Jacob Faithful

“Well, perhaps I am, as I don’t know what that is.”

“But, father, don’t you recollect,” interrupted Tom, “what the parson said last Sunday, that faith saved men? Now, Master Dominie, may it not be faith that a man has in the caul which may save him?”

“Young Tom, thou art astute.”

“Well, perhaps I am, as father said, for I don’t know what that is. You knock us all down with your dictionary.”

“Well I do love to hear people make use of such hard words,” said Mary, looking at the Dominie. “How very clever you must be, sir! I wonder whether I shall ever understand them?”

“Nay, if thou wilt, I will initiate—sweet maiden, wilt steal an hour or so to impregnate thy mind with the seeds of learning, which, in so fair a soil, must needs bring forth good fruit!”

“That’s a fine word, that impregnate—will you give us the English of it, sir?” said young Tom to the Dominie.

“It is English, Tom, only the old gentleman razeed it a little. The third ship in the lee line of the Channel fleet was a eighty, called the Impregnable, but the old gentleman knows more about books than sea matters.”

“A marvellous misconception,” quoth the Dominie.

“There’s another,” cried Tom, laughing; “that must be a three-decker. Come, father, here’s the bottle, you must take another glass to wash that down.”

“Pray what was the meaning of that last long word, sir,” said Mary, taking the Dominie by the arm, “mis—something.”

“The word,” replied the Dominie, “is a compound from conception, borrowed from the Latin tongue implying conceiving; and the mis prefixed, which negatives or reverses the meaning; misconception, therefore, implies not to conceive. I can make you acquainted with many others of a similar tendency as mis-conception; videlicet, mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-contriving mis-applying, mis—”

“Dear me, what a many misses,” cried Mary, “and do you know them all?”

“Indeed do I,” replied the Dominie, “and many, many more are treasured in my memory, quod nunc describere tongum est.”

“I’d no idea that the old gentleman was given to running after the girls in that way,” said old Tom to Stapleton.

“Human natur’,” replied the other.

“No more did I,” continued Mary; “I shall have nothing to say to him;” and she drew off her chair a few inches from that of the Dominie.

“Maiden,” quoth the Dominie, “thou art under a mistake.”

“Another miss, I declare,” cried Tom, laughing.

“What an old Turk!” continued Mary, getting further off.

“Nay, then, I will not reply,” said the Dominie indignantly, putting down his pipe, leaning back on his chair, and pulling out his great red handkerchief, which he applied to his nose, and produced a sound that made the windows of the little parlour vibrate for some seconds.

“I say, master Tom, don’t you make too free with your betters,” said old Tom, when he saw the Dominie affronted.

“Nay,” replied the Dominie, “there’s an old adage which saith, ‘As the old cock crows, so doth the young.’ Wherefore didst thou set him the example?”

“Very true, old gentleman, and I axes your pardon, and here’s my hand upon it.”

“And so do I, sir, and here’s my hand upon it,” said young Tom, extending his hand on the Dominie’s other side.

“Friend Dux, and thou, young Tom, I do willingly accept thy proffered reconciliation; knowing, as I well do, that there may be much mischief in thy composition, but naught of malice.” The Dominie extended his hands, and shook both those offered to him warmly.

“There,” said old Tom, “now my mind’s at ease, as old Pigtown said.”

“I know not the author whom thou quotest from, good Dux.”

“Author!—I never said he was an author; he was only captain of a schooner, trading between the islands, that I sailed with a few weeks in the West Indies.”

“Perhaps, then, you will relate to the company present the circumstances which took place to put old Pegtop’s—(I may not be correct in the name)—but whoever it may be—”

“Pigtown, master.”

“Well, then—that put old Pigtown’s mind at ease—for I am marvellously amused with thy narrations, which do pass away the time most agreeably, good Dux.”

“With all my heart, old gentleman; but first let us fill up our tumblers. I don’t know how it is, but it does appear to me that grog drinks better out of a glass than out of metal and if it wasn’t that Tom is so careless—and the dog has no respect for crockery any more than persons—I would have one or two on board for particular service; but I’ll think about that, and hear what the old woman has to say on the subject. Now to my yarn. D’ye see, old Pigtown commanded a little schooner, which plied between the isles, and he had been in her for a matter of forty years, and was as well-known as Port Royal Tom.”

“Who might Port Royal Tom be?” inquired the Dominie; “a relation of yours?”

“I hope not, master, for I wanted none of his acquaintance; he was a shark about twenty feet long who rode guard in the harbour, to prevent the men-of-war’s men from deserting, and was pensioned by government.”

“Pensioned by government! nay, but that soundeth strangely. I have heard that pensions have been most lavishly bestowed, but not that it extended so far. Truly it must have been a sinecure.”

“I don’t know what that last may be,” replied old Tom, “but I heard our boatswain, in the Minerve, who talked politics a bit, say, ‘as how half the pensions were held by a pack of damned sharks;’ but in this here shark’s case, it wasn’t in money, master; but he’d regular rations of bullock’s liver to persuade him to remain in the harbour, and no one dare swim on shore when he was cruising round and round the ships. Well, old Pigtown, with his white trousers and straw hat, red nose and big belly, was as well-known as could be, and was a capital old fellow for remembering and executing commissions, provided you gave him the money first; if not, he always took care to forget them. Old Pigtown had a son, a little dark or so, which proved that his mother wasn’t quite as fair as a lily, and this son was employed in a drogher, that is, a small craft which goes round to the bays of the island, and takes off the sugars to the West India traders. One fine day the drogher was driven out to sea, and never heard of a’terwards. Now, old Pigtown was very anxious about what had come of his son, and day after day expected he would come back again; but he never did, for very good reasons, as you shall hear by-and-by; and every one knowing old Pigtown, and he knowing everybody, it was at least fifty times a day that the question was put to him, ‘Well, Pigtown, have you heard anything of your son?’ And fifty times a day he would reply, ‘No; and my mind’s but ill at ease.’ Well, it was two or three months afterwards, that when I was in the schooner with him, as we lay becalmed between the islands, with the sun frizzing our wigs, and the planks so hot that you couldn’t walk without your shoes, that we hooked a large shark which came bowling under our counter, got him on board and cut him up. When we opened his inside, what should I see but something shining. I took it out, and sure enough it was a silver watch. So I hands it to old Pigtown. He looks at it very ’tentively, opens the outside case, reads the maker’s name, and then shuts it up again. ‘This here watch,’ says he, ‘belonged to my son Jack. I bought it of a chap in a South whaler for three dollars and a roll of pigtail, and a very good watch it was, though I perceive it to be stopped now. Now, d’ye see, it’s all clear—the drogher must have gone down in a squall—the shark must have picked up my son Jack, and must have digested his body, but has not been able to digest his watch. Now I knows what’s become of him, and so—my mind’s at ease.’”

“Well,” observed old Stapleton, “I agrees with old Poptown, or whatever his name might be, that it were better to know the worst at once than to be kept on the worry all your days; I consider it’s nothing but human natur’. Why, if one has a bad tooth, which is the best plan, to have it out with one good wrench, or to be eternally tormented, night and day.”

“Thou speakest wisely, friend Stapleton, and like a man of resolve—the anticipation is often, if not always, more painful than the reality. Thou knowest, Jacob, how often I have allowed a boy to remain unbuttoned in the centre of the room for an hour previous to the application of the birch—and it was with the consideration that the impression would be greater upon his mind than even upon his nether parts. All of the feelings in the human breast, that of suspense is—”

“Worse than hanging,” interrupted young Tom.

“Even so, boy (cluck, cluck), an apt comparison, seeing that in suspense you are hanging, as it were, in the very region of doubt, without being able to obtain a footing even upon conjecture. Nay, we may further add another simile, although not so well borne out, which is, that the agony of suspense doth stop the breath of a man for the time, as hanging doth stop it altogether, so that it may be truly said, that suspense is put an end to by suspending.” (cluck, cluck.)

“And now that you’ve got rid of all that, master, suppose you fill up your pipe,” observed old Tom.

“And I will fill up your tumbler, sir,” said Mary; “for you must be dry with talking such hard words.”

The Dominie this time made no objection, and again enveloped Mary and himself in a cloud of smoke, through which his nose loomed like an Indiaman in a Channel fog.

Chapter Twenty Six

The Dominie’s bosom grows too warm; so the party and the frost break up—I go with the stream and against it; make money both ways—Coolness between Mary and me—No chance of a Thames’ edition of Abelard and Eloise—Love, learning, and Latin all lost in a fit of the sulks

“I say, Master Stapleton, suppose we were to knock out half a port,” observed old Tom, after a silence of two minutes; “for the old gentleman blows a devil of a cloud: that is, if no one has an objection.” Stapleton gave a nod of assent, and I rose and put the upper window down a few inches. “Ay, that’s right, Jacob; now we shall see what Miss Mary and he are about. You’ve been enjoying the lady all to yourself, master,” continued Tom, addressing the Dominie.

“Verily and truly,” replied the Dominie, “even as a second Jupiter.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I presume not; still, Jacob will tell thee that the history is to be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”

“Never heard of the country, master.”

“Nay, friend Dux, it is a book, not a country, in which thou may’st read how Jupiter at first descended unto Semele in a cloud.”

“And pray, where did he come from, master?”

“He came from heaven.”

“The devil he did. Well, if ever I gets there, I mean to stay.”

“It was love, all-powerful love, which induced him, maiden,” replied the Dominie, turning, with a smiling eye, to Mary.

“’Bove my comprehension altogether,” replied old Tom.

“Human natur’,” muttered Stapleton, with the pipe still between his lips.

“Not the first vessels that have run foul in a fog,” observed young Tom.

“No, boy; but generally there ar’n’t much love between them at those times. But, come, now that we can breathe again, suppose I give you a song. What shall it be, young woman, a sea ditty, or something spooney?”

“Oh, something about love, if you’ve no objection, sir,” said Mary, appealing to the Dominie.

“Nay, it pleaseth me maiden, and I am of thy mind. Friend Dux, let it be Anacreontic.”

“What the devil’s that?” cried old Tom, lifting up his eyes, and taking the pipe out of his mouth.

“Nothing of your own, father, that’s clear; but something to borrow, for it’s to be on tick,” replied Tom.

“Nay, boy, I would have been understood that the song should refer to women or wine.”

“Both of which are to his fancy,” observed young Tom to me, aside.

“Human natur’,” quaintly observed Stapleton.

“Well, then, you shall have your wish. I’ll give you one that might be warbled in a lady’s chamber without stirring the silk curtains:—

“Oh! the days are gone when beauty bright    My heart’s chain wove,When my dream of life from morn to night    Was Love—still Love.New hope may bloom, and days may come,    Of milder, calmer beam,But there’s nothing half so sweet in life    As Love’s young dream;Oh! there’s nothing half so sweet in life,    As Love’s young dream.”

The melody of the song, added to the spirits he had drunk and Mary’s eyes beaming on him, had a great effect upon the Dominie. As old Tom warbled out, so did the pedagogue gradually approach the chair of Mary; and as gradually entwine her waist with his own arm, his eyes twinkling brightly on her. Old Tom, who perceived it, had given me and Tom a wink, as he repeated the two last lines; and then we saw what was going on, we burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. “Boys! boys!” said the Dominie, starting up, “thou hast awakened me, by thy boisterous mirth, from a sweet musing created by the harmony of friend Dux’s voice. Neither do I discover the source of thy cachinnation, seeing that the song is amatory and not comic. Still, it may not be supposed, at thy early age, that thou canst be affected with what thou art too young to feel. Pr’ythee continue, friend Dux, and, boys, restrain thy mirth.”

“Though the bard to a purer fame may soar    When wild youth’s past,Though he win the wise, who frowned before,    To smile at last,He’ll never meet a joy so sweet    In all his noon of fame,As when first he sung to woman’s ear    His soul-felt flame;And at every close she blush’d to hear    The once-lov’d name.”

At the commencement of this verse the Dominie appeared to be on his guard; but gradually moved by the power of song, he dropped his elbow on the table, and his pipe underneath it; his forehead sank into his broad palm, and he remained motionless. The verse ended, and the Dominie, forgetting all around him, softly ejaculated, without looking up, “Eheu! Mary.”

“Did you speak to me, sir?” said Mary, who, perceiving us tittering, addressed the Dominie with a half-serious, half-mocking air.

“Speak, maiden? nay, I spoke not; yet thou mayest give me my pipe, which apparently hath been abducted while I was listening to the song.”

“Abducted! that’s a new word; but it means smashed into twenty pieces, I suppose,” observed young Tom. “At all events, your pipe is, for you let it fall between your legs.”

“Never mind,” said Mary, rising from her chair, and going to the cupboard; “here’s another, sir.”

“Well, master, am I to finish, or have you had enough of it?”

“Proceed, friend Dux, proceed; and believe that I am all attention.”

“Oh, that hallowed form is ne’er forgot    Which first love trac’d,Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot    On memory’s waste.’Twas odour fled as soon as shed,    ’Twas memory’s winged dream,’Twas a light that ne’er can shine again    On life’s dull stream;Oh, ’twas light that ne’er can shine again    On life’s dull stream.”

“Nay,” said the Dominie, again abstracted, “the metaphor is not just. ‘Life’s dull stream.’ ‘Lethe tacitus amnis,’ as Lucan hath it; but the stream of life flows—ay, flows rapidly—even in my veins. Doth not the heart throb and beat—yea, strongly—peradventure too forcibly against my better judgment? ‘Confiteor misere molle cor esse mihi,’ as Ovid saith. Yet must it not prevail! Shall one girl be victorious over seventy boys? Shall I, Dominie Dobbs, desert my post?—Again succumb to—I will even depart, that I may be at my desk at matutinal hours.”

“You don’t mean to leave us, sir?” said Mary, taking the Dominie’s arm.

“Even so, fair maiden, for it waxeth late, and I have my duties to perform,” said the Dominie, rising from his chair.

“Then you will promise to come again.”

“Peradventure I may.”

“If you do not promise me that you will, I will not let you go now.”

“Verily, maiden—”

“Promise,” interrupted Mary.

“Truly, maiden—”

“Promise,” cried Mary.

“In good sooth, maiden—”

“Promise,” reiterated Mary, pulling the Dominie towards her chair.

“Nay, then, I do promise, since thou wilt have it so,” replied the Dominie.

“And when will you come?”

“I will not tarry,” replied the Dominie; “and now good night to all.”

The Dominie shook hands with us, and Mary lighted him downstairs. I was much pleased with the resolution and sense of his danger thus shown by my worthy preceptor, and hoped that he would have avoided Mary in future, who evidently wished to make a conquest of him for her own amusement and love of admiration; but still I felt that the promise exacted would be fulfilled, and I was afraid that a second meeting, and that perhaps not before witnesses, would prove mischievous. I made up my mind to speak to Mary on the subject as soon as I had an opportunity, and insist upon her not making a fool of the worthy old man. Mary remained below a much longer time than was necessary, and when she re-appeared and looked at me, as if for a smile of approval, I turned from her with a contemptuous air. She sat down, and looked confused. Tom was also silent, and paid her no attention. A quarter of an hour passed, when he proposed to his father that they should be off, and the party broke up. Leaving Mary silent and thoughtful, and old Stapleton finishing his pipe, I took my candle and went to bed.

The next day the moon changed, the weather changed, and a rapid thaw took place. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” observed old Stapleton; “we watermen will have the river to ourselves again, and the hucksters must carry their gingerbread-nuts to another market.” It was, however, three or four days before the river was clear of the ice, so as to permit the navigation to proceed; and during that time, I may as well observe, that there was dissension between Mary and me. I showed her that I resented her conduct, and at first she tried to pacify me; but finding that I held out longer than she expected, she turned round, and was affronted in return. Short words and no lessons were the order of the day; and as each party seemed determined to hold out, there was little prospect of a reconciliation. In this she was the greatest sufferer, as I quitted the house after breakfast, and did not return until dinner time. At first old Stapleton plied very regularly, and took all the fares; but about a fortnight after we had worked together, he used to leave me to look after employment, and remain at the public-house. The weather was now fine, and, after the severe frost, it changed so rapidly that most of the trees were in leaf, and the horse-chestnuts in full blossom. The wherry was in constant demand, and every evening I handed from four to six shillings over to old Stapleton. I was delighted with my life, and should have been perfectly happy if it had not been for my quarrel with Mary still continuing, she as resolutely refraining from making advances as I. How much may life be embittered by dissension with those you live with, even when there is no very warm attachment; the constant grating together worries and annoys, and although you may despise the atoms, the aggregate becomes insupportable. I had no pleasure in the house; and the evenings, which formerly passed so agreeably, were now a source of vexation, from being forced to sit in company with one with whom I was not on good terms. Old Stapleton was seldom at home till late, and this made it still worse. I was communing with myself one night, as I had my eyes fixed on my book, whether I should make the first advances, when Mary, who had been quietly at work, broke the silence by asking me what I was reading. I replied in a quiet tone.

“Jacob,” said she, in continuation, “I think you have used me very ill to humble me in this manner. It was your business to make it up first.”

“I am not aware that I have been in the wrong,” replied I.

“I do not say that you have; but what matter does that make? You ought to give way to a woman.”

“Why so?”

“Why so! don’t the whole world do so? Do you not offer everything first to a woman? Is it not her right?”

“Not when she is in the wrong, Mary.”

“Yes, when she’s in the wrong, Jacob; there’s no merit in doing it when she’s in the right.”

“I think otherwise; at all events, it depends on how much she has been in the wrong, and I consider you have shown a bad heart, Mary.”

“A bad heart! in what way, Jacob?”

“In realising the fable of the boys and the frogs with the poor old Dominie, forgetting that what may be sport to you is death to him.”

“You don’t mean to say that he’ll die of love,” replied Mary, laughing.

“I should hope not: but you may contrive, and you have tried all in your power, to make him very wretched.”

“And, pray, how do you know that I do not like the old gentleman, Jacob? You appear to think that a girl is to fall in love with nobody but yourself. Why should I not love an old man with so much learning? I have been told that old husbands are much prouder of their wives than young ones, and pay them more attention, and don’t run after other women. How do you know that I am not serious?”

“Because I know your character, Mary, and am not to be deceived. If you mean to defend yourself in that way, we had better not talk any more.”

“Lord, how savage you are! then, suppose I did pay the old gentleman any attention. Did the young ones pay me any? Did either you, or your precious friend, Mr Tom, even speak to me?”

“No; we saw how you were employed, and we both hate a jilt.”

“Oh, you do. Very well, sir; just as you please. I may make both your hearts ache for this some day or another.”

“Forewarned, forearmed, Mary; and I shall take care that they are both forewarned as well as myself. As I perceive that you are so decided, I shall say no more. Only, for your own sake, and your own happiness, I caution you. Recollect your mother, Mary, and recollect your mother’s death.”

Mary covered her face and burst into tears. She sobbed for a few minutes, and then came to me. “You are right, Jacob; and I am a foolish—perhaps wicked—girl; but forgive me, and indeed I will try to behave better. But, as father says, it is human nature in me, and it’s hard to conquer our natures, Jacob.”

“Will you promise me not to continue your advances to the Dominie, Mary?”

“I will not, if I can help it, Jacob. I may forget for the moment, but I’ll do all I can. It’s not very easy to look grave when one is merry, or sour when one is pleased.”

“But what can induce you, Mary, to practise upon an old man like him? If it were young Tom, I could understand it. There might be some credit, and your pride might be flattered by the victory; but an old man—”

“Still, Jacob, old or young, it’s much the same. I would like to have them all at my feet, and that’s the truth. I can’t help it. And I thought it a great victory to bring there a wise old man, who was so full of Latin and learning, and who ought to know better. Tell me Jacob, if old men a how themselves to be caught, as well as young, where is the crime of catching them? Isn’t there as much vanity in an old man, in his supposing that I really could love him, as there is in me, who am but a young, foolish girl, in trying to make him fond of me?”

“That may be; but still recollect that he is in earnest, and you are only joking, which makes a great difference; and recollect further, that in trying at all, we very often lose all.”

“That I would take my chance of, Jacob,” replied Mary, proudly throwing her curly ringlets back with her hand from her white forehead; “but what I now want is to make friends with you. Come, Jacob, you have my promise to do my best.”

“Yes, Mary, and I believe you, so there’s my hand.”

“You don’t know how miserable I have been, Jacob, since we quarrelled,” said Mary, wiping the tears away, which again commenced flowing; “and yet I don’t know why, for I’m sure I have almost hated you this last week—that I have; but the fact is, I like quarrelling very well for the pleasure of making it up again; but not for the quarrel to last so long as this has done.”

“It has annoyed me too, Mary, for I like you very much in general.”

“Well, then, now it’s all over; but Jacob, are you sure you are friends with me?”

“Yes, Mary.”

Mary looked archly at me. “You know the old saw, and I feel the truth of it.”