Springhaven - R. D. Blackmore
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"That will make it all the more delightful to land at your front door,
my friend; and all the easier to do it. My own plan is to strike with
all force at the head-quarters of the enemy, because the most likely to
be unprepared. About a year ago, when I was down here, a little before
my dear father's death, without your commission I took command of your
fishing-craft coming home for their Sunday, and showed them how to
take the beach, partly to confirm my own suspicions. There is no other
landing on all the south coast, this side of Hayling Island, fit to be
compared with it for the use of flat-bottomed craft, such as most of
Boney's are. And remember the set of the tide, which makes the fortunes
of your fishermen. To be sure, he knows nothing of that himself; but he
has sharp rogues about him. If they once made good their landing here,
it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done from the
land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely come near
enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the skulks--and that has
enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that they would conquer the
country--all brag--but still it would be a nasty predicament, and scare
the poor cockneys like the very devil."
"But remember the distance from Boulogne, Hurry. If they cannot cross
twenty-five miles of channel in the teeth of our ships, what chance
would they have when the distance is nearer eighty?"
"A much better chance, if they knew how to do it. All our cruisers would
be to the eastward. One afternoon perhaps, when a haze is on, they make
a feint with light craft toward the Scheldt--every British ship crowds
sail after them. Then, at dusk, the main body of the expedition slips
with the first of the ebb to the westward; they meet the flood tide in
mid-channel, and using their long sweeps are in Springhaven, or at any
rate the lightest of them, by the top of that tide, just when you
are shaving. You laugh at such a thought of mine. I tell you, my dear
friend, that with skill and good luck it is easy; and do it they should,
if they were under my command."
If anybody else had even talked of such a plan as within the bounds of
likelihood, Admiral Darling would have been almost enraged. But now he
looked doubtfully, first at the sea (as if it might be thick with prames
already), and then at the land--which was his own--as if the rent might
go into a Frenchman's pocket, and then at his old and admired friend,
who had ruined his sleep for the summer.
"Happily they are not under your command, and they have no man to
compare with you;" he spoke rather nervously; while Nelson smiled,
for he loved the praise which he had so well earned; "and if it were
possible for you to talk nonsense, I should say that you had done it
now. But two things surely you have overlooked. In the first place, the
French can have no idea of the special opportunities this place affords.
And again, if they had, they could do nothing, without a pilot well
acquainted with the spot. Though the landing is so easy, there are
shoals outside, very intricate and dangerous, and known to none except
the natives of the place, who are jealous to the last degree about their
knowledge."
"That is true enough; and even I should want a pilot here, though I
know every spit of sand eastward. But away fly both your difficulties if
there should happen to be a local traitor."
"A traitor at Springhaven! Such a thing is quite impossible. You would
laugh at yourself, if you only knew the character of our people. There
never has been, and there never will be, a Springhaven man capable of
treachery."
"That is good news, ay, and strange news too," the visitor answered,
with his left hand on his sword, for he was now in full though rather
shabby uniform. "There are not many traitors in England, I believe; but
they are as likely to be found in one place as another, according to my
experience. Well, well, I am very glad you have no such scoundrels here.
I won't say a single word against your people, who are as fine a lot
as any in the south of England, and as obstinate as any I could wish to
see. Of an obstinate man I can always make good; with a limp one I can
do nothing. But bear in mind every word you have heard me say, because I
came down on purpose about it; and I generally penetrate the devices of
the enemy, though they lead me on a wild-goose-chase sometimes, but only
when our own folk back them up, either by lies or stupidity. Now look
once more, for you are slower as well as a great deal wiser than I am.
You see how this land-locked bight of Springhaven seems made by the
Almighty for flat-bottomed craft, if once they can find their way into
it; while the trend of the coast towards Pebbleridge is equally suited
for the covering fleet, unless a gale from southwest comes on, in
which case they must run for it. And you see that the landed force, by
crowning the hill above your house and across the valley, might defy
our noble Volunteers, and all that could be brought against them, till a
hundred thousand cutthroats were established here. And Boney would make
his head-quarters at the Hall, with a French cook in your kitchen, and
a German butler in your cellar, and my pretty godchild to wait upon him,
for the rogue loves pretty maidens."
"That will do. That is quite enough. No wonder you have written poems,
Nelson, as you told us the last time you were here. If my son had only
got your imagination--but perhaps you know something more than you have
told me. Perhaps you have been told--"
"Never mind about that," the great sea-captain answered, turning away
as if on springs; "it is high time for me to be off again, and my chaise
has springs on her cables."
"Not she. I have ordered her to be docked. Dine with us you shall this
day, if we have to dine two hours earlier, and though Mother Cloam rage
furiously. How much longer do you suppose you can carry on at this pace?
Look at me. I have double your bodily substance; but if I went on as
you do--you remember the twenty-four-pounder old Hotcoppers put into the
launch, and fired it, in spite of all I could say to him? Well, you are
just the same. You have not got the scantling for the metal you carry
and are always working. You will either blow up, or else scuttle
yourself. Look here, how your seams are opening!" Here Admiral Darling
thrust his thumb through the ravelled seam of his old friend's coat,
which made him jump back, for he loved his old coat. "Yes, and you will
go in the very same way. I wonder how any coat lasts so much as a month,
with you inside it."
"This coat," said Nelson, who was most sweet-tempered with any one he
loved, though hot as pepper when stirred up by strangers--"this coat is
the one I wore at Copenhagen, and a sounder and kinder coat never came
on a man's back. Charles Darling, you have made a bad hit this time.
If I am no more worn out than this coat is, I am fit to go to sea for a
number of years yet. And I hope to show it to a good many Frenchmen, and
take as many ships, every time they show fight, as there are buttons on
it."
"Then you will double all your captures at the Nile;" such a series of
buttons had this coat, though mostly loose upon their moorings, for his
guardian angel was not "domestic"; "but you may be trusted not to let
them drift so. You have given me a lesson in coast-defence, and now you
shall be boarded by the ladies. You possess some gifts of the tongue,
my friend, as well as great gifts of hand and eye; but I will back my
daughters to beat you there. Come up to the house. No turning of tail."
"I spoke very well in the House of Lords," said Nelson, in his simple
way, "in reply to the speech of his Majesty, and again about the
Commissioner's Bill; or at least everybody tells me so. But in the House
of Ladies I hold my tongue, because there is abundance without it."
This, however, he failed to do when the matter came to the issue; for
his godchild Horatia, more commonly called Dolly, happened to be in the
mood for taking outrageous liberties with him. She possessed very little
of that gift--most precious among women--the sense of veneration; and to
her a hero was only a man heroic in acts of utility. "He shall do it,"
she said to Faith, when she heard that he was come again; "if I have to
kiss him, he shall do it; and I don't like kissing those old men."
"Hush!" said her elder sister. "Dolly, you do say things so recklessly.
One would think that you liked to kiss younger men! But I am sure that
is not your meaning. I would rather kiss Lord Nelson than all the young
men in the kingdom."
"Well done, Faith! All the young men in the kingdom! How recklessly you
do say things! And you can't kiss him--he is MY godfather. But just see
how I get round him, if you have wits enough to understand it."
So these two joined in their kind endeavour to make the visitor useful,
the object being so good that doubtful means might be excused for it.
In different ways and for divers reasons, each of these young ladies now
had taken to like Blyth Scudamore. Faith, by power of pity first, and of
grief for her own misfortunes, and of admiration for his goodness to his
widowed mother--which made his best breeches shine hard at the knees;
and Dolly, because of his shy adoration, and dauntless defence of her
against a cow (whose calf was on the road to terminate in veal), as well
as his special skill with his pocket-knife in cutting out figures that
could dance, and almost sing; also his great gifts, when the tide was
out, of making rare creatures run after him. What avails to explore
female reason precisely?--their minds were made up that he must be a
captain, if Nelson had to build the ship with his one hand for him.
"After that, there is nothing more to be said," confessed the vanquished
warrior; "but the daughters of an Admiral should know that no man can be
posted until he has served his time as lieutenant; and this young hero
of yours has never even held the King's commission yet. But as he has
seen some service, and is beyond the age of a middy, in the present
rush he might get appointed as junior lieutenant, if he had any stout
seconders. Your father is the man, he is always at hand, and can watch
his opportunity. He knows more big-wigs than I do, and he has not given
offence where I have. Get your father, my dears, to attend to it."
But the ladies were not to be so put off, for they understood the
difference of character. Lord Nelson was as sure to do a thing as
Admiral Darling was to drop it if it grew too heavy. Hence it came
to pass that Blyth Scudamore, though failing of the Victory and
Amphion--which he would have chosen, if the choice were his--received
with that cheerful philosophy (which had made him so dear to the
school-boys, and was largely required among them) his appointment as
junior lieutenant to the 38-gun frigate Leda, attached to the Channel
fleet under Cornwallis, whose business it was to deal with the French
flotilla of invasion.
CHAPTER XV
ORDEAL OF AUDIT
England saw the growing danger, and prepared, with an even mind and
well-girt body, to confront it. As yet stood up no other country to help
or even comfort her, so cowed was all the Continent by the lash, and
spur of an upstart. Alone, encumbered with the pack of Ireland, pinched
with hunger and dearth of victuals, and cramped with the colic of
Whiggery, she set her strong shoulder to the wheel of fortune, and so
kept it till the hill was behind her. Some nations (which owe their
existence to her) have forgotten these things conveniently; an
Englishman hates to speak of them, through his unjust abhorrence of
self-praise; and so does a Frenchman, by virtue of motives equally
respectable.
But now the especial danger lay in the special strength of England.
Scarcely any man along the coast, who had ever come across a Frenchman,
could be led (by quotations from history or even from newspapers) to
believe that there was any sense in this menace of his to come and
conquer us. Even if he landed, which was not likely--for none of them
could box the compass--the only thing he took would be a jolly good
thrashing, and a few pills of lead for his garlic. This lofty contempt
on the part of the seafaring men had been enhanced by Nelson, and throve
with stoutest vigour in the enlightened breasts of Springhaven.
Yet military men thought otherwise, and so did the owners of crops and
ricks, and so did the dealers in bacon and eggs and crockery, and even
hardware. Mr. Cheeseman, for instance, who left nothing unsold that he
could turn a penny by, was anything but easy in his mind, and dreamed
such dreams as he could not impart to his wife--on account of her
tendency to hysterics--but told with much power to his daughter Polly,
now the recognised belle of Springhaven. This vigilant grocer and
butterman, tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuffman, hosier also, and general
provider for the outer as well as the inner man, had much of that
enterprise in his nature which the country believes to come from London.
His possession of this was ascribed by all persons of a thoughtful turn
to his ownership of that well-built schooner the London Trader. Sailing
as she did, when the weather was fine, nearly every other week, for
London, and returning with equal frequency, to the women who had never
been ten miles from home she was a mystery and a watchword. Not one of
them would allow lad of hers to join this romantic galleon, and tempt
the black cloud of the distance; neither did Mr. Cheeseman yearn (for
reasons of his own about city prices) to navigate this good ship with
natives. Moreover, it was absurd, as he said, with a keen sense of his
own cheapness, to suppose that he could find the funds to buy and ply
such a ship as that!
Truth is a fugitive creature, even when she deigns to be visible, or
even to exist. The truth of Mr. Cheeseman's statement had existed, but
was long since flown. Such was his worth that he could now afford to buy
the London Trader three times over, and pay ready money every time. But
when he first invested hard cash in her--against the solid tears of his
prudent wife--true enough it was that he could only scrape together one
quarter of the sum required. Mrs. Cheeseman, who was then in a condition
of absorbing interest with Polly, made it her last request in this
world--for she never expected to get over it--that Jemmy should not
run in debt on a goose-chase, and fetch her poor spirit from its grave
again. James Cheeseman was compelled--as the noblest man may be--to
dissemble and even deny his intentions until the blessed period of
caudle-cup, when, the weather being pleasant and the wind along the
shore, he found himself encouraged to put up the window gently. The
tide was coming in with a long seesaw, and upon it, like the baby in the
cradle full of sleep, lay rocking another little stranger, or rather a
very big one, to the lady's conception.
Let bygones be bygones. There were some reproaches; but the weaker
vessel, Mrs. Cheeseman, at last struck flag, without sinking, as she
threatened to do. And when little Polly went for her first airing, the
London Trader had accomplished her first voyage, and was sailing in
triumphantly with a box of "tops and bottoms" from the ancient firm in
Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many infants from the power that
cuts the thread. After that, everything went as it should go, including
this addition to the commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was
enabled soon to talk of as "our ship," and to cite when any question
rose of the latest London fashion. But even now, when a score of years,
save one, had made their score and gone, Mrs. Cheeseman only guessed and
doubted as to the purchase of her ship. James Cheeseman knew the value
of his own counsel, and so kept it; and was patted on both shoulders by
the world, while he patted his own butter.
He wore an apron of the purest white, with shoulder-straps of linen
tape, and upon his counter he had a desk, with a carved oak rail in
front of it and returned at either end. The joy of his life was here to
stand, with goodly shirt sleeves shining, his bright cheeks also shining
in the sun, unless it were hot enough to hurt his goods. He was not a
great man, but a good one--in the opinion of all who owed him nothing,
and even in his own estimate, though he owed so much to himself. It was
enough to make any one who possessed a shilling hungry to see him so
clean, so ready, and ruddy among the many good things which his looks
and manner, as well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began
to smack his rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a
rasher, or a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red
herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard
enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering
one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the
constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all
cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the
weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine smack of salt
from the sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of expectation,
there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a presence of
hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of imagination. Hams of
the first rank and highest education, springs of pork sweeter than the
purest spring of poetry, pats of butter fragrant as the most delicious
flattery, chicks with breast too ample to require to be broken, and
sometimes prawns from round the headland, fresh enough to saw one
another's heads off, but for being boiled already.
Memory fails to record one-tenth of all the good things gathered there.
And why? Because hope was the power aroused, and how seldom can memory
endorse it! Even in the case of Mr. Cheeseman's wares there were people
who said, after making short work with them, that short weight had
enabled them to do so. And every one living in the village was surprised
to find his own scales require balancing again every time he sent his
little girl to Cheeseman's.
This upright tradesman was attending to his business one cold day in
May, 1803, soon after Nelson sailed from Portsmouth, and he stood with
his beloved pounds of farm-house butter, bladders of lard, and new-laid
eggs, and squares of cream-cheese behind him, with a broad butter-spathe
of white wood in his hand, a long goose-pen tucked over his left ear,
and the great copper scales hanging handy. So strict was his style,
though he was not above a joke, that only his own hands might serve
forth an ounce of best butter to the public. And whenever this was
weighed, and the beam adjusted handsomely to the satisfaction of the
purchaser, down went the butter to be packed upon a shelf uninvaded by
the public eye. Persons too scantily endowed with the greatest of all
Christian virtues had the hardihood to say that Mr. Cheeseman here
indulged in a process of high art discovered by himself. Discoursing
of the weather, or the crops, or perhaps the war, and mourning the
dishonesty of statesmen nowadays, by dexterous undersweep of keen steel
blade, from the bottom of the round, or pat, or roll, he would have away
a thin slice, and with that motion jerk it into the barrel which he kept
beneath his desk.
"Is this, then, the establishment of the illustrious Mr. Cheeseman?"
The time was yet early, and the gentleman who put this question was in
riding dress. The worthy tradesman looked at him, and the rosy hue upon
his cheeks was marbled with a paler tint.
"This is the shop of the 'umble James Cheeseman," he answered, but not
with the alacrity of business. "All things good that are in season, and
nothing kept unseasonable. With what can I have the honor of serving
you, sir?"
"With a little talk." The stranger's manner was not unpleasantly
contemptuous, but lofty, and such as the English shopman loves, and
calls "aristocratic."
"To talk with a gentleman is a pleasure as well as an honour," said
Cheeseman.
"But not in this public establishment." The visitor waved both hands as
he spoke, in a style not then common with Englishmen--though they are
learning eloquent gesticulation now. "It is fine, Mr. Cheeseman; but it
is not--bah, I forget your English words."
"It is fine, sir, as you are good enough to observe"--the humble James
Cheeseman was proud of his shop--"but not, as you remarked, altogether
private. That can hardly be expected, where business is conducted to
suit universal requirements. Polly, my dear, if your mother can spare
you, come and take my place at the desk a few minutes. I have business
inside with this gentleman. You may sell almost anything, except butter.
If any one wants that, they must wait till I come back."
A very pretty damsel, with a cap of foreign lace both adorning and
adorned by her beautiful bright hair, came shyly from a little door
behind the counter, receiving with a quick blush the stranger's earnest
gaze, and returning with a curtsey the courteous flourish of his
looped-up riding-hat. "What a handsome gentleman!" said Polly to
herself; "but there is something very sad and very wild in his
appearance." Her father's conclusion was the same, and his heart misgave
him as he led in this unexpected guest.
"There is no cause for apologies. This place is a very good one,"
the stranger replied, laying down his heavy whip on the table of a
stone-floored room, to which he had been shown. "You are a man of
business, and I am come upon dry business. You can conjecture--is it not
so?--who I am by this time, although I am told that I do not bear any
strong resemblance to my father."
He took off his hat as he spoke, shook back his long black hair, and
fixed his jet-black eyes upon Cheeseman. That upright dealer had not
recovered his usual self-possession yet, but managed to look up--for he
was shorter by a head than his visitor--with a doubtful and enquiring
smile.
"I am Caryl Carne, of Carne Castle, as you are pleased to call it. I
have not been in England these many years; from the death of my father I
have been afar; and now, for causes of my own, I am returned, with hope
of collecting the fragments of the property of my ancestors. It appears
to have been their custom to scatter, but not gather up again. My
intention is to make a sheaf of the relics spread by squanderers, and
snapped up by scoundrels."
"To be sure, to be sure," cried the general dealer; "this is vastly to
your credit, sir, and I wish you all success, sir, and so will all who
have so long respected your ancient and honourable family, sir. Take a
chair, sir--please to take a chair."
"I find very little to my credit," Mr. Carne said, dryly, as he took the
offered chair, but kept his eyes still upon Cheeseman's; "but among that
little is a bond from you, given nearly twenty years agone, and of which
you will retain, no doubt, a vivid recollection."
"A bond, sir--a bond!" exclaimed the other, with his bright eyes
twinkling, as in some business enterprise. "I never signed a bond in all
my life, sir. Why, a bond requires sureties, and nobody ever went surety
for me."
"Bond may not be the proper legal term. It is possible. I know nothing
of the English law. But a document it is, under hand and seal, and your
signature is witnessed, Mr. Cheeseman."
"Ah well! Let me consider. I begin to remember something. But my memory
is not as it used to be, and twenty years makes a great hole in it. Will
you kindly allow me to see this paper, if you have it with you, sir?"
"It is not a paper; it is written upon parchment, and I have not brought
it with me. But I have written down the intention of it, and it is as
follows:
"'This indenture made between James Cheeseman (with a long description),
of the one part, and Montagu Carne (treated likewise), of the other
part, after a long account of some arrangement made between them,
witnesseth that in consideration of the sum of 300 pounds well and truly
paid by the said Montagu Carne to Cheeseman, he, the said Cheeseman,
doth assign, transfer, set over, and so on, to the said Carne, etc., one
equal undivided moiety and one half part of the other moiety of and in a
certain vessel, ship, trading-craft, and so forth, known or thenceforth
to be known as the London Trader, of Springhaven, in the county of
Sussex, by way of security for the interest at the rate of five per
cent. per annum, payable half-yearly, as well as for the principal sum
of 300 pounds, so advanced as aforesaid.'"
"If it should prove, sir, that money is owing," Mr. Cheeseman said, with
that exalted candour which made a weak customer condemn his own eyes and
nose, "no effort on my part shall be wanting, bad as the times are,
to procure it and discharge it. In every commercial transaction I
have found, and my experience is now considerable, that confidence, as
between man and man, is the only true footing to go upon. And how can
true confidence exist, unless--"