CHAPTER XLVII

THE “HAMILTON ARMS”

Like many old country places of the time, Hamilton Hill had a village belonging to it, which seemed to have nestled itself into the valley under shelter of the great house, just near enough to reap the benefits of so august a neighbourhood, but at such a distance as not to infringe on the sacred precincts of the deer-park, or on the romantic privacy of the pleasure-grounds.

Where there is a village there will be thirst, and thirst seems to be an Englishman’s peculiar care and privilege; therefore, instead of slaking and quenching it at once by the use of water, he cherishes and keeps it alive, so to speak, with the judicious application of beer. A public-house is, accordingly, as necessary an adjunct to an English hamlet as an oven to a cookshop, a copper to a laundry, or a powder-magazine to a privateer.

The village of Nether-Hamilton possessed, then, one of these indispensable appendages; but, fortunately for the landlady, its inhabitants were obliged to ascend a steep hill, for the best part of a mile, before they could fill their cans with beer;—I say fortunately for the landlady, because such an exertion entailed an additional draught of this invigorating beverage to be consumed and paid for on the spot. The “Hamilton Arms,” for the convenience of posting, stood on the Great North Road, at least half a league, as the crow flies, from that abrupt termination of upland, the ridge of which was crowned by the towers and terraces of Hamilton Hill. Twice a week a heavy lumbering machine, drawn by six, and in winter, often by eight horses, containing an infinity of passengers, stopped for a fresh relay at the “Hamilton Arms”; and when this ponderous vehicle had once been pulled up, it was not to be set going again without many readjustments, inquiries, oaths, protestations, and other incentives to delay.

The “Flying-Post Coach,” as it was ambitiously called, did not change horses in a minute and a half; a bare-armed helper at each animal to pull the rugs off, almost before the driver had time to exchange glances with the barmaid, in days of which the speed, esteemed so wondrous then, was but a snail’s crawl compared with our rate of travelling now. Nothing of the kind. The “Flying-Post Coach” was reduced to a deliberate walk long before it came in sight of its haven, where it stopped gradually, and in a succession of spasmodic jerks, like a musical-box running down. The coachman descended gravely from his perch, and the passengers, alighting one and all, roamed about the yard, or hovered round the inn door, as leisurely as if they had been going to spend the rest of the afternoon at the “Hamilton Arms,” and scarcely knew how to get rid of the spare time on their hands. Till numerous questions had been asked and answered—the weather, the state of the roads, and the last highway robbery discussed—packets delivered, luggage loaded or taken off, and refreshments of every kind consumed—there seemed to be no intention of proceeding with the journey. At length, during a lull in the chatter of many voices, one lumbering horse after another might be seen wandering round the gable-end of the building; two or three ostlers, looking and behaving like savages, fastened the broad buckles and clumsy straps of harness, in which rope and chain-work did as much duty as leather, and after another pause of preparation, the passengers were summoned, the coachman tossed off what he called his “last toothful” of brandy and ascended solemnly to his place, gathering his reins with extreme caution, and imparting a scientific flourish to the thong of his heavy whip.

The inexperienced might have now supposed a start would be immediately effected. Not a bit of it. Out rushed a bare-armed landlady with streaming cap-ribbons—a rosy chambermaid, all smiles and glances—a rough-headed potboy, with a dirty apron—half-a-dozen more hangers-on of both sexes, each carrying something that had been forgotten—more oaths, more protestations, more discussions, and at least ten more minutes of the waning day unnecessarily wasted—then the coachman, bending forward, chirped and shouted—the poor sore-shouldered horses jerked, strained, and scrambled, plunging one by one at their collars, and leaning in heavily against the pole—the huge machine creaked, tottered, wavered, and finally jingled on at a promising pace enough, which, after about twenty yards, degenerated into the faintest apology for a trot.

But the portly landlady looked after it nevertheless well pleased; for its freight had carried off a goodly quantity of fermented liquors, leaving in exchange many welcome pieces of silver and copper to replenish the insatiable till.

Mrs. Dodge had but lately come to reside at the “Hamilton Arms.” Originally a plump comely lass, only daughter of a drunken old blacksmith at Nether-Hamilton, and inheriting what was termed in that frugal locality “a tidy bit of money,” she was sought in marriage by a south-country pedlar, who visited her native village in the exercise of his calling, and whose silver tongue persuaded her to leave kith and kin and country for his sake. After many ups and downs in life, chiefly the result of her husband’s rascality, she found herself established in a southern seaport, at a pot-house called the “Fox and Fiddle,” doing, as she expressed it, “a pretty business enough,” in the way of crimping for the merchant service; and here, previous to the death of her husband, known by his familiars as “Butter-faced Bob,” she made the acquaintance of Sir George Hamilton, then simple captain of ‘The Bashful Maid,’ little dreaming she would ever become his tenant so near her old home.

Mrs. Dodge made lamentable outcries for her pedlar when she lost him; but there can be no question she was much better off after his death. He was dishonest, irritable, self-indulgent, harsh; and she had probably no better time of it at the “Fox and Fiddle” than is enjoyed by any other healthy, easy-tempered woman, whose husband cheats a good deal, drinks not a little, and is generally dissatisfied with his lot. He left her, however, a good round sum of money, such as placed her completely beyond fear of want; and after a decent term of mourning had expired, after she had received the condolences of her neighbours, besides two offers of marriage from publicans in adjoining streets, she took her niece home to live with her, sold off the good-will of the “Fox and Fiddle,” wished her rejected suitors farewell, and sought the hamlet of her childhood, to sit down for life, as she said, in the bar of the “Hamilton Arms.” “It would be lonesome, no doubt,” she sometimes observed, “without Alice; and if ever Alice took and left her, as leave her she might for a home of her own any day, being a good girl and a comely, why then;” and here Mrs. Dodge would simper and look conscious, bristling her fat neck till her little round chin disappeared in its folds, and inferring thereby that, in the event of such a contingency, she might be induced to make one of her customers happy, by consenting to embark on another matrimonial venture before she had done with the institution for good and all. Nor, though Mrs. Dodge was fifty years of age, and weighed fifteen stone, would she have experienced any difficulty in finding a second husband, save, perhaps, the pleasing embarrassment of selection from the multitude at her command. And if her aunt could thus have “lovyers,” as she said, “for the looking at ’em,” it may be supposed that pretty Alice found no lack of admirers in a house-of-call so well frequented as the “Hamilton Arms.” Pretty Alice, with her pale brow, her hazel eyes, her sweet smile, and soft gentle manners, that made sad havoc in the hearts of the young graziers, cattle-dealers, and other travellers that came under their comforting influence off the wild inhospitable moor. Even Captain Bold, the red-nosed “blood,” as such persons were then denominated, whose calling nobody knew or dared ask him, but who was conspicuous for his flowing wig, laced coat, and wicked bay mare, would swear, with fearfully ingenious oaths, that Alice was prettier than any lady in St. James’s; and if she would but say the word, why burn him, blight him, sink him into the lowest depths of Hamilton Mere, if _he_, John Bold, wouldn’t consent to throw up his profession, have his comb cut, and subside at once into a homely, helpless, henpecked, barndoor fowl.

But Alice would not say the word, neither to Captain Bold nor to any honester man. She had been true to her sailor-love, through a long weary time of anxiety, and now she had her reward. Slap-Jack was domiciled within a mile of her, by one of those unforeseen strokes of fortune which he called a “circumstance,” and Alice thanked heaven on her knees day and night for the happiness of her lot.

It may be supposed that her sweetheart spent much of his leisure at the “Hamilton Arms.” Though he got through half the work of Sir George’s household, for the foretopman never could bear to be idle, his occupations did not seem so engrossing as to prevent a daily visit to Alice. It was on one of these occasions that, gossiping with Mrs. Dodge, as was his wont, he observed a gold cross heaving on her expansive bosom, and taxed her with a favoured lover and a speedy union forthwith.

“Go along with you,” wheezed the jolly landlady, in no way offended by the accusation. “It’s our new lodger as gave me this trinket only yesterday. Lovyers! say you. ‘Marry!’ as my poor Bob used to say, ‘_his_ head is not made of the wood they cut blocks from;’ an’ let me tell you, Master Slap-Jack, a man’s never so near akin to a fool as when he’s a-courting. Put that in your pipe, my lad, and smoke it. Why Alice, my poppet, how you blush! Well, as I was a sayin’, this is a nice civil gentleman, and a well spoken. Takes his bottle with his dinner, and, mind ye, he _will_ have it o’ the best. None of your ranting, random, come-by-chance roysterers, like Captain Bold, who’ll sing as many songs and tell as many—well, _lies_ I call ’em, honest gentleman—over a rummer of punch, as would serve most of my customers two gallons of claret and a stoup of brandy to finish up with.”

“There’s not much pith in that Captain Bold,” interposed Slap-Jack, contemptuously. “You put a strain on him, and see if he don’t start somewhere. Captain, indeed! It’s a queer ship’s company where they made _him_ skipper, askin’ your pardon, Mrs. Dodge.”

Slap-Jack had on one occasion interrupted the captain in a warmer declaration to his sweetheart than he quite relished, and hated him honestly enough in consequence.

“Hoity-toity!” laughed the landlady. “The captain’s nothing to me. I never could abide your black men; and I don’t know that they’re a bit better set off by wearing a red nose. The captain’s Alice’s admirer, not mine; and I think Alice likes him a bit too sometimes, I do!”

This was said, as the French express it, “with intention.” It made Alice toss her head; but Slap-Jack only winked.

“I know better,” said he. “Alice always _was_ heart-of-oak; as true as the compass; wasn’t you, my lass? See how she hoists her colours if you do but hail her. No, no, Aunt Dodge—for aunt you’ll be to me afore another year is out—it’s your broad bows and buxom figure-head as brings the customers cruising about this here bar, like flies round a honey-pot. Come, let’s have the rights now of your gold cross. Is it a keepsake, or a charm, or a love-token, or what?”

“Love-token!” repeated Mrs. Dodge, in high glee. “What do you know of love-tokens? Got a wisp of that silly girl’s brown hair, may be, and a broken sixpence done up in a rag of canvas all stained with sea-water! Why, when my poor Bob was a-courtin’ _me_, the first keepsake as ever he gave me was eighteen yards of black satin, all off of the same piece, and two real silver bodkins for my hair, as thick a’most as that kitchen poker. Ay, lass! it was something like keeping company in my day to have a pedlar for a bachelor. Well, well; our poor sailor lad maybe as good as here and there a one after all. Who knows?”

“Good enough for _me_, aunt,” whispered Alice, looking shyly up at her lover from the dish she was wiping, ere she put it carefully on the shelf.

Mrs. Dodge laughed again. “There’s as good fish in the sea, Alice, as ever came out of it; and a maid may take her word back again, ay, at the church door, if she has a mind. The foreign gentleman in the blue room, him as gave me this little cross, he says to me only yesterday morning, ‘Madame,’ says he, as polite as you please, ‘no man was ever yet deceived by a woman if he trusted her entirely. I repose entire confidence in madame,’ that was _me_, Alice; ‘her face denotes good manners, a good heart, a good life.’ Perhaps he meant good living; but that’s what he said. ‘I am going to ask madame to charge herself with an important trust for me, because I rely securely on her integrity.’ Oh! he spoke beautiful, I can tell you. ‘In case of my absence,’ says he, ‘from your respectable apartments, I will confide to you a sealed packet, to be delivered to a young man who will call for it at a certain hour on a certain day that I shall indicate before I leave. If the young man does not appear, I can trust madame to commit this packet to the flames.’ He was fool enough to add,” simpered Mrs. Dodge, looking a little conscious, “‘that it was rare to see so much discretion joined to so much beauty,’ or some such gammon; but of course I made no account of that.”

“If he paid out his palaver so handsome,” observed Slap-Jack, “take my word for it the chap’s a papist.”

But Mrs. Dodge would not hear of such a construction being put on her lodger’s gallantry.

“Papist!” she repeated angrily; “no more a papist than you are! Why, I sent him up a slice o’ powdered beef was last Friday, with a bit of garnishing, parsnips and what not, and he eats it up every scrap, and asks for another plateful. Papist! says you! and what if he were? I tell you if he was the Pope o’ Rome, come to live respectable on my first floor, he’s a sight more to my mind for a lodger than his friend the captain! Papists, indeed! If I wanted to lay my hand on a papist, I needn’t to travel far for to seek one. Though, I will say, my lady’s liker a hangel nor a Frenchwoman, and if all the papists was made up to her pattern, why for my part, I’d up and cry ‘Bless the Pope!’ with the rankest on ’em all!”

It was obvious that this northern district took no especial credit to itself for the bigotry of its Protestantism, and Mrs. Dodge, though a staunch member enough of the reformed religion, allowed no scruples of conscience to interfere with the gains of her hostelry, nor perhaps entertained any less kindly sentiments towards the persecuted members of the Church of Rome, that they formed some of her best customers, paying handsomely for the privacy of their apartments, while they ate and drank of the choicest during their seclusion.

But this unacknowledged partiality was a bone of contention between his sweetheart’s aunt and Slap-Jack. The latter prided himself especially on being what he termed True-Blue, holding in great abhorrence everything connected with Rome, St. Germains, and the Jacobite party. He allowed of no saints in the calendar except Lady Hamilton, whom he excepted from his denunciations by some reasoning process of his own which it is needless to follow out. Nevertheless Alice knew right well that such an argument as now seemed imminent was the sure forerunner of a storm. “Aunt,” said she softly, “I’ve looked out all the table linen, and done my washing-up till supper-time. If you want nothing particular, I’ll run out and get a breath of fresh air off the moor before it gets dark.”

“And it’s time for me to be off, Aunt Dodge!” exclaimed Slap-Jack, as Alice knew full well he would. “Bless ye, we shall beat to quarters at the Hill, now in less than half an hour, and being a warrant-officer, as you may say, o’ course it’s for me to set a good example to the ship’s company. Fare ye well, Mrs. Dodge, and give the priest a wide berth, if he comes alongside, though I’ll never believe as you’ve turned papist, until I see you barefoot at the church door, in a white sheet with a candle in your hand!”

With this parting shot, Slap-Jack seized his hat and ran out, leaving Mrs. Dodge to smile blandly over the fire, fingering her gold cross, and thinking drowsily, now of her clean sanded floor, now of her bright dishes and gaudy array of crockery, now of her own comely person and the agreeable manners of her lodger overhead.

Meanwhile it is scarcely necessary to say, that although Slap-Jack had expressed such haste to depart, he lingered in the cold wind off the moor not far from the house door, till he saw Alice emerge for the mouthful of fresh air that was so indispensable, but against which she fortified herself with a checked woollen shawl, which she muffled in a manner he thought very becoming, round her pretty head.

Neither need I describe the start of astonishment with which she acknowledged the presence of her lover, as if he was the very last person she expected to meet; nor the assumed reluctance of her consent to accompany him a short distance on his homeward way; nor even the astonishment she expressed at his presumption in adjusting her muffler more comfortably, and exacting for his assistance the payment that is often so willingly granted while it is so vehemently refused. These little manœuvres had been rehearsed very often of late, but had not yet begun to pall in the slightest degree. The lovers had long ago arrived at that agreeable phase of courtship, when the reserve of an agitating and uncertain preference has given way to the confidence of avowed affection. They had a thousand things to talk about, and they talked about them very close together, perhaps because the wind swept bleak and chill over the moor in the gathering twilight. It was warmer no doubt, and certainly pleasanter, thus to carry two faces under one hood.

It is impossible to overhear the conversation of people in such close juxtaposition, nor is it usually, we believe, worth much trouble on the part of an eavesdropper. I imagine it consists chiefly of simple, not to say idiotic remarks, couched in corresponding language, little more intelligible to rational persons than that with which a nurse endeavours to amuse a baby, whose demeanour, by the way, generally seems to express a dignified contempt for the efforts of its attendant. When we consider the extravagances of speech by which we convey our strongest sentiments, we need not be surprised at the follies of which we are guilty in their indulgence. When we recall the absurdities with which an infant’s earliest ideas of conversation must be connected, can we wonder what fools people grow up in after life?

It was nearly dark when they parted, and a clear streak of light still lingered over the edge of the moor. Alice indeed would have gone further, but Slap-Jack had his own ideas as to his pretty sweetheart being abroad so late, and the chance of an escort home, from Captain Bold returning not quite sober on the wicked bay mare; so he clasped her tenderly in his arms, receiving at the same time a hearty kiss given ungrudgingly and with good-will, ere she fleeted away like a phantom, while he stood watching till the last flutter of her dress disappeared through the gloom. Then he, too, turned unwillingly homeward, with a prayer for the woman he loved on his lips.

If Alice looked round, it was under the corner of her muffler, and she sped back to her gleaming saucepans, her white dishes, and the warm glow of her aunt’s kitchen, with a step as light as her happy maiden heart.

But there were only two ways of re-entering the “Hamilton Arms”—up a gravel-walk that led straight to the front door across a washing green, separated from the high road by a thick close-cut hedge, or through the stable-yard and back entrance into the scullery. This last ingress was effectually closed for the present by the arrival of Captain Bold, rather more drunk than common, swearing strings of new and fashionable oaths, while he consigned his wicked bay mare to the charge of the admiring ostler. Alice heard his reckless treble screaming above the hoarse notes of the stableman before she turned the corner of the house, and shrank back to enter at the other door. But here, also, much to her dismay, she found her retreat cut off. Two gentlemen were pacing up and down the gravel path in earnest conversation. One of them, even in the dusk, she recognised as the inmate of their blue room, who had given her aunt the gold cross. The other was a younger, taller, and slimmer man than his companion. Both were dressed in dark plain garments, gesticulating much while they spoke, and seemed deeply engrossed with the subject under discussion. Foolish Alice might well have run past unnoticed, and taken shelter at once in the house, but the girl had some shy feeling as to her late tryst with her sweetheart, and shrank perhaps from the good-humoured banter of the elder man, whose quiet sarcastic smile she had already learned to dread. So she stopped short, and cowered down with a beating heart under shelter of the hedge, thinking to elude them as they turned in their walk, and glide by unobserved into the porch.

They talked with such vehemence, that had they been Englishmen she would have thought they were quarrelling. Their arms waved, their hands worked, their voices rose and fell. The elder man was the principal speaker, and seemed to be urging something with considerable vehemence to which the other was disinclined; but none of his arguments, pointedly as they were put, arrested Alice’s attention so much as two proper names muttered in a tone of deprecation by his companion. These were “Lady Hamilton” and “Slap-Jack.” Of the first she was almost sure, in the latter she could not be mistaken.

Her experience on a southern seaboard, to which many smugglers from the opposite coast resorted, had taught Alice to understand the French language far better than she could speak it. With her ears sharpened and her faculties roused, by the mention of her lover’s name, she cowered down in her hiding-place, and listened, rapt, fearful, attentive, like a hare with the beagles on its track.