Part 9 (1/2)
This, however, he failed to do when the matter came to the issue; for his G.o.dchild Horatia, more commonly called Dolly, happened to be in the mood for taking outrageous liberties with him. She possessed very little of that gift--most precious among women--the sense of veneration; and to her a hero was only a man heroic in acts of utility. ”He shall do it,”
she said to Faith, when she heard that he was come again; ”if I have to kiss him, he shall do it; and I don't like kissing those old men.”
”Hus.h.!.+” said her elder sister. ”Dolly, you do say things so recklessly.
One would think that you liked to kiss younger men! But I am sure that is not your meaning. I would rather kiss Lord Nelson than all the young men in the kingdom.”
”Well done, Faith! All the young men in the kingdom! How recklessly you do say things! And you can't kiss him--he is MY G.o.dfather. But just see how I get round him, if you have wits enough to understand it.”
So these two joined in their kind endeavour to make the visitor useful, the object being so good that doubtful means might be excused for it.
In different ways and for divers reasons, each of these young ladies now had taken to like Blyth Scudamore. Faith, by power of pity first, and of grief for her own misfortunes, and of admiration for his goodness to his widowed mother--which made his best breeches s.h.i.+ne hard at the knees; and Dolly, because of his shy adoration, and dauntless defence of her against a cow (whose calf was on the road to terminate in veal), as well as his special skill with his pocket-knife in cutting out figures that could dance, and almost sing; also his great gifts, when the tide was out, of making rare creatures run after him. What avails to explore female reason precisely?--their minds were made up that he must be a captain, if Nelson had to build the s.h.i.+p with his one hand for him.
”After that, there is nothing more to be said,” confessed the vanquished warrior; ”but the daughters of an Admiral should know that no man can be posted until he has served his time as lieutenant; and this young hero of yours has never even held the King's commission yet. But as he has seen some service, and is beyond the age of a middy, in the present rush he might get appointed as junior lieutenant, if he had any stout seconders. Your father is the man, he is always at hand, and can watch his opportunity. He knows more big-wigs than I do, and he has not given offence where I have. Get your father, my dears, to attend to it.”
But the ladies were not to be so put off, for they understood the difference of character. Lord Nelson was as sure to do a thing as Admiral Darling was to drop it if it grew too heavy. Hence it came to pa.s.s that Blyth Scudamore, though failing of the Victory and Amphion--which he would have chosen, if the choice were his--received with that cheerful philosophy (which had made him so dear to the school-boys, and was largely required among them) his appointment as junior lieutenant to the 38-gun frigate Leda, attached to the Channel fleet under Cornwallis, whose business it was to deal with the French flotilla of invasion.
CHAPTER XV
ORDEAL OF AUDIT
England saw the growing danger, and prepared, with an even mind and well-girt body, to confront it. As yet stood up no other country to help or even comfort her, so cowed was all the Continent by the lash, and spur of an upstart. Alone, enc.u.mbered with the pack of Ireland, pinched with hunger and dearth of victuals, and cramped with the colic of Whiggery, she set her strong shoulder to the wheel of fortune, and so kept it till the hill was behind her. Some nations (which owe their existence to her) have forgotten these things conveniently; an Englishman hates to speak of them, through his unjust abhorrence of self-praise; and so does a Frenchman, by virtue of motives equally respectable.
But now the especial danger lay in the special strength of England.
Scarcely any man along the coast, who had ever come across a Frenchman, could be led (by quotations from history or even from newspapers) to believe that there was any sense in this menace of his to come and conquer us. Even if he landed, which was not likely--for none of them could box the compa.s.s--the only thing he took would be a jolly good thras.h.i.+ng, and a few pills of lead for his garlic. This lofty contempt on the part of the seafaring men had been enhanced by Nelson, and throve with stoutest vigour in the enlightened b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Springhaven.
Yet military men thought otherwise, and so did the owners of crops and ricks, and so did the dealers in bacon and eggs and crockery, and even hardware. Mr. Cheeseman, for instance, who left nothing unsold that he could turn a penny by, was anything but easy in his mind, and dreamed such dreams as he could not impart to his wife--on account of her tendency to hysterics--but told with much power to his daughter Polly, now the recognised belle of Springhaven. This vigilant grocer and b.u.t.terman, tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuffman, hosier also, and general provider for the outer as well as the inner man, had much of that enterprise in his nature which the country believes to come from London.
His possession of this was ascribed by all persons of a thoughtful turn to his owners.h.i.+p of that well-built schooner the London Trader. Sailing as she did, when the weather was fine, nearly every other week, for London, and returning with equal frequency, to the women who had never been ten miles from home she was a mystery and a watchword. Not one of them would allow lad of hers to join this romantic galleon, and tempt the black cloud of the distance; neither did Mr. Cheeseman yearn (for reasons of his own about city prices) to navigate this good s.h.i.+p with natives. Moreover, it was absurd, as he said, with a keen sense of his own cheapness, to suppose that he could find the funds to buy and ply such a s.h.i.+p as that!
Truth is a fugitive creature, even when she deigns to be visible, or even to exist. The truth of Mr. Cheeseman's statement had existed, but was long since flown. Such was his worth that he could now afford to buy the London Trader three times over, and pay ready money every time. But when he first invested hard cash in her--against the solid tears of his prudent wife--true enough it was that he could only sc.r.a.pe together one quarter of the sum required. Mrs. Cheeseman, who was then in a condition of absorbing interest with Polly, made it her last request in this world--for she never expected to get over it--that Jemmy should not run in debt on a goose-chase, and fetch her poor spirit from its grave again. James Cheeseman was compelled--as the n.o.blest man may be--to dissemble and even deny his intentions until the blessed period of caudle-cup, when, the weather being pleasant and the wind along the sh.o.r.e, he found himself encouraged to put up the window gently. The tide was coming in with a long seesaw, and upon it, like the baby in the cradle full of sleep, lay rocking another little stranger, or rather a very big one, to the lady's conception.
Let bygones be bygones. There were some reproaches; but the weaker vessel, Mrs. Cheeseman, at last struck flag, without sinking, as she threatened to do. And when little Polly went for her first airing, the London Trader had accomplished her first voyage, and was sailing in triumphantly with a box of ”tops and bottoms” from the ancient firm in Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many infants from the power that cuts the thread. After that, everything went as it should go, including this addition to the commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was enabled soon to talk of as ”our s.h.i.+p,” and to cite when any question rose of the latest London fas.h.i.+on. But even now, when a score of years, save one, had made their score and gone, Mrs. Cheeseman only guessed and doubted as to the purchase of her s.h.i.+p. James Cheeseman knew the value of his own counsel, and so kept it; and was patted on both shoulders by the world, while he patted his own b.u.t.ter.
He wore an ap.r.o.n of the purest white, with shoulder-straps of linen tape, and upon his counter he had a desk, with a carved oak rail in front of it and returned at either end. The joy of his life was here to stand, with goodly s.h.i.+rt sleeves s.h.i.+ning, his bright cheeks also s.h.i.+ning in the sun, unless it were hot enough to hurt his goods. He was not a great man, but a good one--in the opinion of all who owed him nothing, and even in his own estimate, though he owed so much to himself. It was enough to make any one who possessed a s.h.i.+lling hungry to see him so clean, so ready, and ruddy among the many good things which his looks and manner, as well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began to smack his rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a rasher, or a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the const.i.tution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the weather was cool and the air full of appet.i.te, and a fine smack of salt from the sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of expectation, there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a presence of hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of imagination. Hams of the first rank and highest education, springs of pork sweeter than the purest spring of poetry, pats of b.u.t.ter fragrant as the most delicious flattery, chicks with breast too ample to require to be broken, and sometimes prawns from round the headland, fresh enough to saw one another's heads off, but for being boiled already.
Memory fails to record one-tenth of all the good things gathered there.
And why? Because hope was the power aroused, and how seldom can memory endorse it! Even in the case of Mr. Cheeseman's wares there were people who said, after making short work with them, that short weight had enabled them to do so. And every one living in the village was surprised to find his own scales require balancing again every time he sent his little girl to Cheeseman's.
This upright tradesman was attending to his business one cold day in May, 1803, soon after Nelson sailed from Portsmouth, and he stood with his beloved pounds of farm-house b.u.t.ter, bladders of lard, and new-laid eggs, and squares of cream-cheese behind him, with a broad b.u.t.ter-spathe of white wood in his hand, a long goose-pen tucked over his left ear, and the great copper scales hanging handy. So strict was his style, though he was not above a joke, that only his own hands might serve forth an ounce of best b.u.t.ter to the public. And whenever this was weighed, and the beam adjusted handsomely to the satisfaction of the purchaser, down went the b.u.t.ter to be packed upon a shelf uninvaded by the public eye. Persons too scantily endowed with the greatest of all Christian virtues had the hardihood to say that Mr. Cheeseman here indulged in a process of high art discovered by himself. Discoursing of the weather, or the crops, or perhaps the war, and mourning the dishonesty of statesmen nowadays, by dexterous undersweep of keen steel blade, from the bottom of the round, or pat, or roll, he would have away a thin slice, and with that motion jerk it into the barrel which he kept beneath his desk.
”Is this, then, the establishment of the ill.u.s.trious Mr. Cheeseman?”
The time was yet early, and the gentleman who put this question was in riding dress. The worthy tradesman looked at him, and the rosy hue upon his cheeks was marbled with a paler tint.
”This is the shop of the 'umble James Cheeseman,” he answered, but not with the alacrity of business. ”All things good that are in season, and nothing kept unseasonable. With what can I have the honor of serving you, sir?”
”With a little talk.” The stranger's manner was not unpleasantly contemptuous, but lofty, and such as the English shopman loves, and calls ”aristocratic.”
”To talk with a gentleman is a pleasure as well as an honour,” said Cheeseman.
”But not in this public establishment.” The visitor waved both hands as he spoke, in a style not then common with Englishmen--though they are learning eloquent gesticulation now. ”It is fine, Mr. Cheeseman; but it is not--bah, I forget your English words.”