Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Devilish hard case!” Wyke replied warmly. “If that is so.”

  “You seem, Peggy, to know a great deal about it,” Augusta said. “But what has that to do with his misbehaviour, even if the story be true, my dear, which I greatly doubt? He told it you himself, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” Peggy retorted, and defiance spoke in her tone. “He did.”

  “Oh!” Augusta’s voice was full of meaning, and Wyke wished himself away. “Silly, silly child! Of course, Sir Albery, you may believe just as much of that as you please.”

  Peggy lowered her face over her book, and the curls hid the angry tear that fell on the page. Fortunately, at that moment Dr. Portnal entered the room, and, “Ha, Wyke,” he said, greeting the visitor in the sonorous tone that matched his stately figure, “glad to see you! You’ve heard the news? It’s all over the town by this time, I suppose.” He stepped to the bell-rope, pulled it, and returned to his place on the hearth. “A sad business! A very sad business! But I am not surprised — like father, like son, eh? Ebrii ambo! But this crowns all, and — Wignall!” He turned from them and addressed the butler, who had appeared in the doorway. “You will see that neither Captain Bligh nor his son are admitted in future. Should they call, either of them, the ladies are not at home. If they wish to see me privately that is another matter. You understand? Very good! See that my orders are observed.” He dismissed the man by a nod, and turned to his visitor with the air of a man who had done his duty and had no doubt about the propriety of his action. “An unfortunate young man,” he said, “and no doubt to be pitied. But we must draw a line — we must draw a line, for the sake of others and example. What you will do about the Fencibles, I don’t know, Wyke. That is your business, but—”

  “I don’t think I shall do anything!” Wyke replied rather shortly.

  “Well, that’s your business, as I say. Though I confess I should be glad to have them both out of the parish — they are no honour to us. As to the cottage, I don’t know what I shall do. It is in Budgen’s lease, and I have not full power, but I shall see him about it. In my position I have a duty to others, and I recognize it. Peggy! Where are you going, my dear?”

  But Peggy, her curls quivering, had already reached the door, and only a murmur, conveying no meaning, reached the group about the hearth.

  “Foolish child!” Augusta said, looking after her indulgently.

  “She seems to have known him?” Sir Albery suggested, his eyes lingering on the door.

  “Who? Young Bligh?” the Rector replied comfortably. “To be sure! We all did after a fashion. But a disgrace, an official disgrace such as this, alters the matter — closes the door, so to speak.” The phrase pleased him and he repeated it in the satisfied tone of one whose words were not wont to fall to the ground. “His footing among us” — he warmed his coat-skirts as he stood with his back to the fire—” if footing it could be called, indeed, was slight; and he has now forfeited the right to be considered as existing — as existing for us, I mean,” he amended, with a gesture which once for all eliminated the offender. “In our position we must set an example. Augusta, my dear, you will be good enough not to know him in future, if you come across him in your walks.”

  Augusta assented meekly.

  “Sir Albery must judge for himself. He is his own master, though I venture to think that in his position, he too owes a duty to society.”

  But Sir Albery refused to commit himself. “I hardly know the young man,” he said. “But I am sorry for him. As for his father, I am more than sorry for him, poor beggar.”

  The Rector shook his handsome Jove-like head. He was a very fine figure of a man. “What that unfortunate” — he began portentously—” that poor debased man must be feeling at this moment, I shrink, Wyke, from imagining! His sin has indeed come home to him. I am no Pharisee, as you know. If a gentleman can take his bottle, or even his two bottles, of the wine, that was mercifully given to cheer the heart of man, and can still remain the gentleman, Heaven forbid that I should cast a stone! But the manner! The manner is the man, as we said at Winchester, and Captain Bligh’s manner — deplorable! Deplorable! Brandy, too, I fear, and no doubt smuggled. Well, I look round no corners, I am a man of the world, and we must take the world as we find it, and certainly the duties are high. But, speaking as a magistrate — deplorable!”

  Wyke smiled. “Well, there is plenty of the stuff about,” he said. “I have even heard it whispered that the Lively Peggy has been known to bring in a tub or two, when she has brought back nothing better, rector.”

  “I trust not! I hope not!” Dr. Portnal spoke a little warmly, for he had the credit of owning a comfortable stake in the Beremouth privateer. “I do not think so ill of Budgen as that. No, really, no. Let us have charity, Wyke, charity.”

  “Which covers a multitude of tubs!” Sir Albery rejoined slyly.

  CHAPTER II

  “NEVV?” old Budgen roared, his face crimson with anger. “Nevy, indeed! My nevy you may be, and more shame to me! But an idle, drunken dog you are! Not a stroke o’ work ha’ you done this two months, and the books in that state o’ muddle I might put ‘em in the fire, and no worse off! I wish that there wood was your coffin, I do! But I make an end of you! Off my place you go! Off you go, and I wish I may never see your ugly chaps again!”

  Joe, standing out on the shingle, a picture of loutish gawkiness, rubbed one foot against another. “You can’t do it,” he drawled.

  “Can’t do it? You’ll see if I can’t do it ! Come into my moulding-loft, or so much as put a foot on the slips, and I’ll foot the slack of your breeches with my shoemaker! And that’s my last word to you! My patience is wore out, and high time too. You be ended, my lad.”

  “You darn’t do it,” Joe growled, still sulkily defiant. But his uncle’s attitude was so threatening that he retreated another pace or two from the shed, under the eaves of which Budgen stood declaiming.

  “Daren’t do it, you little, wimping, scrimping effigy!” Budgen shouted. He snatched up a heavy caulking mallet from a bench beside him. “Why, you little threadpaper, for another word I’d duck you in the mast-pond! And by Elijah I will! Ben! Eb’nezer! Give this chap a taste o’ sea-water! Souse him well, souse him overhead — d’you hear ?

  I’ve done with the scamp! Collar him and —— —”

  But Joe Fewster was only a lath of a man, and he knew himself to be no favourite with the men over whom he had exercised an idle and teasing authority. He backed away, still muttering dark threats of what he would do, and in particular declaring an intention of enlisting that very moment in His Majesty’s forces stationed abroad. He repeated this more than once, and seemed to expect something to come of it. But as Budgen remained unshaken and only threatened to throw the mallet at him, Joe presently shambled away and, still cursing, took the steep path that, winding up the side of the Cove, led to the town and the Privateersman.

  His uncle, the job done, wiped his forehead. “Let him go,” he said to the grinning men. “But, mark you, I’ve done with him. I’ve done with Joe! Never no more man o’ mine! If he puts foot in this place do you put him out — put him out with the toe o’ your boot, the lazy, drunken scamp! You’ve my ‘thority! Or duck him if you like— ‘twill do the swab no harm!”

  Dabbing his heated face with a vast yellow handkerchief, a thing of luxury, of Lyons silk and spoil of war, Budgen went back into what he vaingloriously called his moulding-loft. There he proposed to refresh himself with a treat that seldom failed to relieve his feelings — a leisurely gloat over the lines of his latest and dearest creation. The loft was a tall shed closed on three sides only, on the longest of which was depicted in chalk from keel to poop-rail and large as life, the Lively Peggy, Letter of Marque of Beremouth, Master, Ozias Copestake, at present absent on her cruising ground. Budgen’s happiest moments were passed with that drawing before his eyes and the smell of wood-shavings and the tang of tar and seaweed in his nostrils. “Budgen & Fewster” — Fewster, Joe’s fa
ther, had lain in the churchyard these seven years—” Ship and Boat-builders,” was painted on a huge board above the open side of the shed that looked on the slips; for the actual building was done in the open. But of Budgen & Fewster’s skill as shipbuilders the Lively Peggy was the rare and fine flower. There had been an earlier brig, the Pride of Beremouth; but she had met with misfortune, and, alas! was now in French hands and “ravaging,” it was rumoured, out of Cherbourg. Yearly Budgen turned out a fishing-smack or two or a small coaster, and half a dozen quay-punts. But for the main part Budgen’s did not rise above boats — good boats, and they had a good name for them.

  On this occasion neither the contemplation of his darling’s fine lines nor his favourite smell of tar and shavings availed to give Budgen the relief he craved. He had turned a deaf ear to Joe’s threat that he would enlist. But he had heard it, and it worried him. Joe was as worthless a fellow as walked on shoe-leather. He spent at the Privateersman the money that he did not earn, and had it been only his ugly carcase that was at stake he might have gone to the West Indies and, as far as Budgen was concerned, might have fed the land-crabs, and welcome. But unluckily there were other and graver issues depending on him. Joe’s life had a special value for Budgen, as Joe well knew; and this fact, true at all times, was especially true at this moment. It was so true that the mere thought of risking that life and all that it stood for gave Budgen the goose-flesh, boldly as he had carried it off in Joe’s presence. For the capture of the Pride of Beremouth had dealt the boat-builder a shrewd blow, although he had been very far from bearing the whole of the loss. A second blow — and his prophetic eye discerned a possible and a heavy one — would find him ill-prepared to meet it; while, as for Joe’s death, that spelt ruin, sudden and complete, and he dared not even think of it.

  “And the Reverend,” he ruminated with a gloomy face, “he’s as hard as stone. No mercy to be expected from him, d — n his pompous Lord-a-Mighty airs! There’s some might believe in him, but not Isaac

  Budgen. No,” he reflected, with a long and darkling look at the Lively Peggy’s lines, “half of you is his, and the better half, too! And if Copestake bring in an anker or two of rum to cover costs when no better’s to be had, it’s ‘Understand, this must not occur again, Budgen!’ says he, but he takes good care to share in the reckoning! Ay, right good care his reverence takes of that!”

  He was upset for the day, and unfortunately it was his day for checking the monthly accounts, while all the material that Joe had left him consisted of scraps of dirty paper and of some illegible chalk-marks on the side of the shed. The sight of this muddle flustered the boat-builder afresh. He was no scholar; and while he bothered himself about it, with that threat of Joe’s ever at the back of his mind, it seemed to him that the men took advantage of him and worked lazily. The business was his life and soul, his heart was in it, and in the money that seemed to be oozing away from it. But of late it had brought him more pleasure than profit, and it would bear no further burden, he knew.

  Bound up with it in his affections and hardly less loved was his pleasant house in the nook of the Cove, with its white-harled fuchsia-clad walls and its green door with the smart brass knocker — the knocker a naked lady, the spoil of war, as was much of the furniture inside. But this too failed to afford him relief or pleasure at this moment. He had a vision in which he saw house and land and the loft and his half-dozen cottages, sprinkled up and down the steep sides of the Cove — in which he saw them all at stake and taken from him! And with them the piles of seasoning timber that he eyed lovingly morning and night, and the masts pickling in their pond, and the tubs of fragrant tar! Of what use would these be if he lost the Cove and all that went with it — all that made him the man he was.

  “D — n that Joe!” he whispered viciously, as he wiped the beads from his forehead. “D — n him! D — n him!” And the sun that shone into the warm cove, the sunshine and the soft Devon air and the sea-tang all lost their pleasantness and savour. He moved restlessly to the slips and stared up at the steep bluff, crowned by the church tower and scaled by a narrow path so steep that in one place it became a staircase. But the bluff only led his thoughts to the Rectory that stood on it, and he spat in his disgust, and went in again to his muddled accounts.

  Presently Ebenezer put his head into the shed. “There’s the Lieutenant a-coming down, master,” he said, “if you’ve a mind to spy him.”

  But Budgen was grumpy. “I s’pose he looks the same as other days,” he growled. He did not move.

  A moment later Ebenezer looked in again. “I b’lieve he’s coming here,” he said.

  “Well, let him come!” Budgen snarled. So when a moment later Bligh stepped into the shed he found the boat-builder with his horn-rimmed glasses thrust high on his forehead, still digging hopelessly into his pile of papers. Budgen worked at an old rickety desk in one of the closed comers; and to show his indifference he did not glance up, though he heard his visitor’s step. The Lieutenant, as he had supposed, looked much as usual, though a sharp eye might have found him a shade harder and gloomier for his late experience. He came a little way in, and after glancing about him addressed Budgen with the air of a man ready to take offence, but restraining himself for the time. “Can I have a word with you?” he asked.

  “Well,” the boat-builder replied surlily, “I be busy! But I’ve ears. I suppose you can say what you’ve a mind to say, Lieutenant.”

  “Drop that,” Bligh replied sharply. “I’m not that, any more — as you know.”

  “As you will. Have it your own way. What is it?”

  “Can you give me work?”

  Budgen was so much surprised by the question that a good part of his ill-humour (dropped from him.

  “Work! What, afore the mast?” he exclaimed.

  “Lord bless you, man, it’s impossible! See you handle a mallet? Why, the men would do no mortal work hour’s end to hour’s end, but just gape at you!”

  “I hear you’ve got rid of Fewster. I met him up above.”

  “And if I have? What then?”

  “What Fewster could do I could do.”

  Budgen stared, but his attention was caught. He left his desk and came forward. “Well, you’ve lost no time, Lieutenant,” he said, with admiration. “I will say that.”

  “No,” Bligh replied drily. “If I could eat tomorrow for to-day, there’d be no hurry. As it is I’ve got to eat to-day, Budgen.”

  “What do you count to do, man?”

  “What Joe did — but I’d do it. Keep your accounts,” he cast a glance at the desk, “and overlook the men when you are not here. And tally stores in and out.”

  “Umph! Well, you’d be honest, I do believe. There is that,” the boat-builder allowed, calculation in his eyes. “I will say, there’s that.”

  Bligh reddened, but he did not answer. He saw that the other’s mind was working in the desired direction. But presently, seeing that Budgen still pondered and that a word might turn the scale, “And when the Lively Peggy comes in,” he suggested, “I’d take her I out if it suited you.”

  Budgen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “To be sure,” he agreed. “To be sure. You’d do for that, I or you’d ought to. And Ozias—” He shook his head I doubtfully. “Well, I’m not saying as to that, one way or the other, but there might be a berth. I dunno till I she comes to her moorings. I can’t say fairer than that one way or the other. Do you come back then, and I don’t say we’ll talk about it.”

  “No, that won’t do,” Bligh replied firmly. “Take me on now, pay me a pound a week, and when afloat whatever Ozias gets or near it, and I’m your man. And you’ll get a cheap bargain, Budgen. You know that.”

  “A pound a week?” Budgen shook his head. He came forward and joined Bligh near the entrance of the shed —— perhaps to gain time. “I see you’ve your flag flying,” he said, pointing upwards.

  Bligh winced. “Flag?” he queried. “What —— —”

  “Well, we call that table-
cloth o’ your’s on the gate there your flag. It’s there pretty often, I notice. Seemin’ly you do a deal o’ washing up there.” Bligh looked put out. “I see,” he muttered. “I didn’t understand.”

  Budgen shook his head. “A pound a week?” he repeated. “It’s a mint o’ money that. I’d not thought of taking any one in Joe’s place; no more use well without him as with him. Still” —— — he looked cunningly away — —” suppose we say six half-crowns a week, and Ozias’s pay when afloat.” Bligh frowned, but after a moment’s thought, “Very well,” he said curtly. “I’ll come to-morrow morning. Saturday. I’ll begin on Monday, if that will suit you?”

  Budgen nodded. Inwardly he was pluming himself on a good bargain. “Week’s notice,” he said crustily.

  “Very well. You’ll have no call to give it.”

  Bligh was turning away when, “Hallo!” Budgen exclaimed, “here’s Missie! Second time this week, too, I b’lieve.”

  Bligh looked round, and saw Peggy Portnal. She was making her way delicately over the rough shingle.

  He did not pause. “Very well, that’s settled, then,” he said. “Good day.”

  He moved away, lifting his hat as he met the girl. She bowed, a little colour in her cheeks, and he went by her and took the path that climbed the face of the headland and led to the town.

  Peggy came on to Budgen. “I think I dropped a glove here — on Tuesday,” she said. She seemed to be a little out of breath with her rough walk over the stones. “Have any of your men found it, do you think?”