“Well,” a sulky voice, that Dr. Portnal did not at once identify, replied, “you know for what very well.”
“I know I’m a fool — a fool to ha’ begun with it! Ever to ha’ let such a vagabond as you cross my step! But I warn you, you be going too far! Two pound a month, and it be two pound too much, I’ll ‘llow you! And that’s my last word, my lad!”
“I’ll ‘list, then!” the sulky voice rejoined. “That’s what I’ll do! And that’ll be the end of it.”
“Then ‘list and be hanged to you!” the other replied. “But it’s talk, you fool! Talk! You’ve too much care o’ your lazy carcase to ‘list! And I be a fool to listen to you, and be diddled by you! But that’s my last word. You can take your two pound, or go to the devil your own way. Not a penny more do you get o’ mine!”
The Rector had heard enough, and he walked in upon them. He knew now who the second speaker was, and he bent a stormy brow on him as he entered. “You’d far better let the press-gang take him, Budgen,” he said sternly. “Far better!” And then, addressing the offender, “You are a disgrace to the parish,” he said. “A standing disgrace, Fewster! If the Justices had done their duty they would have sent you to sea long ago. Now begone, and keep out of my sight, or I shall remember your case at the next sittings. You are wrong, Budgen, very wrong,” he continued, as Joe, silenced and crushed, crawled out of sight, “to support your nephew in his bad courses. Stop supplies — stop supplies, man, and let him go to sea, or enlist if he chooses.”
But Budgen, harried by Joe and less confident of the wisdom of defying him than he would have it appear, was in a more churlish mood than usual — which was saying a good deal. He feared the Rector, but he detested him also. “Ay!” he replied as rudely as he dared. “But that might suit your reverence better than me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” the Rector rejoined.
“Nonsense? Depends from which side you look at it,” Budgen retorted. “There’s a lot too much hangs on him for me to send him drifting. And, saying your presence, a lot too much for you the other way round!”
“Ah! You mean that he’s the last life in your lease?”
“That’s it.” Budgen nodded gloomily. He had come forward to meet the Rector, and from where he stood his eye could travel over the things that made up his life, the things that he loved; his house and snug garden nestling under the cliff, the Cove, the slips, the smack he was slowly building — mere ribs as yet: a boat or two drawn above high-water mark, and below all these, and still washed by the tide, the blackened timbers, sodden and weed-grown, of a forsaken hulk. To him they were all dear, all familiar — familiar as the bluff that shut him off from Beremouth and from the troublesome world of cares and duns, or as the sea across which his craft came and went. Budgen did not put into words his love for the Cove and its surroundings, the green headland that met his gaze morning by morning, and the shimmering sea; but he did love them, and his grasp of them was hard and greedy, for he knew them to be ever in danger. “That’s where it is,” he repeated gloomily. “He’s my last life, as you well know, sir, and a lot hangs on him for me. Now this talk of peace,” he continued, glad perhaps to lead the talk another way. “It would not suit you nor me, your reverence. Do you think there’s aught in it?” His eyes bent on the Rector’s face strove to read it. He had puzzled over his last newspaper, a stray copy a fortnight old, and had made little of it.
“We must not say that peace would not suit us,” the Rector replied more mildly. “We must not put our interests before the common good, Budgen. God forbid! And why do you say that it would not suit us?”
The boat-builder spat contemptuously on the shingle. He knew what he was talking about now. “The Peggy — what worth would she be — in a peace?” he asked. “She’s built for speed, not for cargo, and all the freight we could put in her hold wouldn’t pay the fok’sle wages. Night they light the fires on that there bluff for a peace she’s done! You may run her ashore on the rocks there for all the value she’d be! And what I’m asking is, is there aught in it, sir?”
The Rector shook his head. “I am afraid I cannot say,” he replied. “There is certainly talk of it, but there has been talk before. In any case a settlement will take time — many months I suspect. When do you look for her to come in, Budgen?”
The boat-builder raised his hat and rubbed his head. “Well, she’ll ha’ been thirty days on her ground come to-morrow, all being well,” he said. “And she’s victualled for thirty days more. Prize or no prize, I reckon she’ll be in this day month at latest, if so be no harm happen her. But if she’s in luck she may come in any day, and the sooner the better!”
The Rector nodded. “Yes,” he said. “And I hope she may be in luck for your sake, Budgen.”
“Ay, your reverence,” Budgen replied with a sardonic look. “And your own.”
The Rector passed that by. “I should be better satisfied if I had more faith in your skipper,” he said. “Are you sure of Copestake, Budgen? I’ve my misgivings. A man who talks as he does, must discourage the men.”
Budgen grinned. “If he talked the same afloat as ashore, ay! And if talk was what mattered, I’d allow he’d take the spunk out of a sucking Nelson, would Ozias, to hear him. But ’tisn’t talk that goes at sea, and, Lord bless you, Ozias with a linstock in his hand and Ozias at the Keppel Head, they’re two men. To listen to him to home, he’s the saddest old-woman Methody ‘tween this and the Land’s End. But the fok’sle hand that trusts to that when a bit of the right bunting s in sight — well, I reckon, your reverence, he’d never know what hit him!”
The Rector pursed up his lips. He only knew Ozias ashore and he was doubtful. “Well,” he said, “I hope it is as you say, Budgen. But he’s not lucky.” No, he’s not lucky. There’s no gainsaying that. All the same, I wish I were as certain Ozias’d go another cruise, as I am that he’s as dogged, ay, and as spry I too, as any skipper that sails out of hereabout. But it’s luck we want — and Ozias the same. I know the loss of the Pride nearly broke me, and it’s time the tide turned, or” — the boat-builder paused and wiped his brow—” ay, nearly broke me it did, as you know, sir, and no one so well. But I’m not afeared of Ozias.” Dr. Portnal nodded, and for a moment the two stood I pondering the case. Then, “However, I did not come to-day,” the Rector resumed in a brisker tone, “to talk about this, but about another matter, Budgen. I hear that you have been so foolish as to take young Bligh into your place.”
The man bristled up. “An’ if I have?”
The Rector raised his hand. “It won’t do,” he I said. That s all, and all that is to be said. It won’t I do, Budgen. You must get rid of him. Understand me, I will not have it. To replace one sot by another is a folly I will not countenance! You must get rid of the man at once.”
If Budgen had never hated the Rector before he hated him then. “I don’t know about that!” he said in his most crabbed tone. “There’s two to that.”
“But I do,” the Rector replied quietly. “And there is only one to it, Budgen. Do you hear? The man is a disgrace to us all, and he must go.”
“Not till I’ve had my say,” Budgen insisted doggedly. “Nor till you have heard me, sir! No. The case is altered. Clean altered. Joe, he was out and out good for naught — not one hour’s work did I get out of him. But the Lieutenant—”
“Pooh! man,” the Rector said contemptuously. “He’s no more Lieutenant now than I am!”
“The Lieutenant,” Budgen repeated stubbornly, ] “he’s worth the money I give him and more. And more! He keeps my books as never before, and the men as was constantly bickering with Joe works for him willing. Be I in the house or be I in the shed, the work’s done, and not one drop o’ drink have I seen him take since he’ve been with me! Swore off it, good!” The Rector shook his head. “When the devil was ill,” he said; “you know the rest, Budgen. But I have said enough. I am not here to argue with you, and what I say must be done. I will not have a man who has disgraced the parish and himself employed
here. And that is all — or we quarrel. And you best know whether that will suit you.”
If Budgen could have killed with a wish, Dr. Portnal would have returned over the bluff feet foremost. But Budgen could not, and he swallowed his wrath. “Needs must,” he snarled, with as much insolence as he dared show, “when the parson drives.”
“Budgen!”
But Budgen turned his back, and did it rudely. “You’ve got your will,” he flung over his shoulder, “for I am no better than a slave, and I have to do your bidding! But let’s hear no more of it!” He went into the shed without more, and seeing him in that temper the Rector, offended as he was, thought it wise to let him go.
The visitor’s step had ceased to sound on the shingle, and he had climbed half-way up the steep slope before Budgen showed himself again. Then, finding his enemy still within sight, he threw a vicious curse after him. “Ay, you great, big, black blot!” he said. “There you go atrampling and atrampling, no matter what’s underfoot. You’d send Joe to sea, would you, and get him killed off? As is the last life between you and the Cove, so as you may shift me and get a thumping big fine for re-letting! I know you! And you’d get rid o’ the young chap as never crossed you — now I wonder why. I wonder what is at the bottom of that, you d — d black blot! I don’t know now, but maybe I shall. And if I weren’t so deep in your books, with as good as nothing I can call my own, I’m hanged if you should have your way! No, d — n me, I’d—”
He did not say what he would do, for at that moment the Rector passed out of sight over the brow, and the angry man turned into the shed and for some moments stood, staring absently at the lines of the Peggy. But his grievance still worked in him and worried him “He’s got his claws into me, ay, too far into me,” he muttered. And for the hundreth time he reckoned up his position. The Pride — now in French hands — he had owned one-half of her, or thirty-two sixth-fourths as he put it — and Dr. Portnal had owned a quarter. The rest had lain with the crew and some small adventurers, tradesmen in Beremouth. But he had borrowed of the Rector to pay his share of her cruising cost, and the money was lost with the Pride, but the debt remained, and was ever growing. Of the Peggy his share had been also one-half — once; but the loss of the Pride had scared the small people who had interests in her, and he had bought them out cheap, making as he had fancied at the time a good bargain. But for that again he had borrowed the money from the Rector, charging the Peggy in his favour, and mortgaging the rest of his property for what it was worth. In outward show he was an independent, well-to-do man, envied and prosperous. His slips and his moulding-loft, his boats built and building, his cosy house and the cottages scattered up and down the Cove made a fine show. But they were his on a lease for three lives only, and the last of the three, Joe Fewster’s, alone remained, and stood between him and ruin. The lease was charged, with the Peggy and the rest, in the Rector’s favour, and if the Peggy were lost the Rector would come down on all that he had. He would have no mercy, and the less as he owned a quarter of the Peggy and would himself be a loser if ill-luck befell her. Then equally, if Joe died, was Budgen a ruined man. But he refused to face that. That meant the end indeed, the end of everything, of the Cove and all that he had.
For he loved the Cove, as has been said. And he saw it hanging on the life of a rogue and the luck of a ship. He was not a happy man as he trudged with bent shoulders along the path to his warm house — the path that his father’s feet had trodden, and his own feet had worn through fifty years.
CHAPTER VI
WHEN Lady Bicester became the tenant of the Grange, a house that lay a mile inland in the lap of the valley that opens on the sea at Beremouth, her welcome was not over-warm. The widow of a Mayor of Bristol who had gone up to St. James’s with an Address and been knighted — the neighbouring squires referred to him slightingly as one of Peg Nicholson’s knights — she had three things against her, her newness, her title, and her money. But her ladyship had known where she stood. She had evinced a proper respect for old estates and landed dignities, and, giving all their due and a little more, she had gradually insinuated herself into the tolerance and the drawing-rooms of her neighbours.
In the execution of this task she had, in her own opinion, been hindered rather than helped by her daughter. Charlotte had shown herself from the first incurably blind to her inferior position. Her blunt address and the easy confidence with which she encountered all comers, from Dunch the barber, who did not matter, to Sir Albery Wyke and the Lord Lieutenant who did, inflicted a hundred stabs on her mother’s self-consciousness; and many a time had her ladyship winced in her company. But whether Charlotte’s frankness set off her mother’s complaisance, or more was tacitly allowed to a second generation, the girl had somehow been accepted as an equal, where her mother entered on sufferance. References to her lack of beauty were certainly common. “That great blowsy girl!” overheard at an assembly or a hunt meeting generally meant Charlotte Bicester. But her plainness was a healthy plainness not unpleasant to the other sex, while it undoubtedly smoothed her path with her own. In fact, and though Lady Bicester never suspected it, the good lady owed a large part of her success to her daughter’s unaffected manner; for while Dr. Portnal seldom talked to the elder woman without his thoughts involuntarily flying to sugar and the slave-trade, he accepted Charlotte without demur, though naturally he thought her inferior to his daughters.
She rode with a nerve and skill not quite feminine; and often alone, to her mother’s disgust. Dunch saw her one morning about this time as she passed down the narrow street, and occupied as he was in dressing a wig suspended to the door-post, he had the opportunity of appraising her points with a knowing eye. “If she’d a face to match her figure,” he decided, “there’d not be much amiss.” And as she drew rein to speak to him, “You’re blooming, my lady,” he said graciously.
“Whose wig is that?” Charlotte inquired, pointing to it with her whip. Wigs were going out of fashion, to Dunch’s great loss. Even the Rector wore his own hair.
“Well, it’s old Captain Bligh’s, miss,” he said, standing back from it that he might review it the better. “And not before it was time, though there’s many a day that he don’t wear it.”
“Then don’t you overcharge him, Dunch,” Charlotte retorted. “As you do me.”
Dunch grinned. “No chance o’ that,” he said, with a shake of the head that reflected on the Captain’s purse or his liberality. “He’s too old a soldier. Nor, indeed, I wouldn’t, miss, if I could — not now at any rate.”
“I wouldn’t trust you,” Charlotte rejoined, reining in her horse. It disliked standing on the cobbles, and was inclined to fret. “But why now, more than at other times, Dunch?”
Dunch let his hand drop. “Haven’t you heard, miss? That his son’s on the street again?”
“On the street?” Charlotte gave her horse a clip with the whip. “What do you mean? I thought that he was working at the Cove. Someone told me so — why, it was only yesterday.”
“He was, my lady, true as true. But “ — the barber looked mysterious—” Budgen shifted him this three days past. And he’s out now, no doubt about it!”
“Dear, dear, I’m sorry!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I thought it so brave of him to take that work.”
“Well, he’s out again, there’s no doubt of that. The why I don’t know, but there it is.”
“Give a dog a bad name, eh!” There was a gleam in Charlotte’s eyes. “I think it’s horrid of Budgen, Dunch!”
“I suppose he knows his own business, miss. But I’m sorry myself. I never had but an easy word from the young man, and it’s a come-down, there’s no denying it. But work’s slack at the Cove. It’s maybe that.”
“No news of the Peggy, I suppose?”
“Not as I’ve heard. But she might come in at any time. And not alone, I hope. Barney Toll, he’s mate on her, he lodges with me, and many a time I think of him stormy nights like.”
“I expect you’ve something in
her, Dunch?” Dunch shook his head. “No, miss, not now. There’s none in the town has, to my knowing. We got fright when the Pride was taken. Ah, me! it was a sad business that! The old Pride! I saw her go out the last time as ever she went, looking that fair and gay and the bells ringing, and every soul in Beremouth on the quay, cheering and God-speeding her as you never see the like! Little we thought the Mounsirea had as good as their grip on her! No, my lady, it’s a ticklish game and parlous. Too many blanks and too few prizes for poor folk!”
Charlotte nodded, and moved on. She was going to the Rectory, where at this hour of the day cake and wine would be on offer in the drawing-room. As she rode at a walk up the winding road to the church she saw the old Captain in front of her stumping up the hill to the churchyard; and something in his weary air, his limping gait and shabby coat touched her. When three minutes later she entered the Rectory drawing-room, she had him on her mind, and what Charlotte had on her mind she seldom failed to make known.
“Well, I think it’s a shame!” she announced as she entered the room. “And someone should tell that old bear, Budgen, what we think of him! Mr. Fareham, you might! No, Augusta, thank you, I’ve not your advantages, I’ll sit with my back to the light. Yes, Peggy, Madeira, please, and a very large piece of that cake!”
“You’ll grow stout, Charlotte.” This from Augusta. “Not while there are men like old Budgen about,” Charlotte retorted. “He makes me sick!”
“Why?” Fareham asked. “What has he done now, Miss Bicester?”
“A very dirty trick, I think. Haven’t you heard?”
“We shall when you have told us,” Augusta said, smiling.
“And you really don’t know?” She turned to Peggy. “Don’t you know?” But Peggy was on her feet, leaning over the cake-tray to set something straight, and she did not answer. “I thought that you had some feeling for the man,” Charlotte persisted, “if Augusta had not! ‘Pon honour, Augusta, I am not sure that you won’t be pleased. That old Budgen has turned off Mr. Bligh!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 747