CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST NIGHT AT TILNEY
Mattland was not in the best of tempers when he retired to his room. Whatever the words he had whispered in Alice’s ear, – and this history will not record them, – they were a failure. They were even worse than a failure, for they produced an effect directly the opposite to that intended.
“Have I gone too fast?” muttered he; “have I deceived myself? She certainly understood me well in what I said yesterday. She, if anything, gave me a sort of encouragement to speak. She drew away her hand, it is true, but without any show of resentment or anger; a sort of protest, rather, that implied, ‘We have not yet come to this.’ These home-bred women are hard riddles to read. Had she been French, Spanish, or Italian, – ay, or even one of our own, long conversant with the world of Europe, – I never should have blundered.” Such thoughts as these be now threw on paper, in a letter to his friend Caffarelli.
“What a fiasco I have made, Carlo mio,” said he, “and all from not understanding the nature of these creatures, who have never seen a sunset south of the Alps. I know how little sympathy any fellow meets with from you, if he be only unlucky. I have your face before me, – your eyebrows on the top of your forehead, and your nether lip quivering with malicious drollery, as you cry out, ‘Ma perche? perche? perche?’ And I’ll tell you why: because I believed that she had hauled down her colors, and there was no need to continue firing.
“Of course you’ll say, ‘Meno male,’ resume the action. But it won’t do, Signor Conte, it won’t do. She is not like one of your hardened coquettes on the banks of the Arno or the slopes of Castellamare, who think no more of a declaration of love than an invitation to dinner; nor have the slightest difficulty in making the same excuse to either, – a pre-engagement. She is English, or worse again, far worse, – Irish.
“I ‘d give – I don’t know what I would n’t give – that I could recall that stupid speech. I declare I think it is this fearful language has done it all. One can no more employ the Anglo-Saxon tongue for a matter of delicate treatment, than one could paint a miniature with a hearth-brush. What a pleasant coinage for cajolery are the liquid lies of the sweet South, where you can lisp duplicity, and seem never to hurt the Decalogue.”
As he had written so far, a noisy summons at his door aroused him; while the old Commodore’s voice called out, “Maitland! Maitland! I want a word with you.” Maitland opened the door, and without speaking, returned to the fire, standing with his back to it, and his hands carelessly stuck in his pockets.
“I thought I ‘d come over and have a cigar with you here, and a glass of brandy-and-water,” said Graham. “They ‘re hard at it yonder, with harp and piano, and, except holystoning a deck, I don’t know its equal.”
“I ‘m the more sorry for your misfortune, Commodore, that I am unable to alleviate it I ‘m deep in correspondence just now, as you see there, and have a quantity more to do before bedtime.”
“Put it aside, put it aside; never write by candlelight. It ruins the eyes; and yours are not so young as they were ten years ago.”
“The observation is undeniable,” said Maitland, stiffly.
“You’re six-and-thirty? well, five-and-thirty, I take it.”
“I ‘m ashamed to say I cannot satisfy your curiosity on so natural a subject of inquiry.”
“Sally says forty,” said he, in a whisper, as though the remark required caution. “Her notion is that you dye your whiskers; but Beck’s idea is that you look older than you are.”
“I scarcely know to which of the young ladies I owe my deeper acknowledgments,” said Maitland, bowing.
“You’re a favorite with both; and if it hadn’t been for the very decided preference you showed, I tell you frankly they ‘d have been tearing caps about you ere this.”
“This flattery overwhelms me; and all the more that it is quite unexpected.”
“None of your mock modesty with me, you dog!” cried the Commodore, with a chuckling laugh. “No fellow had ever any success of that kind that he did n’t know it; and, upon my life, I believe the very conceit it breeds goes halfway with women.”
“It is no small prize to learn the experiences of a man like yourself on such a theme.”
“Well, I ‘ll not deny it,” said he, with a short sigh. “I had my share – some would say a little more than my share – of that sort of thing. You’ll not believe it, perhaps, but I was a devilish good-looking fellow when I was – let me see – about six or eight years younger than you are now.”
“I am prepared to credit it,” said Maitland, dryly.
“There was no make-up about me, – no lacquering, no paint, no padding; all honest scantling from keel to taffrail. I was n’t tall, it’s true. I never, with my best heels on, passed five feet seven and a half.”
“The height of Julius Caesar,” said Maitland, calmly.
“I know nothing about Julius Caesar; but I ‘ll say this, it was a good height for a sailor in the old gun-brig days, when they never gave you much head-room ‘tween decks. It don’t matter so much now if every fellow in the ward-room was as tall as yourself. What’s in this jar here?”
“Seltzer.”
“And this short one, – is it gin?”
“No; it’s Vichy.”
“Why, what sort of stomach do you expect to have with all these confounded slops? I never tasted any of these vile compounds but once, – what they called Carlsbad, – and, by Jove, it was bad, and no mistake. It took three fourths of a bottle of strong brandy to bring back the heat into my vitals again. Why don’t you tell Raikes to send you in some sherry? That old brown sherry is very pleasant, and it must be very wholesome, too, for the doctor here always sticks to it.”
“I never drink wine, except at my dinner,” was the cold and measured reply.
“You ‘ll come to it later on, – you ‘ll come to it later on,” said the Commodore, with a chuckle, “when you ‘ll not be careful about the color of your nose or the width of your waistcoat. There’s a deal of vanity wrapped up in abstemiousness, and a deal of vexation of spirit too.” And he laughed at his own drollery till his eyes ran over. “You ‘re saying to yourself, Maitland, ‘What a queer old cove that is!’ – ain’t you? Out with it, man! I’m the best-tempered fellow that ever breathed, – with the men I like, mind you; not with every one. No, no; old G. G., as they used to call me on board the ‘Hannibal,’ is an ugly craft if you board him on the wrong quarter. I don’t know how it would be now, with all the new-fangled tackle; but in the old days of flint-locks and wide bores I was a dead shot. I ‘ve heard you can do something that way?”
“A little,” said he, dryly.
“Every gentleman ought; I’ve always maintained it; as poor old Bowes used to say, ‘With a strong head for port, and a steady hand for a pistol, a man may go a long way in this world.’ There, I think it’s your turn now at the pump. I’ve had all the talk to myself since I came in; and the most you’ve done has been to grant out ‘Indeed!’ or ‘Really!’”
“I have listened, Commodore, – listened most attentively. It has been my great privilege to have heard your opinions on three most interesting topics, – women, and wine, and the duel; and, I assure you, not unprofitably.”
“I ‘m not blown, not a bit run off my wind, for all that, if I was n’t so dry; but my mouth is like a lime-burner’s hat. Would you just touch that bell and order a little sherry or Madeira? You don’t seem to know the ways of the house here; but every one does exactly as he pleases.”
“I have a faint inkling of the practice,” said Maitland, with a very peculiar smile.
“What’s the matter with you this evening? You ‘re not like yourself one bit. No life, no animation about you. Ring again; pull it strong. There, they’ll hear that, I hope,” cried he, as, impatient at Maitland’s indolence, he gave such a Jerk to the bell-rope that it came away from the wire.
“I didn’t exactly come in here for a gossip,” said the Commodore, as he resumed his seat. “I wanted to have a little serious talk with you, and perhaps you are impatient that I haven’t begun it, eh?”
“It would be unpardonable to feel impatience in such company,” said’ Maitland, with a bow.
“Yes, yes; I know all that. That’s what Yankees call soft sawder; but I ‘m too old a bird, Master Maitland, to be caught with chaff, and I think as clever a fellow as you are might suspect as much.”
“You are very unjust to both of us if you imply that I have not a high opinion of your acuteness.”
“I don’t want to be thought acute, sir; I am not a lawyer, nor a lawyer’s clerk, – I’m a sailor.”
“And a very distinguished sailor.”
“That’s as it may be. They passed me over about the good-service pension, and kept ‘backing and filling’ about that coast-guard appointment till I lost temper and told them to give it to the devil, for he had never been out of the Admiralty since I remembered it; and I said, ‘Gazette him at once, and don’t let him say, You ‘re forgetting an old friend and supporter.’”
“Did you write that?”
“Beck did, and I signed it; for I ‘ve got the gout or the rheumatism in these knuckles that makes writing tough work for me, and tougher for the man it’s meant for. What servants they are in this house! – no answer to the bell.”
“And what reply did they make you?” asked Maitland.
“They shoved me on the retired list; and Curtis, the Secretary, said, ‘I had to suppress your letter, or my Lords would certainly have struck your name off the Navy List,’ – a thing I defy them to do; a thing the Queen could n’t do!”
“Will you try one of these?” said Maitland, opening his cigar-case; “these are stronger than the pale ones.”
“No; I can’t smoke without something to drink, which I foresee I shall not have here.”
“I deplore my inhospitality.”
“Inhospitality! why, you have nothing to say to it. It is old mother Maxwell receives us all here. You can be neither hospitable nor inhospitable, so far as I see, excepting, perhaps, letting me see a little more of that fire than you have done hitherto, peacocking out the tail of your dressing-gown in front of me.”
“Pray draw closer,” said Maitland, moving to one side; “make yourself perfectly at home here.”
“So I used to be, scores of times, in these very rooms. It’s more than five-and-twenty years that I ever occupied any others.”
“I was thinking of going back to the drawing-room for a cup of tea before I resumed my work here.”
“Tea! don’t destroy your stomach with tea. Get a little gin, – they ‘ve wonderful gin here; I take a glass of it every night Beck mixes it, and puts a sprig of, not mint, but marjoram, I think they call it I ‘ll make her mix a brew for you; and, by the way, that brings me to what I came about.”
“Was it to recommend me to take gin?” asked Maitland, with a well-assumed innocence.
“No, sir; not to recommend you to take gin,” said the old Commodore, sternly. “I told you when I came in that I had come on an errand of some importance.”
“If you did, it has escaped me.”
“Well, you sha’n’t escape me; that’s all.”
“I hope I misunderstand you. I trust sincerely that it is to the dryness of your throat and the state of your tonsils that I must attribute this speech. Will you do me the very great favor to recall it?”
The old man fidgeted in his chair, buttoned his coat, and unbuttoned it, and then blurted out in an abrupt spasmodic way, “All right, – I did n’t mean offence – I intended to say that as we were here now – that as we had this opportunity of explaining ourselves – ”
“That’s quite sufficient, Commodore. I ask for nothing beyond your simple assurance that nothing offensive was intended.”
“I ‘ll be hanged if I ever suffered as much from thirst in all my life. I was eighteen days on a gill of water a day in the tropics, and didn’t feel it worse than this. I must drink some of that stuff, if I die for it. Which is the least nauseous?”
“I think you’ll find the Vichy pleasant; there is a little fixed air in it, too.”
“I wish there was a little cognac in it. Ugh! it’s detestable! Let’s try the other. Worse! I vow and declare – worse! Well, Maitland, whatever be your skill in other matters, I ‘ll be shot if I ‘ll back you for your taste in liquors.”
Maitland smiled, and was silent.
“I shall have a fever – I know I shall – if I don’t take something. There’s a singing in my head now like a chime of bells, and the back of my throat feels like a coal-bunker in one of those vile steamers. How you stand it I don’t know; but to be sure you ‘ve not been talking as I have.” The old Commodore rose, but when he reached the door, seemed suddenly to have remembered something; for he placed his hand to his forehead, and said, “What a brain I have! here was I walking away without ever so much as saying one word about it.”
“Could we defer it till to-morrow, my dear Commodore?” said Maitland, coaxingly. “I have not the slightest notion what it is, but surely we could talk it over after breakfast.”
“But you ‘ll be off by that time. Beck said that there would be no use starting later than seven o’clock.”
“Off! and where to?”
“To the Burnside, – to the widow Butler’s, – where else! You heard it all arranged at dinner, didn’t you?”
“I heard something suggested laughingly and lightly, but nothing serious, far less settled positively.”
“Will you please to tell me, sir, how much of your life is serious, and how much is to be accepted as levity? for I suppose the inquiry I have to make of you amounts just to that, and no more.”
“Commodore Graham, it would distress me much if I were to misunderstand you once again to-night, and you will oblige me deeply if you will put any question you expect me to answer in its very simplest form.”
“That I will, sir; that I will! Now then, what are your intentions?”
“What are my intentions?”
“Yes, sir, – exactly so; what are your intentions?”
“I declare I have so many, on such varied subjects, and of such different hues, that it would be a sore infliction on your patience were I only to open the budget; and as to either of us exhausting it, it is totally out of the question. Take your chance of a subject, then, and I ‘ll do my best to enlighten you.”
“This is fencing, sir; and it doesn’t suit me?”
“If you knew how very little the whole conversation suits me, you ‘d not undervalue my patience.”
“I ask you once again, what are your intentions as regards my youngest daughter, Miss Rebecca Graham! That’s plain speaking, I believe.”
“Nothing plainer; and my reply shall be equally so. I have none, – none whatever.”
“Do you mean to say you never paid her any particular attentions?”
“Never.”
“That you never took long walks with her when at Lyle Abbey, quite alone and unaccompanied?”
“We walked together repeatedly. I am not so ungrateful as to forget her charming companionship.”
“Confound your gratitude, sir! it’s not that I’m talking of. You made advances. You – you told her – you said – in fact, you made her believe – ay, and you made me believe – that you meant to ask her to marry you.”
“Impossible!” said Maitland; “impossible!”
“And why impossible? Is it that our respective conditions are such as to make the matter impossible?”
“I never thought of such an impertinence, Commodore. When I said impossible, it was entirely with respect to the construction that could be placed on all my intercourse with Miss Graham.”
“And did n’t I go up to your room on the morning I left, and ask you to come over to Port-Graham and talk the matter over with me?”
“You invited me to your house, but I had not the faintest notion that it was to this end. Don’t shake your head as if you doubted me; I pledge you my word on it.”
“How often have you done this sort of thing? for no fellow is as cool as you are that’s not an old hand at it.”
“I can forgive a good deal – ”
“Forgive! I should think you could forgive the people you’ve injured. The question is, can I forgive? Yes, sir, can I forgive?”
“I declare it never occurred to me to inquire.”
“That’s enough, – quite enough; you shall hear from me. It may take me twenty-four hours to find a friend; but before this time to-morrow evening, sir, I ‘ll have him.”
Maitland shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and said, “As you please, sir.”
“It shall be as I please, sir; I ‘ll take care of that. Are you able to say at present to whom my friend can address himself?”
“If your friend will first do the favor to call upon me, I ‘ll be able by that time to inform him.”
“All right. If it’s to be Mark Lyle – ”
“Certainly not; it could never occur to me to make choice of your friend and neighbor’s son for such an office.”
“Well, I thought not, – I hoped not; and I suspected, besides, that the little fellow with the red whiskers – that major who dined one day at the Abbey – ”
Maitland’s pale cheek grew scarlet, his eyes flashed with passion, and all the consummate calm of his manner gave way as he said, “With the choice of my friend, sir, you have nothing to do, and I decline to confer further with you.”
“Eh, eh! that shell broke in the magazine, did it? I thought it would. I ‘ll be shot but I thought it would!” And with a hearty laugh, but bitter withal, the old Commodore seized his hat and departed.
Maitland was much tempted to hasten after the Commodore, and demand – imperiously demand – from him an explanation of his last words, whose taunt was even more in the manner than the matter. Was it a mere chance hit, or did the old sailor really know something about the relations between himself and M’Caskey? A second or two of thought reassured him, and he laughed at his own fears, and turned once more to the table to finish his letter to his friend.
“You have often, my dear Carlo, heard me boast that amidst all the shifting chances and accidents of my life, I had ever escaped one signal misfortune, – in my mind, about the greatest that ever befalls a man. I have never been ridiculous. This can be my triumph no longer. The charm is broken! I suppose, if I had never come to this blessed country, I might have preserved my immunity to the last; but you might as well try to keep your gravity at one of the Polichinello combats at Naples as preserve your dignity in a land where life is a perpetual joke, and where the few serious people are so illogical in their gravity, they are the best fun of all. Into this strange society I plunged as fearlessly as a man does who has seen a large share of life, and believes that the human crystal has no side he has not noticed; and the upshot is, I am supposed to have made warm love to a young woman that I scarcely flirted with, and am going to be shot at to-morrow by her father for not being serious in my intentions! You may laugh – you may scream, shout, and kick with laughter, and I almost think I can hear you; but it’s a very embarrassing position, and the absurdity of it is more than I can face.
“Why did I ever come here? What induced me ever to put foot in a land where the very natives do not know their own customs, and where all is permitted and nothing is tolerated? It is too late to ask you to come and see me through this troublesome affair; and indeed my present vacillation is whether to marry the young lady or run away bodily; for I own to you I am afraid – heartily afraid – to fight a man that might be my grandfather; and I can’t bear to give the mettlesome old fellow the fun of shooting at me for nothing. And worse – a thousand times worse than all this, – Alice will have such a laugh at me! Ay, Carlo, here is the sum of my affliction.
“I must close this, as I shall have to look out for some one long of stride and quick of eye, to handle me on the ground. Meanwhile, order dinner for two on Saturday week, for I mean to be with you; and, therefore, say nothing of those affairs which interest us, ultra montant. I write by this post to M’C. to meet me as I pass through Dublin; and, of course, the fellow will want money. I shall therefore draw on Cipriani for whatever is necessary, and you must be prepared to tell him the outlay was indispensable. I have done nothing, absolutely nothing, here, – neither seduced man nor woman, and am bringing back to the cause nothing greater or more telling than
“Norman Maitland.”