My son Gildart, with his hands in his pockets and his cap very much on
one side of his head, entered my drawing-room one morning with a
perplexed air.
"What troubles you to-day?" asked Lizzie Gordon, who was seated at the
window winding up a ball of worsted, the skein of which was being held
by Miss Puff, who was at that time residing with us.
"What troubles me?--everything troubles me," said the middy with a stern
air, as he turned his back to the fire; "the world troubles me,
circumstances trouble me, my heart troubles me, my pocket troubles me,
my friends and relations trouble me, and so do my enemies; in fact, it
would be difficult to name the sublunary creature or thing that does
_not_ trouble me. It blows trouble from every point of the compass, a
peculiarity in moral gales that is never observed in physical breezes."
"How philosophically you talk this morning," observed Lizzie with a
laugh. "May it not be just possible that the trouble, instead of
flowing from all points to you as a centre, wells up within and flows
out in all directions, and that a warped mind inverts the process?"
"Perhaps you are right, sweet cousin! Anyhow we can't be both wrong,
which is a comfort."
"May I ask what is the heart-trouble you complain of?" said Lizzie.
"Love and hatred," replied Gildart with a sigh and a frown.
"Indeed! Is the name of the beloved object a secret?"
"Of course," said the middy with a pointed glance at Miss Puff, who
blushed scarlet from the roots of her hair to the edge of her dress,
(perhaps to the points of her toes--I am inclined to think so); "of
course it is; but the hated object's name is no secret. It is Haco
Barepoles."
"The mad skipper!" exclaimed Lizzie in surprise. "I thought he was the
most amiable man in existence. Every one speaks well of him."
"It may be so, but I hate him. The hatred is peculiar, though I believe
not incurable, but at present it is powerful. That preposterous giant,
that fathom and four inches of conceit, that insufferable disgrace to
his cloth, that huge mass of human bones in a pig-skin--he--he bothers
me."
"But how does he bother you?"
"Well, in the first place, he positively refuses to let his daughter
Susan marry Dan Horsey, and I have set my heart on that match, for Susan
is a favourite of mine, and Dan is a capital fellow, though he is a
groom and a scoundrel--and nothing would delight me more than to bother
our cook, who is a perfect vixen, and would naturally die of vexation if
these two were spliced; besides, I want a dance at a wedding, or a
shindy of some sort, before setting sail for the land of spices and
niggers. Haco puts a stop to all that; but, worse still, when I was
down at the Sailors' Home the other day, I heard him telling some
wonderful stories to the men there, in one of which he boasted that he
had never been taken by surprise, nor got a start in his life; that a
twenty-four pounder had once burst at his side and cut the head clean
off a comrade, without causing his nerves to shake or his pulse to
increase a bit. I laid him a bet of ten pounds on the spot that I could
give him a fright, and he took it at once. Now I can't for the life of
me think how to give him a fright, yet I _must_ do it somehow, for it
will never do to be beat."
"Couldn't you shoot off a pistol at his ear?" suggested Lizzie.
Miss Puff sniggered, and Gildart said he might as well try to startle
him with a sneeze.
"Get up a ghost, then," said Lizzie; "I have known a ghost act with
great effect on a dark night in an out-of-the-way place."
"No use," returned Gildart, shaking his head. "Haco has seen ghosts
enough to frighten a squadron of horse-marines."
Miss Puff sniggered again, and continued to do so until her puffy face
and neck became extremely pink and dangerously inflated, insomuch that
Gildart asked her somewhat abruptly what in the world she was laughing
at. Miss Puff said she wouldn't tell, and Gildart insisted that she
would; but she positively declined, until Gildart dragged her forcibly
from her chair into a window-recess, where she was prevailed on to
whisper the ideas that made her laugh.
"Capital!" exclaimed the middy, chuckling as he issued from the recess;
"I'll try it. You're a charming creature, Puff, with an imagination
worthy the owner of a better name. There, don't pout. You know my
sentiments. Adieu, fair cousin! Puff, good-bye."
So saying, the volatile youth left the room.
That afternoon Gildart sauntered down to the Sailors' Home and entered
the public hall, in which a dozen or two of sailors were engaged in
playing draughts or chatting together. He glanced round, but, not
finding the object of his search, was about to leave, when Dan Horsey
came up, and, touching his hat, asked if he were looking for Haco
Barepoles.
"I am," said Gildart.
"So is meself," said Dan; "but the mad skipper an't aisy to git howld
of, an' not aisy to kape howld of when ye've got him. He's goin' to
Cove this afternoon, I believe, an'll be here before startin', so I'm
towld, so I'm waitin' for him."
As he spoke Haco entered, and Dan delivered a letter to him.
"Who from?" inquired the skipper sternly.
"Mr Stuart, _alias_ the guv'nor," replied Dan with extreme affability;
"an' as no answer is required, I'll take my leave with your highness's
permission."
Haco deigned no reply, but turned to Gildart and held out his hand.
"You've not gone to stay at Cove yet, I see," said Gildart.
"Not yet, lad, but I go to-night at nine o'clock. You see Mrs Gaff is
a-goin' to visit a relation for a week, an' wants me to take care o' the
house, the boodwar, as she calls it, though why she calls it by that
name is more than I can tell. However I'll be here for a week yet, as
the `Coffin' wants a few repairs, (I wonder if it ever didn't want
repairs), an' I may as well be there as in the Home, though I'm bound to
say the Home is as good a lodgin' as ever I was in at home or abroad,
and cheap too, an' they looks arter you so well. The only thing I an't
sure of is whether the repairs is to be done here or in Athenbury."
"The letter from Mr Stuart may bear on that point," suggested Gildart.
"True," replied the skipper, opening the letter.
"Ha! sure enough the repairs _is_ to be done there, so I'll have to cut
my visit to Cove short by four days."
"But you'll sleep there to-night, I suppose?" asked Gildart, with more
anxiety than the subject seemed to warrant.
"Ay, no doubt o' that, for Mrs G and Tottie left this mornin', trustin'
to my comin' down in the evenin'; but I can't get before nine o'clock."
"Well, good-day to you," said Gildart; "I hope you'll enjoy yourself at
Cove."
The middy hastened away from the Sailors' Home with the air of a man who
had business on hand. Turning the corner of a street he came upon a
brass band, the tones of which were rendering all the bilious people
within hearing almost unable to support existence. There was one
irascible old gentleman, (a lawyer), under whose window it was braying,
who sat at his desk with a finger in each ear trying to make sense out
of a legal document. This was a difficult task at any time, for the
legal document was compounded chiefly of nonsense, with the smallest
possible modicum of sense scattered through it. In the circumstances
the thing was impossible, so the lawyer rose and stamped about the
floor, and wished he were the Emperor of Russia with a cannon charged
with grape-shot loaded to the muzzle and pointed at the centre of that
brass band, in which case he would--. Well, the old gentleman never
thought out the sentence, but he stamped on and raved a little as the
band brayed below his window.
There was a sick man in a room not far from the old lawyer's office. He
had spent two days and two nights in the delirium of fever. At last the
doctor succeeded in getting him to fall into a slumber. It was not a
very sound one; but such as it was it was of inestimable value to the
sick man. The brass band, however, brayed the slumber away to the
strains of "Rule Britannia," and effectually restored the delirium with
"God Save the Queen."
There were many other interesting little scenes enacted in that street
in consequence of the harmonious music of that brass band, but I shall
refrain from entering into farther particulars. Suffice it to say that
Gildart stood listening to it for some time with evident delight.
"Splendid," he muttered, as an absolutely appalling burst of discord
rent the surrounding air and left it in tatters. "Magnificent! I think
that will do."
"You seem fond of bad music, sir," observed an elderly gentleman, who
had been standing near a doorway looking at the middy with a quiet
smile.
"Yes, on the present occasion I am," replied Gildart; "discord suits my
taste just now, and noise is pleasant to my ear."
The band ceased to play at that moment, and Gildart, stepping up to the
man who appeared to be the leader, inasmuch as he performed on the
clarionet, asked him to turn aside with him for a few minutes.
The man obeyed with a look of surprise, not unmingled with suspicion.
"You are leader of this band?"
"Yes, sir, I ham."
"Have you any objection to earn a sovereign or two?"
"No, sir, I han't."
"It's a goodish band," observed Gildart.
"A fus'-rater," replied the clarionet. "No doubt the trombone is a
little cracked and brassy, so to speak, because of a hinfluenza as has
wonted him for some weeks; but there's good stuff in 'im, sir, and
plenty o' lungs. The key-bugle is a noo 'and, but 'e's capital,
'ticklerly in the 'igh notes an' flats; besides, bein' young, 'e'll
improve. As to the French 'orn, there ain't his ekal in the country;
w'en he does the pathetic it would make a banker weep. You like
pathetic music, sir?"
"Not much," replied the middy.
"No! now that's hodd. _I_ do. It 'armonises so with the usual state o'
my feelin's. My feelin's is a'most always pathetic, sir."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, 'cept at meal-times, w'en I do manage to git a little jolly. Ah!
sir, music ain't wot it used to be. There's a general flatness about it
now, sir, an' people don't seem to admire it 'alf so much as w'en I
first began. But if you don't like the pathetic, p'raps you like the
bravoory style?"
"I doat on it," said Gildart. "Come, let's have a touch of the
`bravoory.'"
"I've got a piece," said the clarionet slowly, looking at the sky with a
pathetic air, "a piece as I composed myself. I don't often play it,
'cause, you know, sir, one doesn't 'xactly like to shove one's-self too
prominently afore the public. I calls it the `Banging-smash Polka.'
But I generally charge hextra for it, for it's dreadful hard on the
lungs, and the trombone he gets cross when I mention it, for it nearly
bu'sts the hinstrument; besides, it kicks up sich a row that it puts the
French 'orn's nose out o' jint--you can't 'ear a note of him. I flatter
myself that the key-bugle plays his part to parfection, but the piece
was written chiefly for the trombone and clarionet; the one being deep
and crashing, the other shrill and high. I had the battle o' Waterloo
in my mind w'en I wrote it."
"Will that do?" said Gildart, putting half-a-crown into the man's hand.
The clarionet nodded, and, turning to his comrades, winked gravely as he
pronounced the magic word--"Banging-smash."
Next moment there was a burst as if a bomb-shell had torn up the street,
and this was followed up by a series of crashes so rapid, violent, and
wildly intermingled, that the middy's heart almost leapt out of him with
delight!
In a few seconds three doors burst open, and three servant-girls rushed
at the band with three sixpences to beseech it to go away.
"Couldn't go under a shillin' a head," said the clarionet gravely.
A word from Gildart, however, induced him to accept of the bribe and
depart.
As they went along the street Gildart walked with the clarionet and held
earnest converse with him--apparently of a persuasive nature, for the
clarionet frequently shook his head and appeared to remonstrate.
Presently he called on his comrades to stop, and held with them a long
palaver, in which the French horn seemed to be an objector, and the
trombone an assenter, while the key-bugle didn't seem to care. At last
they all came to an agreement.
"Now," said the middy, taking out his purse, "that's all fixed; here is
five shillings in advance, and twenty shillings will follow when the
performance is over. Don't forget the time and place: the village of
Cove, the rear of Stephen Gaff's cottage--everybody knows it--and eight
o'clock precisely."