A VISITOR EXPECTED.
It was indeed Captain Derinzy who had passed up the village street.
It is needless to say that he had not heard anything of the comments
which his appearance had evoked; but had he heard them, they would not
have made the smallest difference to him. He was essentially a man of
the world, and on persons of his class these things have very little
effect. A is irretrievably involved; B has outwritten himself; C is
much too intimate with Mrs. D; while D is ruining that wretched young
E at _écarté_--so at least say Y and Z; but the earlier letters of
the alphabet do not care much about it. They know that the world must
be always full of shaves and _cancans_, and, like men versed in the
great art of living, they know they must have their share of them, and
know how to take them. Captain Derinzy passed up the village street
without bestowing one single thought upon that street's inhabitants,
or indeed upon anything or anybody within a hundred miles of
Beachborough. He looked utterly incongruous to the place, and he felt
utterly incongruous to it, and if he were recalled to the fact of its
existence, or of his existence in it, by his accidentally slipping over
one of the round knobbly stones which supplied the place of a footway,
or having to step across one of the wide self-made sluices which,
coming from the cottages, discharged themselves into the common kennel,
all he did was to wish it heartily at the devil; an aspiration which he
uttered in good round rich tones, and without any heed to the feelings
of such lookers-on as might be present.
See him now, as he steps off the knobbly pavement and strikes across
the road, making for the greensward of the cliff, and unconsciously
becoming bathed in a halo of sunset glory in his progress. A thin man,
of fifty years of age, of middle height, with a neat trim figure,
and one of his legs rather lame, with a spare, sallow, fleshless
face, high cheek-boned, lantern-jawed, bright black eyes, straight
nose, thin lips, not overshadowed, but outlined rather, by a very
small crisp black moustache. His hair is blue-black in tint and wiry
in substance, so much at least of it as can be seen under a rather
heavy brown sombrero hat, which he wears perched on one side of his
head in rather a jaunty manner. His dress, a suit of some light-gray
material, is well cut, and perfectly adapted for the man and the place;
and his boots are excellently made, and fit his small natty feet to
perfection. His ungloved hands are lithe and brown; in one of them he
carries a crook-headed cane, with which--a noticeable peculiarity--he
fences and makes passes at such posts and palings as he encounters on
his way. That he was a gentleman born and bred you could have little
doubt; little doubt from his carriage of himself, and an indescribable,
unmistakable something, that he was, or had been, a military man; no
doubt at all that he was entirely out of place in Beachborough, and
that he was bored out of his existence.
Captain Derinzy passed the little road, which was ankle-deep in white
sandy dust, save where the overflowings of the kennel had worked
it into thick flaky mud, hopped nimbly, albeit lamely, over the
objectionable parts, and when he reached the other side, and stood
upon the short crisp turf leading up to the cliff, looked at the soles
of his boots, shook his head, and swore aloud. Considerably relieved
by this proceeding, he made his way slowly and gently up the ascent,
pausing here and there, less from want of breath than from sheer
absolute boredom. Rambling quietly on in his own easy-going fashion,
now fencing at a handrail, now making a one, two, three sword-exercise
cut, and finally demolishing a sprouting field-flower, he took some
time to reach the top of the cliff. When there he looked carefully
about him for a clean dry spot, and, having found one, dropped gently
down at full length, and comfortably reclining his head on his arm,
looked round him.
It was high-tide below, and the calmest and softest of silver summer
seas was breaking in the gentlest ripple on the beach, and against
the base of the high chalk cliff whereon he lay. The entrance to the
little bay was marked by a light line of foam-crested breakers, beyond
which lay a broad stretch of heaving ocean; but the bay itself was
"oily calm," its breast dotted here and there with fishing-luggers
outward-bound for the night's service, their big tan sails gleaming
lightly and picturesquely in the red beams of the setting sun. Faintly,
very faintly, from below rose the cries of the boatmen--hoarse
monotonous calls, which had accompanied such and such acts of labour
for centuries, and had been taught by sire to son, and practised from
time immemorial. But the silence around the man outstretched on the
cliffs top was unbroken save by the occasional cry of the seafowl,
wheeling round and round above his head, and swooping down into their
habitation holes, with which the chalk-face was honeycombed. As he lay
there idly watching, the sun, a great blood-red globe of fire, sank
into the sea, leaving behind it a halo of light, in which the strips of
puff-cloud hovering over the horizon--here light, thin, and vaporous,
there heavy, dense, and opaque--assumed eccentric outlines, and
deadened to one gorgeous depth of purple. There were very few men who
would have been insensible to the loveliness of the surroundings--very
few but would have been impressed under such circumstances with a sense
of the beauty of Nature and the beneficence of Providence. Captain
Derinzy was one of these few. He saw it all, marked it all, looked at
it leisurely and critically through half-shut eyes, as though scanning
some clever picture or some scene at the theatre. Then, quietly
dropping his head back upon his hand, he gave a prolonged yawn, and
said quietly to himself, "Oh, dam!"
"Oh, dam!" Sun and sea and sky, purple clouds, foam-crested
breakwaters, tan sails sunset-gilded, yohoing boatmen, nest-seeking
curlews, hoary cliff. "Oh, dam!" But that was not all. Lazily lying at
full length, lazily picking blades of grass, lazily nibbling them, and
lazily spitting them from his mouth, he said in a quaintly querulous
tone:
"Beastly place! How I hate it! Beastly sea, and all that kind of thing;
and those fellows going away in their beastly boats, smelling of
fish and oil and grease, and beastliness, and wearing greasy woollen
nightcaps, and smoking beastly strong tobacco in their foul pipes; and
then people draw them, and write about them, and call them romantic,
and all such cussed twaddle! Why the deuce ain't they clean and
neat, and why don't they dance about, and sing like those fellows in
_Masaniello_? And--Oh Lord! _Masaniello_! I didn't think I should even
have remembered the name of anything decent in this infernal place!
What's the time now?" looking at his watch. "Nearly eight. Gad! fancy
having had a little dinner at the Windham, or, better still, at the
Coventry, where they say that fellow--what's his name?--Francatelli,
is so good, and then dropping down to the Opera to hear Cruvelli
and Lablache, or the new house which Poyntz wrote me about--Covent
Garden--where Grisi and Mario and the lot have gone! Fancy my never
having seen the new house! Dammy! I shall become a regular fogey if I
stop in this infernal hole much longer. And not as if I were stopping
for myself either! If I'd been shaking a loose leg, and had outrun
the constable, or anything of that sort, I can understand a fellow
being compelled to pull up and live quiet for a bit; though there's
Boulogne, which is much handier to town, and much jollier with the
_établissement_, and plenty of _écarté_, and all that sort of thing,
to go on with. But _this_! Pooh! that's the dam folly of a man's
marrying what they call a superior woman! I suppose Gertrude's all
right; I suppose it will come off all straight; but I don't see the
particular pull for me when it does come off. Here am I wastin' the
best years of my life--and just at a time when I haven't got too many
of 'em to waste, by Jove!--just that another fellow may stand in for
a good thing. To be sure, he's my son, and there's fatherly feelings,
and all that sort of thing; but he's never done anything for me, and I
think it's rather hard he don't come and take a little of this infernal
dreariness on his own shoulders. I shall have to cut away--I know I
shall; I can't stand it much longer. I shall have to tell Gertrude--and
I never can do that, and I haven't got the pluck to cut away without
telling her, and I know she won't even let me go to old Dingo's for
the shooting in the autumn. What an ass I was ever to let myself be
swindled into coming into this beastly place! and how confoundedly I
hate it! Oh, dam! Oh, dam!"
As he concluded he raised himself lightly to his feet, and commenced
his descent of the hill as easily and jauntily as he had ascended
it. His lame leg troubled him a little, and once when he trod on a
rolling stone and nearly fell, he stopped and smiled pleasantly at the
erring foot, and shook his cane facetiously over it. As he entered the
village, he muttered to himself: "Good heavens! _du monde_, how very
interesting!" For the hours of toil were over, and the shopkeepers
and the wives of the fishermen, and such of the fisher-boys as had
not gone to sea that evening, were standing at their doors and
gossiping, or playing in the street. The lace-making girls were there
too--very pretty girls for the most part, with big black eyes and
swarthy complexions and thick blue-black hair; their birthright these
advantages, for in the old days one of the home-flying ships of the
Spanish Armada had been wrecked on the Beachborough coast, and the
saved mariners had intermarried with the village women, and transmitted
their swarthy comeliness to their posterity. As the Captain passed by,
hats were lifted and curtsies dropped, courtesy which he duly returned
by touching his sombrero with his forefinger in the military style to
the men, and by God-blessing the women and chin-chucking the girls with
great heartiness.
So on till he arrived at his own house, where he opened the door from
the outside, and entering the handsome old dining-room, was surprised
to see the table laid for four persons.
"Hallo! what's this?" he said to a woman at the other end of the room
with her back towards him. "Who is coming to dinner, Mrs. Stothard?"
"Have you forgotten?" said the woman addressed, without turning her
head. "Dr. Wainwright."
"Oh, ah!" growled Captain Derinzy, in a subdued key. "Where's Annette?"
"In her own room."
"Why don't she come down?"
"Because she's heard Dr. Wainwright is expected, and has turned sulky,
and won't move."
"Oh, dam!" said Captain Derinzy.