IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE
The _Niagara_ was running into Halifax.
It was early of a bright summer morning, and all the passengers came
on deck, joyous with hopes of _terra firma_. There was our hero, Mr.
Ira Waddy; there were two shipboard friends of his, Harry Dunston and
Gilbert Paulding; there was the Budlong family, to wit: old De Flournoy
Budlong; Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong, his second wife, luxuriantly
handsome, and greatly his junior; Tim De Flournoy Budlong, and Arabella
De Flournoy Budlong; and accompanying them was M. Auguste Henri
Miromenil de Châteaunéant.
They all looked fresh and well-dressed in shore toggery. The Budlongs,
particularly, were in full bloom. They were always now in full bloom,
and meant the world should fully know they were returning from Europe
with fashion and the fashions, with a gallery of pictures and a
Parisian pronunciation. Old Budlong had once been a brisk young clerk,
lively and lucky. He was called Flirney then. He had traded in most
things and all had yielded him pelf. He was now a capitalist, fat and
uneasy, with a natural jollity which he thought unbecoming his position
and endeavoured to suppress. Budlong in full bloom was as formal as a
ball bouquet.
It was under the régime of the second wife that the Budlongs had
blossomed. After one season of gorgeous grandeur, but doubtful
triumph, at home, they, or rather the master-she of their social life,
determined to be stamped into undoubted currency by the cachet of
Europe and Paris. They went, were _parisinés_, and were now returning,
wiser and worse. They were now the De Flournoy B.’s, and brought with
them De Châteaunéant, as attaché of mother and step-daughter, either or
both. Old Bud, on marital and paternal grounds, disliked the Gaul.
Halifax is dull and provincial, but any land ho! is charming after a
voyage. Old Budlong knew all about Mr. Waddy’s wealth and position.
He had lavished much of his style of civility, with much sincere good
will, upon him on board ship and now was urgent that he should join the
ladies and himself in their promenade ashore.
“Thank you,” said Waddy, “but I have promised to take a tramp with your
boy and these gentlemen,” and he indicated Dunstan and Paulding.
So De Châteaunéant carried the day. Old Budlong walked in advance,
inquiring the way, while his wife and daughter followed, making a
cheerful glare of ankles through the muddy streets.
“Isn’t it delightful to be ashore?” remarked Miss Arabella to Auguste
Henri.
“Yese, mees. I am mose pleese to be out of ze ice-bugs. Ah,
mademoiselle,”--as Arabella made a lofty lift over a puddle,--“vous
avez le pied d’une sylphide.”
Mr. Waddy and his companions soon exhausted the town. They lunched
substantially on land fare, and having still time, went to drive,
Dunstan and Paulding in one drag, Mr. Waddy and Tim in another. The
first signal-gun recalled them. The two friends, whose steed was a
comparative Bucephalus to the others’ Rosinante, drew rapidly out of
sight. The rear coachman was flogging his beast into a clumsy canter,
when just as they passed a little jetty near some fishing-huts, they
saw a child fall from the end into deep water.
“We can’t let the child drown,” said Mr. Waddy, stopping the coachman.
“He’s none of ours. We must catch the ship. Perhaps he can swim,”
rejoined Timothy.
But it was evident he couldn’t; there was no other help in sight. In an
instant, Mr. Waddy was on the jetty, coat, waistcoat, and hat off; in
another, he was fighting the tide for the drowning life.
Tim was no more selfish a fellow than is the rule with the sons of such
merchants, and especially such step-mothers. He would, perhaps, have
stayed by Mr. Waddy had that gentleman been in positive danger, but
seeing that he was not only not drowning, but had the child safe by the
hair, Tim whipped up and got on board just in time.
Cunarders do not wait for passengers who choose to go a-ducking after
top-heavy children. Tim told his story. Mrs. Budlong and most of the
commercial gentry rather laughed at Mr. Waddy. Dunstan and Paulding
said nothing to them. They, however, seemed to have an opinion on the
subject which prevented them from any further interchange of cigars
with Master Timothy. Dunstan looked up Chin Chin, Mr. Waddy’s Chinese
servant, and by dint of pulling his ears and cue and saying Hi yah! a
great many times, made him understand that his master was left, and
he, Chin Chin, must pack up the traps, and for the present obey the
cue-puller.
It was a very tender and beautiful thing to see how Mr. Waddy raised
the insensible boy up from the boat below to the jetty. He wrapped
the dripping object without scruple in his own very neat and knowing
travelling jacket and carried him toward the mother, who had seen
the accident from a distance and was running wildly toward them. She
clasped the child to her breast, and, at the beating of her heart, life
seemed suddenly to thrill through the saved one. He opened his eyes and
smiled through his gasping agony.
Then the mother turned, seized Mr. Waddy in an all-round embrace, and
gave him a stout fisherwoman’s smack. It was a first-class salute for
the returning hero.
He disentangled himself from this codfishy network; then, looking
up, he suddenly fell to swearing violently in a variety of Oriental
languages. The _Niagara_ was just off under full headway. Two men,
probably Dunstan and Paulding, were waving their handkerchiefs from the
quarter-deck.
Mr. Waddy stopped swearing as suddenly as he had begun and burst into a
roar of laughter; then he looked ruefully at his shirt.
The fisherwoman was occupied in punching the child’s ribs and standing
it on its head. It was spouting water like the fountain of Trevi, and
gurgling out lusty screams that proved the efficacy of the treatment.
“Mrs. Hawkins,” said Waddy, becoming conscious that he had observed her
name over her door in his momentary _coup d’œil_ before he sprang into
the water; “Mrs. Hawkins, I am wet; you will have to dry me.”
“Why, so you are,” said the lady, “wet as a swab. Sammy, you jest git
up an’ go in the shop, an’ don’t you be fallin’ overboard ag’in an’
botherin’ the gentleman.”
She accompanied this advice with a box on the ear of the sobbing Sammy,
which started Trevi again.
Without much ceremony or disappearance into a tiring-room, Mr. Waddy
doffed his wet clothes and donned the toggery of the widow’s eldest
son. His cigar-case, well filled with cheroots, had fortunately escaped
with his coat. He lighted his first, and sat waiting patiently while
Mrs. Hawkins displayed his wet raiment before her cooking stove and
turned the articles judiciously to toast on either side. Let us observe
him as he sits.
He is rather young for a nabob. Many of the nabobs are lymphatic and
wheezy, as well as old, and that without reference to the place of
their nabobery, whether Canton, Threadneedle, or Wall Street. Mr.
Waddy was none of these--he was alert, athletic, and thirty-seven. It
is a grand thing to have had one’s full experience and having chased
all flying destinies through the bush, to have caught one and hold
it safely in the hand, while the catcher is still young and strong
enough to handle and tame the captive. Mr. Waddy looked strong and
active enough to catch and tame anything. But some things are tamed
only with delicacy and tenderness. Was he destitute of these? At
this moment, there was no exhibition of any trait beyond nonchalant
patience, such as men who have had to deal with Asiatics or Spanish
Americans, necessarily acquire. As the last film of his smoke-puff
exhales from his lips, they close under the yellow-brown moustache into
an expression of firmness, and perhaps of pride. It was easy to see
that firm might become stern, and pride might harshen bitterly, if
treachery should betray generosity and repel candour.
Tossing his cheroot-end into the stove, he allows an interregnum for
reverie. He leans his head upon his hand; his thick brown hair half
hides the keen sparkle of his grey eyes; the lines of his mouth soften.
He is thinking probably of welcomes from old friends, of pilgrimages
to old shrines. Suddenly he throws down his hand; the proud expression
closes again about his lips, his face hardens, hardens----
“Brown man, what makes you look so ugly and black?” says Sammy,
loquitur. “Ma, I know he wants to kill me for wettin’ his clothes,” and
Sammy wept boo! hoo!
“Don’t cry, my boy,” said Mr. Waddy, and putting his hand into a pocket
he thought his own, he drew out not the expected purse containing the
presentable shilling, but a strip of pigtail tobacco. “Am I brown? I am
the Ancient Mariner. I have been where the sun bakes men as brown as
that loaf of gingerbread. Here are two shillings out of my vest pocket.
Keep one yourself and buy that loaf from your mother with the other. My
mother used to bake gingerbread and my father sold it, years ago, when
I was white, not ginger-coloured.”
So Ira and Sammy came to terms of peace and good will and munched
together.
“I kind er guess your things is dry now, capting,” said Mrs. Hawkins.
“I’ll jest put the flatiron to that air shirt and make it as slick as a
slide. Salt water don’t take sterch or them collars would stan’ right
up.”
While Mr. Waddy was recovering his habiliments, Isaiah Hawkins, the
widow’s eldest son, came in. He owned a small coaster and was to sail
that afternoon for Portland. He came to get his traps.
“Can you take a passenger?” inquired Mr. Waddy, after the usual
preliminary greetings.
“Wal, capting,” replied Hawkins, with much deliberation, “I dunno as
I could, an’ I dunno as I couldn’t. What kind a feller is this ere
passenger? Kin he eat pork an’ fish?”
“I’m the man,” explained Mr. Waddy. “I should think I could eat pork
and fish. I’ve lived in Boston.”
“Wal, capting, come along if yer like,” said Hawkins heartily, “an’ it
shan’t cost yer a durned cent. ’Tain’t every feller I’d take, but I
feel kinder ’bleeged to yer fer pickin’ up Sam.”
Mr. Waddy would not consent to be a dead-head, but took pay passage
at once, to start at two. Meanwhile he strolled about the town, and
climbing the steep glacis, admired the glorious bay and the impregnable
fort. He was entering when his way was stopped by the sentinel.
“No one admitted without special order,” announced that functionary.
“My old friend Mr. Waddy has special entrée everywhere!” cried a
passing officer, laying his hand on Ira’s shoulder. “My dear fellow,
you wouldn’t let me thank you at Inkerman for dropping that Cossack.
Now I intend to pepper you with gratitude.”
“Oh, no! we never mention it, Granby,” retorted Ira, warmly grasping
the extended hand, “unless you need reminding how you dropped the
rhinoceros who wouldn’t drop me. By the way, I’ve had a match-box made
of his horn.”
He pulled out his cigar-case and the match-box. They each took a cigar
and walked off together to Major Granby’s quarters, as coolly as if the
reciprocal life-saving they had recalled was an everyday business.
“How in the name of Mercury came you here?” asked the major, after they
were seated.
“Ginger beer--gingerbread, beer,” murmured Waddy abstractedly. “Bass’
Pale Ale. Yes--ah, well!”
“What, ho! Patrick!” called the major. “Here’s Mr. Waddy come back and
wants his ale!”
While Patrick grinned a cheerful recognition and drew the cork, Mr.
Waddy explained his position and the gingerbread allusion.
“I sail at two for Portland in the _Billy Blue Nose_,” he concluded.
“Why won’t you come and see me in the States?”
“Why not? I’ll join you when you please,” assented Granby instantly. “I
already have a furlough. I wish I could start to-day.”
“Come by the next steamer, to-day fortnight,” suggested Ira, “and meet
me in Boston at the Tremont House. I’m really as much a stranger as
you; but they all know me. We’ll see the lions together.”
“You’ll have to be a ladies’ man, for my sake,” said the major. “I’ve
heard the American women are the loveliest of the world, and I’ve
determined to see for myself. I thought, before I saw you, of dropping
in at Newport this summer. That’s the mart, I hear.”
“Certainly, we’ll go there and everywhere,” agreed Ira. “What do you
say to a partnership for matrimonial speculation? You put in good
looks, good name, and glory. I contribute money--the prize, of course,
to be mine.”
“You say nothing about wit,” the major pointed out. “Modest! As to good
looks, these are perhaps degenerate days, but you’ll do very well for
an Antinous with whiskers, and I used constantly in Rome to be mistaken
for the Apollo, in costume of the period.”
“Well, Apollo, I leave you to study attitudes,” said Waddy, rising. “I
must be off. Good-bye! To-day three weeks.”
“So long! Here, Pat! pack up a carpet-bag for Mr. Waddy and put in
some of those short shirts. My six-feet-one beats you by three inches.”
The _Billy Blue Nose_ was quite ready. Mr. Waddy was also ready and
just stepping into the boat when he heard Sammy’s voice:
“Say, mister! gimme another shilling to buy gingerbread!”
We leave the reader to judge whether the prayer went unanswered.