It was at the close of that war which lost this country the wealthiest and
most populous of her American colonies, that a fleet of ships were
returning from their service amongst the islands of the New World, to seek
for their worn out and battered hulks, and equally weakened crews, the
repairs and comforts of England and home.
The latter word, to the mariner the most endearing of all sounds, had, as
it were, drawn together by instinct a group of sailors on the forecastle
of the proudest ship of the squadron, who gazed with varied emotions on
the land which gave them birth, but with one common feeling of joy that
the day of attaining it was at length arrived.
The water curled from the bows of this castle of the ocean, in increasing
waves and growing murmurs, that at times drew the attention of the veteran
tar to their quickening progress, and having cheered his heart with the
sight, he cast his experienced eye in silence on the swelling sails, to
see if nothing more could be done to shorten the distance between him and
his country.
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on the land of their birth, and hundreds of
hearts were beating in that one vessel with the awakening delights of
domestic love and renewed affections; but no tongue broke the disciplined
silence of the ship into sounds that overcame the propitious ripple of the
water.
On the highest summit of their towering mast floated a small blue flag,
the symbol of authority, and beneath it paced a man to and fro the deck,
who was abandoned by his inferiors to his more elevated rank. His
square-built form and careworn features, which had lost the brilliancy of
an English complexion, and hair whitened prematurely, spoke of bodily
vigor, and arduous services which had put that vigor to the severest
trials.
At each turn of his walk, as he faced the land of his nativity, a lurking
smile stole over his sun-burnt features, and then a glance of his eye
would scan the progress of the far-stretched squadron which obeyed his
orders, and which he was now returning to his superiors, undiminished in
numbers, and proud with victory.
By himself stood an officer in a uniform differing from all around him.
His figure was small, his eye restless, quick, and piercing, and bent on
those shores to which he was unwillingly advancing, with a look of anxiety
and mortification, that showed him the late commander of those vessels
around them, which, by displaying their double flags, manifested to the
eye of the seaman a recent change of masters.
Occasionally the conqueror would stop, and by some effort of well meant,
but rather uncouth civility, endeavor to soften the hours of captivity;
efforts which were received with the courtesy of the most punctilious
etiquette, but a restraint which showed that they were unwelcome.
It was, perhaps, the most unlucky moment that had occurred within the two
months of their association, for an exchange of their better feelings. The
honest heart of the English tar dilated with ill-concealed delight at his
approach to the termination of labors performed with credit and honor, and
his smiles and good humor, which partly proceeded from the feelings of a
father and a friend, were daggers to the heart of his discomfited rival.
A third personage now appeared from the cabin of the vessel, and
approached the spot where the adverse admirals at the moment were engaged
in one of these constrained conferences.
The appearance and dress of this gentleman differed widely from the two
just described. He was tall, graceful, and dignified; he was a soldier,
and clearly of high rank. His carefully dressed hair concealed the ravages
of time and on the quarter-deck of a first-rate his attire and manners
were suited to a field-day in the park.
"I really insist, monsieur," cried the admiral, good-naturedly, "that you
shall take part of my chaise to London. You are a stranger, and it will
help to keep up your spirits by the way."
"You are very good, Monsieur Howell," replied the Frenchman, with a polite
bow and forced smile, misconstruing ill-judged benevolence into a wish for
his person to grace a triumph--"but I have accepted the offer Monsieur le
General Denbigh was so good as to make me."
"The comte is engaged to me, Howell," said the general, with a courtly
smile, "and, indeed, you must leave the ship to night, or as soon as we
anchor.--But I shall take daylight and to-morrow."
"Well--well--Denbigh," exclaimed the other, rubbing his hands with
pleasure as he viewed the increasing power of the wind, "only make
yourselves happy, and I am contented."
A few hours intervened before they reached the Bay of Plymouth, and round
the table, after their dinner, were seated the general and English
admiral. The comte, under the pretence of preparing his things for a
removal, had retired to his apartment to conceal his feelings;--and the
captain of the ship was above, superintending the approach of the vessel
to her anchorage. Two or three well emptied bottles of wine yet remained;
but as the healths of all the branches of the House of Brunswick had been
propitiated from their contents, with a polite remembrance of Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette from General Denbigh, neither of the superiors was
much inclined for action.
"Is the Thunderer in her station?" said the admiral to the signal
lieutenant, who at that moment came below with a report.
"Yes, sir, and has answered."
"Very well; make the signal to prepare to anchor."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"And here, Bennet," to the retiring lieutenant--"call the transports all
in shore of us."
"Three hundred and eighty-four, sir," said the officer, looking at his
signal-book.
The admiral cast his eye at the book, and nodded an assent.
"And let the Mermaid--Flora--Weasel--Bruiser, and all the sloops lie well
off, until we have landed the soldiers: the pilot says the channel is full
of luggers, and Jonathan has grown very saucy."
The lieutenant made a complying bow, and was retiring to execute these
orders, as Admiral Howell, taking up a bottle not yet entirely deserted by
its former tenant, cried stoutly--"Here, Bennet--I forgot--take a glass of
wine; drink success to ourselves, and defeat to the French all over the
world."
The general pointed significantly to the adjoining cabin of the French
admiral, as he pressed his hand on his lips for silence.
"Oh!" cried Admiral Howell, recollecting himself, continuing in a whisper,
"you can drink it in your heart, notwithstanding."
The signal officer nodded, and drank the liquor. As he smacked his lips
while going on deck, he thought to himself, these nabobs drink famous good
wine.
Although the feelings of General Denbigh were under much more command and
disciplined obedience than those of his friend, yet was he too unusually
elated with his return to home and expected honors. If the admiral had
captured a fleet, _he_ had taken an island;--and hand in hand they had
co-operated in unusual harmony through the difficulties of an arduous
campaign. This rather singular circumstance was owing to their personal
friendship. From their youth they had been companions, and although of
very different characters and habits, chance had cemented their intimacy
in more advanced life. While in subordinate stations, they had been
associated together in service; and the general and admiral, in command of
an army and fleet, had once before returned to England with less renown,
as a colonel and a captain of a frigate. The great family influence of the
soldier, with the known circumstance of their harmony, had procured them
this later command, and home, with its comforts and rewards, was close
before them. Pouring out a glass of Madeira, the general, who always
calculated what he said, exclaimed,
"Peter--we have been friends from boys."
"To be sure we have," said the admiral, looking up in a little surprise at
this unexpected commencement--"and it will not be my fault if we do not
die such, Frederick."
Dying was a subject the general did not much delight in although of
conspicuous courage in the field; and he proceeded to his more important
purpose--"I could never find, although I have looked over our family tree
so often, that we are in any manner related, Howell."
"I believe it is too late to mend that matter now," said the admiral,
musing.
"Why no--hem--I think not, Howell; take a glass of this Burgundy."
The admiral shook his head with a stubborn resolution to taste nothing
French, but he helped himself to a bountiful stock of Madeira, as he
replied--
"I should like to know how you can bring it about this time of day,
Denbigh."
"How much money will you be able to give that girl of yours, Peter?" said
his friend, evading the point.
"Forty thousand down, my good fellow, and as much more when I die," cried
the open-hearted sailor, with a nod of exultation.
"George, my youngest son, will not be rich--but Francis will be a duke,
and have a noble estate; yet," said the general; meditating, "he is so
unhappy in his disposition and uncouth in his manners, I cannot think of
offering him to your daughter as a husband."
"Isabel shall marry a good-natured man, like myself, or not at all," said
the admiral, positively, but not in the least suspecting the drift of his
friend, who was influenced by anything but a regard for the lady's
happiness.
Francis, his first born, was, in truth, as he had described; but his
governing wish was to provide for his favorite George. Dukes could never
want wives, but unportioned captains in the guards might.
"George is one of the best tempers in the world," said his father, with
strong feeling, "and the delight of us all. I could wish he had been the
heir to the family honors."
"_That_ it is certainly too late to help," cried the admiral, wondering if
the ingenuity of his friend could devise a remedy for this evil too.
"Too late, indeed," said the other, with a heavy sigh, "but Howell, what
say you to matching Isabel with my favorite George?"
"Denbigh," cried the sailor, eyeing him keenly, "Isabel is my only child,
and a dutiful, good girl; one that will obey orders if she breaks owners,
as we sailors say. Now I did think of marrying her to a seaman, when a
proper man came athwart my course; yet your son is a soldier, and that is
next to being in the navy: if-so-be you had made him come aboard me, when
I wanted you to, there would have been no objection at all: however, when
occasion offers. I will overhaul the lad, and if I find him staunch he may
turn in with Bell and welcome."
This was uttered in perfect simplicity, and with no intention of giving
offence, partaking partly of the nature of a soliloquy; so the general,
greatly encouraged, was about to push the point, when a gun was fired from
their own ship.
"There's some of them lubberly transports won't mind our signals; they
have had these soldiers so long on board, they get as clumsy as the
red-coats themselves," muttered the admiral, hastening on deck to enforce
his commands.
A shot or two, sent significantly in the direction of the wanderers, but
so as not to hit them, restored order; and within an hour forty line of
battle ships and a hundred transports were disposed in the best manner for
convenience and safety.
On their presentation to their sovereign, both veterans were embellished
with the riband of the Bath; and as their exploits filled the mouths of
the newsmongers, and the columns of the public prints of the day, the new
knights began to think more seriously of building a monument to their
victories, in a union between their children. The admiral, however,
determined to do nothing with his eyes shut, and he demanded a scrutiny.
"Where is the boy who is to be a duke?" exclaimed he, one day, when his
friend had introduced the point with a view to a final arrangement. "Bell
has good blood in her veins--is a tight built little vessel--clean heel'd
and trim, and would make as good a duchess as the best of them; so
Denbigh, I will begin by taking a survey of the senior."
To this the general had no objection, as he well knew that Francis would
be wide of pleasing the tastes of an open-hearted, simple man, like the
sailor. They met, accordingly, for what the general facetiously called the
review, and what the admiral innocently termed his survey, at the house of
the former, when the young gentlemen were submitted to his inspection.
Francis Denbigh was about four and twenty, of a feeble body, and with a
face marked with the small-pox, to approaching deformity; his eye was
brilliant and piercing, but unsettled, and at times wild--his manner
awkward, constrained, and timid. There would be seen, it is true, an
intelligence and animation, which occasionally lighted his countenance
into gleams of sunshine, that caused you to overlook the lesser
accompaniments of complexion and features in the expression; but they were
transient, and inevitably vanished whenever his father spoke or in any
manner mingled in his pursuits.
An observer close as Mrs. Wilson, would have said that the feelings of the
father and son were not such as ought to exist between parent and child.
But the admiral, who regarded model and rigging a good deal, satisfied
himself with muttering, as he turned his eye on the junior--
"He may do for a duke--but I would not have him for a cockswain."
George was a year younger than Francis; in form, stature, and personal
grace, the counterpart of his father; his eye was less keen but more
attractive than that of his brother; his air open, polished, and manly.
"Ah!" thought the sailor, as he ended a satisfactory survey of the youth,
"what a thousand pities Denbigh did not send him to sea!"
The thing was soon settled, and George was to be the happy man. Sir Peter
concluded to dine with his friend, in order to settle preliminaries over
the bottle by themselves; the young men and their mother being engaged to
their uncle the duke.
"Well, Denbigh," cried the admiral, as the last servant withdrew, "when do
you mean to have the young couple spliced?"
"Why," replied the wary soldier, who knew he could not calculate on
obedience to his mandate with as great a certainty as his friend--"the
better way is to bring the young people together, in order that they may
become acquainted, you know."
"Acquainted--together--" cried his companion, in a little surprise, "what
better way is there to bring them together, than to have them up before a
priest, or to make them acquainted by letting them swing in the same
hammock?"
"It might answer the end, indeed," said the general, with a smile, "but
somehow or other, it is always the best method to bring young folks
together, to let them have their own way in the affair for a time."
"Own way!" rejoined Sir Peter, bluntly, "did you ever find it answer to
let a woman have her own way, Sir Frederick?"
"Not common women certainly, my good friend," said the general, "but such
a girl as my intended daughter is an exception."
"I don't know that," cried the sailor; "Bell is a good girl, but she has
her quirks and whims like all the sex."
"You have had no trouble with her as yet, I believe, Howell," said Sir
Frederick cavalierly, throwing an inquiring glance on his friend at the
same time.
"No, not yet--nor do I think she will ever dare to mutiny; but there has
been one wishing to take her in tow already since we got in."
"How!" said the other in alarm, "who--what is he? some officer in the
navy, I suppose."
"No, he was a kind of chaplain, one Parson Ives, a good sort of a youth
enough, and a prodigious favorite with my sister, Lady Hawker."
"Well, what did you answer, Peter?" said his companion in increasing
uneasiness; "did you put him off?"
"Off! to be sure I did--do you think I wanted a barber's clerk for a
son-in-law? No, no, Denbigh; a soldier is bad enough, without having a
preacher."
The general compressed his lips at this direct attack on a profession that
he thought the most honorable of any in the world, in some resentment; but
remembering the eighty thousand pounds, and accustomed to the ways of the
other, he curbed his temper, and inquired--
"But Miss Howell--your daughter--how did she stand affected to this
priest?"
"How--why--how?--why I never asked her."
"Never asked her?"
"No, never asked her: she is my daughter, you know, and bound to obey my
orders, and I did not choose she should marry a parson; but, once for all,
when is the wedding to take place?"
General Denbigh had indulged his younger son too blindly and too fondly to
expect that implicit obedience the admiral calculated to a certainty on,
and with every prospect of not being disappointed, from his daughter.
Isabel Howell was pretty, mild, and timid, and unused to oppose any of her
father's commands; but George Denbigh was haughty, positive, and
self-willed, and unless the affair could be so managed as to make him a
willing assistant in the courtship, his father knew it might be abandoned
at once. He thought his son might be led, but not driven; and, relying on
his own powers for managing, the general saw his only safety in executing
the scheme was in postponing his advances for a regular siege to the
lady's heart.
Sir Peter chafed and swore at this circumlocution: the thing could be done
as well in a week as in a year; and the veterans, who, for a miracle, had
agreed in their rival stations, and in doubtful moments of success, were
near splitting on the point of marrying a girl of nineteen.
As Sir Peter both loved his friend, and had taken a prodigious fancy to
the youth, he however was fain to submit to a short probation.
"You are always for going a round-about way to do a thing," said the
admiral, as he yielded the point. "Now, when you took that battery, had
you gone up in front, as I advised you, you would have taken it in ten
minutes, instead of five hours."
"Yes," said the other, with a friendly shake of the hand at parting, "and
lost fifty men in place of one by the step."