THE PARLOUR-LODGER
There was a tolerably snug parlour under the roof of the Fox and Fiddle,
notwithstanding that its dimensions were small, its floor uneven, and its
ceiling so low that a solitary inmate could not but feel enlivened by
the company of the landlord’s family, who inhabited the rooms overhead.
This apartment, which was usually occupied by some skipper from beyond
seas, put forward certain claims to magnificence as well as comfort;
and although the vaguest attempts at cleanliness seemed to have been
suppressed, there was no little pretension apparent in the furniture, the
chimney ornaments, and the “History of the Prodigal Son” on the walls.
China shepherdesses stood on the mantelpiece, surmounted by the backbone
of a shark. Two gilt chairs, with frayed velvet cushions, supported an
unframed representation of a three-decker, with every available sail set,
and British colours flying at the main, stemming a grass-green sea, under
a sky of intense blue. A contracted square of real Turkey carpet covered
a few feet in the middle, and the rest of the floor, ornamented at
regular intervals by spittoons, stood inch-deep in dust. The hearth could
not have been swept for days, nor the smouldering fire raked out for
hours; but on a mahogany sideboard, that had obviously sustained at least
one sea-voyage, stood a dozen different drinking-measures, surrounding a
punch-bowl capacious enough to have baptized a full-grown pirate.
The occupant of this chamber was sitting at the table engrossed by a task
that seemed to tax all his energies and employ his whole attention. He
was apparently no adept at accounts, and every time he added a column
afresh, and found its result differed from his previous calculation, he
swore a French oath in a whisper and began again. It was nearly dusk
before the landlord came in with the candles, when his guest looked up,
as if much relieved at a temporary interruption of work.
Butter-faced Bob was a plausible fellow enough, well fitted for the
situation he filled, crimp, publican, free-trader, and, on occasion,
receiver of stolen goods. From the seaman in the tap, to the skipper in
the parlour, he prided himself on his facility in making conversation to
his customers, saying the right thing to each; or, as he expressed it,
“oiling the gear so as the crank should work easy.”
Setting down the candles, therefore, he proceeded to lubrication without
delay.
“Sorry shall we be to lose ye, Captain! and indeed it will drive me out
of the public line at last, to see the way as the best o’ friends must
part. My dame, she says to me, it was but this blessed day as I set down
to my nooning, says she, Bob, says she, whatever we shall do when the
Captain’s gone foreign, says she, I, for one, can’t tell no more than the
dead. You step round to the quay, says she, when you’ve a-taken a drink,
and see if ‘The Bashful Maid’ ha’n’t histed her blue-Peter at the fore,
and the Captain he’ll make a fair wind o’ this here sou’-wester, see if
he won’t, and maybe weigh at the ebb; an’ it’ll break my heart, let alone
the chil’en’s, to wish him a good voyage, it will. She’s about ready for
sea, Captain, _now_; I see them gettin’ the fresh water aboard myself.”
The Captain, as his host called him, smiled good-humouredly.
“Your dame will have many a better lodger than I have been, Bob,” said
he, fixing his bold eyes on the landlord, which the latter, who never
seemed comfortable under an honest man’s gaze, avoided by peering into
every corner of the room; “one that will stay longer with you, and
entertain more friends than I have done. What of that? The heaviest purse
makes the best lodger, and the highest score, the merriest landlord, at
every hostelry in Europe. Well, I shall be ready for sea now, when I’ve
got my complement; but I’m not going to cruise in the”—here the speaker
stopped short and corrected himself—“not going to cruise _anywhere_,
short-handed.”
Bob’s eyes glistened, and he stole a look in the Captain’s face.
“How many would you be wanting?” said he, cautiously, “and where would
they have to serve? First-class men is very bad to get hereaway, just
now.”
“If I had a gunner, a boatswain’s-mate, and a good captain of the
foretop, I’d weigh next tide, and chance it,” replied the other,
cheerfully, but his chin fell while his eye rested on the pile of
accounts, and he wondered how he could ever comb them into shape for
inspection.
Bob thought of the seamen still drinking in his tap-room, and the
obviously low state of their finances. It would work he decided, but it
must be done under three influences, viz., beer, secrecy, and caution.
“Captain,” said he, shutting the door carefully, “I’d rather do you
a turn than any lodger I’ve had yet. If I can help you to a hand or
two, I’m the man as’ll do it. You’ll be willing to pay the expenses, I
suppose?”
The Captain did not appear totally inexperienced in such matters, for,
on asking the amount and receiving for answer a sum that would have
purchased all the stock of liquors in the house over and over again, he
showed neither indignation nor surprise, but observed quietly—
“Able seamen, of course?”
“Of course!” repeated Bob. “Honour, you know, Captain, honour!” If he had
added “among thieves,” he would none the less clearly have expressed the
situation. Reflecting for a moment, he approached his guest and whispered
in his ear, “For the account?”
“Ask me no questions,” answered the Captain, significantly. “You know as
well as I do that your price covers everything. Is it a bargain?”
“That would make a difference, you see, Captain,” urged Bob, determined
to get all he could. “It’s not what it used to be, and the Government
is uncommon hard upon a look-out man now, if he makes a mistake in the
colours of a prize. In King James’s time, I’ve seen the gentlemen-rovers
drinking at this very table with the mayor and the magistrates, ay, and
sending up their compliments and what not, maybe, to the Lord-Lieutenant
himself. Why, that very mug as you see there was given me by poor
Captain Delaval; quite the gentleman he was! An’ he made no secret
where he took it from, nor how they cut the Portuguese chap’s throat
as was drinking from it in the after-cabin. And now, it’s as likely as
not the Whigs would hang a man in chains for such a thing. I tell you,
Captain, the hands don’t fancy it. They can’t cruise a mile along-shore
without running foul of a gibbet with a pi—I mean, with a skeleton on
it, rattling and grinning as if he was alive. It makes a difference,
Captain—it makes a difference!”
“Take it or leave it,” replied the other, looking like a man who had made
his highest bid, which no consideration would induce him to increase by a
shilling.
Bob evidently thought so. “A bargain be it,” said he, with a villainous
smile on his shining face, and muttering something about his wish to
oblige a customer and the high respect he entertained for his guest’s
character, in all its relations, public, private, and nautical, he
shambled out of the room, leaving the latter to tackle once more with his
accounts.
A shade of melancholy crossed the Captain’s brow, deeper and darker than
was to be attributed to the unwelcome nature of his employment or the
sombre surroundings of his position. The light of two tallow-candles,
by which he worked was not indeed enlivening, bringing into indistinct
relief the unsightly furniture and the gloomy pictures on the walls.
The yard-dog, too, behind the house, had not entirely discontinued his
lamentations, and the dip and wash of a retiring tide upon the shingle
no farther off than the end of the street was like the voice from some
unearthly mourner in its solemn and continuous wail. It told of lonely
nights far out on the wild dark sea; of long shifting miles of surf
thundering in pitiless succession on the ocean shore; of mighty cliffs
and slabs of dripping rock, flinging back their defiance to the gale in
the spray of countless hungry, leaping waves, that toss and madden round
their prey ere she breaks up and goes to pieces in the storm. More than
all, it told of desolation, and doubt, and danger, and death, and the
uncertainty beyond.
But to him, sitting there between the candles, his head bent over his
work, it seemed the voice of a counsellor and a friend. Each wave that,
fuller than ordinary, circled up with a fiercer lash, to ebb with a
louder, angrier, and more protracted hiss, seemed to brighten the man’s
face, and he listened like a prisoner who knows the step that leads him
out to life, and liberty, and love. At such times he would glance round
the room, congratulating himself that his charts, his instruments, his
telescope, were all safe on board, and perhaps, would rise, take a turn
or two, and open the window-shutter for a consoling look at a certain
bright speck in the surrounding darkness, which might be either in earth,
or sea, or air, and was indeed the anchor-light in the foretop of his
ship. Then he would return, refreshed and comforted, to his accounts.
He was beginning to hope he had really got the better of these, and had
so far succeeded that two consecutive columns permitted themselves to be
added up with an appearance of probability, when an unusually long-drawn
howl from the house-dog, following the squeak of a fiddle, distracted him
from his occupation, and provoked him to swear once more in a foreign
tongue.
It was difficult to make calculations, involving a thousand
probabilities, with that miserable dog howling at regular intervals.
It was impossible to speculate calmly on the value of his cargo, the
quantity of his powder, and the chances of peace and war. While he sat
there he knew well enough that his letters of marque would bear him out
in pouncing on any unfortunate merchantman he could come across under
Spanish colours, but there had been whispers of peace in London, and the
weekly news-letter (substitute for our daily paper), read aloud that
afternoon in the coffee-house round the corner, indorsed the probability
of these rumours. By the time he reached his cruising-ground, the treaty
might have been signed which would change a privateer into a pirate, and
the exploit that would earn a man his knighthood this week might swing
him at his own yard-arm the next. In those times, however, considerable
latitude, if not allowed, was at least claimed by these kindred
professions, and the calculator in the parlour of the Fox and Fiddle
seemed unlikely to be over-scrupulous in the means by which he hoped to
attain his end.
He had resolved on earning, or winning, or taking, such a sum of money
as would render him independent of fortune for life. He had an object in
this which he deemed worthy of any sacrifice he could offer. Therefore he
had fitted out and freighted his brigantine partly at his own expense,
partly at that of certain confiding merchants in Leadenhall Street, so as
to combine the certain gains of a peaceful trader with the more hazardous
venture of a licensed sea-robber who takes by the strong hand. If the
license should expire before his rapacity was satisfied, he would affect
ignorance while he could, and when that was no longer practicable, throw
off all disguise and hoist the black flag openly at the main.
To this end he had armed his brigantine with the heaviest guns she could
carry; had taken in store of provisions, water, spare tackle, gunpowder,
pistols, cutlasses, and musquetoons; had manned her with the best seamen
and wildest spirits he could lay hands on. These items had run up a
considerable bill. He was now preparing a detailed statement of the cost,
for the information of his friends in Leadenhall Street.
And all this time, had he only known it, fortune was preparing for him,
without effort on his part, the independence he would risk life and
character to gain. That very sou’-wester wailing up the narrow street was
rattling the windows of a castle on a hill hundreds of miles away, and
disturbing the last moments of a dying man in his lordly bed-chamber; was
driving before it, over a bleak, barren moor, pelting storms of rain to
drench the cloaked and booted heir, riding post to reach that death-bed;
sowing in a weak constitution the seeds of an illness that would allow
him but a brief enjoyment of his inheritance; and the next in succession,
the far-off cousin, was making up his accounts in the humble parlour of a
seaport pot-house, because he was to sail for the Spanish main with the
next tide.
“One, two, tree!”—thump—“one, two, tree!”—thump—“_Balancez! Chassez. Un,
deux, trois!_” Thump after thump, louder and heavier than before. The
rafters shook, the ceiling quivered. The Captain rose, irritated and
indignant, to call fiercely for the landlord.
Butter-faced Bob, anticipating a storm, wisely turned a deaf ear,
ensconcing himself in the back kitchen, whence he refused to emerge.
The Captain shouted again, and receiving no answer walked into the
passage.
“Stow that noise!” he hallooed from the foot of the half-dozen wooden
steps that led to the upper floor. “Who is to get any business done with
a row like that going on aloft, as if the devil was dead and the ship
gone overboard?” The Captain’s voice was powerful and his language plain,
but the only reply he received was a squeak from the fiddle, a wail from
the dog, and a “One, two, tree”—thump—louder than ever.
His patience began to fail.
“Zounds! man,” he broke out; “will you leave off that cursed noise, or
must I come up and _make_ you?”
Then the fiddle stopped, the dog was silent, and children’s voices were
heard laughing heartily.
The last sound would have appeased the Captain had his wrath been ever so
high, but a strange, puzzled expression overspread his features while he
received the following answer in an accent that denoted the speaker was
no Englishman.
“You are a rude, gross man. I sall continue my instructions to my
respectable young friends in the dance wizout your permission.
_Monsieur_, you are insolent. _Tiens!_”
The last word carried with it such an amount of anger, defiance, and
contempt as can only be conveyed in that monosyllable by a Frenchman. The
Captain’s frown changed to a broad smile, but he affected wrath none the
less, while he exclaimed in a coarse, sailor-like voice—
“Insolent! you dancing dog of a Mounseer! Insolent! I’ll teach _you_
manners afore I’ve done with you. If you don’t drop it _now_, this
instant, I’ll come aloft in a pig’s whisper, and pull you down by the
ears!”
“Ears! _Les oreilles!_” repeated the voice above stairs, in a tone
of repressed passion, that seemed to afford his antagonist intense
amusement. “_Soyez tranquil, mes enfants._ My children, do not derange
yourselves. Sir, you have insulted me; you have insulted my society. You
shall answer me. _Monsieur! vous allez me rendre raison!_”
Thus speaking, the dancing-master, for such was the foreign gentleman
whose professional avocations the parlour-lodger had interrupted, made
his appearance at the head of the stairs, with a small fiddle under
his arm and a sheathed rapier in his hand; the passage below was quite
dark, but the light from an open door behind him brought his figure into
relief, whilst the skipper, on the contrary, remained unseen in the
gloom. Notwithstanding that the one was in a towering passion, the other
shook with suppressed laughter.
“Come on,” he shouted roughly, though he could scarce command his voice,
adding in a more natural tone, and with a perfect French accent—“_On
prétend, dans les Mousquetaires du Roi, que Monsieur est de la première
force pour l’epée!_”
The effect was instantaneous. With one spring the dancing-master was upon
him, kissing both his cheeks, hugging him in his arms, and repeating,
with eyes full of tears—
“Captain George! Captain George! My comrade, my captain, my officer; and
I thought I was without a friend in this miserable country; without a
friend and without a _sou_! Now I have found the one, I don’t care about
the other. Oh, what happiness! What fortune! What luck!”
The former Captain of Musketeers seemed equally pleased, if in a less
demonstrative manner, at this unexpected meeting, though he had been
better prepared for so strange a termination of their dispute by his
recognition of the other’s voice before he caught sight of his figure.
Now he pulled him into the parlour, sent for Butter-faced Bob to fill the
capacious punch-bowl, pressed him into a chair with both hands on his
shoulders, and looked gravely into his face, saying—
“Eugène, I owe you my life, and I am a man who never left a debt unpaid.”