The Mayor of Troy Part 21

He fell back against the pedestal of a leaden effigy of Julius Caesar and plucked his dressing-gown about him with fumbling bewildered hands. Was the whole British Army pouring into his peaceful park?

What had he done to bring down on his head the sportive mockery of heaven, and at such a moment?

But in the act of collapsing he looked across the bal.u.s.trade and saw the Major's face suddenly lose its colour. Then in an instant he understood and pulled himself together.

"Hey? A hunt breakfast, is it?" he inquired sardonically, and turned to welcome the approaching troop. "Good morning, gentlemen! You have come to draw my covers? Then let me suggest your beginning with the plantation yonder to the right, where I can promise you good sport."

It was unneighbourly; an action remembered against Sir Felix to the close of his life, as it deserved to be. He himself admitted later that he had given way to momentary choler, and made what amends he could by largess to the victims and their families. But it was long before he recovered his place in our esteem. Indeed, he never wholly recovered it: since of many dire consequences there was one, unforeseen at the time, which proved to be irreparable. Over the immediate consequences let me drop the curtain. _Male, male feriati Troes!_ . . . As a man at daybreak takes a bag and, going into the woods, gathers mushrooms, so the Dragoons gathered the men of Troy.

. . . Mercifully the most of them were unconscious.

Even less heart have I to dwell on the return of the merrymakers:

"But now, ye shepherd la.s.ses, who shall lead Your wandering troops, or sing your virelays?"

Sure no forlorner procession ever pa.s.sed down Troy river than this, awhile so jocund, mute now, irresponsive to the morning's smile, the cuckoo's blithe challenge from the cliff. To the Major, seated in the stern sheets of the leading boat, no one dared to speak.

They supposed his pecuniary loss to be heavier than it actually was-- since the Dragoons had after all surprised but a portion of the cargo, and the leafy woods of Pentethy yet concealed many scores of tubs of _eau-de-vie_; but they knew that he brooded over no pecuniary loss. He had been outraged, betrayed as a neighbour, as a military commander, and again as a father of his people; wounded in the house of his friends; scourged with ridicule in the very seat of his dignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers s.n.a.t.c.hed from them and now bound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears by stealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the river reach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the end of all things with a tearless stare.

So they returned, drew to the quays, and disembarked, unwitting yet of worse discoveries awaiting them.

In the hospital Gunner Sobey, having dived into bed, with great presence of mind fell asleep. The Vicar had fled the town by the North, or Pa.s.sage, Gate, and was by this time devouring a country walk in long strides, heedless whither they led him, vainly endeavouring to compose his thoughts and readjust his prophecies in the light of the morning's events--a process which from time to time compelled him to halt and hold his head between both hands.

The Major had slammed his front door, locked himself in his room, and would give audience to no one.

It was in vain that the inhabitants besieged his porch, demanding to know if the town were bewitched. Who had gutted their shops?

Why the causeways swam with strong liquor? How the churchyard came to be full of cattle? What hand had fired Farmer Elford's ricks?

In short, what in the world had happened, and what was to be done?

They came contritely, conscious of their undeserving; but to each and all Scipio, from the head of the steps, returned the same answer.

His master was indisposed.

Troy, ordinarily a busy town, did no business at all that day.

Tradesmen and workmen in small groups at every street-corner discussed a mystery--or rather a series of mysteries--with which, as they well knew, one man alone was competent to grapple. To his good offices they had forfeited all right. Nevertheless, a crowd hung about all day in front of the Mayor's house, nor dispersed until long after nightfall. At eight o'clock next morning they rea.s.sembled, word having flown through the town that Dr. Hansombody and Lawyer Chinn had been summoned soon after daybreak to a private conference.

At eight-thirty the Vicar arrived and entered the house, Scipio admitting him with ceremony and at once shutting the door behind him with an elaborate show of caution.

But at a quarter to ten precisely the door opened again and the great man himself stood on the threshold. He wore civilian dress, and carried a three-caped travelling cloak on his left arm. His right hand grasped a valise. The sight of the crowd for a moment seemed to discompose him. He drew back a pace and then, advancing, cleared his throat.

"My friends," said he, "I am bound on a journey. Your consciences will tell you if I deserved yesterday's indignity, and how far you might have obviated it. But I have communed with myself and decided to overlook all personal offence. It is enough that certain of our fellow-townsmen are in durance, and I go to release them. In short, I travel to-day to Plymouth to seek the best legal advice for their defence. In my absence I commit the good behaviour of Troy to your keeping, one and all."

You, who have read how, when Nelson left Portsmouth for death and victory, the throng pressed after him down the beach in tears, and ran into the water for a last grasp of his hand, conceive with what emotion we lined up and escorted our hero to the ferry; through what tears we watched him from the Pa.s.sage Slip as he waved back from the boat tiding him over to the farther sh.o.r.e, where at length Boutigo's Van--"The Eclipse," Troy to Torpoint, No Smoking Inside--received and bore him from our straining eyes.

CHAPTER XII.

A COLD DOUCHE ON A HOT FIT.

There lived at Plymouth, in a neat house at the back of the Hoe, and not far from the Citadel, a certain Mr. Basket, a retired haberdasher of Cheapside, upon whom the Major could count for a hospitable welcome. The two had been friends--cronies almost--in their London days; dining together daily at the same cook-shop, and as regularly sharing after dinner a bottle of port to the health of King George and Mr. Pitt. Nor, since their almost simultaneous retreat from the capital, had they allowed distance to diminish their mutual regard.

They frequently corresponded, and their letters included many a playful challenge to test one another's West Country hospitality.

Now while the Major had (to put it mildly) but exchanged one sphere of activity for another, Mr. Basket, a married man, embraced the repose of a contemplative life; cultivating a small garden and taking his wife twice a week to the theatre, of which he was a devotee.

These punctual jaunts, very sensibly practised as a purge against dullness, together with the stir and hubbub of a garrison town in which his walled garden stood isolated, as it were, all day long, amid marchings, countermarchings, bugle-calls, and the rumble of wagons filled with material of war, gave him a sense of being in the swim--of close partic.i.p.ation in the world's affairs; failing which a great many folk seem to miss half the enjoyment of doing nothing in particular.

Mr. Basket welcomed the Major cordially, with a dozen rallying comments on his healthy rural complexion, and carried him off to admire the garden while Mrs. Basket enlarged her preparations for dinner at five o'clock.

The garden was indeed calculated to excite admiration, less for its flowers--for Mr. Basket confessed ruefully that very few flowers would grow with him--than for a hundred ingenuities by which this defect was concealed.

"And the beauty of it is," announced Mr. Basket, with a wave of his hand towards a black-and-white edging compound of marrow bones and the inverted bases of wine bottles, disposed alternately, "it harbours no slugs. It saves labour, too; you would be surprised at the sum it used to cost me weekly in labour alone. But," he went on, "I pin my faith to oyster sh.e.l.ls. They are, if in a nautical town one may be permitted to speak breezily, my sheet anchor."

He indicated a grotto at the end of the walk. "Maria and me did the whole of that."

"Mrs. Basket is fond of gardening?" hazarded the Major.

"She's extraordinary partial to oysters," Mr. Basket corrected him.

"We made it a principle from the first to use nothing but what we consumed in the house. That don't apply to the statuary, of course, which I have purchased at one time and another from an Italian dealer who frequents the Hoe. The material is less durable than one might wish; but I could not afford marble. The originals of these objects, so the dealer informs me, are sold for very considerable sums of money; in addition to which," went on Mr. Basket, lucidly, "he carries them in a tray on his head, which, in the case of marble, would be out of the question; and, as it is, how he contrives to keep 'em balanced pa.s.ses my understanding. But he is an intelligent fellow, and becomes very communicative as soon as he finds out you have leanings for Art. Here's a group, for instance--Cupid and Fisky--in the nude."

"But, excuse me--" The Major stepped back and rubbed his chin dubiously, for some careful hand had adorned the lovers with kilts of pink wool in crochet work, and Psyche, in addition, wore a neat pink turnover.

"The artist _designed_ 'em in the nude, but Maria worked the petticoats, having very decided views, for which I don't blame her.

It keeps off the birds, too: not that the birds could do the same damage here as in an ordinary garden."

"I can well believe that."

"But we were talking of oyster sh.e.l.ls. They are, as I say, our stand-by. To be sure, you can't procure 'em all the year round, like marrow bones for instance; but, as I tell Maria, from a gardening point of view that's almost a convenience. You can work at your beds whenever there's an 'r' in the month, and then, during the summer, take a spell, look about, and enjoy the results. Besides, it leaves you free to plan out new improvements. Now, here"--Mr. Basket caught his friend's arm, and leading him past a bust of Socrates ("an Athenian," he explained in pa.s.sing; "considered one of the wisest men of antiquity, though not good-looking in _our_ sense of the word "), paused on the brink of a small basin, cunningly sunk in centre of a round, pebble-paved area guarded by statuary--"I consider this my masterpiece."

"A fish-pond!"

"Yes, and containing real fish; goldfish, you perceive. I keep it supplied from a rain-water cistern at the top of the house, and feed 'em on bread-crumbs. Never tell _me_," said Mr. Basket, "that animals don't reason!"

"You certainly have made yourself a charming retreat," the Major admitted, gazing about him.

Mr. Basket beamed. "You remember the lines I was wont to declaim to you, my friend, over our bottle in Cheapside?--

"'May I govern my pa.s.sion with an absolute sway, And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away, Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay. . . .'"

"For the last, it must be as Heaven pleases; but to some extent, you see, I have come to enjoy my modest aspirations. Only until to-day one thing was lacking. As poor Bannister used to quote it in the play--you remember him?--

"'I've often wished that I had clear For life six hundred pounds a year A something-or-other house to lodge a friend. . . .'

"Ay, my dear Hymen," Mr. Basket wrung the Major's hand with genuine feeling, "you have been a long time putting off this visit; but, now we have you, I promise we don't let you go in a hurry. We will toast old days; we will go visit the play together as of old--yes, this very night. For, as luck will have it, the stock company at the Theatre Royal makes way to-night--for whom think you? No less a man than Orlando B. Sturge, and in his great part of Tom Taffrail in _Love Between Decks; or, The Triumph of Constancy_; a week's special engagement with his own London company in honour of the Duke of Clarence, who is paying us a visit just now at Admiralty House."

"Sturge?" echoed the Major, doubtfully.

"Good heavens, my dear fellow, don't tell me you haven't heard of him! Really, now, really, you bury yourself--believe me, you do.

Why, for nautical parts, the stage hasn't his equal; and a voice, they tell me, like Incledon's in his prime! Mrs. Basket and I have reserved seats, and, now I come to think of it, we had best step down to the theatre before dining, book yours, and arrange it so that we sit in a row. The house will be crowded, if 'tis only for a view of his Royal Highness, who will certainly attend if--hem!--equal to the effort."

"I had not heard of his being indisposed."

"Nor is he, at this hour. But now and then . . . after his fourth bottle . . . However, as I say, the house will certainly be crowded."

"You'll excuse me, my friend, if I beg that you and your good wife will trot off to the theatre to-night without troubling about me.

The--er--fact is, I have come up to Plymouth primarily to consult a lawyer on a somewhat delicate business, and shall be glad of a few hours' solitude this evening to prepare my case. Do you happen, by the way, to know of a good lawyer? I wish for the very best advice procurable."