“Sir Wycherly has insisted that I shall consider his table as set in my own cabin,” he continued; “and I know of no better manner of proving my gratitude, than by taking him at his word, and filling it with guests that will be agreeable to us both. I believe there is a Mrs. Dutton, and a Miss – a – a – a – “
“Milly,” put in the baronet, eagerly; “Miss Mildred Dutton – the daughter of our good friend Dutton, here, and a young lady who would do credit to the gayest drawing-room in London.”
“You perceive, sir, that our kind host anticipates the wishes of an old bachelor, as it might be by instinct, and desires the company of the ladies, also. Miss Mildred will, at least, have two young men to do homage to her beauty, and three old ones to sigh in the distance – hey! Atwood?”
“Mildred, as Sir Wycherly knows, sir, has been a little disturbed this morning,” returned Dutton, putting on his best manner for the occasion; “but, I feel no doubt, will be too grateful for this honour, not to exert herself to make a suitable return. As for my wife, gentlemen – “
“And what is to prevent Mrs. Dutton from being one of the party,” interrupted Sir Wycherly, as he observed the husband to hesitate; “she sometimes favours me with her company.”
“I rather think she will to-day, Sir Wycherly, if Mildred is well enough to go; the good woman seldom lets her daughter stray far from her apron-strings. She keeps her, as I tell her, within the sweep of her own hawse, Sir Gervaise.”
“So much the wiser she, Master Dutton,” returned the admiral, pointedly. “The best pilot for a young woman is a good mother; and now you have a fleet in your roadstead, I need not tell a seaman of your experience that you are on pilot-ground; – hey! Atwood?”
Here the parties separated, Dutton remaining uncovered until his superior had turned the corner of his little cottage, and was fairly out of sight. Then the master entered his dwelling to prepare his wife and daughter for the honours they had in perspective. Before he executed this duty, however, the unfortunate man opened what he called a locker – what a housewife would term a cupboard – and fortified his nerves with a strong draught of pure Nantes; a liquor that no hostilities, custom-house duties, or national antipathies, has ever been able to bring into general disrepute in the British Islands. In the mean time the party of the two baronets pursued its way towards the Hall.
The village, or hamlet of Wychecombe, lay about halfway between the station and the residence of the lord of the manor. It was an exceedingly rural and retired collection of mean houses, possessing neither physician, apothecary, nor attorney, to give it importance. A small inn, two or three shops of the humblest kind, and some twenty cottages of labourers and mechanics, composed the place, which, at that early day, had not even a chapel, or a conventicle; dissent not having made much progress then in England. The parish church, one of the old edifices of the time of the Henrys, stood quite alone, in a field, more than a mile from the place; and the vicarage, a respectable abode, was just on the edge of the park, fully half a mile more distant. In short, Wychecombe was one of those places which was so far on the decline, that few or no traces of any little importance it may have once possessed, were any longer to be discovered; and it had sunk entirely into a hamlet that owed its allowed claims to be marked on the maps, and to be noted in the gazetteers, altogether to its antiquity, and the name it had given to one of the oldest knightly families in England.
No wonder then, that the arrival of a fleet under the head, produced a great excitement in the little village. The anchorage was excellent, so far as the bottom was concerned, but it could scarcely be called a roadstead in any other point of view, since there was shelter against no wind but that which blew directly off shore, which happened to be a wind that did not prevail in that part of the island. Occasionally, a small cruiser would come-to, in the offing, and a few frigates had lain at single anchors in the roads, for a tide or so, in waiting for a change of weather; but this was the first fleet that had been known to moor under the cliffs within the memory of man. The fog had prevented the honest villagers from ascertaining the unexpected honour that had been done them, until the reports of the two guns reached their ears, when the important intelligence spread with due rapidity over the entire adjacent country. Although Wychecombe did not lie in actual view of the sea, by the time the party of Sir Wycherly entered the hamlet, its little street was already crowded with visiters from the fleet; every vessel having sent at least one boat ashore, and many of them some three or four. Captain’s and gun-room stewards, midshipmen’s foragers, loblolly boys, and other similar harpies, were out in scores; for this was a part of the world in which bum-boats were unknown; and if the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must fain go to the mountain. Half an hour had sufficed to exhaust all the unsophisticated simplicity of the hamlet; and milk, eggs, fresh butter, soft-tommy, vegetables, and such fruits as were ripe, had already risen quite one hundred per cent. in the market.
Sir Gervaise had called his force the southern squadron, from the circumstance of its having been cruising in the Bay of Biscay, for the last six months. This was a wild winter-station, the danger from the elements greatly surpassing any that could well be anticipated from the enemy. The duty notwithstanding had been well and closely performed; several West India, and one valuable East India convoy having been effectually protected, as well as a few straggling frigates of the enemy picked up; but the service had been excessively laborious to all engaged in it, and replete with privations. Most of those who now landed, had not trod terra firma for half a year, and it was not wonderful that all the officers whose duties did not confine them to the vessels, gladly seized the occasion to feast their senses with the verdure and odours of their native island. Quite a hundred guests of this character were also pouring into the street of Wychecombe, or spreading themselves among the surrounding farm-houses; flirting with the awkward and blushing girls, and keeping an eye at the same time to the main chance of the mess-table.
“Our boys have already found out your village, Sir Wycherly, in spite of the fog,” the vice-admiral remarked, good-humouredly, as he cast his eyes around at the movement of the street; “and the locusts of Egypt will not come nearer to breeding a famine. One would think there was a great dinner in petto, in every cabin of the fleet, by the number of the captain’s stewards that are ashore, hey! Atwood? I have seen nine of the harpies, myself, and the other seven can’t be far off.”
“Here is Galleygo, Sir Gervaise,” returned the secretary, smiling; “though he can scarcely be called a captain’s steward, having the honour to serve a vice-admiral and a commander-in-chief.”
“Ay, but we feed the whole fleet at times, and have some excuse for being a little exacting – harkee, Galleygo – get a horse-cart, and push off at once, four or five miles further into the country; you might as well expect to find real pearls in fishes’ eyes, as hope to pick up any thing nice among so many gun-room and cock-pit boys. I dine ashore to-day, but Captain Greenly is fond of mutton-chops, you’ll remember.”
This was said kindly, and in the manner of a man accustomed to treat his domestics with the familiarity of humble friends. Galleygo was as unpromising a looking butler as any gentleman ashore would be at all likely to tolerate; but he had been with his present master, and in his present capacity, ever since the latter had commanded a sloop of war. All his youth had been passed as a top-man, and he was really a prime seaman; but accident having temporarily placed him in his present station, Captain Oakes was so much pleased with his attention to his duty, and particularly with his order, that he ever afterwards retained him in his cabin, notwithstanding the strong desire the honest fellow himself had felt to remain aloft. Time and familiarity, at length reconciled the steward to his station, though he did not formally accept it, until a clear agreement had been made that he was not to be considered an idler on any occasion that called for the services of the best men. In this manner David, for such was his Christian name, had become a sort of nondescript on board of a man-of-war; being foremost in all the cuttings out, a captain of a gun, and was frequently seen on a yard in moments of difficulty, just to keep his hand in, as he expressed it, while he descended to the duties of the cabin in peaceable