Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn

Kenneth rode back to town that day with a heart so heavy that the bright eyes of Lizzie Gordon failed to rouse him to even the semblance of cheerfulness, and the effervescing small-talk of the volatile Gildart was almost intolerable.

Chapter Eight.

Dan Horsey does the Agreeable in the Kitchen

“Captain Bingley,” said Kenneth, entering my study somewhat hastily on the following morning, “I am going to carry off Gildart for the day to have a ride with me, and I looked in on you in passing to tell you that Haco has arrived in his schooner, and that he is going to sail this evening for London and will take your Russians to their consul if you wish it.”

“Thank you, lad; many thanks,” said I, “some of them may be able to go, but others, I fear, are too much hurt, and may require to be nursed in the ‘Home’ for some time yet. I will consider it; meanwhile will you carry a note to your father for me?”

“With pleasure; at least I will send Dan Horsey with it, if that will do as well.”

“Quite as well, if you can spare him; send him into the kitchen while I write the note. Adieu, lad, and see that you don’t break Gildart’s neck. Remember that he is not much accustomed to horses.”

“No fear of him,” said Kenneth, looking back with a laugh as he reached the door, “he is well used to riding out hard gales, and that is more arduous work than steeple-chasing.” When Dan Horsey was told to go to the kitchen and await further orders, he received the command with a cheerful smile, and, attaching the bridle of his horse to a post, proceeded to obey it.

The kitchen of Bingley Hall was the abode of two females who severally owned a distinct and dissimilar character, both mental and physical. The first female—first in most senses of the word—was Bounder the cook, who was fat, as cooks ought to be in order to prove that their productions agree with them; and self-opinionated, as cooks generally are, in order, no doubt, to prove that they know their business.

The second female was Susan Barepoles, a slim, graceful housemaid, apparently modest, (cook did not even pretend to that virtue), and wonderfully sharp-eyed. Both females were good-looking and young, and both were desperately in love with Daniel Horsey. Each knew the fact, and so did Dan. Each was mortally jealous of the other, and Dan was dreadfully perplexed in consequence.

Not that he was uncertain as to which of the two he preferred, for Susan’s image was “engruven,” as he expressed it, deeply on his heart, to the exclusion of all other images, but he found that the jealousy of the two interfered somewhat with the course of true love, causing it to run in its proverbially rough channel.

“It’s a fine mornin’, my darlints,” said Dan, as he entered the kitchen with a swagger, and laid his hat and riding-whip on the dresser, at the same time seating himself on the edge of a small table that stood near the window. This seat he preferred to a chair, partly because it enabled him to turn his back to the light, and partly because it afforded him an opportunity of swinging his legs gently with an easy motion that was agreeable, and, at the same time, in his opinion, graceful.

“None o’ yer imperance,” said cook, stirring the contents of a large pan carefully.

Susan tossed her head slightly, but admitted that the morning was good.

“He’s a-writin’ of a letter to Grumpy,” said Dan, pointing with his thumb towards the ceiling, in order to indicate that the “he” referred to was myself.

“Who’s Grumpy?” inquired cook, with a look of interest.

“Arrah, now, don’t ye know it’s old Stuart?”

Susan laughed, and cook observed that the name seemed to her an extremely disrespectful one.

“It’s not bad enough for him, the old pair o’ tongs,” said Dan, taking up his whip with a gentlemanly assumption of ease, and flipping the toe of his boot with it; “av it wasn’t for the love that my master Kenneth bears me, I’d have left ’em long ago. But, you see, the young master is a first-rater, and couldn’t get on without me no how, so I’m willin’ to stop. Besides,” continued Dan, with a very small sigh, “I have private raisons for not carin’ to leave just now.”

He accompanied the latter remark with a sly glance at Susan, who chanced quite accidentally to cast a sly glance at Dan, so that their eyes met, and the result was that Susan blushed and began to rub the silver tea-pot, which she was cleaning, unmercifully, and Dan laughed. Whereupon cook looked round hastily and asked what he was laughing at, to which Dan responded that his own imagination, which happened to be a brilliant one, had just then suggested a train of comical ideas which had tickled his risible muscles so that he couldn’t help it!

“I don’t believe it,” said cook, who observed Susan’s confusion of face, and became internally red hot with jealousy, “I b’lieve you was larfin’ at me.”

“Och, Miss Bounder!” exclaimed Dan, looking at her with an expression so awfully reproachful that cook instantly repented and laughed.

“There’s bin some strange doin’s up at the Villa,” said Susan, by way of changing the subject, while she polished the tea-pot yet more unmercifully.

“Ah,” exclaimed cook, “that’s true; what does it all mean, Mr Horsey?”

“That’s more nor myself can tell,” said Dan; “the facts o’ the case is clear, so far as they come’d under our obsarvation. But as to the circumstances o’ the case, ’specially those of ’em as hasn’t yet transpired, I don’t rightly know myself wot opinions I ought to entertain.”

Susan listened to these remarks with profound admiration, chiefly because she did not understand them; but cook, who was more matter-of-fact in her nature, and somewhat demonstrative in her tendencies, advised Dan not to talk gammon, but to explain what he meant.

“Explain what I mean, coolinary sunbeam!” said Dan; “isn’t it explainin’ that I am as plain as the nose on yer face, (an’ a purty wan it is), though I haven’t got the powers of a lawyer, nor yit a praist? Didn’t a drippin’ wet sailor come to our door at the dead o’ night an’ ring the bell as bowld as brass, an’ when Mrs Niven, whose intellect was niver much beyond that of a poplypus—”

“What’s a poplypus?” interrupted cook.

“Well now,” remonstrated Dan, “I ain’t ’xactly a walkin’ dictionary; but I b’lieve it’s a baist o’ the say what hain’t got nothin’ but a body an’ a stummik, indeed I’m not sure but that it’s all stummik together, with just legs enough to move about with, or may be a fin or two, an’ a hole to let in the wittles; quite in your line, by the way, Miss Bounder.”

“Imperance!” ejaculated cook.

“No offence,” said Dan; “but ‘to resoom the thread o’ the narrative,’ as the story books say, Mrs Niven she opened the door, and the drippin’ wet sailor he puts a little wet spalpeen in her arms, an’ goes right off without so much as by your lave, an’ that’s all we know about it. An’ Grumpy he goes ragin’ about the house sayin’ he’ll have nothin’ to do wi’ the poor little thing—who’s not so little naither, bein’ a ten-year-old if she’s an hour, an’ a purty sweet face to boot—an’ that he’ll send her to the workus’ or pris’n, or anywhere; but in his house she’s not to stop another day. Well, not havin’ the management o’ the whole of this world’s affairs, (fort’nately, else a scrubbily managed world it would be), Grumpy finds out that when he wants to send little Emmie, (as she calls herself), off, she’s knocked down by a ragin’ fever, an’ the doctor he says it’s as much as her life is worth to move her. So Grumpy has to grin and bear it, and there’s little Emmie lyin’ at this minit in our best bed, (where Mrs Niven put her the moment she was took bad), a-tossin’ her purty arms in the air, an’ makin’ her yellow hair fly over the pillows, and kickin’ off the close like a young angel in a passion, and callin’ on her mama in a voice that would make a stone immage weep, all the while that Miss Penelope is snivellin’ on one side o’ the bed, an’ Mrs Niven is snortin’ on the other.”

“Poor dear,” said Susan in a low voice, devoting herself with intensified zeal to the tea-pot, while sympathetic tears moistened her eyes.

I interrupted the conversation at this point by entering the kitchen with my note to my friend Stuart. I had to pass through the kitchen to my back garden when I wished to leave my house by the back garden gate. I had coughed and made as much noise as possible in approaching the cook’s domains, but they had been so much engrossed with each other that they did not hear me. Dan sprang hastily off the table, and suddenly assumed a deeply respectful air.

“Dan,” said I, “take this note to Mr Stuart as quickly as possible, and bring me an answer without delay. I am going to see Haco Barepoles at—”

“Oh, sir!” exclaimed Susan with a start, and looking at me interrogatively.

“Oh, I forgot, Susan; your father has just arrived from Aberdeen, and is at this moment in the Sailors’ Home. You may run down to see him, my girl, if you choose.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Susan, with a glow of pleasure on her good-looking face, as she pushed the tea-pot from her, and dropt the cloth, in her haste to get away to see her sire.

“Stay, Susan,” said I; “you need not hurry back. In fact, you may spend the day with your father, if you choose; and tell him that I will be down to see him in a few minutes. But I shall probably be there before you. You may take Mr Stuart’s answer to the Home,” I added, turning to Dan; “I shall be there when you return with it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dan in a tone so energetic as to cause me to look at him. I observed that he was winking towards the kitchen door. Casting my eyes thither I saw that Susan’s face was much flushed as he disappeared into the passage. I also noted that the cook’s face was fiery red, and that she stirred a large pot, over which she bent, with unnecessary violence—viciously, as it were.

Pondering on these things I crossed my garden and proceeded towards the Home, which stood on a conspicuous eminence near the docks, at the east end of the town.

Chapter Nine.

The Sailors’ Home and the Mad Skipper

The Sailors’ Home in Wreckumoft was a neat, substantial, unpretending edifice, which had been built by a number of charitable people, in order to provide a comfortable residence, with board at moderate terms, for the numerous seamen who frequented our port. It also served as a place of temporary refuge to the unfortunate crews of the numerous wrecks which occurred annually on our shores.

Here I found Haco Barepoles, the skipper of a coal sloop, seated on the side of his bed in one of the little berths of the Home, busily engaged in stuffing tobacco into the bowl of a great German pipe with the point of his little finger. Susan, who had outstripped me, was seated beside him with her head on his shoulder.

“Oh, father!” I heard Susan say, as I walked along the passage between the rows of sleeping berths that lined each side of the principal dormitory of our Home; “I shall lose you some day, I fear. How was it that you came so near bein’ wrecked?”

Before the skipper could reply I stood in the doorway of his berth.

“Good-day, Haco,” said I; “glad to see you safe back once more.”

“Thankee, Cap’n Bingley—same to you, sir,” said Haco, rising hastily from the bed and seizing my hand, which he shook warmly, and, I must add, painfully; for the skipper was a hearty, impulsive fellow, apt to forget his strength of body in the strength of his feelings, and given to grasp his male friends with a gripe that would, I verily believe, have drawn a roar from Hercules.

“I’ve come back to the old bunk, you see,” he continued, while I sat down on a chest which served for a chair. “I likes the Home better an’ better every time I comes to it, and I’ve brought all my crew with me; for you see, sir, the ‘Coffin’s’ a’most fallin’ to pieces, and will have to go into dock for a riglar overhaul.”

“The Coffin?” said Susan, interrogatively.