Читать книгу One of the Six Hundred - James Grant - Страница 8

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Come, let us enjoy the fleeting day,

And banish toil, and laugh at care,

For who would grief and sorrow beat

When he can throw his griefs away?

Away, away! begone, I say!

For mournful thought

Will come unsought.

BOWRING'S "POETRY OF SPAIN."

"Provost," said my uncle to the jovial and rubicund magistrate who sat on his left hand, now that he had taken Cora's place at the head of the table, "try the Johannisberg. It is some given to me by Prince Metternich when I was at Vienna, and is from grapes raised in his own vineyards. Rare stuff it is for those who like such light wines."

"Thank you, Sir Nigel; but Binns, I see, has brought the three elements, so I'll e'en brew some whisky-toddy," replied the magistrate.

The conversation now became more noisy and animated. The approaching war, the treaty of neutrality between the Scandinavian and the Western Powers, whether our fleet had yet entered the Euxine, or whether Luders had yet burst into the Dobrudscha, became the prevailing topics, and in interest seemed fully to rival that never-failing subject at a country table, fox-hunting.

The county pack, the meet of the Fifeshire hounds at the kennels, or on the green slopes of Largo; of the Buccleuch pack at Blacklaw, Ancrum, and so forth; their runs by wood and wold, loch and lee, rock and river, with many a perilous leap and wild adventure in the field, over a rough and hilly country, were narrated with animation, and descanted on with interest, though all such sank into insignificance beside the history of a hunt in Bengal, where General Rammerscales had figured in pursuit of a tiger (long the terror of the district), seated in a lofty howdah of basket-work, strapped on the back of an elephant, twelve feet high to the shoulder, accompanied by the major of his regiment, each armed with two double-barrelled guns.

The tiger, which measured nine feet from his nose to the tip of his tail, and five in height, had been roused from among the jungle grass, and was a brute of the most ferocious kind, yellow in hide, and striped with beautiful transverse bars of black and brown. He was well-known in that district. With his tremendous jaws he had carried off many a foal and buffalo; by a single stroke of his claws he had disembowelled and rent open the body of more than one tall dark sowar of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry; and as for sheep and goats, he made no more account of them than if they had been so many shrimps.

With a shrill, short scream of rage, on finding that he was brought to bay at last, he threw himself in cat-fashion on his back, belly upwards, his small and quivering ears close on the back of his head, his dreadful claws thrust out, his eyes glaring like two gigantic carbuncles, his wide, red mouth distended, and every wiry whisker bristling with rage and fury.

The general fired both barrels of his first gun. One shot failed; but the other wounded the tiger in the shoulder, and only served to make him more savage; though, instead of springing upwards, he lay thus on the defensive, gathered up in a round ball.

The major, an enormously fat man, weighing more than twenty stone, now leant over the howdah to take a cool and deliberate aim; but the elephant in the same moment happened to bend his fore-knees, for the claws of the tiger were inserted in his trunk.

Losing all balance by this unlucky motion, the poor major toppled headlong over the howdah, just as both barrels of his gun exploded harmlessly, amid a yell from the Indian hunters as they thought of his fate.

But, "with a mighty squelch," as the general phrased it, the major, with his twenty-two stone weight of flesh and bone, fell prone upon the fair, white, upturned belly of the tiger!

Terrified, breathless, and bewildered by an antagonist so ponderous, and by such an unexpected mode of attack, the tiger started up, and fled from the scene, leaving the major untouched and unharmed, but seated ruefully among the jungle grass, and with considerable doubts as to his safety and his own identity.

The parish minister fairly overmatched this story by the narrative of a fox which had been drowned by a mussel.

Prior to being appointed pastor of Calderwood Kirk, through the favour of its patron, Sir Nigel, he had been an assistant in a parish situated on the borders of one of the great salt lochs in the western highlands.

When riding one morning along the shore, opposite the Summer Isles, he was surprised to see a large grey fox busy among the basket-mussels, thick clusters of which were adhering to the dark whin rocks which the ebb tide had left dry. The sea was coming in fast; but, strange to say, Reynard seemed to be so much engaged in breakfasting on shell-fish that he was heedless of that important circumstance.

Dismounting, and tying his horse to a tree, the minister made a circuit to reach the place, and being armed with a heavy-handled riding-whip, he had no fear of the encounter; but by the time he arrived at the mussel-beds, the rapid tide had overflowed them, and the fox had disappeared. So, remounting, the minister pursued his way into the mountains.

Returning along the shore by the same path in the evening, when the tide had ebbed, he again saw Reynard in the same place, but lying quite dead, and, on examination, discovered that he was held fast by the tongue between the sharp shells of one of the basket-mussels, which are sometimes seven inches long, and adhere with intense strength to the rocks by the beard, known to the learned as a powerful byssus. Seized and retained thus, as if in the grasp of a steel vice, the fox, which had been in the habit of seeking the sea shore to feed on the mussels, had been held fast, until drowned by the advancing tide, which there flows rapidly in from the Atlantic.

This story elicited roars of laughter from the fox-hunters, who had never heard of a brush being taken in such a fashion; and Berkeley expressed astonishment that the anecdote had never found its way into the columns of Bell's Life, or other sporting journals.

The provost and minister gabbled about presbyteries and synods, the moderation of calls, elders, deacons, and overtures to the General Assembly, anent sundry ecclesiastical matters, particularly the adoption of organs, and other innovations that savoured of prelacy, making up a jargon which, to many present, and even to me, proved quite unintelligible; but now, as a military man, old Rammerscales seized me by a button, for there was no eluding being bored by him.

He had been so many years in India that he found a difficulty in assuring himself that he was not "up country" and in cantonments still.

Thus, if the rooms were warm, the general grumbled that there was no punkah to swing over his head, the baldness of which he polished vigorously, and muttered about "tatties of iced water."

He calculated everything by its value in rupees, and talked much of compounds and cantonments; of batta and marching money, of chutney and chunam, and all manner of queer things, including sepoys and sowars, subadars, havildars, and jemidars; thus the most casual remark drew forth some Indian reference.

The cold of last night reminded him of what he had endured in the mountains of Affghanistan; and the dark clouds of this morning were exactly like some he had seen near Calcutta, when a sepoy was killed by his side by a stroke of lightning, which twisted up the barrel of his musket like a screw—"yes, sir, like a demmed corkscrew!"

Next, the gas offended his eyes, which had been so long accustomed to the oil lamps or oil-shades of his bungalow; and then he spoke to all the servants, even respectable old Mr. Binns (who had been for forty years like Sir Nigel's shadow) as if they had been so many sycees, grass-cutters, or tent-pitchers, making them start whenever he addressed them; for he seemed to bark or snap out his words and wishes at "the precious Griffs," as he termed them.

On the other hand, I was bored by the provost, who, like the M.P. (a peace-at-any-price man), by no means approved of the expected war, and informed Berkeley and myself that—

"Our trade—soldiering, to wit—was a deuced poor one—a speculation, a loss, and never profit to any one, individually or collectively."

Berkeley smiled superciliously, eyed the provost through his glass, and blandly asked him to repeat his remark twice over, professing that he did not understand the worthy man.

"If you mean that you disapprove of the intended war, my good friend," said he, "I—haw—quite agree with you, Why the deuce should I fight for the 'sick man' at Constantinople; or for the Turks or the Tartars of the Crimea? It's a horrid bore."

Amid all this uncongenial conversation, I longed for the time when the seniors would move towards the drawing-room, from whence the sounds of music and of voices sweetly attuned were heard to issue at times; for there my star was shining—Louisa Loftus, so beautiful to look upon, and yet whom it seemed so hopeless in me to love!

Lost in reverie, and full of her image, it was some time before I became aware that my distinguished brother in arms, Mr. De Warr Berkeley, was addressing me.

"I beg your pardon," said I, nervously; "did you speak?"

"I was remarking," he lisped, languidly, "that these good people here are—haw—very pleasant, and all that sort of thing; but have little of the—haw—the—haw——"

"What?"

"Oh—the odeur de la bonne société about them."

"The deuce!" said I, with some annoyance, for I was conscious that at our end of the table were really gathered the lions of my uncle's dinner party. "I hope you don't include our host in this—he represents the oldest line of baronets in Scotland."

"In Scotland—haw—very good," he drawled.

"Sir Nigel is my uncle," said I, pointedly.

"Yes, by the way, I crave pardon; so deuced stupid of me, when I know well that there are no such sticklers about precedence and dignity as your little baronets."

Coming from a conceited parvenu, the cool impudence of this remark was so amusing that I burst into a fit of laughter; and at that moment, by a singular coincidence, Sir Nigel, who had been engaged in an animated discussion, almost amounting to a dispute, with Spittal of Lickspittal, the M.P., now suddenly raised his voice, and without at all intending it, sent one random shot after another at my fashionable comrade.

"I can assure you, sir," he continued, "that such cosmopolitan views as yours, politically and socially, can never be endorsed by me. Thackeray says—and he says truly—that God has created no more offensive creature than a Scotch snob, and I quite agree with him. The chief aim of such is to be thought an Englishman (just as some Englishmen affect the foreigner), and a deplorable caricature he makes of the Englishman in language, bearing, and appearance. An English snob, in whatever his line may be, is, as Thackeray has shown us, a great and amusing original; but a Scotch snob is a poor and vile imitation, and like all counterfeits is easily discernible: Birmingham at once. I know no greater hot-bed of snobbery than our law-courts, sir, especially those of Edinburgh. Binns, pass the claret."

The M.P. bowed, and smiled deprecatingly, for he had long figured among the said courts as one who would joyfully have blacked the boots of the lord advocate or the ministry.

I felt almost sorry for Berkeley while my uncle spurred his hobby against the M.P.; the ugly cap fitted so exactly.

"I know," resumed Sir Nigel, "that in a nation of tuft-hunters like the British, whose Bible is the 'Peerage,' a man with a handle to his name, however small it may be, is a trump card indeed; hence the adoration of rank, which, as some one says, 'if folly in London, deepens into positive vice in the country.'"

"Then what do you say of your poor Scottish metropolis, whose aristocracy consists of a few psalm-singing—aw—bailies and young legal prigs of the bar, whose importance is only equalled by their necessities—boiled mutton and thin Cape Madeira?" said Berkeley, glad of an opportunity to sneer at something Scotch.

"I have known a few honest fellows—and men of first-rate ability, too—connected with the Scottish Parliament House," said Sir Nigel.

"But that, I suppose, was in the old Tory days, when all Edinburgh fell down in the mud to worship George IV., the first gentleman in Europe," said the M.P. as a retort, at which my uncle laughed loudly.

But thus, by his remarks at the fag end of some discussion, Sir Nigel had the effect of completely silencing, and unintentionally mortifying, Berkeley, who continued to sip his wine in silence, and with something of malevolence in his eye, till Binns announced coffee, and we repaired to the drawing-room.