The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (47 page)
Read The Complete Works of Stephen Crane Online
Authors: Stephen Crane
Tags: #Classic, #Fiction, #Historical, #Military, #Retail, #War
CHAPTER
I
My chieftain ancestors had lived at Glandore for many centuries and were very well known. Hardly a ship could pass the Old Head of Kinsale without some boats putting off to exchange the time of day with her, and our family name was on men’s tongues in half the seaports of Europe, I dare say. My ancestors lived in castles which were like churches stuck on end, and they drank the best of everything amid the joyous cries of a devoted peasantry. But the good time passed away soon enough, and when I had reached the age of eighteen we had nobody on the land but a few fisher-folk and small farmers, people who were almost law-abiding, and my father came to die more from disappointment than from any other cause. Before the end he sent for me to come to his bedside.
“Tom,” he said, “I brought you into existence, and God help you safe out of it; for you are not the kind of man ever to turn your hand to work, and there is only enough money to last a gentleman five more years.
“The ‘Martha Bixby,’ she was, out of Bristol for the West Indies, and if it hadn’t been for her we would never have got along this far with plenty to eat and drink. However, I leave you, besides the money, the two swords, — the grand one that King Louis, God bless him, gave me, and the plain one that will really be of use to you if you get into a disturbance. Then here is the most important matter of all. Here are some papers which young Lord Strepp gave me to hold for him when we were comrades in France. I don’t know what they are, having had very little time for reading during my life, but do you return them to him. He is now the great Earl of Westport, and he lives in London in a grand house, I hear. In the last campaign in France I had to lend him a pair of breeches or he would have gone bare. These papers are important to him, and he may reward you, but do not you depend on it, for you may get the back of his hand. I have not seen him for years. I am glad I had you taught to read. They read considerably in England, I hear. There is one more cask of the best brandy remaining, and I recommend you to leave for England as soon as it is finished. And now, one more thing, my lad, never be civil to a king’s officer. Wherever you see a red coat, depend there is a rogue between the front and the back of it. I have said everything. Push the bottle near me.”
Three weeks after my father’s burial I resolved to set out, with no more words, to deliver the papers to the Earl of Westport. I was resolved to be prompt in obeying my father’s command, for I was extremely anxious to see the world, and my feet would hardly wait for me. I put my estate into the hands of old Mickey Clancy, and told him not to trouble the tenants too much over the rent, or they probably would split his skull for him. And I bid Father Donovan look out for old Mickey Clancy, that he stole from me only what was reasonable.
I went to the Cove of Cork and took ship there for Bristol, and arrived safely after a passage amid great storms which blew us so near Glandore that I feared the enterprise of my own peasantry. Bristol, I confess, frightened me greatly. I had not imagined such a huge and teeming place. All the ships in the world seemed to lie there, and the quays were thick with sailor-men. The streets rang with noise. I suddenly found that I was a young gentleman from the country.
I followed my luggage to the best inn, and it was very splendid, fit to be a bishop’s palace. It was filled with handsomely dressed people who all seemed to be yelling, “Landlord! landlord!” And there was a little fat man in a white apron who flew about as if he were being stung by bees, and he was crying, “Coming, sir! Yes, madam! At once, your ludship!” They heeded me no more than if I had been an empty glass. I stood on one leg, waiting until the little fat man should either wear himself out or attend all the people. But it was to no purpose. He did not wear out, nor did his business finish, so finally I was obliged to plant myself in his way, but my speech was decent enough as I asked him for a chamber. Would you believe it, he stopped abruptly and stared at me with sudden suspicion. My speech had been so civil that he had thought perhaps I was a rogue. I only give you this incident to show that if later I came to bellow like a bull with the best of them, it was only through the necessity of proving to strangers that I was a gentleman. I soon learned to enter an inn as a drunken soldier goes through the breach into a surrendering city.
Having made myself as presentable as possible, I came down from my chamber to seek some supper. The supper-room was ablaze with light and well filled with persons of quality, to judge from the noise that they were making. My seat was next to a garrulous man in plum-colour, who seemed to know the affairs of the entire world. As I dropped into my chair he was saying —
“ — the heir to the title, of course. Young Lord Strepp. That is he — the slim youth with light hair. Oh, of course, all in shipping. The Earl must own twenty sail that trade from Bristol. He is posting down from London, by the way, to-night.”
You can well imagine how these words excited me. I half arose from my chair with the idea of going at once to the young man who had been indicated as Lord Strepp, and informing him of my errand, but I had a sudden feeling of timidity, a feeling that it was necessary to be proper with these people of high degree. I kept my seat, resolving to accost him directly after supper. I studied him with interest. He was a young man of about twenty years, with fair unpowdered hair and a face ruddy from a life in the open air. He looked generous and kindly, but just at the moment he was damning a waiter in language that would have set fire to a stone bridge. Opposite him was a clear-eyed soldierly man of about forty, whom I had heard called “Colonel,” and at the Colonel’s right was a proud, dark-skinned man who kept looking in all directions to make sure that people regarded him, seated thus with a lord.
They had drunk eight bottles of port, and in those days eight bottles could just put three gentlemen in pleasant humour. As the ninth bottle came on the table the Colonel cried —
“Come, Strepp, tell us that story of how your father lost his papers. Gad, that’s a good story.”
“No, no,” said the young lord. “It isn’t a good story, and besides my father never tells it at all. I misdoubt it’s truth.”
The Colonel pounded the table. “’Tis true. ’Tis too good a story to be false. You know the story, Forister?” said he, turning to the dark-skinned man. The latter shook his head.
“Well, when the Earl was a young man serving with the French he rather recklessly carried with him some valuable papers relating to some estates in the North, and once the noble Earl — or Lord Strepp as he was then — found it necessary, after fording a stream, to hang his breeches on a bush to dry, and then a certain blackguard of a wild Irishman in the corps came along and stole—”
But I had arisen and called loudly but with dignity up the long table, “That, sir, is a lie.” The room came still with a bang, if I may be allowed that expression. Every one gaped at me, and the Colonel’s face slowly went the colour of a tiled roof.
“My father never stole his lordship’s breeches, for the good reason that at the time his lordship had no breeches. ’Twas the other way. My father—”
Here the two long rows of faces lining the room crackled for a moment, and then every man burst into a thunderous laugh. But I had flung to the winds my timidity of a new country, and I was not to be put down by these clowns.
“’Tis a lie against an honourable man and my father,” I shouted. “And if my father hadn’t provided his lordship with breeches, he would have gone bare, and there’s the truth. And,” said I, staring at the Colonel, “I give the lie again. We are never obliged to give it twice in my country.”
The Colonel had been grinning a little, no doubt thinking, along with everybody else in the room, that I was drunk or crazy; but this last twist took the smile off his face clean enough, and he came to his feet with a bound. I awaited him. But young Lord Strepp and Forister grabbed him and began to argue. At the same time there came down upon me such a deluge of waiters and pot-boys, and, may be, hostlers, that I couldn’t have done anything if I had been an elephant. They were frightened out of their wits and painfully respectful, but all the same and all the time they were bundling me toward the door. “Sir! Sir! Sir! I beg you, sir! Think of the ‘ouse, sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!” And I found myself out in the hall.
Here I addressed them calmly. “Loose me and takes yourselves off quickly, lest I grow angry and break some dozen of these wooden heads.” They took me at my word and vanished like ghosts. Then the landlord came bleating, but I merely told him that I wanted to go to my chamber, and if anybody inquired for me I wished him conducted up at once.
In my chamber I had not long to wait. Presently there were steps in the corridor and a knock at my door. At my bidding the door opened and Lord Strepp entered. I arose and we bowed. He was embarrassed and rather dubious.
“Aw,” he began, “I come, sir, from Colonel Royale, who begs to be informed who he has had the honour of offending, sir?”
“’Tis not a question for your father’s son, my lord,” I answered bluntly at last.
“You are, then, the son of The O’Ruddy?”
“No,” said I. “I am The O’Ruddy. My father died a month gone and more.”
“Oh!” said he. And I now saw why he was embarrassed. He had feared from the beginning that I was altogether too much in the right. “Oh!” said he again. I made up my mind that he was a good lad. “That is dif—” he began awkwardly. “I mean, Mr. O’Ruddy — oh, damn it all, you know what I mean, Mr. O’Ruddy!”
I bowed. “Perfectly, my lord!” I did not understand him, of course.
“I shall have the honour to inform Colonel Royale that Mr. O’Ruddy is entitled to every consideration,” he said more collectedly. “If Mr. O’Ruddy will have the goodness to await me here?”
“Yes, my lord.” He was going in order to tell the Colonel that I was a gentleman. And of course he returned quickly with the news. But he did not look as if the message was one which he could deliver with a glib tongue. “Sir,” he began, and then halted. I could but courteously wait. “Sir, Colonel Royale bids me say that he is shocked to find that he has carelessly and publicly inflicted an insult upon an unknown gentleman through the memory of the gentleman’s dead father. Colonel Royale bids me to say, sir, that he is overwhelmed with regret, and that far from taking an initial step himself it is his duty to express to you his feeling that his movements should coincide with any arrangements you may choose to make.”
I was obliged to be silent for a considerable period in order to gather head and tail of this marvellous sentence. At last I caught it. “At daybreak I shall walk abroad,” I replied, “and I have no doubt that Colonel Royale will be good enough to accompany me. I know nothing of Bristol. Any cleared space will serve.”
My Lord Strepp bowed until he almost knocked his forehead on the floor. “You are most amiable, Mr. O’Ruddy. You of course will give me the name of some friend to whom I can refer minor matters?”
I found that I could lie in England as readily as ever I did in Ireland. “My friend will be on the ground with me, my lord; and as he also is a very amiable man it will not take two minutes to make everything clear and fair.” Me, with not a friend in the world but Father O’Donovan and Mickey Clancy at Glandore!
Lord Strepp bowed again, the same as before. “Until the morning then, Mr. O’Ruddy,” he said, and left me.
I sat me down on my bed to think. In truth I was much puzzled and amazed. These gentlemen were actually reasonable and were behaving like men of heart. Neither my books nor my father’s stories — great lies, many of them, God rest him! — had taught me that the duelling gentry could think at all, and I was quite certain that they never tried. “You were looking at me, sir?” “Was I, ‘faith? Well, if I care to look at you I shall look at you.” And then away they would go at it, prodding at each other’s bellies until somebody’s flesh swallowed a foot of steel. “Sir, I do not like the colour of your coat!” Clash! “Sir, red hair always offends me.” Cling! “Sir, your fondness for rabbit-pie is not polite.” Clang!