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for the rest, a good sort of woman, and un
très bon parti for Master Sims, who seemed
to consider it a profitable speculation, and
made love to her whenever she happened to
come into his head, which, it must be con-
fessed, was hardly so often as her merits and
her annuity deserved.
Remiss as he was,

jected; the bells stopped of themselves, and we heard no more of the pretty pastry-cook. For three months after that rebuff, mine host, albeit not addicted to aversions, testified an equal dislike to women and tartlets, widows and plum-cake. Even poor Alice Taylor, whose travelling basket of lollypops and gingerbread he had whilome patronized, was he had no lack of encouragement to complain forbidden the house; and not a bun or a bis-of-for she "to hear would seriously incline," cuit could be had at the Rose, for love or and put on her best silk, and her best simper, money. and lighted up her faded complexion into something approaching to a blush, whenever he came to visit her. And this was Master Sims's up-street love.

So stood affairs at the Rose when the day of the Maying arrived; and the double flirtation, which, however dexterously managed, must have been, sometimes, one would think, rather inconvenient to the inamorato, proved on this occasion extremely useful. Each of the fair ladies contributed her aid to the festival; Miss Lydia by tying up sentimental garlands for the May-house, and scolding the carpenters into diligence in the erection of the booths; the widow by giving her whole bevy of boys and girls a holiday, and turning them loose on the neighbourhood to collect flowers as they could. Very useful auxiliaries were these light foragers; they scoured the country far and near-irresistible mendicants!-pardonable thieves!-coming to no harm, poor children, except that little George got a black eye in tumbling from the top of an acacia tree at the park, and that Sam (he's a sad pickle is Sam!) narrowly escaped a horsewhipping from the head gardener at the Hall, who detected a bunch of his new rhododendron, the only plant in the country, forming the very crown and centre of the May-pole. Little harm did they do, poor children, with all their pilfery; and when they returned, covered with their flowery loads, like the Mayday figure called "Jack of the Green," they worked at the Garlands and the May-houses,

The fit, however, wore off in time; and he began again to follow the advice of his neighbours, and to look out for a wife, up street and down; whilst at each extremity a fair object presented herself, from neither of whom he had the slightest reason to dread a repetition of the repulse which he had experienced from the blooming widow. The down-street lady was a widow also, the portly, comely relict of our drunken village blacksmith, who, in spite of her joy at her first husband's death, and an old spite at mine host of the Rose, to whose good ale and good company she was wont to ascribe most of the aberrations of the deceased, began to find her shop, her journeymen, and her eight children (six unruly obstreperous pickles of boys, and two tom-boys of girls,) rather more than a lone woman could manage, and to sigh for a helpmate to ease her of her cares, collect the boys at night, see the girls to school of a morning, break the larger imps of running away to revels and fairs, and the smaller fry of birds'nesting and orchard-robbing, and bear a part in the lectures and chastisements, which she deemed necessary to preserve the young rebels from the bad end which she predicted to them twenty times a day. Master Sims was the coadjutor on whom she had inwardly pitched; and, accordingly, she threw out broad hints to that effect, every time she had encountered him, which, in the course of her search for boys and girls, who were sure to be missing at school-time and bed-time, hap-as none but children ever do work, putting all pened pretty often; and Mr. Sims was far too gallant and too much in the habit of assenting to listen unmoved; for really the widow was a fine, tall, comely woman; and the whispers, and smiles, and hand-pressings, when they happened to meet, were becoming very tender; and his admonitions and head-shakings, addressed to the young crew (who, nevertheless, all liked him) quite fatherly. This was his down-street flame.

The rival lady was Miss Lydia Day, the carpenter's sister; a slim, upright maiden, not remarkable for beauty, and not quite so young as she had been, who, on inheriting a small annuity from the mistress with whom she had spent the best of her days, retired to her native village to live on her means. A genteel, demure, quiet personage, was Miss Lydia Day; much addicted to snuff and green tea, and not averse from a little gentle scandal

their young life and their untiring spirit of noise and motion into their pleasant labour. Oh, the din of that building! Talk of the tower of Babel! that was a quiet piece of masonry compared to the May-house of Whitley-wood, with its walls of leaves and flowers-and its canvass booths at either end for refreshments and musicians. Never was known more joyous note of preparation.

The morning rose more quietly-I had almost said more dully-and promised ill for the fête. The sky was gloomy, the wind cold, and the green filled as slowly as a balloon seems to do when one is watching it. The entertainments of the day were to begin with a cricket-match (two elevens to be chosen on the ground), and the wickets pitched at twelve o'clock precisely. Twelve o'clock camebut no cricketers-except, indeed, some two or three punctual and impatient gentlemen ;

world began to be gay at Whitley-wood. Carts and gigs, and horses and carriages, and people of all sorts, arrived from all quarters; and, lastly, "the blessed sun himself" made his appearance, adding a triple lustre to the scene. Fiddlers, ballad-singers, cake-baskets

one o'clock came, and brought no other reinforcement than two or three more of our young Etonians and Wykhamites-less punctual than their precursors, but not a whit less impatient. Very provoking, certainly-but not very uncommon. Your country cricketer, the peasant, the mere rustic, does love, on these Punch-Master Frost, crying cherries-a occasions, to keep his betters waiting, if only Frenchman with dancing dogs-a Bavarian to display his power; and when we consider woman selling brooms-half-a-dozen stalls that it is the one solitary opportunity in which with fruit and frippery-and twenty noisy importance can be felt and vanity gratified, we games of quoits, and bowls, and ninepinsmust acknowledge it to be perfectly in human boys throwing at boxes-girls playing at ball nature that a few airs should be shown. Ac-gave to the assemblage the bustle, clatter, cordingly, our best players held aloof. Tom and gaiety of a Dutch fair, as one sees it in Coper would not come to the ground; Joel Teniers' pictures. Plenty of drinking and Brent came, indeed, but would not play; smoking on the green-plenty of eating in the Samuel long coquetted he would and he booths: the gentlemen cricketers, at one end, would not. Very provoking, certainly! Then dining off a round of beef, which made the two young farmers, a tall brother and a short, table totter-the players, at the other, supping Hampshire men, cricketers born, whose good- off a gammon of bacon-Amos Stone crammed humour and love of the game rendered them at both-and Landlord Sims bustling everysure cards, had been compelled to go on busi- where with an activity that seemed to confer ness-the one, ten miles south-the other, fif- upon him the gift of ubiquity, assisted by the teen north-that very morning. No playing little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all without the Goddards! No sign of either of smiles and curtsies, and by a pretty black-eyed them on the Broad or the F. Most young woman-name unknown, with whom, intolerably provoking, beyond a doubt! Mas- even in the midst of his hurry, he found time, ter Sims tried his best coaxing and his best as it seemed to me, for a little philandering. double X on the recusant players; but all in What would the widow and Miss Lydia have vain. In short, there was great danger of the said? But they remained in happy ignorance match going off altogether; when, about two-the one drinking tea in most decorous primo'clock, Amos Stone, who was there with the crown of his straw hat sewed in wrong side outward-new thatched, as it were-and who had been set to watch the Bhighway, gave notice that something was coming as tall as the Maypole-which something turned out to be the long Goddard, and his brother approaching at the same moment in the opposite direction, hope, gaiety, and good-humour revived again; and two elevens, including Amos and another urchin of his calibre, were formed on the spot.

I never saw a prettier match. The gentlemen, the Goddards, and the boys being equally divided, the strength and luck of the parties were so well balanced, that it produced quite a neck-and-neck race, won only by two notches. Amos was completely the hero of the day, standing out half of his side, and getting five notches at one hit. His side lost-but so many of his opponents gave him their ribbons (have not I said that Master Sims bestowed a set of ribbons?) that the straw hat was quite covered with purple trophies; and Amos, stalking about the ground, with a shy and awkward vanity, looked with his decorations like the sole conqueror-the Alexander or Napoleon of the day. The boy did not speak a word; but every now and then he displayed a set of huge white teeth in a grin of inexpressible delight. By far the happiest and proudest personage at that Maying was Amos Stone.

By the time the cricket-match was over, the

ness in a distant marquée, disliking to mingle with so mixed an assembly,-the other in full chase after the most unlucky of all her urchins, the boy called Sam, who had gotten into a démêle with a showman, in consequence of mimicking the wooden gentleman Punch, and his wife Judy-thus, as the showman observed, bringing his exhibition into disrepute.

Meanwhile, the band struck up in the Mayhouse, and the dance, after a little demur, was fairly set afloat-an honest English country dance-(there had been some danger of waltzing and quadrilling)—with ladies and gentlemen at the top, and country lads and lasses at the bottom; a happy mixture of cordial kindness on the one hand, and pleased respect on the other. It was droll though to see the beplumed and beflowered French hats, the silks and the furbelows sailing and rustling amidst the straw bonnets and cotton gowns of the humbler dancers; and not less so to catch a glimpse of the little lame clerk, shabbier than ever, peeping through the canvass opening of the booth, with a grin of ineffable delight, over the shoulder of our vicar's pretty wife. Really, considering that Mabel Green and Jem Tanner were standing together at that moment at the top of the set, so deeply engaged in making love that they forgot when they ought to begin, and that the little clerk must have seen them, I cannot help taking his grin for a favourable omen to those faithful lovers.

Well, the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The Maying is over, the

booths carried away, and the May-house demolished. Every thing has fallen into its old position, except the love affairs of Landlord Sims. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made her appearance at Whitleywood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn, on a visit to his daughters; and the village talk goes that she is to be the mistress of that thriving hostelry, and the wife of its master; and both her rivals are jealous, after their several fashions-the widow in the tantrums, the maiden in the dumps. Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may be, but she's young, and pretty, and civil, and modest; and, without intending to depreciate the merits of either of her competitors, I cannot help thinking that our good neighbour has shown his taste.

AN ADMIRAL ON SHORE.

I Do not know any moment in which the two undelightful truisms, which we are all so ready to admit and to run away from, the quick progress of time and the instability of human events, are brought before us with a more uncomfortable consciousness than that of visiting, after a long absence, a house with whose former inhabitants we had been on terms of intimacy. The feeling is still more unpleasant when it comes to us unexpectedly and finds us unprepared, as has happened to me to-day.

A friend requested me this morning to accompany her to call on her little girl, whom she had recently placed at the Belvidere, a new and celebrated boarding-school-I beg pardon!-establishment for young ladies, about ten miles off. We set out accordingly, and my friend being a sort of person in whose company one is apt to think little of any thing but herself, had proceeded to the very gate of the Belvidere before I had at all recollected the road we were travelling, when in our momentary stop at the entrance of the lawn, I at once recognised the large substantial mansion, surrounded by magnificent oaks and elms, whose shadow lay broad and heavy on the grass in the bright sun of August; the copselike shrubbery, which sunk with a pretty natural wildness to a dark clear pool, the ha ha, which parted the pleasure-ground from the open common, and the beautiful country which lay like a panorama beyond-in a word, I knew at a glance, in spite of the disguise of its new appellation, the White House at Hannonby, where ten years ago I had so often visited my good old friend Admiral Floyd.

The place had undergone other transmogrifications besides its change of name; in particular, it had gained a few prettinesses and had lost much tidiness. A new rustic bench,

a green-house, and a verandah, may be laid to the former score; a torn book left littering on the seat, a broken swing dangling from the trees, a skipping-rope on the grass, and a straw bonnet on a rose-bush, to the latter; besides which, the lawn which, under the naval reign, had been kept almost as smooth as water, was now in complete neglect, the turf in some places growing into grass, in others trodden quite bare by the continual movement of little rapid feet; leaves lay under the trees; weeds were on the gravel; and dust upon the steps. And in two or three chosen spots small fairy gardens had been cribbed from the shrubberies, where seedy mignionette and languishing sweet peas, and myrtles over-watered, and geraniums, trained as never geraniums were trained before, gave manifest tokens of youthful gardening. None of the inhabitants were visible, but it was evidently a place gay and busy with children, devoted to their sports and their exercise. As we neared the mansion, the sounds and sights of school-children became more obvious. Two or three pianos were jingling in different rooms, a guitar tinkling, and a harp twanging: a din of childish voices, partly French partly English, issued from one end of the house; and a foreign looking figure advanced from the other; whom, from his silk stockings, his upright carriage, and the boy who followed him carrying his kit, I set down for the dancingmaster; whilst in an upstair apartment were two or three rosy laughing faces, enjoying the pleasure of disobedience in peeping out of window, one of which faces disappeared the moment it caught sight of the carriage, and was in an other instant hanging round its mother's neck in the hall. I could not help observing to the governess, who also met us there, that it was quite shocking to think how often disobedience prospers amongst these little people. If Miss Emily had not been peeping out of the window when we drove up to the door, she would have been at least two minutes later in kissing her dear mammaa remark to which the little girl assented very heartily, and at which her accomplished preceptress tried to look grave.

Leaving Emily with her mother, I sallied forth on the lawn to reconnoitre old scenes and recollect old times. My first visit especially forced itself on my remembrance. It had been made, like this, under the sultry August sun. We then lived within walking distance, and I had been proceeding hither to call on our new neighbours, Admiral and Mrs. Floyd, when a very unaccountable noise on the lawn induced me to pause at the entrance; a moment's observation explained the nature of the sounds. The admiral was shooting wasps with a pocket-pistol; a most villanous amusement, as it seemed to me, who am by nature and habit a hater of such poppery, and indeed of all noises which are at once sudden

lated; all the furniture of the White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of His Majesty's ship the Mermaiden. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious mansion made to resemble, as much as possible, that wonderfully inconvenient abode, the inside of a ship; every thing crammed into the smallest possible compass; space most unnecessarily economized, and contrivances devised for all those matters which need no contriving at all. He victualled the house as for an East-India voyage, served out the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks.

and unexpected. My first impulse was to run By that standard his calculations were reguaway, and I had actually made some motions' towards a retreat, when, struck with the ludicrous nature of the sport, and the folly of being frightened at a sort of squibbery, which even the unusual game (though the admiral was a capital marksman, and seldom failed to knock down his insect) did not seem to regard, I faced about manfully, and contenting myself with putting my hands to my ears to keep out the sound, remained at a very safe distance to survey the scene. There, under the shade of the tall elms, sate the veteran, a little old withered man, very like a pocketpistol himself, brown, succinct, grave, and fiery. He wore an old-fashioned naval uniform of blue, faced with white, which set off It will easily be believed that these innovahis mahogany countenance, drawn into a thou- tions, in a small village in a midland county, sand deep wrinkles, so that his face was as where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants full of lines as if it had been tattooed, with had never seen a piece of water larger than the full force of contrast. At his side stood Hannonby great pond, occasioned no small a very tall, masculine, large-boned middle- commotion. The poor admiral had his own aged woman, something like a man in petti- troubles. At first every living thing about the coats, whose face, in spite of a quantity of place rebelled. there was a general mutiny; rouge and a small portion of modest assur-the very cocks and hens whom he had cramance, might still be called handsome, and med up in coops in the poultry-yard screamed could never be mistaken for belonging to other aloud for liberty; and the pigs, ducks, and than an Irish woman. There was a touch of geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gabthe brogue in her very look. She, evidently bled for water; the cows lowed in their stall his wife, stood by marking the covies, and enjoying as it seemed to me, the smell of gunpowder, to which she had the air of being The most unmanageable of these complainquite as well accustomed as the admiral. A ers were of course the servants: with the men, younger lady was watching them at a little after a little while, he got on tolerably, sterndistance, apparently as much amused as my-ness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) self, and far less frightened; on her advancing to meet me, the pistol was put down, and the admiral joined us. This was my first introduction; we were acquainted in a moment, and before the end of my visit he had shown me all over his house, and told me the whole history of his life and adventures.

In these there was nothing remarkable, excepting their being so entirely of the sea. Some sixty-five years before, he had come into the world in the middle of the British channel, whilst his mother was taking a little trip from Portsmouth to Plymouth on board her husband's flag-ship, (for he too had been an admiral,) when, rather before he was expected, our admiral was born. This débat fixed his destiny. At twelve years old he went to sea, and had remained there ever since, till now, when an unlucky promotion sent him ashore, and seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly displeased with his own title. He forbade any of his family from calling him by it, and took it as a sort of affront from strangers. Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence as much like a man-of-war as possible, or rather as much like that beau-idéal of a habitation his last frigate, the Mermaiden, in which he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds.

the sheep bleated in their pens, the whole live stock of Hannonby was in durance.

conquered them; his stanchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman, and plagued and thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their aversion with interest; talked of female stupidity, female awkwardness, and female dirt, and threatened to compound an household of the crew of the Mermaiden, that should shame all the twirlers of mops and brandishers of brooms in the county. Especially, he used to vaunt the abilities of a certain Bill Jones, as the best laundress, sempstress, cook, and housemaid in the navy; him he was determined to procure, to keep his refractory household in some order; accordingly, he wrote to desire his presence; and Bill, unable to resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly.

This Avatar, which had been anticipated by the revolted damsels with no small dismay, tended considerably to ameliorate matters. The dreaded major-domo turned out to be a smart young sailor, of four or five-and-twenty, with an arch smile, a bright merry eye, and a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation, or indifferent to female charms. The women of the house, particularly the pretty ones, soon perceived their power; and as this Admirable Crichton of his Majesty's ship the Mermaiden, had, amongst

a delightful simplicity of belief; pitied them; relieved them; fought their battles at the bench and the vestry, and got into two or three scrapes with constables and magistrates, by the activity of his protection. Only one counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden-leg, he found out at a question, and, by aid of Bill Jones, ducked in the horse-pond, for an impostor, till the unlucky wretch, who was, as the worthy seaman suspected, totally unused to the water, a thorough land-lubber, was nearly drowned; an adventure which turned

his other accomplishments, the address completely to govern his master, all was soon in the smoothest track possible. Neither, universal genius though he were, was Bill Jones at all disdainful of female assistance, or averse to the theory of a division of labour. Under his wise direction and discreet patronage, a peace was patched up between the admiral and his rebellious handmaids. A general amnesty was proclaimed, with the solitary exception of an old crone of a she-cook, who had, on some occasion of culinary interference, turned her master out of his own kitch-out the luckiest of his life, he having carried en, and garnished Bill Jones's jacket with an unseemly rag yelept a dish-clout. She was dismissed by mutual consent; and Sally the kitchenmaid, a pretty black-eyed girl, promoted to the vacant post, which she filled with eminent ability.

Soothed, guided, and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced perhaps a little by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze, which he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to show symptoms of a man of this world. The earth became, so to say, his native element. He took to gardening, to farming, for which Bill Jones had also a taste; set free his prisoners in the basse-cour, to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and hen, and cackling and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from pacing backwards and forwards in the dining-room, followed by his old shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants. He even talked of going pheasant shooting, bought a hunter, and was only saved from following the fox-hounds by accidentally taking up Peregrine Pickle, which, by a kind of Sortes Virgiliana, opened on the mischances of Lieutenant Hatchway and Commodore Trunnion in a similar expedition.

his case to an attorney, who forced the admiral to pay fifty pounds for the exploit.

Our good veteran was equally popular amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to make him a most welcome relief to the dulness of a country dinner party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected for company; moved thereunto by an accident which befel the fat Rector of Kinton, who having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby one wet night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his own neck, by a fall from his hammock. The admiral would have put up twenty spare beds, if he could have been sure of filling them, for besides his natural sociability, he was, it must be confessed, in spite of his farming, and gardening, and keeping a log-book, a good deal at a loss how to fill up his time. His reading was none of the most extensive: Robinson Crusoe, the Naval Chronicle, Southey's admirable life of Nelson, and Smollet's novels, formed the greater part of his library; and for other books he cared little ; though he liked well enough to pore over maps and charts, and to look at modern voyages, especially if written by landsmen or ladies; and his remarks on those occasions often displayed a talent for criticism, which, under different circumstances, might have

After this warning which he considered as nothing less than providential, he relinquished any attempt at mounting that formidable ani-ripened into a very considerable reviewer. mal, a horse, but having found his land legs, he was afoot all day long in his farm or his garden, setting people to rights in all quarters, and keeping up the place with the same scrupulous nicety that he was wont to bestow on the planks and rigging of his dear Mermaiden. Amongst the country people, he soon became popular. They liked the testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully, and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way, to be sure, but then he paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and amusements, promoted May-games, revels, and other country sports, patronized dancing-dogs and monkeys, and bespoke plays in barns. Above all, he had an exceeding partiality to vagrants, strollers, gipsies, and such like persons; listened to their tales with

For the rest, he was a most kind and excellent person, although a little testy and not a little absolute; and a capital disciplinarian, although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys, whilst he suffered none other to swear. He had besides a few prejudices incident to his condition-loved his country to the point of hating all the rest of the world, especially the French; and regarded his own profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. To the army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. "To be sure to have drubbed the French was a fine thing-a

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