Springhaven : a Tale of the Great War Part 52

"I hope you are not much hurt, my lord?" said the Captain, doing his best to smile.

"They have done for me at last," the hero gasped. "Hardy, my backbone is shot through."

Through the roar of battle, sobs of dear love sounded along the blood-stained deck, as Dan and another seaman took the pride of our nation tenderly, and carried him down to the orlop-deck. Yet even so, in the deadly pang and draining of the life-blood, the sense of duty never failed, and the love of country conquered death. With his feeble hand he contrived to reach the handkerchief in his pocket, and spread it over his face and breast, lest the crew should be disheartened.

"I know who fired that shot," cried Dan, when he saw that he could help no more. "He never shall live to boast of it, if I have to board the French s.h.i.+p to fetch him."

He ran back quickly to the quarterdeck, and there found three or four others eager to give their lives for Nelson's death. The mizzen-top of the Redoutable, whence the fatal shot had come, was scarcely so much as fifty feet from the starboard rail of the Victory. The men who were stationed in that top, although they had no bra.s.s cohorn there, such as those in the main and fore tops plied, had taken many English lives, while the thick smoke surged around them.

For some time they had worked unheeded in the louder roar of cannon, and when at last they were observed, it was hard to get a fair shot at them, not only from the rolling of the entangled s.h.i.+ps, and clouds of blinding vapour, but because they retired out of sight to load, and only came forward to catch their aim. However, by the exertions of our marines--who should have been at them long ago--these sharp-shooters from the coign of vantage were now reduced to three brave fellows. They had only done their duty, and perhaps had no idea how completely they had done it; but naturally enough our men looked at them as if they were "too bad for hanging." Smoky as the air was, the three men saw that a very strong feeling was aroused against them, and that none of their own side was at hand to back them up. And the language of the English--though they could not understand it--was clearly that of bitter condemnation.

The least resolute of them became depressed by this, being doubtless a Radical who had been taught that Vox populi is Vox Dei. He endeavoured, therefore, to slide down the rigging, but was shot through the heart, and dead before he had time to know it. At the very same moment the most desperate villain of the three--as we should call him--or the most heroic of these patriots (as the French historians describe him) popped forward and shot a worthy Englishman, who was shaking his fist instead of pointing his gun.

Then an old quartermaster, who was standing on the p.o.o.p, with his legs spread out as comfortably as if he had his Sunday dinner on the spit before him, shouted--"That's him, boys--that glazed hat beggar! Have at him all together, next time he comes forrard." As he spoke, he fell dead, with his teeth in his throat, from the fire of the other Frenchman. But the carbine dropped from the man who had fired, and his body fell dead as the one he had destroyed, for a sharp little Middy, behind the quartermaster, sent a bullet through the head, as the hand drew trigger. The slayer of Nelson remained alone, and he kept back warily, where none could see him.

"All of you fire, quick one after other," cried Dan, who had picked up a loaded musket, and was kneeling in the embrasure of a gun; "fire so that he may tell the shots; that will fetch him out again. Sing out first, 'There he is!' as if you saw him."

The men on the quarter-deck and p.o.o.p did so, and the Frenchman, who was watching through a hole, came forward for a safe shot while they were loading. He pointed the long gun which had killed Nelson at the smart young officer on the p.o.o.p, but the muzzle flew up ere he pulled the trigger, and leaning forward he fell dead, with his legs and arms spread, like a jack for oiling axles. Dan had gone through some small-arm drill in the fortnight he spent at Portsmouth, and his eyes were too keen for the bull's-eye. With a rest for his muzzle he laid it truly for the spot where the Frenchman would reappear; with extreme punctuality he shot him in the throat; and the gallant man who deprived the world of Nelson was thus despatched to a better one, three hours in front of his victim.

CHAPTER LXVI

THE LAST BULLETIN

To Britannia this was but feeble comfort, even if she heard of it. She had lost her pet hero, the simplest and dearest of all the thousands she has borne and nursed, and for every penny she had grudged him in the flesh, she would lay a thousand pounds upon his bones. To put it more poetically, her smiles were turned to tears--which cost her something--and the laurel drooped in the cypress shade. The hostile fleet was destroyed; brave France would never more come out of harbour to contend with England; the foggy fear of invasion was like a morning fog dispersed; and yet the funds (the pulse of England) fell at the loss of that one defender.

It was a gloomy evening, and come time for good people to be in-doors, when the big news reached Springhaven. Since the Admiral slept in the green churchyard, with no despatch to receive or send, the importance of Springhaven had declined in all opinion except its own, and even Captain Stubbard could not keep it up. When the Squire was shot, and Master Erle as well, and Carne Castle went higher than a lark could soar, and folk were fools enough to believe that Boney would dare put his foot down there, John Prater had done a most wonderful trade, and never a man who could lay his tongue justly with the pens that came spluttering from London had any call for a fortnight together to go to bed sober at his own expense. But this bright season ended quite as suddenly as it had begun; and when these great "hungers"--as those veterans were ent.i.tled who dealt most freely with the marvellous--had laid their heads together to produce and confirm another guinea's worth of fiction, the London press would have none of it. Public interest had rushed into another channel; and the men who had thriven for a fortnight on their tongues were driven to employ them on their hands again.

But now, on the sixth of November, a new excitement was in store for them. The calm obscurity of night flowed in, through the trees that belonged to Sir Francis now, and along his misty meadows; and the only sound in the village lane was the murmur of the brook beside it, or the gentle sigh of the retiring seas. Boys of age enough to make much noise, or at least to prolong it after nightfall, were away in the fis.h.i.+ng-boats, receiving whacks almost as often as they needed them; for those times (unlike these) were equal to their fundamental duties.

In the winding lane outside the grounds of the Hall, and shaping its convenience naturally by that of the more urgent brook, a man--to show what the times were come to--had lately set up a shoeing forge. He had done it on the strength of the troopers' horses coming down the hill so fast, and often with their cogs worn out, yet going as hard as if they had no knees, or at least none belonging to their riders. And although he was not a Springhaven man, he had been allowed to marry a Springhaven woman, one of the Capers up the hill; and John Prater (who was akin to him by marriage, and perhaps had an eye to the inevitable ailment of a man whose horse is ailing) backed up his daring scheme so strongly that the Admiral, anxious for the public good, had allowed this smithy to be set up here.

John Keatch was the man who established this, of the very same family (still thriving in West Middles.e.x) which for the service of the state supplied an official whose mantle it is now found hard to fill; and the blacksmith was known as "Jack Ketch" in the village, while his forge was becoming the centre of news. Captain Stubbard employed him for battery uses, and finding his swing-shutters larger than those of Widow Shanks, and more cheaply lit up by the glow of the forge, was now beginning, in spite of her remonstrance, to post all his very big proclamations there.

"Rouse up your fire, Ketch," he said that evening, as he stood at the door of the smithy, with half a dozen of his children at his heels.

"Bring a dozen clout-nails; here's a tremendous piece of news!"

The blacksmith made a blaze with a few strokes of his bellows, and swung his shutter forward, so that all might read.

"GREAT AND GLORIOUS VICTORY. Twenty line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps destroyed or captured. Lord Nelson shot dead. G.o.d save the King!"

"Keep your fire up. I'll pay a s.h.i.+lling for the coal," cried the Captain, in the flush of excitement. "Bring out your cow's horn, and go and blow it at the corner. And that drum you had to mend, my boy and girl will beat it. Jack, run up to the battery, and tell them to blaze away for their very lives."

In less than five minutes all the village was there, with the readers put foremost, all reading together at the top of their voices, for the benefit of the rest. Behind them stood Polly Cheeseman, peeping, with the glare of the fire on her sad pale face and the ruddy cheeks of her infant. "Make way for Widow Carne, and the young Squire Carne," the loud voice of Captain Zeb commanded; "any man as stands afront of her will have me upon him. Now, ma'am, stand forth, and let them look at you."

This was a sudden thought of Captain Tugwell's; but it fixed her rank among them, as the order of the King might. The strong sense of justice, always ready in Springhaven, backed up her right to be what she had believed herself, and would have been, but for foul deceit and falsehood. And if the proud spirit of Carne ever wandered around the ancestral property, it would have received in the next generation a righteous shock at descrying in large letters, well picked out with shade: "Caryl Carne, Grocer and b.u.t.terman, Cheese-monger, Dealer in Bacon and Sausages. Licensed to sell Tea, Coffee, Snuff, Pepper, and Tobacco."

For Cheeseman raised his head again, with the spirit of a true British tradesman, as soon as the nightmare of traitorous plots and contraband imports was over. Captain Tugwell on his behalf led the fis.h.i.+ng fleet against that renegade La Liberte, and casting the foreigners overboard, they restored her integrity as the London Trader. Mr. Cheeseman shed a tear, and put on a new ap.r.o.n, and entirely reformed his political views, which had been loose and Whiggish. Uprightness of the most sensitive order--that which has slipped and strained its tendons--stamped all his dealings, even in the b.u.t.ter line; and facts having furnished a creditable motive for his rash reliance upon his own cord, he turned amid applause to the pleasant pastimes of a smug church-warden. And when he was wafted to a still sublimer sphere, his grandson carried on the business well.

Having spread the great news in this striking manner, Captain Stubbard--though growing very bulky now with good living, ever since his pay was doubled--set off at a conscientious pace against the stomach of the hill, lest haply the Hall should feel aggrieved at hearing all this noise and having to wonder what the reason was. He knew, and was grateful at knowing, that Carne's black crime and devilish plot had wrought an entire revulsion in the candid but naturally too soft mind of the author of the Harmodiad. Sir Francis was still of a liberal mind, and still admired his own works. But forgetting that n.o.body read them, he feared the extensive harm they might produce, although he was now resolved to write even better in the opposite direction. On the impulse of literary conscience, he held a council with the gardener Swipes, as to the best composition of bonfire for the consumption of poetry. Mr.

Swipes recommended dead pea-haulm, with the sticks left in it to ensure a draught. Then the poet in the garden with a long bean-stick administered fire to the whole edition, not only of the Harmodiad, but also of the Theiodemos, his later and even grander work. Persons incapable of lofty thought attributed this--the most sage and practical of all forms of palinode--to no higher source than the pretty face and figure, and sweet patriotism, of Lady Alice, the youngest sister of Lord Dashville. And subsequent facts, to some extent, confirmed this interpretation.

The old house looked gloomy and dull of brow, with only three windows showing light, as stout Captain Stubbard, with his short sword swinging from the bulky position where his waist had been, strode along the winding of the hill towards the door. At a sharp corner, under some trees, he came almost shoulder to shoulder with a tall man striking into the road from a foot-path. The Captain drew his sword, for his nerves had been flurried ever since the great explosion, which laid him on his back among his own cannon.

"A friend," cried the other, "and a great admirer of your valour, Captain, but not a worthy object for its display."

"My dear friend Shargeloes!" replied the Captain, a little ashamed of his own vigilance. "How are you, my dear sir? and how is the system?"

"The system will never recover from the tricks that infernal Carne has played with it. But never mind that, if the intellect survives; we all owe a debt to our country. I have met you in the very nick of time.

Yesterday was Guy Fawkes' Day, and I wanted to be married then; but the people were not ready. I intend to have it now on New-Year's Day, because then I shall always remember the date. I am going up here to make a strange request, and I want you to say that it is right and proper. An opinion from a distinguished sailor will go a long way with the daughters of an Admiral. I want the young ladies to be my bridesmaids--and then for the little ones, your Maggy and your Kitty. I am bound to go to London for a month to-morrow, and then I could order all the bracelets and the brooches, if I were only certain who the blessed four would be."

"I never had any bridesmaids myself, and I don't know anything about them. I thought that the ladies were the people to settle that."

"The ladies are glad to be relieved of the expense, and I wish to start well," replied Shargeloes. "Why are ninety-nine men out of a hundred henpecked?"

"I am sure I don't know, except that they can't help it. But have you heard the great news of this evening?"

"The reason is," continued the member of the Corporation, "that they begin with being n.o.bodies. They leave the whole management of their weddings to the women, and they never recover the reins. Miss Twemlow is one of the most charming of her s.e.x; but she has a decided character, which properly guided will be admirable. But to give it the lead at the outset would be fatal to future happiness. Therefore I take this affair upon myself. I pay for it all, and I mean to do it all."

"What things you do learn in London!" the Captain answered, with a sigh.

"Oh, if I had only had the money--but it is too late to talk of that.

Once more, have you heard the news?"

"About the great battle, and the death of Nelson? Yes, I heard of all that this morning. But I left it to come in proper course from you. Now here we are; mind you back me up. The Lord Mayor is coming to be my best man."

The two sisters, dressed in the deepest mourning, and pale with long sorrow and loneliness, looked wholly unfit for festive scenes; and as soon as they heard of this new distress--the loss of their father's dearest friend, and their own beloved hero--they left the room, to have a good cry together, while their brother entertained the visitors. "It can't be done now," Mr. Shargeloes confessed; "and after all, Eliza is the proper person. I must leave that to her, but nothing else that I can think of. There can't be much harm in my letting her do that."

It was done by a gentleman after all, for the worthy Rector did it. The bride would liefer have dispensed with bridesmaids so much fairer than herself, and although unable to advance that reason, found fifty others against asking them. But her father had set his mind upon it, and together with his wife so pressed the matter that Faith and Dolly, much against their will, consented to come out of mourning for a day, but not into gay habiliments.

The bride was attired wonderfully, stunningly, carnageously--as Johnny, just gifted with his commission, and thereby with much slang, described her; and in truth she carried her bunting well, as Captain Stubbard told his wife, and Captain Tugwell confirmed it. But the eyes of everybody with half an eye followed the two forms in silver-grey. That was the nearest approach to brightness those lovers of their father allowed themselves, within five months of his tragic death; though if the old Admiral could have looked down from the main-top, probably he would have shouted, "No flags at half-mast for me, my pets!"

Two young men with melancholy glances followed these fair bridesmaids, being tantalized by these nuptial rites, because they knew no better.

One of them hoped that his time would come, when he had pushed his great discovery; and if the art of photography had been known, his face would have been his fortune. For he bore at the very top of it the seal and stamp of his patent--the manifest impact of a bullet, diffracted by the power of Pong. The roots of his hair--the terminus of blushes, according to all good novelists--had served an even more useful purpose, by enabling him to blush again. Strengthened by Pong, they had defied the lead, and deflected it into a shallow channel, already beginning to be overgrown by the aid of that same potent drug. Erle Twemlow looked little the worse for his wound; to a lady perhaps, to a man of science certainly, more interesting than he had been before. As he gazed at the bride all bespangled with gold, he felt that he had in his trunk the means of bespangling his bride with diamonds. But the worst of it was that he must wait, and fight, and perhaps get killed, before he could settle in life and make his fortune. As an officer of a marching regiment, ordered to rejoin immediately, he must flesh his sword in lather first--for he had found no razor strong enough--and postpone the day of riches till the golden date of peace.

The other young man had no solace of wealth, even in the blue distance, to whisper to his troubled heart. Although he was a real "Captain Scuddy" now, being posted to the Danae, 42-gun frigate, the capacity of his c.o.c.ked hat would be tried by no shower of gold impending. For mighty dread of the Union-jack had fallen upon the tricolor; that gallant flag perceived at last that its proper flight was upon dry land, where as yet there was none to flout it. Trafalgar had reduced by 50 per cent. the British sailor's chance of prize-money.

Such computations were not, however, the chief distress of Scudamore.

The happiness of his fair round face was less p.r.o.nounced than usual, because he had vainly striven for an interview with his loved one. With all her faults he loved her still, and longed to make them all his own.

He could not help being sadly shocked by her fatal coquetry with the traitor Carne, and slippery conduct to his own poor self. But love in his faithful heart maintained that she had already atoned for that too bitterly and too deeply; and the settled sorrow of her face, and listless submission of her movements, showed that she was now a very different Dolly. Faith, who had always been grave enough, seemed gaiety itself in comparison with her younger sister, once so gay. In their simple dresses--grey jaconet muslin, sparely trimmed with lavender--and wearing no jewel or ornament, but a single snow-drop in the breast, the lovely bridesmaids looked as if they defied all the world to make them brides.

But the Rector would not let them off from coming to the breakfast party, and with the well-bred sense of fitness they obeyed his bidding.

Captain Stubbard (whose jokes had missed fire too often to be satisfied with a small touch-hole now) was broadly facetious at their expense; and Johnny, returning thanks for them, surprised the good company by his manly tone, and contempt of life before beginning it. This invigorated Scudamore, by renewing his faith in human nature as a thing beyond calculation. He whispered a word or so to his friend Johnny while Mr.

and Mrs. Shargeloes were bowing farewell from the windows of a great family coach from London, which the Lord Mayor had lent them, to make up for not coming. For come he could not--though he longed to do so, and all Springhaven expected him--on account of the great preparations in hand for the funeral of Lord Nelson.

"Thy servant will see to it," the boy replied, with a wink at his sisters, whom he was to lead home; for Sir Francis had made his way down to the beach, to meditate his new poem, Theriodemos.

"His behaviour," thought Dolly, as she put on her cloak, "has been perfect. How thankful I feel for it! He never cast one glance at me. He quite enters into my feelings towards him. But how much more credit to his mind than to his heart!"