It was a calm, bright day, that third of December, with a mild,
sweet westerly wind blowing between a blue, waveless sea and a blue,
cloudless sky. So warm and genial the weather, that sandwich-board-men
parading the streets of Folkestone behind blue-and-red double-crown
bills announcing that Performances would be given at the Town Hall of
that Thrilling Melodrama, “The Warlock of the Glen,” by Miss Arabella
Smallsopp, of the Principal London Theaters, and a Full Company of
Specially Engaged Artists, For Three Nights Only,--were fain to lean
against the outer walls of public-houses--thus nefariously concealing
from the public eye the colored pictorial representations of Miss
Smallsopp in the _rôle_ of the persecuted Countess--Mr. Montague
Barnstormer as the usurping Laird, and Master Pilkington as the infant
Adalbert--and hide their streaming faces in pots of frothing beer.
And so, over the salty, creaking, tarry-smelling gangway to the deck of
the Boulogne packet _Britannia_. A jovial Irish priest, a pair of prim
English spinsters in green veils, their lapdogs and their maid, their
manservant and their courier; with Dunoisse and a honeymooning couple,
made up the list of the _Britannia’s_ after-cabin passengers. The bride
was my Aunt Julietta; Fate would have it so.
For the impression created three brief years before upon the
susceptible maiden fancy of my Aunt by the very ingratiating manners
and handsome personality of a young foreign gentleman, by chance
encountered in a railway-train, had faded; to be replaced by the
highly-colored image of a large, loud, heavily-built, sturdily-limbed
young man, holding the commission of a junior Captain in Her
Majesty’s 444th Irish Regiment of Foot; a well-known fighting corps,
distinguished in the annals of the British Army by the significant
sobriquet of the “Rathkeale Ragamuffins.”
You saw in Captain Golightly M’Creedy the eldest of fourteen children,
begotten of an ancient warrior of Peninsular fame, a certain
Lieutenant-General M’Creedy of Creedystown, County Cork, who had served
twenty years in the 444th, had left three fingers and half a sword-hilt
upon the field of Talavera, and wore a silver plate at the top of
his skull, to testify to his having been cut down by a sergeant of
French Light Infantry during the Battle of Barrosa, when in the act of
capturing an eagle from the foe.
Having thus performed his duty by his country, the veteran thought,
and with some reason, that his country owed something to him; and
commissions for his sons Golightly, Thaddeus, and Considine being
obtained by the paternal interest, these three young gentlemen--as
innocent of polite education and technical information as the hairy
“lepping” colts they hunted, and the half-bred pointers they shot
over--were pitched into the General’s old regiment, and left to sink or
swim.
Goliath, Thady, and young Con, after some rasping experiences, mastered
the small amount of professional knowledge that was held in those
days to be indispensable to the status of an officer and a gentleman.
Indeed, by the time the Rathkeale Ragamuffins, with flying colors,
banging of drums, and blaring of brazen instruments, marched into the
provincial garrison town of Dullingstoke, in the genteeler suburbs of
which stood the family mansion of my grandparents, Captain Goliath
M’Creedy had attained some degree of reputation in his regiment as a
smart officer and a show man.
You saw him at this era as a strapping young Celt of thirty, with thick
sandy whiskers and a thicker brogue, who could top the regulation
three bottles of port with a jorum or so of whisky-punch; walk
home to his quarters while men of weaker head were being conveyed
to theirs in wheelbarrows; and consume vast quantities of bacon and
eggs, washed down by bitter ale, at breakfast, when hardened seniors
were calling for green apples and glasses of gin, and pallid juniors
nibbled captain’s biscuits as they quenched their red-hot coppers with
soda-water. But what did my Aunt Julietta see in him, I should like to
know?
Why did not her gentle affections rather twine about the Captain’s
younger brother, Lieutenant Thady, who sang Irish ballads with the
sweetest of tenor voices, played juvenile leading parts in private
theatricals, and won regimental steeplechases on his leggy Irish
thoroughbred, to the admiration of the gentler sex and the envy of the
males? Or Ensign Con, who had the biggest blue eyes and the smallest
waist you can imagine; wrote poetry which was understood to be of home
manufacture, in feminine albums--painted groups of impossible flowers
and marvelous landscapes upon fans and fire-screens--waltzed like an
angel, and was generally admitted to be a ladies’ man.
Why should my gentle Aunt adore Captain Goliath, who gambled, and swore
horribly when he lost; who loved strong liquors, to the detriment of
his figure and complexion; who had fought duels and perforated with
pistol-bullets the bodies of two gentlemen who had impugned his honor;
who kept fighting-cocks in his quarters, and the steel spurs wherewith
he armed these feathered warriors for the combat in a neat leather
pocket-case; who would consume raw beefsteaks, bend pokers, and lift
ponies for wagers, and win them; and spend the money in carousing with
his friends; and who had once--oh, hideous thought!--backed himself to
kill three rats with his teeth against the Major’s bull-terrier bitch
Fury, and accounted for the rodents with half-a-minute out of five to
spare?...
In the lifetime of my grandfather, thrice Mayor of Dullingstoke, a
peppery old sea-dog, who had settled down as far from his professional
element as possible,--had amassed a considerable fortune in the
tanning-trade, and had made it the business of his later years to keep
his large family of daughters single--no young men were ever admitted
within his doors. It is on record that no sooner had the sable border
of woe upon the edge of my widowed grandmother’s notepaper narrowed
to the quarter-inch significant of tempered sorrow than--each of my
aunts having inherited a nice little landed property under the paternal
will--in addition to a snug sum, comfortably invested in Three Per
Cent. Consols--the bachelor officers of the “Rathkeale Ragamuffins”
began to buzz like hungry wasps about the six fair honey-pots that
adorned my grandmother’s tea-table.
Ordinarily of a frugal mind, she is said to have been lavish in her
expenditure of plum-cake, home-made jams, preserved ginger, and best
Souchong upon these festal occasions, accounting for her prodigality to
a female friend in these words:
“I grudge nothing, Georgiana, that helps to get rid of the girls!”
Honest Captain Goliath, introduced at the ladies’ tea-table by
Lieutenant Thady--who had a knack at making acquaintances which the
clumsier Captain did not possess, was at first attracted by the showier
charms of my Aunt Marietta, which, you will perhaps remember?--were
of the lofty, aquiline, disdainful kind. He stared at the young lady
a good deal, and tugged his sandy whiskers, and breathed hard, as he
paid her clumsy compliments, punctuated with “Egad!” and “By Jove!”
He was rather at a loss when his long legs were inserted under my
grandmother’s polished mahogany. He liked the rich plum-cake, but tea
was a beverage abhorred of his manly soul.
“Women’s slops,” the young officer mentally termed the infusion
beloved of the sex, as he took three lumps of sugar, and stirred
the boiling liquid so clumsily with a fiddle-headed silver teaspoon
that--splash!--he overset the cup.... My Aunts Harrietta and Emmelina,
who were timid, screamed aloud.... My Aunts Elisabetta and Claribella,
who were sitting upon either side of Lieutenant Thady, tittered, being
giddily inclined.
My Aunt Marietta, who was wearing a sweet new pink _barége_, suffered
the complete ruin of a beflounced side-breadth, and, it must be owned,
took the unlucky incident with a very bad grace; even permitting
herself to utter the word “Clumsy,” and toss her head in contempt of
the crimson Captain’s profuse if incoherently expressed regrets. While
my Aunt Julietta, in whose lap the agitated sweep of the young man’s
elbow had deposited a plate of bread-and-butter, butter side down--bade
him “Never mind!” in so soft a tone of kindness, accompanying the
words with a glance so bright and gentle, that the utterance and the
look bowled Goliath over as completely as the elder Philistine, his
namesake, was, cycles of centuries ago, by the brook-stone hurled from
the young David’s sling.
“Indeed and indeed, Miss Juley,” the Captain stuttered, “with all the
good-will in the worruld a man can do no more than apologize, that
has had the bad luck to do damage to a young lady’s dress. And though
you’re so kind and amiable as to make no very great shakes of it,
begad! I see your own elegant gown is spoilt entirely by the clumsy
divvle--begging your pardon for the word!--that would walk from here to
London--supposing you’d accept it!--to get you a purtier gown!”
The Captain dropped a glove in the hall when he went away. It had his
initials marked inside in great big sprawling characters; but even
without the inky “G. M’C.” my Aunt Julietta would have known to whom it
belonged....
Ah! in what a pure, sweet hiding-place it was lying, that clumsy
hand-cover of dogskin,--while the Captain was routing in the litter of
bills, and writs, and dunning-letters that strewed the table in his
quarters, and cursing at his soldier-servant for losing his things. And
he came to tea yet again, and one of his extra-sized feet accidentally
touched, beneath the shelter of the well-spread board, a little foot
in a velvet sandal-slipper; and She blushed like an armful of roses,
and He crimsoned to the parting of his sandy curls. And thenceforwards
the Captain’s wooing proceeded smoothly enough, save for a few
manifestations of jealousy on the part of Lieutenant Thady, who was
inclined to resent the appropriation of my Aunt Julietta’s smiles.
“For I inthrojuiced you--and you’d heard me say the black-eyed wan was
the natest pacer of the sthring--and you’ve cut me out with her--so you
have!--and begad! the thing’s joocedly unfair!”
Upon which Captain Goliath extracted a shilling from his
waistcoat-pocket, and suggested that the goddess of Chance be called in
to decide the issue.
“I’m wit’ you!” said the Lieutenant, with alacrity. “And the best two
out of three takes Black Eyes!”
“Done!” agreed his senior, rubbing the edge of his coin carelessly with
a stout, muscular thumb. “And the loser will have his pick of the five
girrls that’s left. He’ll not have a pin to choose between them in the
way of fortune, for the old man left them share and share alike; but
the fella that gets the high-nosed wan”--in these disrespectful terms
the Captain alluded to my Aunt Marietta--“will have a vixen, take my
word for it! Call, now! Heads or tails?--shame or honor?”
Lieutenant Thady called “Tails,” and Captain Goliath spun, and the
Lieutenant lost the toss three times running, unaware that the astute
Captain carried a double-headed shilling for contingencies of this kind.
A few days later, with the consent of my grandmother--now beginning
to realize that the sacrifice of her best plum-cake and Souchong had
not been all in vain--the Captain drove my Aunt Julietta out in the
family chaise. That drive was, at the outset, a painful experience
for Browney, the younger of the stout, elderly carriage pair, who
was attached to the vehicle. Never had such pace been got out of him
before. Never had such scientific handling of the reins, such artistic
touches of the whip, been known to the experience of that respectable
cob. But it is on record that he returned home at his own pace, with an
engaged couple behind him; and that when my Aunt Julietta was assisted
to descend by the hand of the _brave and gallant man_, to whom, as
she wrote to her confidential friend, the daughter of Sir Wackton
Tackton, “I have plighted the _fondest vow_ that a _woman’s lips_ may
_breathe_,” she went to the sedate animal’s head and thanked him for
the happiest day in all her maiden life, and kissed him on the nose.
Thus Captain Goliath M’Creedy and my Aunt Julietta became definitely
betrothed. And the Lieutenant, after some hesitation between blue eyes
and brown, arch, coquettish ringlets and Grecian coils, “plumped,” as
he afterwards said, for my Aunt Elisabetta.
And Ensign Con, being ordered by his seniors to choose a bride of
three-hundred a year pin-money from amongst my grandmother’s remaining
daughters, wrote her a note in his best round-hand, soliciting an
interview upon a “mater of importanse very near my hart”; and upon the
receipt of an elegant billet naming a fitting hour, set out, attired in
his best; curled, pomatumed, gloved, and booted beyond anything you can
imagine, to conquer Fate.
Perhaps the brain behind those cerulean orbs of my Uncle Con’s was of
rather soft consistency. Or it may be that the sight of my grandmother
sitting in her best parlor, arrayed in her stiffest black silk
gown--endued with her most imposing widow’s cap and weepers--waiting,
with folded mittens, to hear that yet another of the pound-cakes cast
upon the waters had not been sacrificed in vain--was calculated to
make havoc of stronger wits and daunt a stouter courage. Suffice it
to say that, having started out from barracks with the firm intention
of returning as a man definitely engaged--preferably to my Aunt
Emmelina rather than to my Aunt Claribella (young ladies between whose
respective persons Con had hesitated, uncertain as the proverbial
donkey between the bundles of hay)--the Ensign tottered back to
quarters, a blighted being, engaged to my Aunt Marietta, whose Roman
profile and haughty manners had from the first stricken terror to the
young man’s soul.
He must have made wild work with his wooing, unlucky Con! for my
grandmother subsequently confided to her bosom friend, Georgiana, that
at one moment her firm conviction had been that the young man, with
a maturity of taste and judgment rare in one so young, was proposing
marriage to herself. In vain Con’s fraternal counselors advised him to
go back, explain that he had got the wrong girl, and change her! Con
could not muster the pluck! And so my Aunt Emmelina, who had loved the
handsome young booby, never married; and Con was a henpecked husband to
the ending of his days.
There was a triple wedding, so that one breakfast and one cake might
do duty for three brides, a flying visit to London to do the lions;
and now you saw my Aunt Julietta, a wife of two days, starting on her
honeymoon-trip to Boulogne with the idol of her soul. Be sure that she
recognized the deposed idol in their handsome fellow-traveler; that my
aunt’s fresh English face had completely faded from Dunoisse’s memory
may be guessed.
But the natural chagrin of my Aunt at this discovery was to give place
to pangs of a less romantic kind. She had studied French fashions in
the illuminating pages of the _Ladies’ Mentor_, had mastered the
French language sufficiently to spell out a “Moral Tale” of Marmontel,
or a page of Lamartine, or even a verse of Victor Hugo; and had
compounded French dishes from English recipes. But she had never
previously crossed the restless strip of Channel that divides her
native isle of Britain from the shores of Gallia. And in those days
nobody had ever heard of a real gentlewoman who was not very seriously
incommoded, if not absolutely indisposed, at sea.
Conceive, then, my Aunt Julietta upon this smoothest of crossings,
being dreadfully prostrated by the malady of the wave. Imagine her
flattening her bridal bonnet--a sweet thing in drawn peach-blossom
satin, with a wreath of orange-blooms inside the brim--into a
cocked hat against the stalwart shoulder of her martial lord, as
she reiterated agitated entreaties to be taken immediately on
shore--picture her subsiding, in all the elegance of her flounced
plaid poplin--a charming thing in large checks of pink, brown, and
bottle-green--and her mantle of beaver-trimmed _casimir_, into a
mere wisp of seasick humanity, distinguishable afterwards as a
moaning bundle of shawls--prone upon a red plush sofa in a saloon
cabin--ministered to by a stewardess with brandy-and-water and
smelling-salts.
While the _Britannia’s_ other first-class passengers gathered for
the one o’clock dinner about the long table in the adjoining saloon,
whence the clashing of knives and forks and the robust savors of the
leg of boiled mutton with caper sauce, turnips, and potatoes--the
porter and ale that washed these down; the apple-pudding that followed,
and the Dutch cheese that came in with the materials for gin-hot and
whisky-toddy--penetrated to the sufferer, moaning on the other side of
the dividing partition of painted planks.
You may imagine that the bridegroom--placed upon the right hand of
the _Britannia’s_ commander at the head of the board, made tremendous
havoc among the eatables; disposed of pewter after pewter of foaming
ale; hobnobbed with the more jovial of the male passengers in bumpers
of whisky-toddy; cracked broad jokes, and roared at them loudest of
all; and capped the skipper’s thrilling recital of how, in 1830, when
First Officer, and on his way to join his steamer at Southampton, he
had nearly been pressed for service in the Royal Navy, and had, armed
solely with a carpet-bag, containing a log-book and some heavy nautical
instruments, done battle with and escaped from the clutches of a gang
of crimps and man-catchers;--by relating, with much circumstantial
detail, and to the breathless interest of his auditors, the story of
how he, Captain Goliath M’Creedy, had backed himself to kill “tree
rass” with his “teet” in emulation of the Adjutant’s “ould turrabred
bull-bitch Fury,” and had “shuk the squale” out of the last remaining
victim thirty seconds under the five minutes. “To the chune of ten
guineas and six dozen of the foinust clarrut that ever a gentleman put
down his troat!”