Rhoda Fleming. Complete

CHAPTER XVIII

A single night at the Pilot Inn had given life and vigour to Robert’s old reputation in Warbeach village, as the stoutest of drinkers and dear rascals throughout a sailor-breeding district, where Dibdin was still thundered in the ale-house, and manhood in a great degree measured by the capacity to take liquor on board, as a ship takes ballast. There was a profound affectation of deploring the sad fact that he drank as hard as ever, among the men, and genuine pity expressed for him by the women of Warbeach; but his fame was fresh again. As the Spring brings back its flowers, Robert’s presence revived his youthful deeds. There had not been a boxer in the neighbourhood like Robert Eccles, nor such a champion in all games, nor, when he set himself to it, such an invincible drinker. It was he who thrashed the brute, Nic Sedgett, for stabbing with his clasp-knife Harry Boulby, son of the landlady of the Pilot Inn; thrashed him publicly, to the comfort of all Warbeach. He had rescued old Dame Garble from her burning cottage, and made his father house the old creature, and worked at farming, though he hated it, to pay for her subsistence. He vindicated the honour of Warbeach by drinking a match against a Yorkshire skipper till four o’clock in the morning, when it was a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire steadying the defeated North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to his flattish-bottomed billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise on the river—yo-ho! ahoy!

Glorious Robert had tried, first the sea, and then soldiering. Now let us hope he’ll settle to farming, and follow his rare old father’s ways, and be back among his own people for good. So chimed the younger ones, and many of the elder.

Danish blood had settled round Warbeach. To be a really popular hero anywhere in Britain, a lad must still, I fear, have something of a Scandinavian gullet; and if, in addition to his being a powerful drinker, he is pleasant in his cups, and can sing, and forgive, be freehanded, and roll out the grand risky phrases of a fired brain, he stamps himself, in the apprehension of his associates, a king.

Much of the stuff was required to deal King Robert of Warbeach the capital stroke, and commonly he could hold on till a puff of cold air from the outer door, like an admonitory messenger, reminded him that he was, in the greatness of his soul, a king of swine; after which his way of walking off, without a word to anybody, hoisting his whole stature, while others were staggering, or roaring foul rhymes, or feeling consciously mortal in their sensation of feverishness, became a theme for admiration; ay, and he was fresh as an orchard apple in the morning! there lay his commandership convincingly. What was proved overnight was confirmed at dawn.

Mr. Robert had his contrast in Sedgett’s son, Nicodemus Sedgett, whose unlucky Christian name had assisted the wits of Warbeach in bestowing on him a darkly-luminous relationship. Young Nic loved also to steep his spirit in the bowl; but, in addition to his never paying for his luxury, he drank as if in emulation of the colour of his reputed patron, and neighbourhood to Nic Sedgett was not liked when that young man became thoughtful over his glass.

The episode of his stabbing the landlady’s son Harry clung to him fatally. The wound was in the thigh, and nothing serious. Harry was up and off to sea before Nic had ceased to show the marks of Robert’s vengeance upon him; but blood-shedding, even on a small scale, is so detested by Englishmen, that Nic never got back to his right hue in the eyes of Warbeach. None felt to him as to a countryman, and it may be supposed that his face was seen no more in the house of gathering, the Pilot Inn.

He rented one of the Fairly farms, known as the Three-Tree Farm, subsisting there, men fancied, by the aid of his housekeeper’s money. For he was of those evil fellows who disconcert all righteous prophecy, and it was vain for Mrs. Boulby and Warbeach village to declare that no good could come to him, when Fortune manifestly kept him going.

He possessed the rogue’s most serviceable art: in spite of a countenance that was not attractive, this fellow could, as was proved by evidence, make himself pleasing to women. “The truth of it is,” said Mrs. Boulby, at a loss for any other explanation, and with a woman’s love of sharp generalization, “it’s because my sex is fools.”

He had one day no money to pay his rent, and forthwith (using for the purpose his last five shillings, it was said) advertized for a housekeeper; and before Warbeach had done chuckling over his folly, an agreeable woman of about thirty-five was making purchases in his name; she made tea, and the evening brew for such friends as he could collect, and apparently paid his rent for him, after a time; the distress was not in the house three days. It seemed to Warbeach an erratic proceeding on the part of Providence, that Nic should ever be helped to swim; but our modern prophets have small patience, and summon Destiny to strike without a preparation of her weapons or a warning to the victim.

More than Robert’s old occasional vice was at the bottom of his popularity, as I need not say. Let those who generalize upon ethnology determine whether the ancient opposition of Saxon and Norman be at an end; but it is certain, to my thinking, that when a hero of the people can be got from the common popular stock, he is doubly dear. A gentleman, however gallant and familiar, will hardly ever be as much beloved, until he dies to inform a legend or a ballad: seeing that death only can remove the peculiar distinctions and distances which the people feel to exist between themselves and the gentleman-class, and which, not to credit them with preternatural discernment, they are carefully taught to feel. Dead Britons are all Britons, but live Britons are not quite brothers.

It was as the son of a yeoman, showing comprehensible accomplishments, that Robert took his lead. He was a very brave, a sweet-hearted, and a handsome young man, and he had very chivalrous views of life, that were understood by a sufficient number under the influence of ale or brandy, and by a few in default of that material aid; and they had a family pride in him. The pride was mixed with fear, which threw over it a tender light, like a mother’s dream of her child. The people, I have said, are not so lost in self-contempt as to undervalue their best men, but it must be admitted that they rarely produce young fellows wearing the undeniable chieftain’s stamp, and the rarity of one like Robert lent a hue of sadness to him in their thoughts.

Fortune, moreover, the favourer of Nic Sedgett, blew foul whichever the way Robert set his sails. He would not look to his own advantage; and the belief that man should set his little traps for the liberal hand of his God, if he wishes to prosper, rather than strive to be merely honourable in his Maker’s eye, is almost as general among poor people as it is with the moneyed classes, who survey them from their height.

When jolly Butcher Billing, who was one of the limited company which had sat with Robert at the Pilot last night, reported that he had quitted the army, he was hearkened to dolefully, and the feeling was universal that glorious Robert had cut himself off from his pension and his hospital.

But when gossip Sedgett went his rounds, telling that Robert was down among them again upon the darkest expedition their minds could conceive, and rode out every morning for the purpose of encountering one of the gentlemen up at Fairly, and had already pulled him off his horse and laid him in the mud, calling him scoundrel and challenging him either to yield his secret or to fight; and that he followed him, and was out after him publicly, and matched himself against that gentleman, who had all the other gentlemen, and the earl, and the law to back him, the little place buzzed with wonder and alarm. Faint hearts declared that Robert was now done for. All felt that he had gone miles beyond the mark. Those were the misty days when fogs rolled up the salt river from the winter sea, and the sun lived but an hour in the clotted sky, extinguished near the noon.

Robert was seen riding out, and the tramp of his horse was heard as he returned homeward. He called no more at the Pilot. Darkness and mystery enveloped him. There were nightly meetings under Mrs. Boulby’s roof, in the belief that he could not withstand her temptations; nor did she imprudently discourage them; but the woman at last overcame the landlady within her, and she wailed: “He won’t come because of the drink. Oh! why was I made to sell liquor, which he says sends him to the devil, poor blessed boy? and I can’t help begging him to take one little drop. I did, the first night he was down, forgetting his ways; he looked so desperate, he did, and it went on and went on, till he was primed, and me proud to see him get out of his misery. And now he hates the thought of me.”

In her despair she encouraged Sedgett to visit her bar and parlour, and he became everywhere a most important man.

Farmer Eccles’s habits of seclusion (his pride, some said), and more especially the dreaded austere Aunt Anne, who ruled that household, kept people distant from the Warbeach farm-house, all excepting Sedgett, who related that every night on his return, she read a chapter from the Bible to Robert, sitting up for him patiently to fulfil her duty; and that the farmer’s words to his son had been: “Rest here; eat and drink, and ride my horse; but not a penny of my money do you have.”

By the help of Steeve Bilton, the Fairly huntsman, Sedgett was enabled to relate that there was a combination of the gentlemen against Robert, whose behaviour none could absolutely approve, save the landlady and jolly Butcher Billing, who stuck to him with a hearty blind faith.

“Did he ever,” asked the latter, “did Bob Eccles ever conduct himself disrespectful to his superiors? Wasn’t he always found out at his wildest for to be right—to a sensible man’s way of thinking?—though not, I grant ye, to his own interests—there’s another tale.” And Mr. Billing’s staunch adherence to the hero of the village was cried out to his credit when Sedgett stated, on Stephen Bilton’s authority, that Robert’s errand was the defence of a girl who had been wronged, and whose whereabout, that she might be restored to her parents, was all he wanted to know. This story passed from mouth to mouth, receiving much ornament in the passage. The girl in question became a lady; for it is required of a mere common girl that she should display remarkable character before she can be accepted as the fitting companion of a popular hero. She became a young lady of fortune, in love with Robert, and concealed by the artifice of the offending gentleman whom Robert had challenged. Sedgett told this for truth, being instigated to boldness of invention by pertinacious inquiries, and the dignified sense which the whole story hung upon him.

Mrs. Boulby, who, as a towering woman, despised Sedgett’s weak frame, had been willing to listen till she perceived him to be but a man of fiction, and then she gave him a flat contradiction, having no esteem for his custom.

“Eh! but, Missis, I can tell you his name—the gentleman’s name,” said Sedgett, placably. “He’s a Mr. Algernon Blancove, and a cousin by marriage, or something, of Mrs. Lovell.”

“I reckon you’re right about that, goodman,” replied Mrs. Boulby, with intuitive discernment of the true from the false, mingled with a desire to show that she was under no obligation for the news. “All t’ other’s a tale of your own, and you know it, and no more true than your rigmaroles about my brandy, which is French; it is, as sure as my blood’s British.”

“Oh! Missis,” quoth Sedgett, maliciously, “as to tales, you’ve got witnesses enough it crassed chann’l. Aha! Don’t bring ‘em into the box. Don’t you bring ‘em into ne’er a box.”

“You mean to say, Mr. Sedgett, they won’t swear?”

“No, Missis; they’ll swear, fast and safe, if you teach ‘em. Dashed if they won’t run the Pilot on a rock with their swearin’. It ain’t a good habit.”

“Well, Mr. Sedgett, the next time you drink my brandy and find the consequences bad, you let me hear of it.”

“And what’ll you do, Missis, may be?”

Listeners were by, and Mrs. Boulby cruelly retorted; “I won’t send you home to your wife;” which created a roar against this hen-pecked man.

“As to consequences, Missis, it’s for your sake I’m looking at them,” Sedgett said, when he had recovered from the blow.

“You say that to the Excise, Mr. Sedgett; it, belike, ‘ll make ‘em sorry.”

“Brandy’s your weak point, it appears, Missis.”

“A little in you would stiffen your back, Mr. Sedgett.”

“Poor Bob Eccles didn’t want no stiffening when he come down first,” Sedgett interjected.

At which, flushing enraged, Mrs. Boulby cried: “Mention him, indeed! And him and you, and that son of your’n—the shame of your cheeks if people say he’s like his father. Is it your son, Nic Sedgett, thinks to inform against me, as once he swore to, and to get his wage that he may step out of a second bankruptcy? and he a farmer! You let him know that he isn’t feared by me, Sedgett, and there’s one here to give him a second dose, without waiting for him to use clasp-knives on harmless innocents.”

“Pacify yourself, ma’am, pacify yourself,” remarked Sedgett, hardened against words abroad by his endurance of blows at home. “Bob Eccles, he’s got his hands full, and he, maybe, ‘ll reach the hulks before my Nic do, yet. And how ‘m I answerable for Nic, I ask you?”

“More luck to you not to be, I say; and either, Sedgett, you does woman’s work, gossipin’ about like a cracked bell-clapper, or men’s the biggest gossips of all, which I believe; for there’s no beating you at your work, and one can’t wish ill to you, knowing what you catch.”

“In a friendly way, Missis,”—Sedgett fixed on the compliment to his power of propagating news—“in a friendly way. You can’t accuse me of leavin’ out the ‘l’ in your name, now, can you? I make that observation,”—the venomous tattler screwed himself up to the widow insinuatingly, as if her understanding could only be seized at close quarters, “I make that observation, because poor Dick Boulby, your lamented husband—eh! poor Dick! You see, Missis, it ain’t the tough ones last longest: he’d sing, ‘I’m a Sea Booby,’ to the song, ‘I’m a green Mermaid:’ poor Dick! ‘a-shinin’ upon the sea-deeps.’ He kept the liquor from his head, but didn’t mean it to stop down in his leg.”

“Have you done, Mr. Sedgett?” said the widow, blandly.

“You ain’t angry, Missis?”

“Not a bit, Mr. Sedgett; and if I knock you over with the flat o’ my hand, don’t you think so.”

Sedgett threw up the wizened skin of his forehead, and retreated from the bar. At a safe distance, he called: “Bad news that about Bob Eccles swallowing a blow yesterday!”

Mrs. Boulby faced him complacently till he retired, and then observed to those of his sex surrounding her, “Don’t ‘woman-and-dog-and-walnut-tree’ me! Some of you men ‘d be the better for a drubbing every day of your lives. Sedgett yond’ ‘d be as big a villain as his son, only for what he gets at home.”

That was her way of replying to the Parthian arrow; but the barb was poisoned. The village was at fever heat concerning Robert, and this assertion that he had swallowed a blow, produced almost as great a consternation as if a fleet of the enemy had been reported off Sandy Point.

Mrs. Boulby went into her parlour and wrote a letter to Robert, which she despatched by one of the loungers about the bar, who brought back news that three of the gentlemen of Fairly were on horseback, talking to Farmer Eccles at his garden gate. Affairs were waxing hot. The gentlemen had only to threaten Farmer Eccles, to make him side with his son, right or wrong. In the evening, Stephen Bilton, the huntsman, presented himself at the door of the long parlour of the Pilot, and loud cheers were his greeting from a full company.

“Gentlemen all,” said Stephen, with dapper modesty; and acted as if no excitement were current, and he had nothing to tell.

“Well, Steeve?” said one, to encourage him.

“How about Bob, to-day?” said another.

Before Stephen had spoken, it was clear to the apprehension of the whole room that he did not share the popular view of Robert. He declined to understand who was meant by “Bob.” He played the questions off; and then shrugged, with, “Oh, let’s have a quiet evening.”

It ended in his saying, “About Bob Eccles? There, that’s summed up pretty quick—he’s mad.”

“Mad!” shouted Warbeach.

“That’s a lie,” said Mrs. Boulby, from the doorway.

“Well, mum, I let a lady have her own opinion.” Stephen nodded to her. “There ain’t a doubt as t’ what the doctors ‘d bring him in I ain’t speaking my ideas alone. It’s written like the capital letters in a newspaper. Lunatic’s the word! And I’ll take a glass of something warm, Mrs. Boulby. We had a stiff run to-day.”

“Where did ye kill, Steeve?” asked a dispirited voice.

“We didn’t kill at all: he was one of those ‘longshore dog-foxes,’ and got away home on the cliff.” Stephen thumped his knee. “It’s my belief the smell o’ sea gives ‘em extra cunning.”

“The beggar seems to have put ye out rether—eh, Steeve?”

So it was generally presumed: and yet the charge of madness was very staggering; madness being, in the first place, indefensible, and everybody’s enemy when at large; and Robert’s behaviour looked extremely like it. It had already been as a black shadow haunting enthusiastic minds in the village, and there fell a short silence, during which Stephen made his preparations for filling and lighting a pipe.

“Come; how do you make out he’s mad?”

Jolly Butcher Billing spoke; but with none of the irony of confidence.

“Oh!” Stephen merely clapped both elbows against his sides.

Several pairs of eyes were studying him. He glanced over them in turn, and commenced leisurely the puff contemplative.

“Don’t happen to have a grudge of e’er a kind against old Bob, Steeve?”

“Not I!”

Mrs. Boulby herself brought his glass to Stephen, and, retreating, left the parlour-door open.

“What causes you for to think him mad, Steeve?”

A second “Oh!” as from the heights dominating argument, sounded from Stephen’s throat, half like a grunt. This time he condescended to add,—

“How do you know when a dog’s gone mad? Well, Robert Eccles, he’s gone in like manner. If you don’t judge a man by his actions, you’ve got no means of reckoning. He comes and attacks gentlemen, and swears he’ll go on doing it.”

“Well, and what does that prove?” said jolly Butcher Billing.

Mr. William Moody, boatbuilder, a liver-complexioned citizen, undertook to reply.

“What does that prove? What does that prove when the midshipmite was found with his head in the mixedpickle jar? It proved that his head was lean, and t’ other part was rounder.”

The illustration appeared forcible, but not direct, and nothing more was understood from it than that Moody, and two or three others who had been struck by the image of the infatuated young naval officer, were going over to the enemy. The stamp of madness upon Robert’s acts certainly saved perplexity, and was the easiest side of the argument. By this time Stephen had finished his glass, and the effect was seen.

“Hang it!” he exclaimed, “I don’t agree he deserves shooting. And he may have had harm done to him. In that case, let him fight. And I say, too, let the gentleman give him satisfaction.”

“Hear! hear!” cried several.

“And if the gentleman refuse to give him satisfaction in a fair stand-up fight, I say he ain’t a gentleman, and deserves to be treated as such. My objection’s personal. I don’t like any man who spoils sport, and ne’er a rascally vulpeci’ spoils sport as he do, since he’s been down in our parts again. I’ll take another brimmer, Mrs. Boulby.”

“To be sure you will, Stephen,” said Mrs. Boulby, bending as in a curtsey to the glass; and so soft with him that foolish fellows thought her cowed by the accusation thrown at her favourite.

“There’s two questions about they valpecies, Master Stephen,” said Farmer Wainsby, a farmer with a grievance, fixing his elbow on his knee for serious utterance. “There’s to ask, and t’ ask again. Sport, I grant ye. All in doo season. But,” he performed a circle with his pipe stem, and darted it as from the centre thereof toward Stephen’s breast, with the poser, “do we s’pport thieves at public expense for them to keep thievin’—black, white, or brown—no matter, eh? Well, then, if the public wunt bear it, dang me if I can see why individles shud bear it. It ent no manner o’ reason, net as I can see; let gentlemen have their opinion, or let ‘em not. Foxes be hanged!”

Much slow winking was interchanged. In a general sense, Farmer Wainsby’s remarks were held to be un-English, though he was pardoned for them as one having peculiar interests at stake.

“Ay, ay! we know all about that,” said Stephen, taking succour from the eyes surrounding him.

“And so, may be, do we,” said Wainsby.

“Fox-hunting ‘ll go on when your great-grandfather’s your youngest son, farmer; or t’ other way.”

“I reckon it’ll be a stuffed fox your chil’ern ‘ll hunt, Mr. Steeve; more straw in ‘em than bow’ls.”

“If the country,” Stephen thumped the table, “were what you’d make of it, hang me if my name ‘d long be Englishman!”

“Hear, hear, Steeve!” was shouted in support of the Conservative principle enunciated by him.

“What I say is, flesh and blood afore foxes!”

Thus did Farmer Wainsby likewise attempt a rallying-cry; but Stephen’s retort, “Ain’t foxes flesh and blood?” convicted him of clumsiness, and, buoyed on the uproar of cheers, Stephen pursued, “They are; to kill ‘em in cold blood’s beast-murder, so it is. What do we do? We give ‘em a fair field—a fair field and no favour! We let ‘em trust to the instincts Nature, she’s given ‘em; and don’t the old woman know best? If they cap, get away, they win the day. All’s open, and honest, and aboveboard. Kill your rats and kill your rabbits, but leave foxes to your betters. Foxes are gentlemen. You don’t understand? Be hanged if they ain’t! I like the old fox, and I don’t like to see him murdered and exterminated, but die the death of a gentleman, at the hands of gentlemen—”

“And ladies,” sneered the farmer.

All the room was with Stephen, and would have backed him uproariously, had he not reached his sounding period without knowing it, and thus allowed his opponent to slip in that abominable addition.

“Ay, and ladies,” cried the huntsman, keen at recovery. “Why shouldn’t they? I hate a field without a woman in it; don’t you? and you? and you? And you, too, Mrs. Boulby? There you are, and the room looks better for you—don’t it, lads? Hurrah!”

The cheering was now aroused, and Stephen had his glass filled again in triumph, while the farmer meditated thickly over the ruin of his argument from that fatal effort at fortifying it by throwing a hint to the discredit of the sex, as many another man has meditated before.