The Buccaneer Part 32

"'My chaplain at prayers! you are mighty devout, methinks,' he said, in his coldest voice. Jerry stammered, and stumbled, and entangled his leg in arising with the point of my father's sword; and then my father's choler rose, and he stormed out, 'The meaning, sir, the meaning of this idolatrous mummery? what would ye of my daughter, the Lady Frances Cromwell?' And Jerry, like all men, though he could get into a sc.r.a.pe, had not much tact at getting out; so he looked to me for a.s.sistance--and I gave it. 'He is enamoured, please your Highness,' said I, with more wit than grace, 'of Mistress Mabel, my chief lady.' Then, having got the clue, Jerry went on without hesitation: 'And I was praying my Lady Frances that she would interfere, and prevent Mistress Mabel from exercising so much severity towards her faithful servant.' 'What ho!'

said his Highness, 'without there!--who waits?' One of the pages entered on the instant. 'Send hither,' he commanded, 'Mistress Mabel, and also that holy man of the Episcopal faith, who now tarrieth within the house.' Jerry looked confounded, and I trembled from head to foot.

Mabel, with her silly face, entered almost at the moment. 'And pray, Mistress Mabel,' said my father, 'what have you to say against my chaplain? or why should you not be married forthwith to this chosen vessel, Jeremiah White?' And Mabel, equally astonished, blushed and courtesied, and courtesied and blushed. Then my father, flinging off his hat and mailed gloves, ordered the Episcopalian to perform the ceremony on the instant, adding, he would take the place of father, and I that of bridesmaid. It was like a dream to us all! I never shall forget it--and Jerry never can; it was most wonderfully comic--Only imagine it, Constance!"

Lady Frances had been so carried away by her mirthful imagining, that she had little heeded her mournful friend; nor was it till her last sentence--"Only imagine it, Constance!"--that she looked fully upon her.

"Hus.h.!.+" murmured Constantia in a hollow tone; "hus.h.!.+" she repeated.

"Merciful Heaven! what is it?" inquired Frances, terrified at her earnestness.

"Hus.h.!.+" again said Constantia: adding, "Do you not hear?"

"Hear? I hear nothing but the tolling of the midnight bell--'Tis twelve o'clock."

"It is," said Constantia, in a voice trembling with intense suffering; "it is twelve o'clock---- My wedding-day is indeed come!"

CHAPTER VIII.

When all the riches of the globe beside Flow'd in to thee with every tide; When all that nature did thy soil deny, The growth was of thy fruitful industry; When all the proud and dreadful sea, And all his tributary streams, A constant tribute paid to thee, Extended Thames.

COWLEY.

The country through which Robin travelled on his journey to London presented an aspect very different from that which it now a.s.sumes.

Blackheath was noted for highwaymen; and there was a fair and reasonable chance of being robbed and murdered between Greenwich and London. The Ranger never paused from the time he set out until he found himself under a portion of the long brick-wall that still divides the richly ornamented park from the arid and unfertilised heath. He sat down beneath its shadow, and regaled himself with a morsel of s.h.i.+p-biscuit and a mouthful of brandy; then undid the fastening of his wallet, and selected from amid its contents a neatly and skilfully made hump, which, having previously removed his coat, he dexterously transferred to his shoulder, and then donned a jacket into which the hump fitted with extraordinary exactness. He next drew from his bosom a small hand-gla.s.s, and painted and dyed his face with different preparations, so that even Barbara would have failed to recognise her friend and admirer. Having placed a patch over one eye, and stuck a chin-tuft of black hair under his lip, he seemed satisfied with his appearance, replaced the gla.s.s and sundry other things in his sack, then, with his usual agility, mounted one of the overhanging trees, and concealed it amid the branches. As he resumed his journey, he might have been taken for a gipsy minstrel, for suspended round his neck was a small cracked gittern, retaining only two strings. This, as if in mockery of his a.s.sumed misfortune, he had rested on the hump, while the riband, which was of bright scarlet, encircled, like a necklace, his swarthy neck, that was partially uncovered. In his steeple-crowned hat was stuck a peac.o.c.k's feather; and any pa.s.senger would have been puzzled to ascertain whether the motley deformed being was a wit or a fool.

"Now"--thus ran his thoughts--"Now do I defy any of the serving-men at Whitehall to recognise their play-fellow, Sir Willmott Burrell's valet, in the gipsy-looking rascal into which I have, of myself, manufactured myself! Verily, Robin, thou art a most ingenious fellow! Apt at contrivances--even nature is thy debtor, for thou hast increased her deformity! I could gain no tidings of the Cavalier in my own proper person--of that I am certain; because the people there will either not know, or be so effectually cautioned--there would be no use in fis.h.i.+ng in such water. Ah! your heart's blood Puritans will never defile themselves by questioning such as me. 'Slife, I think Old Noll himself could hardly make me out! I wonder what would Barbara say now, if she were to behold me in this disguise! I should not like her to see me, and that's the truth; for no man likes to look worse than he is to his mistress, and, the devil knows, I can ill spare my beauty! My _beauty_!"

he thought again, and then chuckled one of his vile laughs, the most decided indicators of a scornful and bitter temper.

Robin did not pursue the high London road, but struck across the Park; and his love of fine scenery induced him to pause at the top of Greenwich Hill, and look around on the richness and beauty of the prospect. Flowing to the right, the broad and glorious Thames turned its liquid mirror to the skies, and reflected every pa.s.sing cloud upon its translucent bosom. But our n.o.ble river had more than clouds to shadow it;--the treasures of the universe floated for us upon its wave--the spoils of conquered and humbled nations left their track along its sh.o.r.es; Spain, France, and either India--the whole world, rendered us homage and paid us tribute, and proud was our own Father Thames to bear that homage and that tribute to his favoured city. Well might the great cupola of St. Paul erect its heavy but majestic head, and peer forth through the first beams of day upon the rich and blessed river! Robin felt his heart swell within his bosom when he looked down upon the waters and the land of which every Englishman is so justly proud. "It is my own country!" was his emphatic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, as he gazed on this picture of English wealth and English cultivation. The little village of Greenwich, straggling at the foot of the hill, approaching closely to the palace, and then wandering along the great Dover and London road, formed a more pleasant object than it does now that it has been magnified into a great and populous town. Many wooden cottages nested under the Park walls, and sent their smoke curling through the foliage of the fine trees that formed a bold, rich back-ground. The palace, extending its squares and courts along the river's brink, gave an air of dignity to the whole scene; while the tinkling music of the sheep-bells, echoing from the heath, lent to it a soft and harmonising effect. On the river, in the extreme distance, an English vessel was towing up some of the Spanish prizes which the gallant Blake had forwarded to their future home: they trailed the water heavily and gloomily, like captives as they were; and their dismantled and battered aspect afforded ample subject for discourse to a group of old sailors, who, though not yet possessed of their Palace-Hospital, found many convenient dwellings in the village, and added not a little to the picturesque appearance of the hill, as, congregated in a small party, they handed a rude spy-gla.s.s from one to another,

"And told how s.h.i.+ps were won."

"Ah!" said one veteran, "I heard old Blake myself say, soon after his Highness was made the same as a king, and many lubberly scoundrels put up their backs at it--'Boys,' says he, and, my eyes! how n.o.bly he does stand upon the deck o' his own s.h.i.+p, the Triumph!--'Boys,' says he, 'it isn't for us to mind state affairs, but keep foreigners from fooling us.' D--n it, _that_'s what I call English."

"So it is," continued another, whose weather-beaten body was supported on a pair of wooden legs, and who had just joined the little party of which Robin made one; "so it is, Jack, and what _I_ call English, worth ten books full of other lingo; wasn't I with him in Fifty-three, when, with only twelve vessels, he beat Van Tromp, who had seventy s.h.i.+ps of the line and three hundred merchantmen under convoy? and hadn't the Triumph seven hundred shot in her hull? Well, though it was there I lost my precious limbs, I don't grudge them, not I: it's as well to go to the fish as to the worms, and any how we have the king's pension."

"Jemmy," said a waggish-looking sailor, with only one eye and half an arm, twirling some tobacco in his mouth at the same time--"Jemmy, it's rum talking about royalty--you forget----"

"It's no such thing as rum talking, Terry; I don't mind who governs England--she's England still. It warms my blood, too, to think of the respect paid the Union Jack by all nations. When our admiral, G.o.d bless him! was in the road of Cadiz, a Dutch fellow didn't dare to hoist his flag; so, ye see, the Dutch knows what's what, though both men and s.h.i.+ps are heavy sailors."

"Yes," chimed in the first speaker, "that was the time when his health was drunk with a salute of five guns by one of the French commanders: and it's n.o.ble, so it is, to see the order he keeps those Algerines in.

Why, if in searching the Sallee rovers they found an English prisoner aboard, they sent him off to Blake as civil as possible, hoping to get favour. But that didn't hinder him from peppering both the Dey of Algiers, and the infidel rascal at Tunis."

"I hear that the burning of the Spanish s.h.i.+ps in the Road of Santa Cruz was the most wonderful thing ever done," observed he of the wooden legs; "and it's desperate bad news that he's taken on for sickness; for sure am I, that the Protector will never have so faithful a friend, or so good a servant. And so I told the sergeant, or whatever you choose to call him, of the Ironsides, who stopped at the Oliver's Head, down below yesterday, to bait horses, or some such thing:--says I, 'If Blake goes, let your master look to himself.'--But I hate all soldiers--lubberly, sulky, black-looking fellows--no spirit in them, particularly now, when it's the fas.h.i.+on not to drink, or swear, or do any thing for divarsion--ugh!" And the old man's ire against the "land-lubbers" grew so hot, that he turned away, and stumped stoutly down the hill. Robin was not tardy in following, nor long in getting into conversation, though the remembrance of the "land lubbers" still rankled in the old man's mind.

"Here's a most excellent gla.s.s," said Robin, pulling a pocket-gla.s.s from his vest, and showing it to the sailor; "you can count the very shot-holes in the vessel they are towing up."

The sailor took it with a sneer of incredulity and a glance of distrust at the speaker, but neither were of long duration.

"Yes," said he, after gazing through it attentively for some minutes; "yes, that is something like what I call a gla.s.s. 'Gad, it makes me young again to see those marks--every bullet had its billet, I warrant me. The eye you have left, my friend, does not look, though, as if it wanted such a helper."

"Nor does it," said Robin; "and, as a token of the great honour which I bear to the wooden walls of Old England, you are welcome to keep it."

"Keep your gla.s.s, sir!" repeated the wooden-legged hero; "no; you don't look like one who could afford to make such a present. But I'll buy it, I'll buy it, if you'll let me--that I will."

"I'd rather you would take it," replied Robin with much courtesy, and in a well-feigned foreign accent; "for though I am a poor wanderer, one of another country, trying to pick up a little by my skill in music, and from those charitable Christians who pity my deformity, yet I love the very look of a sailor so much, that I would give even my gittern to a true son of the sea."

"Say you so, my boy?" shouted the old tar, "then d--n me now if I do take it, nor I'll not buy it either; but I'll swop for it any thing I have, and then, d'ye see, we'll have something to remember each other all our days."

"The sailors of England," pursued the crafty Robin, "are never seen but to be remembered--feared on sea and loved on land."

"You're the best-hearted foreigner I ever fell in with," said the old man; "so let us make full sail for the Oliver's Head, and settle the matter there; perhaps you'll give us a taste of your calling," touching as he spoke the cracked gittern with the point of his stick. "My eyes!

how Ned Purcell will stare at this gla.s.s! His own! why his own an't a fly-blow to it."

"The Oliver's Head" was a gay hostelry by the road-side, with what was called in those days a portraiture of the Protector swinging from a post which stood on the slip of turf that skirted the house. It was kept by a bluff landlord and a young and pretty landlady, young enough to be her husband's daughter, and discreet enough to be an old man's wife with credit and respectability. There were benches all round the house, one side of which looked towards the river, and the other out upon the heath, and up the hill; and a pleasant view it was either way; but the sailor chose the water-prospect, and established himself and Robin on a small separate bench that was overshadowed by a green and spreading cherry-tree. Having settled the exchange, which ended in Robin's receiving a small Spanish dagger in exchange for his gla.s.s, the seaman insisting on his taking a gla.s.s of another sort; to which Robin was by no means averse, as he had not yet been able to obtain the desired information relative to the Ironsides.

While they sat under the cherry-tree, however, the wished-for opportunity occurred.

"What a pity it is," observed Robin, "that they don't cut ca.n.a.ls through the country, and do all the business by water instead of land. They do it, you know, in Venice."

"There'd be sense and reason in that," replied the sailor in great glee.

"I never could see much use in the land at any time."

"And then we should have all sailors and no soldiers," continued Robin.

"Ah!" said the sailor, "I doubt if the Protector could ever be brought to see the good of that; he's mortally fond of the army."

"You had some of his own Ironsides here yesterday, you said?"

"Ay, they were after something or other, I'll answer for that; for though they never go the same road twice, if they can by any means help it, yet they have been about the place, and round the neighbourhood, very much lately. I did hear that Noll was after some smuggling, or devilrie, down a little beyond Gravesend. He never can let a thing alone when once he gets scent of it."

"Was there any one, any prisoner, or chap of that sort, with them last night, or yesterday?" Robin ventured to ask.

"No, not that I saw or noticed," said the sailor.

"Yes, there was," replied the landlady, who had been leaning over the hatch-door, listening to their conversation, and scrutinising the person of her new guest. "There was a young gentleman, not like a prisoner either, only I fancied under some restraint; and I brought him a better stoup of wine than I brought the rest. Poor gentleman! he seemed downhearted, or like one crossed in love."

"Crossed in a fiddlestick!" said the bluff old landlord: "your woman's head is ever running on love."

"Then it does not run on you, I am sure," retorted Robin. "Your stick would get no music out of any fiddle."

"I could make as good music out of a currycomb, as you out of that cracked thing that sits perched on your hump--like a monkey on the back of a dromedary."

"Get your currycomb, and we'll make a wager of it," replied Robin, unslinging his gittern, while some of the old sailors crowded round the challenger, and voted it a fair challenge.