CHAPTER II.
I START IN LIFE AS AN EMINENT PERSON.
Mr. Scougall was a lean, strident man who, if he lectured usoften, whipped us on the whole with judgment and when we deserved it.So we bore him no grudge. But neither did we love him nor take anylively interest in him as a bridegroom, and I was startled to findthese feelings shared by Mr. George in the porter's box when Idiscussed the news with him. "I'm to have a new suit of clothes,"said Mr. George, "but whoever gets Scougall, he's no catch."This sounded blasphemous, while it gave me a sort of fearful joy.I reported it, under seal of secrecy, to Miss Plinlimmon."Naval men, my dear Harry," was her comment, "are notoriously bluntand outspoken, even when retired upon a pension; perhaps, indeed, ifanything, more so. It is in consequence of this habit that they havesometimes performed their grandest feats, as, for instance, whenHoratio Nelson put his spy-glass up to his blind eye. I advise youto do the same and treat Mr. George as a chartered heart of oak,without remembering his indiscretions to repeat them." She went onto tell me that sailor-men were beloved in Plymouth and allowed to dopretty well as they pleased; and how, quite recently, a Quaker ladyhad been stopped in Bedford Street by a Jack Tar who said he hadsworn to kiss her. "Thee must be quick about it, then," said theQuaker lady. And he was.
I suppose this anecdote encouraged me to be more familiar with Mr.George. At any rate, I confided to him next day that I thought ofbeing a soldier.
"Do you know what we used to say in the Navy?" he answered. "We usedto say, 'A friend before a messmate, a messmate before a shipmate, ashipmate before a dog, and a dog before a soldier.'"
"You think," said I, somewhat discouraged, "that the Navy would be abetter opening for me?"
"Ay," he answered again, eyeing me gloomily; "that is, if so be yecan't contrive to get to jail." He cast a glance down upon hisjury-leg and patted the straps of it with his open palm. "The leg,now, that used to be here--I left it in a French prison called Jivvy,and often I thinks to myself, 'That there leg is having better luckthan the rest of me.' And here's another curious thing. What d'yethink they call it in France when you remember a person in yourwill?"
I hadn't a notion, and said so.
"Why, 'legs,'" said he. "And they've got one of mine. If a man wassuperstitious, you might almost call it a coincidence, hey?"
This was the longest conversation I ever had with Mr. George. I havesince found that sentiments very like his about the Navy have beenuttered by Dr. Samuel Johnson. But Mr. George spoke them out of hisown experience.
Mr. Scougall's bride was the widow of a Plymouth publican who hadsold his business and retired upon a small farm across the Hamoaze,near the Cornish village of Anthony. On the wedding morning (whichfell early in July) she had, by agreement with her groom, prepared adelightful surprise for us. We trooped after prayers into thedining-hall to find, in place of the hateful porridge, a feast laidout--ham and eggs, cold veal pies, gooseberry preserves, and--best ofall--plate upon plate of strawberries with bowl upon bowl of coolclotted cream. Not a child of us had ever tasted strawberries orcream in his life, so you may guess if we ate with prudence.At half-past ten Miss Plinlimmon (who had not found the heart torestrain our appetites) marshalled and led us forth, gorged andtorpid, to the church where at eleven o'clock the ceremony was totake place. Her eyes were red-rimmed as she cast them up towards thewindow behind which Mr. Scougall, no doubt, was at that momentarraying himself: but she commanded a firm step, and even a firmvoice to remark outside the wicket, as she looked up at thechimney-pots, that Nature had put on her fairest garb.
The day, to be sure, was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath ofwind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which wetrudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore.I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of itsweathercock.
We found its interior spacious but warm, and the air heavy with thescent--it comes back to me as I write--of a peculiar sweet oil usedin the lamps. Perhaps Mr. Scougall had calculated that a ceremony sointeresting to him would attract a throng of sightseers; at any rate,we were packed into a gallery at the extreme western end of thechurch, and in due time watched the proceedings from that respectfuldistance and across a gulf of empty pews.
--That is to say, some of us watched. I have no doubt that MissPlinlimmon did, for instance; nay, that her attention was riveted.Otherwise I cannot explain what followed.
On the previous night I had gone to bed almost supperless, as usual.I had come, as usual, ravenous to breakfast, and for once I hadsated, and more than sated, desire. For years after, though hungryoften enough in the course of them, I never thought with longing uponcold veal or strawberries, nor have I ever recovered an unmitigatedappetite for either.
It is certain, then, that even before the ceremony began--and thebride arrived several minutes late--I slumbered on the back bench ofthe gallery. The evidence of six boys seated near me agrees that, atthe moment when Mr. Scougall produced the ring, I arose quietly, butwithout warning, and made my exit by the belfry door. They supposedthat I was taken ill; they themselves were feeling more or lessuncomfortable.
The belfry stairway, by which we had reached the door of our gallery,wound upward beyond it to the top of the tower, and gave issue by alow doorway upon the dwarf battlements, from which sprang a spiresome eighty feet high. This spire was, in fact, a narrowing octagon,its sides hung with slate, its eight ridges faced with Bath stone,and edged from top to bottom with ornamental crockets.
The service over, bride and bridegroom withdrew with their friends tothe vestry for the signing of the register; and there, while theydallied and interchanged good wishes, were interrupted by the beadle,a white-faced pew-opener, and two draymen from the street, with news(as one of the draymen put it, shouting down the rest) that "one ofScougall's yellow orphans was up clinging to the weathercock by hisblessed eyebrows; and was this a time for joking, or for feelingashamed of themselves and sending for a constable?"
The drayman shouted and gesticulated so fiercely with a great handflung aloft that Mr. Scougall, almost before comprehending,precipitated himself from the church. Outside stood his hiredcarriage with its pair of greys, but the driver was pointing with hiswhip and craning his neck like the rest of the small crowd.
It may have been their outcries, but I believe it was the ringing ofthe dockyard bell for the dinner-hour, which awoke me. In my dreamsmy arms had been about some kindly neck (and of my dreams in thosedays, though but a glimpse ever survived the waking, in thoseglimpses dwelt the shade, if not the presence, of my unknown mother).They were, in fact, clasped around the leg of the weathercock.Unsympathetic support! But I have known worse friends. A mercy itwas, at any rate, that I kept my embrace during the moments whensense returned to me, with vision of the wonders spread around andbelow. Truly I enjoyed a wonderful view--across the roofs ofPlymouth, quivering under the noon sun, and away to the violet hillsof Dartmoor; and, again, across the water and shipping of the Hamoazeto the green slopes of Mount Edgcumbe and the massed trees slumberingin the heat. Slumber, indeed, and a great quiet seemed to rest overme, over the houses, the ships, the whole wide land. By the blessingof Heaven, not so much as the faintest breeze played about the spire,or cooled the copper rod burning my hand (and, again, it may havebeen this that woke me). I sat astride the topmost crocket, andglancing down between my boot heels, spied the carriage with its pairof greys flattened upon the roadway just beyond the verge of thebattlements, and Mr. Scougall himself dancing and waving his armslike a small but very lively beetle.
Doubtless, I had ascended by the narrow stairway of the crockets: butto descend by them with a lot of useless senses about me would be avery different matter. No giddiness attacked me as yet; indeed Iknew rather than felt my position to be serious. For a moment Ithought of leaving my perch and letting myself slip down the face ofthe slates, to be pulled up short by the parapet; but the length ofthe slide daunted me, and the parapet appeared dangerously shallow.I sho
uld shoot over it to a certainty and go whirling into air.On the other hand, to drop from my present saddle into the one belowwas no easy feat. For this I must back myself over the edge of it,and cling with body and legs in air while I judged my fall into thenext. To do this thirty times or so in succession without mistakewas past hoping for: there were at least thirty crockets to bemanoeuvred, and a single miscalculation would send me spinningbackwards to my fate. Above all, I had not the strength for it.
So I sat considering for a while; not terrified, but with a brainexceedingly blank and hopeless. It never occurred to me that, if Isat still and held on, steeplejacks would be summoned and laddersbrought to me; and I am glad that it did not, for this would havetaken hours, and I know now that I could not have held out for halfan hour inactive. But another thought came. I saw the slates at thefoot of the weathercock, that they were thinly edged and of lightscantling. I knew that they must be nailed upon a wooden frameworknot unlike a ladder. And at the Genevan Hospital, as I haverecorded, we wore stout plates on our shoes.
I am told that it was a bad few moments for the lookers-on when theysaw me lower myself sideways from my crocket and begin to hammer onthe slates with my toes: for at first they did not comprehend, andthen they reasoned that the slates were new, and if I failed to kickthrough them, to pull myself back to the crocket again would be adesperate job.
But they did not know our shoe-leather. Mr. Scougall, whatever hisfaults, usually contrived to get value for his money, and at thetenth kick or so my toes went clean through the slate and rested onthe laths within. Next came the most delicate moment of all, forwith a less certain grip on the crocket I had to kick a second holelower down, and transfer my hand-hold from the stone to the woodenlath laid bare by my first kicks.
This, too, with a long poise and then a flying clutch, Iaccomplished; and with the rest of my descent I will not weary thereader. It was interminably slow, and it was laborious; but, tospeak comparatively, it was safe. My boots lasted me to withintwenty feet of the parapet, and then, just as I had kicked my toesbare, a steeplejack appeared at the little doorway with a ladder.Planting it in a jiffy, he scrambled up, took me under his arm, boreme down and laid me against the parapet, where at first I began tocry and then emptied my small body with throe after throe ofsickness.
I recovered to find Mr. Scougall and another clergyman (the vicar)standing by the little door and gazing up at my line of holes on theface of the spire. Mr. Scougall was offering to pay.
"But no," said the vicar, "we will set the damage down against thelad's preservation; that is, if I don't recover from the contractor,who has undoubtedly swindled us over these slates."