ad infinitum_, without the possibility of ever meeting."

"Ha, ha, ha!--ay," shouted Harry; "and if he addresses one of a sanguine temperament, there will be a pretty considerable traffic of quarrels carried on between them, typified and ill.u.s.trated very well by the constant commerce of heat which is maintained between the poles and the equator, by the agency of opposite currents in the atmosphere. By Jove!

Frank, matrimony presents the fire of two batteries at you; one rakes you fore and aft, and the other strikes between wind and water."

"And pray, Harry, what sort of a consort will you sail with yourself?"

inquired Rhimeson. This was, perhaps, a question, of all others, that the young sailor would have wished to avoid answering at that time. He was the accepted lover of the sister of his friend Elliot--and, at the moment he was running Frank down, to be, as he himself might have said, brought up standing, was sufficiently disagreeable.

"Come, come, Harry," cried the young poet, seeing the sailor hesitate; "let's have her from skysail-mast fid to keel--from starboard to larboard stunsails--from the tip of the flying, jib-boom to the taffrail."

"They're all fireships, Rhimeson!" replied Harry, with forced gaiety--for he was indignant at Elliot's keen and suspicious glance--"and, if I do come near them, it shall always be to windward, for the Christian purpose of blowing them out of the water."

"A libertine," said Frank, significantly, "reviles women just in the same way that licentious priests lay the blame of the disrespect with which parsons are treated on the irreligion of the laity."

"I don't understand either your wit or your manner, Frank," replied Harry, giving a lurch in his chair; "but this I know, that I don't care a handful of shakings for either of them; and I say still, that women are all fireships--keep to windward of them--pretty things to try your young gunners at; but, if you close with them, you're gone, that's all."

"I'll tell you what you're very like, just now, Harry," said Frank--who had been pouring down gla.s.s after gla.s.s of wine, as if to quench his anger--"you're just like a turkey c.o.c.k after his head has been cut off, which will keep stalking on in the same gait for several yards before he drops."

"Elliot! do you mean to insult me?" cried Whitaker, springing furiously from his seat.

"I leave that to the decision of your own incomparable judgment, sir,"

replied Elliot, bowing, with a sneer just visible on his features.

"If I thought so, Frank, I would----but it's impossible; you are my oldest friend." And the young sailor sat down with a moody brow.

"What would you, sir?" said Elliot, in a tone of calm contempt; "bear it meekly, I presume? Nay, do not look big, and clench your hands, sir, unless, like Bob Acres, you feel your valour oozing out at your palms, and are striving to retain it!"

"I'll tell you what, Elliot," cried the young sailor, again springing to his feet, and seizing a decanter of wine by the neck, "I don't know what prevents me from driving this at your head."

"It would be quite in keeping with the rest of your gentlemanly conduct, sir," replied Frank, still keeping his seat, and looking at Harry with the most cool and provoking derision; "but I'll tell you why you don't--you dare not!"

"But that you are Harriet Elliot's brother"----began Harry, furiously.

"Scoundrel!" thundered Elliot, rising suddenly, and making a stride towards the young sailor, while the veins of his brow protruded like lines of cordage; "utter that name again, before me, with these blasphemous lips"----

Elliot had scarce, however, let fall the opprobrious epithet, ere the decanter flew, with furious force, from Whitaker's hand, and, narrowly missing Frank's head, was shivered on the wall beyond.

In a moment the young sailor was in the nervous grasp of Frank, who, apparently without the slightest exertion of his vast strength, lifted up the comparatively slight form of Whitaker, and laid him on his back on the floor.

"Be grateful, sir," said he, pressing the prostrate youth firmly down with one hand; "be grateful to the laws of hospitality, which, though you may think it a slight matter to violate, prevent me from striking you in my own house, or pitching you out of the window. Rise, sir, and begone."

Harry rose slowly; and it was almost fearful to see the change which pa.s.sion had wrought in a few moments on his features. The red flush of drunken rage was entirely gone, and the livid cheek, the pale quivering lip, and collected eye, which had usurped its place, showed that the degradation he had just undergone had completely sobered him, and given his pa.s.sion a new but more malignant character. He stood for a brief period in moody silence, whilst the rest of the young men closed round him and Frank, with the intention of reconciling them. At length he moved away towards the door, pushing his friends rudely aside; but turning, before he left the room, he said, in a voice trembling with suppressed emotion--

"I hope to meet Mr. Elliot where his mere brute strength will be laid aside for more honourable and equitable weapons."

"I shall be happy, at any place or time, to show my sense of Mr.

Whitaker's late courtesy," replied Frank, bowing slightly, and then drawing up his magnificent figure to its utmost height.

"Let it be _now_, then, sir," said the young sailor, stepping back into the centre of the room, and pointing to a brace of sharps, which, among foils and masks, hung on one of the walls.

"Oh, no, no!--for G.o.d's sake, not now!" burst from every one except Frank.