Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn

Mrs Gaff became suddenly comforted, and said, with a bland smile, that, having heard only that morning of her intention to visit the town of Athenbury, she had called to ask her to do her a great favour.

“With the greatest pleasure; what can I do for you?” said Miss Peppy, who was the essence of good-nature.

“Thank ’ee, ma’am, it’s to take charge o’ a bit parcel, about the size of my head, or thereaway, and give it to a poor relation o’ mine as lives there when he an’t afloat.”

“A seaman?” said Miss Peppy.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well; but,” continued Miss Peppy, “you say the parcel is the size of your head: do you mean your head with or without the bonnet? Excuse me for—”

“La! ma’am, without the bonnet, of course. It may perhaps be rather heavy, but I an’t quite sure yet. I’ll let you know in an hour or so.”

Mrs Gaff rose abruptly, left the house, with Tottie, precipitately, and made her way to the bank, where she presented herself with a defiant air to the teller who had originally supplied her with a hundred pounds in gold. She always became and looked defiant, worthy woman, on entering the bank, having become unalterably impressed with the idea that all the clerks, tellers, and directors had entered into an agreement to throw every possible difficulty in the way of her drawing out money, and having resolved in her own determined way that she wouldn’t give in as long as, (to borrow one of her husband’s phrases), “there was a shot in the locker!”

“Now, sir,” she said to the elderly teller, “I wants twenty pounds, if there’s as much in the shop.”

The elderly teller smiled, and bade her sit down while he should write out the cheque for her. She sat down, gazing defiance all round her, and becoming painfully aware that there were a number of young men behind various screened rails whose noses were acting as safety-valves to their suppressed feelings.

When the cheque was drawn out and duly signed, Mrs Gaff went to the rails and shook it as she might have shaken in the face of her enemies the flag under which she meant to conquer or to die. On receiving it back she returned and presented it to the elderly teller with a look that said plainly—“There! refuse to cash that at your peril;” but she said nothing, she only snorted.

“How will you have it?” inquired the teller blandly.

“In coppers,” said Mrs Gaff stoutly.

“Coppers!” exclaimed the teller in amazement.

“Yes, coppers.”

“My good woman, are you aware that you could scarcely lift such a sum in coppers.”

“How many would it make?” she inquired with an air of indecision.

“Four thousand eight hundred pence.”

Mrs Gaff’s resolution was shaken; after a few moments’ consideration she said she would take it in silver, and begged to have it mixed—with a good number of sixpences amongst it.

“You see, my lamb,” she whispered to Tottie, while the teller was getting the money, “my poor cousin George is a’most too old to go to sea now, and he han’t got a penny to live on, an’ so I wants to gladden his heart and astonish his eyes wi’ a sight o’ such a heap o’ silver. Mix it all together, sir,” she said to the teller.

He obeyed, and pushed the pile towards Mrs Gaff, who surveyed it first with unmixed delight; but gradually her face was clouded with a look of concern as she thought of the counting of it.

If the counting of the gold was terrible to her, the counting of the silver was absolutely appalling, for the latter, consisting as it did of half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences, numbered nearly five hundred pieces.

The poor woman applied herself to the task with commendable energy, but in ten minutes she perceived that the thing was utterly beyond her powers, so she suddenly exclaimed to Tottie, who stood looking on with tears in her eyes,—“Surely the elderly teller must be an honest man, and would never cheat me;” having come to which conclusion she swept the silver into the bag previously prepared for it, and consigned that to the basket which was the inseparable companion of her left arm. Thereafter she left the bank and hastened to a grocer in the town with whom she was acquainted, and from whom she obtained brown paper and twine with which she made the money up into a parcel. Her next act was to purchase a new bonnet-box, which she presented to Miss Peppy with many earnest protestations that she would have got a better if she could, but a better was not to be had in town for love or money.

Having executed all her commissions, Mrs Gaff returned to Cove and spent an hour or two with Tottie in the four-poster—not by any means because she was lazy, but because it afforded her peculiar and inexpressible pleasure to stare at the damask curtains and wonder how Gaff would like it, and think of the surprise that he would receive on first beholding such a bed. So anxious did the good woman become in her desire to make the most of the new bed, that she once or twice contemplated the propriety of Stephen and herself, and the Bu’ster and Tottie, spending the first night, “after their return,” all together in it, but on mature consideration she dismissed the idea as untenable.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Miss Peppy undertakes a Journey

The scene is changed now to the railway station at Wreckumoft, where there is the usual amount of bustle and noise. The engines are shrieking and snorting as if nothing on earth could relieve their feelings but bursting. Bells are ringing; porters are hurrying to and fro with luggage on trucks, to the risk of passengers’ shins and toes; men, women, and children, young and old, high and low, rich and poor, are mixed in confusion on the platform, some insanely attempting to force their way into a train that is moving off, under the impression that it is their train, and they are too late “after all!” Others are wildly searching for lost luggage. Many are endeavouring to calm their own spirits, some are attempting to calm the spirits of others. Timid old ladies, who cannot get reconciled to railways at all, are convinced that “something is going to happen,” and testy old gentlemen are stumping about in search of wives and daughters, wishing that railways had never been invented, while a good many self-possessed individuals of both sexes are regarding the scene with serene composure.

When Miss Peppy made her appearance she was evidently not among the latter class. She was accompanied by Kenneth, and attended by Mrs Niven.

Neither mistress nor maid had ever been in a railway station before. They belonged to that class of females who are not addicted to travelling, and who prefer stage-coaches of the olden times to railways. They entered the station, therefore, with some curiosity and much trepidation—for it chanced to be an excursion day, and several of the “trades” of Athenbury were besieging the ticket-windows.

“It is very good of you to go with me, Kennie,” said Miss Peppy, hugging her nephew’s arm.

“My dear aunt, it is a pleasure, I assure you,” replied Kenneth; “I am quite anxious to make the acquaintance of Colonel Crusty and his pretty daughter.”

“O dear! what a shriek! Is anything wrong, Kennie?”

“Nothing, dear aunt; it is only a train about to start.”

“What’s the matter with you, Niven?” inquired Miss Peppy with some anxiety, on observing that the housekeeper’s face was ashy pale.

“Nothink, ma’am; only I feels assured that everythink is a-goin’ to bu’st, ma’am.”

She looked round hastily, as if in search of some way of escape, but no such way presented itself.

“Look-out for your legs, ma’am,” shouted a porter, as he tried to stop his truck of luggage.

Mrs Niven of course did not hear him, and if she had heard him, she would not have believed it possible that he referred to her legs, for she wore a very long dress, and was always scrupulously particular in the matter of concealing her ankles. Fortunately Kenneth observed her danger, and pulled her out of the way with unavoidable violence.

“It can’t ’old on much longer,” observed Niven with a sigh, referring to an engine which stood directly opposite to her in tremulous and apparently tremendous anxiety to start.

The driver vented his impatience just then by causing the whistle to give three sharp yelps, which produced three agonising leaps in the bosoms of Miss Peppy and Mrs Niven.

“Couldn’t it all be done with a little less noise,” said Miss Peppy to Kenneth, “it seems to me so aw— oh! look! surely that old gentleman has gone mad!”

“Not he,” said Kenneth with a smile; “he has only lost his wife in the crowd, and thinks the train will start before he finds her; see, she is under the same impression, don’t you see her rushing wildly about looking for her husband, they’ll meet in a moment or two if they keep going in the same direction, unless that luggage-truck should interfere.”

“Look-out, sir!” shouted the porter at that moment. The old gentleman started back, and all but knocked over his wife, who screamed, recognised him, and clung to his arm with thankful tenacity.

A bell rang.

The crowd swayed to and fro; agitated people became apparently insane; timid people collapsed; strong people pushed, and weak folk gave way. If any man should be sceptical in regard to the doctrine of the thorough depravity of the human heart, he can have his unbelief removed by going into and observing the conduct of an eager crowd!

“What a hinfamous state of things!” observed Mrs Niven.

“Yell!—shriek!” went the engine whistle, drowning Miss Peppy’s reply.

“Take your seats!” roared the guard.

The engine gave a sudden snort, as if to say, “You’d better, else I’m off without you.”

“Now aunt,” said Kenneth, “come along.”

In another moment Miss Peppy was seated in a carriage, with her head out of the window, talking earnestly and rapidly to Mrs Niven.

It seemed as if she had reserved all the household directions which she had to give to that last inopportune moment!

“Now, take good care of Emmie, Niven, and don’t forget to get her—”

The remainder was drowned by “that irritating whistle.”

“Get her what, ma’am?”

“Get her shoes mended before Sunday, and remember that her petticoat was torn when she—bless me! has that thing burst at last?”

“No, ma’am, not yet,” said Niven.

“Now then, keep back; show your tickets, please,” said the inspector, pushing Niven aside.

“Imperence!” muttered the offended housekeeper, again advancing to the window when the man had passed.

As the train was evidently about to start, Miss Peppy’s memory became suddenly very acute, and a rush of forgotten directions almost choked her as she leaned out of the window.

“Oh! Niven, I forgot—the—the—dear me, what is it? I know it so well when I’m not in a flurry. It’s awful to be subjected so constantly to—the Child’s History of England! that’s it—on the top of my—my—which trunk can it be? I know, oh yes, the leather one. Emmie is to read—well now, that is too bad—”

As Miss Peppy stopped and fumbled in her pocket inquiringly, Mrs Niven asked, in some concern, if it was her purse.

“No, it’s my thimble; ah! here it is, there’s a corner in that pocket where everything seems to—well,” (shriek from the whistle), “oh! and—and—the baker’s book—it must be—by the bye, that’s well remembered, you must get money from Mr Stuart—”

“What now, ma’am,” inquired Mrs Niven, as Miss Peppy again paused and grew pale.

“The key!”

“Of the press?” inquired Niven.

“Yes—no; that is, it’s the key of the press, and not the key of my trunk. Here, take it,” (she thrust the key into the housekeeper’s hand, just as the engine gave a violent snort.) “What shall I do? My trunk won’t open without, at least I suppose it won’t, and it’s a new lock! what shall—”

“Make a parcel of the key, Niven,” said Kenneth, coming to the rescue, “and send it by the guard of next train.”

“And oh!” shrieked Miss Peppy, as the train began to move, “I forgot the—the—”

“Yes, yes, quick, ma’am,” cried Niven eagerly, as she followed.

“Oh! can’t they stop the train for a moment? It’s the—it’s—dear me—the pie—pie!”

“What pie, ma’am?”

“There’s three of them—for my brother’s dinner—I forgot to tell cook—it’ll put him out so—there’s three of ’em. It’s not the—the—two but the—the—other one, the what-d’ye-call-it pie.” Miss Peppy fell back on her seat, and gave it up with a groan. Suddenly she sprang up, and thrust out her head—“The deer pie,” she yelled.

“The dear pie!” echoed the astonished Mrs Niven interrogatively.

Another moment and Miss Peppy vanished from the scene, leaving the housekeeper to return home in despair, from which condition she was relieved by the cook, who at once concluded that the “dear pie” must mean the venison pasty, and forthwith prepared the dish for dinner.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Perplexities and Musical Charms

My son Gildart, with his hands in his pockets and his cap very much on one side of his head, entered my drawing-room one morning with a perplexed air.

“What troubles you to-day?” asked Lizzie Gordon, who was seated at the window winding up a ball of worsted, the skein of which was being held by Miss Puff, who was at that time residing with us.

“What troubles me?—everything troubles me,” said the middy with a stern air, as he turned his back to the fire; “the world troubles me, circumstances trouble me, my heart troubles me, my pocket troubles me, my friends and relations trouble me, and so do my enemies; in fact, it would be difficult to name the sublunary creature or thing that does not trouble me. It blows trouble from every point of the compass, a peculiarity in moral gales that is never observed in physical breezes.”

“How philosophically you talk this morning,” observed Lizzie with a laugh. “May it not be just possible that the trouble, instead of flowing from all points to you as a centre, wells up within and flows out in all directions, and that a warped mind inverts the process?”

“Perhaps you are right, sweet cousin! Anyhow we can’t be both wrong, which is a comfort.”

“May I ask what is the heart-trouble you complain of?” said Lizzie.

“Love and hatred,” replied Gildart with a sigh and a frown.

“Indeed! Is the name of the beloved object a secret?”

“Of course,” said the middy with a pointed glance at Miss Puff, who blushed scarlet from the roots of her hair to the edge of her dress, (perhaps to the points of her toes—I am inclined to think so); “of course it is; but the hated object’s name is no secret. It is Haco Barepoles.”

“The mad skipper!” exclaimed Lizzie in surprise. “I thought he was the most amiable man in existence. Every one speaks well of him.”

“It may be so, but I hate him. The hatred is peculiar, though I believe not incurable, but at present it is powerful. That preposterous giant, that fathom and four inches of conceit, that insufferable disgrace to his cloth, that huge mass of human bones in a pig-skin—he—he bothers me.”

“But how does he bother you?”

“Well, in the first place, he positively refuses to let his daughter Susan marry Dan Horsey, and I have set my heart on that match, for Susan is a favourite of mine, and Dan is a capital fellow, though he is a groom and a scoundrel—and nothing would delight me more than to bother our cook, who is a perfect vixen, and would naturally die of vexation if these two were spliced; besides, I want a dance at a wedding, or a shindy of some sort, before setting sail for the land of spices and niggers. Haco puts a stop to all that; but, worse still, when I was down at the Sailors’ Home the other day, I heard him telling some wonderful stories to the men there, in one of which he boasted that he had never been taken by surprise, nor got a start in his life; that a twenty-four pounder had once burst at his side and cut the head clean off a comrade, without causing his nerves to shake or his pulse to increase a bit. I laid him a bet of ten pounds on the spot that I could give him a fright, and he took it at once. Now I can’t for the life of me think how to give him a fright, yet I must do it somehow, for it will never do to be beat.”

“Couldn’t you shoot off a pistol at his ear?” suggested Lizzie.

Miss Puff sniggered, and Gildart said he might as well try to startle him with a sneeze.

“Get up a ghost, then,” said Lizzie; “I have known a ghost act with great effect on a dark night in an out-of-the-way place.”

“No use,” returned Gildart, shaking his head. “Haco has seen ghosts enough to frighten a squadron of horse-marines.”

Miss Puff sniggered again, and continued to do so until her puffy face and neck became extremely pink and dangerously inflated, insomuch that Gildart asked her somewhat abruptly what in the world she was laughing at. Miss Puff said she wouldn’t tell, and Gildart insisted that she would; but she positively declined, until Gildart dragged her forcibly from her chair into a window-recess, where she was prevailed on to whisper the ideas that made her laugh.

“Capital!” exclaimed the middy, chuckling as he issued from the recess; “I’ll try it. You’re a charming creature, Puff, with an imagination worthy the owner of a better name. There, don’t pout. You know my sentiments. Adieu, fair cousin! Puff, good-bye.”

So saying, the volatile youth left the room.

That afternoon Gildart sauntered down to the Sailors’ Home and entered the public hall, in which a dozen or two of sailors were engaged in playing draughts or chatting together. He glanced round, but, not finding the object of his search, was about to leave, when Dan Horsey came up, and, touching his hat, asked if he were looking for Haco Barepoles.

“I am,” said Gildart.

“So is meself,” said Dan; “but the mad skipper an’t aisy to git howld of, an’ not aisy to kape howld of when ye’ve got him. He’s goin’ to Cove this afternoon, I believe, an’ll be here before startin’, so I’m towld, so I’m waitin’ for him.”

As he spoke Haco entered, and Dan delivered a letter to him.

“Who from?” inquired the skipper sternly.

“Mr Stuart, alias the guv’nor,” replied Dan with extreme affability; “an’ as no answer is required, I’ll take my leave with your highness’s permission.”

Haco deigned no reply, but turned to Gildart and held out his hand.

“You’ve not gone to stay at Cove yet, I see,” said Gildart.

“Not yet, lad, but I go to-night at nine o’clock. You see Mrs Gaff is a-goin’ to visit a relation for a week, an’ wants me to take care o’ the house, the boodwar, as she calls it, though why she calls it by that name is more than I can tell. However I’ll be here for a week yet, as the ‘Coffin’ wants a few repairs, (I wonder if it ever didn’t want repairs), an’ I may as well be there as in the Home, though I’m bound to say the Home is as good a lodgin’ as ever I was in at home or abroad, and cheap too, an’ they looks arter you so well. The only thing I an’t sure of is whether the repairs is to be done here or in Athenbury.”

“The letter from Mr Stuart may bear on that point,” suggested Gildart.

“True,” replied the skipper, opening the letter.

“Ha! sure enough the repairs is to be done there, so I’ll have to cut my visit to Cove short by four days.”

“But you’ll sleep there to-night, I suppose?” asked Gildart, with more anxiety than the subject seemed to warrant.

“Ay, no doubt o’ that, for Mrs G and Tottie left this mornin’, trustin’ to my comin’ down in the evenin’; but I can’t get before nine o’clock.”

“Well, good-day to you,” said Gildart; “I hope you’ll enjoy yourself at Cove.”

The middy hastened away from the Sailors’ Home with the air of a man who had business on hand. Turning the corner of a street he came upon a brass band, the tones of which were rendering all the bilious people within hearing almost unable to support existence. There was one irascible old gentleman, (a lawyer), under whose window it was braying, who sat at his desk with a finger in each ear trying to make sense out of a legal document. This was a difficult task at any time, for the legal document was compounded chiefly of nonsense, with the smallest possible modicum of sense scattered through it. In the circumstances the thing was impossible, so the lawyer rose and stamped about the floor, and wished he were the Emperor of Russia with a cannon charged with grape-shot loaded to the muzzle and pointed at the centre of that brass band, in which case he would—. Well, the old gentleman never thought out the sentence, but he stamped on and raved a little as the band brayed below his window.

There was a sick man in a room not far from the old lawyer’s office. He had spent two days and two nights in the delirium of fever. At last the doctor succeeded in getting him to fall into a slumber. It was not a very sound one; but such as it was it was of inestimable value to the sick man. The brass band, however, brayed the slumber away to the strains of “Rule Britannia,” and effectually restored the delirium with “God Save the Queen.”

There were many other interesting little scenes enacted in that street in consequence of the harmonious music of that brass band, but I shall refrain from entering into farther particulars. Suffice it to say that Gildart stood listening to it for some time with evident delight.

“Splendid,” he muttered, as an absolutely appalling burst of discord rent the surrounding air and left it in tatters. “Magnificent! I think that will do.”

“You seem fond of bad music, sir,” observed an elderly gentleman, who had been standing near a doorway looking at the middy with a quiet smile.

“Yes, on the present occasion I am,” replied Gildart; “discord suits my taste just now, and noise is pleasant to my ear.”

The band ceased to play at that moment, and Gildart, stepping up to the man who appeared to be the leader, inasmuch as he performed on the clarionet, asked him to turn aside with him for a few minutes.

The man obeyed with a look of surprise, not unmingled with suspicion.

“You are leader of this band?”

“Yes, sir, I ham.”

“Have you any objection to earn a sovereign or two?”

“No, sir, I han’t.”

“It’s a goodish band,” observed Gildart.

“A fus’-rater,” replied the clarionet. “No doubt the trombone is a little cracked and brassy, so to speak, because of a hinfluenza as has wonted him for some weeks; but there’s good stuff in ’im, sir, and plenty o’ lungs. The key-bugle is a noo ’and, but ’e’s capital, ’ticklerly in the ’igh notes an’ flats; besides, bein’ young, ’e’ll improve. As to the French ’orn, there ain’t his ekal in the country; w’en he does the pathetic it would make a banker weep. You like pathetic music, sir?”

“Not much,” replied the middy.

“No! now that’s hodd. I do. It ’armonises so with the usual state o’ my feelin’s. My feelin’s is a’most always pathetic, sir.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, ’cept at meal-times, w’en I do manage to git a little jolly. Ah! sir, music ain’t wot it used to be. There’s a general flatness about it now, sir, an’ people don’t seem to admire it ’alf so much as w’en I first began. But if you don’t like the pathetic, p’raps you like the bravoory style?”

“I doat on it,” said Gildart. “Come, let’s have a touch of the ‘bravoory.’”

“I’ve got a piece,” said the clarionet slowly, looking at the sky with a pathetic air, “a piece as I composed myself. I don’t often play it, ’cause, you know, sir, one doesn’t ’xactly like to shove one’s-self too prominently afore the public. I calls it the ‘Banging-smash Polka.’ But I generally charge hextra for it, for it’s dreadful hard on the lungs, and the trombone he gets cross when I mention it, for it nearly bu’sts the hinstrument; besides, it kicks up sich a row that it puts the French ’orn’s nose out o’ jint—you can’t ’ear a note of him. I flatter myself that the key-bugle plays his part to parfection, but the piece was written chiefly for the trombone and clarionet; the one being deep and crashing, the other shrill and high. I had the battle o’ Waterloo in my mind w’en I wrote it.”

“Will that do?” said Gildart, putting half-a-crown into the man’s hand.

The clarionet nodded, and, turning to his comrades, winked gravely as he pronounced the magic word—“Banging-smash.”

Next moment there was a burst as if a bomb-shell had torn up the street, and this was followed up by a series of crashes so rapid, violent, and wildly intermingled, that the middy’s heart almost leapt out of him with delight!