Several weeks passed by and, as Colonel Baskerville had predicted,
nothing was left undone to make Archy feel how desirable a position Lord
Bellingham's grandson and heir would hold. Every afternoon his
grandfather sent for him, and talked long and interestingly to him,
telling of the early days at the court of George II., describing
splendid court functions to him, and impressing upon him with great art
the important position that the Baron of Bellingham would always hold,
both socially and politically--for Lord Bellingham had the disposal of
three seats in Parliament.
Archy listened attentively enough, but the effect of much that he heard
was directly the contrary of what his grandfather expected. Archy was
quite sharp enough to realize that many of the usual advantages of rank
did not appeal to him, while its restrictions were almost intolerable.
He saw that the possession of a great name and estate, and all the vast
privileges of a peer in the eighteenth century, had only intensified
all of his grandfather's faults, his violent temper, his dictatorial
disposition--and had neutralized his talents, which were considerable.
The sight of an irritable, eccentric old man leading a life of perfect
solitude, estranged from all his family except his half-brother, and
using every art of cajolery to make himself tolerable to his only
grandson, was not an inspiring one to a boy of Archy Baskerville's high
and daring spirit and inborn love of adventure.
Nevertheless, Lord Bellingham showed signs of softening, which were more
surprising to Colonel Baskerville and the rest of his household than to
Archy, who had seen really the best of him. He seemed to take a
melancholy interest in hearing of Langton's many fine qualities and
personal charm--and one day, after a long conversation with Archy, Lord
Bellingham said, almost as if talking to himself:
"My poor daughter--what misery to lose such a son!"
A day or two after that Colonel Baskerville said to Archy, in his usual
kind but curt manner:
"You have done a good thing in speaking of Langton to your grandfather.
He has this day written to his daughter--the first time for twenty
years. He is really becoming quite human."
Lord Bellingham, however, seemed to be ashamed of any soft or generous
impulse, and harangued Archy upon the subject of his daughter and her
son as if the real sorrow was not Langton's death, but the loss of a
possible heir to the Bellingham estates--and as for the title, he seemed
to regard Archy's indifference to it as something sacrilegious.
"All titles are not honorable, sir," said Archy. "There is Sir Henry
Clinton, the British commander at New York. He is called the Prince of
Blunderers. Nothing pleasant about that, sir."
Lord Bellingham showed his appreciation of this news about Sir Henry
Clinton by giving a savage kick to a chair near him, which in its turn
knocked over a table with candles on it, and only Archy's quickness
prevented a fire on the spot. When quiet was restored, this young
American, in perfect good faith, and thinking himself rather a clever
fellow for hitting upon a solution of the question of the estates, came
near bringing a hurricane of wrath down on himself.
"There are two girls, sir. Langton has often told me of his sisters,
and you could give the estates to them."
"Girls!" almost shrieked Lord Bellingham, and then relapsed into a state
of silent fury at the idea that Bellingham should go to two girls. Archy
looked deeply hurt at the way his remark had been received, and left his
grandfather's presence with an air of haughtiness ridiculously like the
old man's, which caused Colonel Baskerville to laugh heartily at the
scene. But Archy made no more suggestions as to the disposition of the
Bellingham estates.
At the end of December the assizes were held at York, and Lord
Bellingham, as Lord-lieutenant of the North Riding, was to attend them
in state.
"And I should be glad, my dear Archibald, to have your company in the
coach," said the old gentleman, in a tone of dulcet softness, having
forgiven Archy his maladroit speech.
Archy, who would walk ten miles any day to see a fine show, readily
agreed. Nothing was said about clothes; but when Archy carefully
examined his blue uniform that night, he found that it was indeed on its
last legs. His elbows were out, his knees were but little better, and,
worse than all, he was shooting up so tall and filling out so fast that
he had completely outgrown both jacket and trousers. There was no help
for it; Archy laid his beloved shabby uniform away carefully, and next
morning appeared at breakfast in the handsome brown riding-suit.
Colonel Baskerville noted it with an approving nod.
"I fully reckoned on your getting a broken head, sooner or later, for
wearing your American uniform. It was foolhardy; but I perceive, nephew,
you are inclined to be foolhardy."
"The French, sir, called Captain Jones foolhardy when he sailed into the
narrow seas with the _Ranger_ sloop, and they had fifty-five sail of the
line holding on to their anchors at L'Orient; but he came back all safe,
and brought the _Drake_ with him. And they said he was worse than
foolhardy when he went out in the poor old _Bon Homme Richard_; but he
came back again, and that time he brought the _Serapis_--huzza!" Here
Archy got up and cut a pigeon-wing, nearly upsetting Diggory with a tray
full of cups and saucers.
"Let me tell you one thing, young man," remarked Colonel Baskerville,
coolly; "you have a very clever trick of always having the last word,
but don't imagine for a moment that it proves you are always right.
Clever tricks count for but little in the long-run."
Archy went into a brown-study at this remark, and at the end of ten
minutes came out of it to say:
"Uncle, I believe you know a great deal, one way and another."
"Hear! hear!" said Colonel Baskerville, sarcastically. "A young
gentleman not yet seventeen gracefully admits that a man three times his
age actually knows something! You amaze me, nephew."
"I don't admit that I don't know anything," stoutly protested Archy.
"Far from it, my dear boy. You know more now than you ever will, if you
live to be a hundred. Every year of your life you will know less--in
your own estimation, that is. But at present you have nothing to learn."
At which Archy laughed rather sheepishly, and went on with his
breakfast.
Immediately after breakfast the splendid coach-and-four, with outriders,
was drawn up at the main entrance, and Lord Bellingham appeared,
magnificently dressed, with his breast covered with orders, and a
diamond-hilted sword on his hip. He entered the coach, taking the
middle of the back seat, while Colonel Baskerville and Archy sat facing
him.
It was a beautifully clear December morning, and when the horses took
the road through the park at a rattling gait, it was exhilarating in the
highest degree. Colonel Baskerville's plain but kindly face lighted up,
and even Lord Bellingham seemed to feel a briskness in the blood. But
Archy grew unaccountably grave. He had an indefinable feeling that he
was leaving it all for the last time, and caught himself involuntarily
looking around at the gray old castle on the hill, the slopes of the
park on which the red deer stood peacefully feeding, the low chain of
blue hills in the distance, as if he were saying farewell to them--nor
could he shake off this singular impression during the whole drive.
At the park gates they were joined by the mounted yeomanry, and every
parish they passed through sent its quota, until, when they reached the
old minster city of York, they had a great cavalcade behind them. The
venerable town was in holiday garb. The trainbands were out, with fife
and drum; the sheriffs and lord-lieutenants of all three ridings were
present in state; and the judges in their robes awaited the forming of
the procession to the assize hall.
The life, the color, the masses of people who filled the picturesque
streets of the beautiful old town, were captivating to Archy--but what
amazed him most was to see a number of man-o'-warsmen about. He was not
long in finding out that there was a large fleet at the mouth of the
Humber, and these were liberty men who had come to York in wagons to
spend their few hours of shore time.
But Archy was himself a sailor, and he began to consider that captains
were not wont to allow men so far inland merely for a day's holiday, and
the presence of several officers threw a flood of light on the question.
"They are press-gangs," he thought to himself. "The fleet, I have heard,
is short-handed, and they have selected some of the trustiest fellows
and sent them here with their officers, and many a stout countryman will
sleep to-morrow night on one of his Majesty's ships."
But Archy soon became so taken up with the splendid pageant of opening
the assizes that he forgot the sailors for the time. The highwayman and
his accomplice, the coachman of the Comet, were to be tried at that
term, but Archy soon found that the trial would not come off until the
next day, and his testimony would not be wanted until then. All was
grand and imposing until the prisoners were brought in, but the sight of
so much misery and wickedness smote the boy to the heart, and he quickly
left the favored position he occupied in the hall, and went out and
walked about the streets.
The sitting of the Court was unusually prolonged, and the short December
day was rapidly closing in before the procession was again formed, with
something less of state, to return to the grand dinner served to the
judges and all the great functionaries. In the evening there was to be a
splendid assize ball, and while wretches were bemoaning the sentences of
death or transportation they had received, and trembling prisoners
waited in anguish the coming of their turn of trial, a splendid company
assembled for the ball. But the same strange feeling of oppression still
hung upon Archy. The sights he had seen were very brilliant, but there
was something in the very word Assize that sobered him.
After dinner he slipped quietly away from Colonel Baskerville, and
joining the crowd outside the noble building where the ball was to be
held, watched the assembling of the guests. Among the last to come was
his grandfather. Never had Lord Bellingham looked more superb than when
he descended from his coach, bowing right and left to the cheering
crowd. He was an unpopular man, a hard landlord, and overbearing to his
equals--but he was noble to look at, and the unthinking crowd cheered
him because of that.
Archy felt no inclination to enter the ballroom then, and wrapping his
cloak around him, he sauntered away into the distant streets, now silent
and deserted under the quiet stars.
He was thinking deeply and rather sadly--trying to imagine how his
father had walked those streets twenty years before--recalling Langton,
and pitying his grandfather's coming loneliness when both he and Colonel
Baskerville left him--for he had made up his mind to go to London with
Colonel Baskerville shortly, and to see what his prospects of exchange
were. He wandered on and on, until he found himself in a remote corner
of the town, opposite a quaint, old-fashioned inn, its spacious tap-room
opening on a level with the street.
Inside were a number of sailors and countrymen, and slightly separated
from them, in little box-like compartments, were two or three naval
officers. Archy was surprised at this at first, but he soon reasoned it
out for himself.
"It is a regular raid they are planning," he thought, "and the officers
are there to quietly direct. Oh, there will be a love of a scrimmage!"
and this notion proving very enticing, Archy entered, and calling for
bread and cheese and ale, seated himself in one of the little boxes by
the fire.
The landlady, a handsome, middle-aged woman, and her three buxom
daughters, he soon guessed were in the plot with the officers, who spent
their money freely, and kept the landlord and all his assistants on the
trot. One party at a table particularly attracted his attention. There
were half a dozen sailors who let on, in their characteristically
imprudent way, that they had lately been paid off at Plymouth, and being
north-country men, were on their way home to see their relatives instead
of spending their money in riot and dissipation in Plymouth and London.
One of them, a hale, handsome, well-made man of about fifty,
particularly struck Archy's eye.
"You won't stand much of a chance, my fine fellow, with a press-gang,"
thought Archy, admiring the old sailor's brawny figure and fine,
sailor-like air, "nor your mates either, and if I were out on a press
for men I don't know but I would be as quick to nab you as anybody."
Besides the main door, there was another door opening upon a corridor
that led to the court-yard, and through this corridor passed the
landlord and his wife and daughters, and the waiters, serving the
guests. Presently Archy saw an officer get up nonchalantly, open the
door slightly, then close it, and the landlady quietly barred and locked
it. Archy, however, had a momentary glimpse down the corridor, and he
caught sight of a huge covered wagon, with four horses, drawn up in the
court-yard.
Five minutes afterwards every light went out like magic, leaving only
the half-light of a blazing sea-coal fire; the front door was clapped
to, and as if by a preconcerted effort a dozen sailors dashed at the
seafaring men seated at the middle table, others made a rush for several
countrymen quietly munching bread and cheese, and a general mêlée was in
order.
After the first moment of surprise, the sailors did not have it all
their own way, and a tremendous uproar followed. It seemed to be quite
free from any of the enmities of a fight, though, and the landlord,
standing off impartially, grinned, while the landlady and her three
daughters seemed to consider it the height of a frolic. The three
officers on the edge of the struggling crowd shouted out orders, and
several brawny countrymen were secured after a hard scuffle. But the
sailors at the middle table were used to that sort of thing, and it was
plain that the press-gang had its work cut out to capture these men. The
next thing they did, after fighting off the first onslaught, was to
throw themselves like a battering-ram against the door leading to the
corridor, the main door being much too heavy and too securely fastened
for them to break it down. The corridor door gave way with a crash as
they hurled themselves against it, but a dozen sailors rushed to it, and
fought them back step by step. The men, led by the handsome old fellow
that Archy had admired, held their ground stoutly, but they were slowly
driven back from the door, only to intrench themselves behind the long
tables, where, brandishing chairs, shovels and tongs, sticks, and
anything else they could lay hold of, they jeered at the sailors with
cutlasses, and dared them to come on.
"Catch that old fellow, my lads--he's the best topman in the service,"
bawled one of the officers, and in response to this half a dozen men
surrounded the old sailor, who, armed with the kitchen poker, made it
fly around like a flail. During all this uproar and confusion Archy had
sat still in his corner, a perfectly disinterested observer; but when he
saw a young sailor suddenly begin to crawl under the table to seize the
old man by the legs, Archy could not remain neutral another minute. He
made a dash at the young fellow, and, seizing him by the legs in turn,
immediately found himself in the thick of the fight.
The men who were to be pressed, encouraged by their new recruit, who
yelled out, "Stick to it, my lads! Don't let 'em take you against your
will!" made a sortie from behind the table, valiantly led by Archy with
his sword; but this rash proceeding proved disastrous--they were quickly
overpowered by numbers, and every one of them finally captured. They
made a desperate fight for their new ally, and protected him to the end,
the old sailor being the last to succumb; but when Archy's fortunes
seemed most desperate, he suddenly found a friend in the landlady.
"Hey, there!" exclaimed this sturdy Amazon. "Let the young gentleman
alone. He ain't no man for a press-gang!" And with that she pushed her
way between the struggling, shouting men, and, planting herself firmly
before Archy, cried out, brandishing a canister of snuff she had
snatched off the mantel-piece, "The first man as lays hold on this here
young gentleman gets snuff in his eyes. And you, Hizzy, Betsy, and
Nancy, come here and help me to keep this sweet young gentleman out o'
the way o' them murderin' ruffians, bad luck to 'em!"
[Illustration: THE LANDLADY STOOD BETWEEN ARCHY AND THE OFFICER]
Hizzy, Betsy, and Nancy, three great, strapping girls, each bigger than
Archy, ran forward at this. Hizzy, pulling out a table-drawer and
handing a rolling-pin to Betsy and another to Nancy, armed herself with
a tremendous pair of shears, and, marching to her mother's side,
prepared to defend "the sweet young gentleman."
The officers and men, disconcerted for a moment by the sudden move on
the part of the women, fell back, laughing.
"Please, sir," said one of the sailors, with a broad grin, to the
officers, "we knows how to fight men, but we ain't used to handlin'
women--and we leaves 'em to our betters."
The landlady, who had heretofore made no objection to the rumpus going
on, now suddenly discovered that it was a very outrageous proceeding,
and began to harangue at the top of her lungs.
"Nice goings on, this, for a respectable tavern! Next thing we'll be up
afore a justice and have our license took away! And arter takin' away
our customers, peaceable men as pays their score, you wants to nab with
your beastly press-gang a beautiful young gentleman, with a handsome
cloak and silk stockings. But never you mind, my darlin', we'll keep
them murderin' ruffians off and send you home to your lady mother"--this
last to the hero of this tale, who, in his heart, somewhat resented the
language of his rescuers.
"Madam," explained one of the officers, in a tone of the mildest
argument, "we are exceedingly sorry to cause your ladyship and your
ladyship's lovely daughters any inconvenience, but that young gentleman
we mean to have, to serve as we please, for his insolence in daring to
resist the King's officers; so here goes"--and at this he made a dash
forward, and, seizing the landlady round the waist, attempted to drag
her away. But the Amazon, as good as her word, gave him a shower of
snuff in the face. His two brother officers, coming to his rescue, were
so unmercifully whacked on the head with the rolling-pins in the hands
of Betsy and Nancy, while Hizzy jabbed at them with the shears, that
they soon found it prudent to retire amid the roars of laughter of both
victors and vanquished. They presently returned to the charge; and now
beheld Mr. Archibald Baskerville, late midshipman on the continental
ship _Bon Homme Richard_, dodging back and forth behind the women's
petticoats, and always managing to keep the buxom form of one of their
ladyships, as the officer had called them, between him and his
assailants. Meanwhile, what with the scuffle, the sneezing from the
snuff which the landlady had so freely distributed, and the roars of
laughter with which the combat was witnessed, the cries and shouts,
there was a noise like Bedlam; but Archy, anxiously dodging hither and
yon, found nothing to laugh at in his somewhat grotesque circumstances.
The fight was desperate, the manoeuvring masterly--but, at last, a young
lieutenant with a long arm seized Archy from behind Hizzy's skirts, and
giving him a clip on the ear, he suddenly fell over, and the world
became a blank to him; he heard not another sound and knew nothing more
of the fight with the press-gang.