And Widow Shanks quite agreed with her.
Never can I tell you what my feelings was, when I seed him a-standing by the monument, maam. But I said to myselfwhy, my poor John, as is now in heaven, poor fellow, would a took you up with one hand, my lord, stars and garters and crowns and all, and put you into his sow-west pocket. And so he could have done, Mrs. Cheeseman.
But the opinion of the men was different, because they knew a bee from a bulls foot.
He may not be so very big, they said, nor so outrageous thunderin, as the missus looked out for from what she have read. They always goes by their own opinions, and wrong a score of times out of twenty. But any one with a fork to his leg can see the sort of stuff he is made of. He tended his duty in the house of the Lord, and he wouldnt look after the women; but he kept his live eye upon every young chap as were fit for a man-of-wars-manDan Tugwell especial, and young Harry Shanks. You see if he dont have both of they afore ever the war comes on again!
Conscious of filling the public eye, with the privilege of being upon private view, Lord Nelson had faced the position without flinching, and drawn all the fire of the enemy. After that he began to make reprisals, according to his manner, taking no trouble to regard the womenwhich debarred them from thinking much of himbut settling with a steady gaze at each sea-faring man, whether he was made of good stuff or of pie-crust. And to the credit of the place it must be said that he found very little of that soft material, but plenty of good stuff, slow, perhaps, and heavy, but needing only such a soul as his to rouse it.
What a fine set of fellows you have in your village! he said to Miss Darling after dinner, as she sat at the head of her fathers table, for the Admiral had long been a widower. The finest I have seen on the south coast anywhere. And they look as if they had been under some training. I suppose your father had most of them in the Fencibles, last summer?
Not one of them, Faith answered, with a sweet smile of pride. They have their own opinions, and nothing will disturb them. Nobody could get them to believe for a moment that there was any danger of invasion. And they carried on all their fishing business almost as calmly as they do now. For that, of course, they may thank you, Lord Nelson; but they have not the smallest sense of the obligation.
I am used to that, as your father knows; but more among the noble than the simple. For the best thing I ever did I got no praise, or at any rate very little. As to the Boulogne affair, Springhaven was quite right. There was never much danger of invasion. I only wish the villains would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to see your godfather at work? I hope not. Young ladies should be peaceful.
Then I am not peaceful at all, cried Dolly, who was sitting by the maimed side of her Flapfin, as her young brother Johnny had nicknamed him. Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very low people find to do? There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general, or even a captain, orwell, a boy to beat the drums.
But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia, her elder sister Faith replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; and the admirals and the generals would have to be
Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even worsenasty lawyers. Then Dolly (whose name was Horatia only in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.
That last cut was meant for me, Frank Darling, the eldest of the family, explained from the opposite side of the table. Your lordship, though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to know or remember all the little particulars of our race. We are four, as you know; and the elder two are peaceful, while the younger pair are warlike. And I am to be the nasty lawyer, called to the bar in the fullness of timewhich means after dining sufficientlyto the great disgust of your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me shot.
LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great story. But now youll make it true.
To witas we say at Lincolns Innshe has not longed always for my death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall afford her that gratification. I shall keep out of danger as zealously as your lordship rushes into it.
Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense, Admiral Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of the table. Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not mean a word of it. He belongs to the peacepeacepeace-at-any-price lot. But when a man wanted to rob him last winter, he knocked him down, and took him by the throat, and very nearly killed him.
Thats the only game to play, exclaimed Lord Nelson, who had been looking at Frank Darling with undisguised disgust. My young friend, you are not such a fool after all. And why should you try to be one?
My brother, said the sweet-tempered Faith, never tries to be a fool, Lord Nelson; he only tries to be a poet.
This made people laugh; and Nelson, feeling that he had been rude to a youth who could not fairly answer him, jumped from his chair with the lightness of a boy, and went round to Frank Darling, with his thin figure leaning forward, and his gray unpowdered hair tossed about, and upon his wrinkled face that smile which none could ever resist, because it was so warm and yet so sad.
Shake hands, my dear young friend, he cried, though I can not offer the right one. I was wrong to call you a fool because you dont look at things as I do. Poets are almost as good as sailors, and a great deal better than soldiers. I have felt a gift that way myself, and turned out some very tidy lines. But I believe they were mainly about myself, and I never had time to go on with them.
Such little touches of simplicity and kindness, from a man who never knew the fear of men, helped largely to produce that love of Nelson which England felt, and will always feel.
My lord, replied the young man, bending lowfor he was half a cubit higher than the mighty captainit is good for the world that you have no right arm, when you disarm it so with your left one.
CHAPTER VI
AS OTHERS SEE US
Admiral Darling was very particular in trying to keep his grounds and garden tolerably tidy always. But he never succeeded, for the simple reason that he listened to every ones excuses; and not understanding a walk or a lawn half so well as the deck of a battle-ship, he was always defeated in argument.
Heres a state of things! he used to say in summer-time; thistles full of seed within a biscuit-heave of my front door, and other thingsI forget their nameswith heads like the head of a capstan bursting, all as full of seeds as a purser is of lies!
Your lordship do not understand them subjects, Mr. Swipes, the head gardener, was in the habit of replying; and small blame to you, in my opinion, after so many years upon the briny wave. Ah! they cant grow them things there.
Swipes, that is true, but to my mind not at all a satisfactory reason for growing them here, just in front of the house and the windows. I dont mind a few in the kitchen-garden, but you know as well as I do, Swipes, that they can have no proper business here.
I did hear tell down to the Club, last night, Mr. Swipes would reply, after wiping his forehead, as if his whole mind were perspired away, though I dont pretend to say how far true it may be, that all the land of England is to be cultivated for the public good, same as on the continence, without no propriety or privacy, my lord. But I dont altogether see how they be to do it. So I thought Id better ask your lordship.