I
’Tis not in my nature to be cowed by any woman whatever. Therefore,
when I found myself in the presence of my Lady Hawkshaw, in her Chinese
drawing-room, with her great black eyes glaring at me, and her huge
black plume of feathers nodding at me, as she sat, enveloped in a vast
black velvet robe like a pall, I said to myself, “After all, she is
but a woman.” So I stared back at her with all the coolness in the
world--and I was a seeker after favor, too--and but fourteen years of
age, and had only seven and sixpence in my pocket. The tall footman
who stood behind Lady Hawkshaw’s chair made a grimace at me; and I
responded by a fierce look, as if I were about to run him through the
body.
“Jeames,” said her ladyship, “go and make my compliments to Sir
Peter Hawkshaw, and say to him that his roistering kept me awake half
the night, and consequently I feel very ill this morning; and that
his great-nephew, Master Richard Glyn from America, is come after a
midshipman’s warrant in his Majesty’s navy,--and I desire Sir Peter to
attend me in my _bowdwor_ immediately.”
Her ladyship’s French was the queerest imaginable,--yet in her youth
she had the French tutor who had taught the daughters of the Regent of
France.
There was a silence after the tall footman left, during which my lady
and I eyed each other closely. I remembered having heard that she had
defied her father, Lord Bosanquet, and one of the greatest family
connections in the kingdom, in order to marry Sir Peter, who was then a
penniless lieutenant in his Majesty’s navy and the son of a drysalter
in the city. This same drysalter was my great-grandfather; but I had an
infusion of another blood through my mother, God bless her!--who was
of a high family and a baronet’s daughter. The drysalter strain was
honest, but plebeian, while the baronet strain was rather more lofty
than honest, I fancy.
[Illustration: “Here is your nephew Tom’s brat.” _Page 3_]
Having heard, as I say, of the desperate struggle it cost Lady Hawkshaw
to marry her lieutenant, I somewhat expected to find her and Admiral
Sir Peter Hawkshaw living like doves in a cage, and was disconcerted
at the message her ladyship sent her lord. But I was still more
disconcerted when Sir Peter, a short, stout man, with a choleric eye,
presently bounced into the room.
“Sir Peter,” said her ladyship, “here is your nephew Tom’s brat, who
wants a midshipman’s warrant.”
Sir Peter stopped short, looked me over,--I was tall for my age,--and
grinned savagely. I thought it was all up with me and was almost ready
to haul down my flag.
“And Sir Peter,” screamed her ladyship, “he must have it!”
“Hang me, my lady!” snapped Sir Peter, “but when did you take such an
interest in my nephew Tom’s brat?”
“This very hour,” replied Lady Hawkshaw tartly, and tossing her black
plumes haughtily. “You behaved like a wretch to the boy after the
death of his father and mother in America; and God has given you the
chance to make amends, and I say he shall have his warrant.”
“Zounds, Madam!” bawled Sir Peter; “since you take the liberty of
disposing of my warrants, I presume you are the holder of my commission
as Vice-Admiral of the White in his Majesty’s service. Let me know it
if you are--let me know it, I say!”
“Stuff!” responded my lady, to which Sir Peter answered something that
sounded like “Damme!” and then my attention was distracted from this
matrimonial engagement by the silent entrance of two young girls. One
of them was about twelve years of age. She had dove-like eyes, and her
dark lashes kissed her cheek. She came and stood familiarly by Lady
Hawkshaw’s chair; and the gentle affectionateness of her manner toward
that redoubtable person amazed me at the time. This was my first sight
of Daphne Carmichael; and when she fixed her soft, childish glance
upon me, it was like the sight of stars on a cloudy night. But the
other one, a tall girl of sixteen or thereabouts, dazzled me so that
I am obliged to confess I had no more eyes for Daphne. This older girl
was the Lady Arabella Stormont, and was then and always by far the
handsomest creature I ever beheld. I shall not attempt to describe her.
I will only say that her brilliant face, with such a complexion as I
never saw before or since, showed a haughty indifference toward the
shabby boy over whom Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw were squabbling, and
the sense of my shabbiness and helplessness pierced my heart under Lady
Arabella’s calmly scornful gaze.
Both of these young girls were the great-nieces of Sir Peter Hawkshaw,
but not on the drysalter’s side, so they were no blood-relation to me.
Sir Peter was their guardian, and Lady Hawkshaw had charge of them, and
was most kind and devoted to them in her way. I soon found out that
every one of Sir Peter’s family had a good friend in Lady Hawkshaw; and
I may as well say here that for true devotion and incessant wrangling,
I never saw a married pair that equaled Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw.
The discussion between them concerning me grew hotter, and I grew as
hot as the discussion, in thinking what a figure I was making before
that divinely beautiful Lady Arabella. I had clean forgotten Daphne.
Lady Hawkshaw lugged in a great variety of extraneous matter, reminding
Sir Peter of certain awful predictions concerning his future which had
been made by the last chaplain who sailed with him. Sir Peter denounced
the chaplain as a sniveling dog. Lady Hawkshaw indulged in some French,
at which Lady Arabella laughed behind her hand.
The battle royal lasted some time longer, but Lady Hawkshaw’s metal was
plainly heavier than Sir Peter’s; and it ended by Sir Peter’s saying to
me angrily:
“Very well, sir, to oblige my lady I will give you the remaining
midshipman’s berth on the _Ajax_, seventy-four. You may go home now,
but show yourself aboard the _Ajax_ at Portsmouth, before twelve
o’clock on this day week, and be very careful to mind your eye.”
I had nerved myself to hear with coolness the refusal of this fiery
admiral; but his real kindness, disguised under so much of choler,
overcame me. I stammered something and stopped,--that hound of a
footman was grinning at me, because my eyes were full of tears,
and also, perhaps, because my coat was of cheap make, and my shoes
needed attention. But at that moment little Daphne, with the greatest
artlessness, came up and slipped her little hand into mine, saying:
“He means he is very much obliged to you, uncle, and to you, dear aunt.”
I do not know how I got out of the house, but the next thing I knew I
was standing on the street outside. I had been told to go home. I had
no home now unless the Bull-in-the-Bush tavern be one. But I did not
return to the Bull-in-the-Bush, whose tawdry splendors revolted me
now, after I had seen Sir Peter Hawkshaw’s imposing house, as much as
they had before attracted me. I was tingling with the sense of beauty
newly developed in me. I could not forget that exquisite vision of
Lady Arabella Stormont, who seemed to my boyish mind more like a white
rose-bush in full flower than anything I could call to memory. I made
my way instead to the plain, though clean lodgings, where I had spent
the years since my parents’ death, with good Betty Green, the widow of
Corporal Green, late of my father’s regiment.
These two excellent but humble creatures had brought me, an orphan,
home from my birthplace, America, consigned to Sir Peter and Lady
Hawkshaw. This woman, Betty Green, had been my mother’s devoted
servant, as her husband had been my father’s, and it was thought
perfectly safe to send me home with them. But there was a danger
which no one foresaw. Betty was one of those strange women who love
like a lioness. This lioness’ love she felt for me; and for that
reason, I believe, she deliberately planned to prevent my family
from ever getting hold of me. It is true, on landing in England, her
husband’s regiment being ordered to Winchester, she went to see Sir
Peter Hawkshaw and, I suspect, purposely made him so angry that, Lady
Hawkshaw being absent, he almost kicked Betty Green out of the house.
That is what I fancy my lady meant when she reproached Sir Peter with
cruelty to me. I well remember the air of triumph with which Betty
returned and told the corporal of her ill success; then, clasping
me in her arms, she burst out with a cry that no admiral nor ladies
nor lords neither should take her darling boy away from her. Green,
her husband, being a steady, cool-headed fellow, waited until the
paroxysm was over, when he told her plainly that she must carry out
my parents’ instructions, and he himself would go to see Sir Peter as
soon as he could. But Fate disposed of this plan by cutting short the
corporal’s life the next week, most unexpectedly. Then this woman,
Betty Green,--illiterate, a stranger in England, and supporting us both
by her daily labor,--managed to foil all of the efforts of Admiral Sir
Peter Hawkshaw to find me; for he had done all he could to discover the
whereabouts of his nephew’s orphan. ’Tis not for me to say one word
against Betty Green, for she slaved for me as only a woman can slave,
and, besides, brought me up in the habits and manners of a gentleman,
albeit she did little for my education, and to this day I am prone to
be embarrassed when I have a pen in my hand. I can not say that I was
happy in the devoted, though savage love she lavished upon me. She
would not allow me to play with the boys of her own class, and those
of my class I never saw. All my clamorings to know something about my
family on either side were met by her declaring that she had forgotten
where my mother’s people lived; and as for Sir Peter, she gave me
such a horrifying account of him that I never dreamed it possible to
receive any kindness from him. At last, though, on her death-bed,
she acknowledged a part of the deception her desperate affection had
impelled her to play upon me. The poor soul had actually forgotten
about my mother’s family, and had destroyed everything relating to
them, but directed me to go to Sir Peter; and thus it was that, on
the day after I saw Betty Green, my only friend on earth, laid in a
pauper’s grave, I went to the house of my father’s uncle, with the
result narrated. When I got back to the humble lodgings where I had
lived before Betty’s death, I looked up a small box of trinkets of
little value which had belonged to my mother, and from the sale of them
I got enough to live upon for a week, and to make my way to Portsmouth
at the end of it. Either Sir Peter had forgotten to tell me anything
about my outfit, or else I had slipped out so quickly--galled by the
fear of weeping before that rascally footman--that he had no chance. At
all events, I arrived at Portsmouth by the mail-coach, with all of my
belongings in one shabby portmanteau.
I shall not describe my feelings during that journey toward the new
life that awaited me. In fact, I scarcely recall them coherently; all
was a maze, a jumble, and an uproar in my mind.
We got down in the inn yard,--a coach full of passengers,--I the only
one who seemed adrift and alone among them. I stood looking about
me--at a pert chambermaid who impudently ogled the hostlers and got a
kiss in return; at the pretentious entrance to the inn; at all of the
bustle and confusion of the arrival of the coach. Presently I saw a
young gentleman somewhat older than myself, and wearing the uniform
of his Majesty’s sea-service, come out of the inn door. He had a very
elegant figure, but his face was rather plain. Within five minutes of
my first meeting with Giles Vernon, I had an example of what was one
of his most striking traits--every woman in sight immediately fixed
her attention on him and smiled at him. One was the chambermaid, who
left off ogling the hostlers and gaped at this young officer with
her coarse, handsome face all aflame; another was the landlady, who
followed him to the door, smirking and fanning herself; and the third
was a venerable Quakeress, who was about entering the inn, and who
beamed benevolently on him as he bowed gallantly in passing. I know not
why this should have made such an impression on me; but being young and
a fool, I thought beauty was as highly prized by women as by men, and
it surprised me that a fellow with a mouth so wide and with something
dangerously near a squint should be such a lady-killer. It was common
enough for young gentlemen holding midshipmen’s warrants to come down
by the coach, and as soon as he saw me this young officer called out:
“Halloo, my hearty! Is it a ship of the line or a frigate you are
booked for? Or is it one of those damned gun-brigs which are unfit for
a gentleman to serve in?”
Now, the peculiar circumstances of my bringing-up had given me a
ridiculous haughtiness,--for Betty Green had never ceased to implore me
to remember my quality,--so I replied to this offhand speech in kind.
“A ship of the line,” said I. “Damme, do you think I’d serve in a
gun-brig?”