The Pilot (14 page)

At one end of the table an elderly man was seated, who performed
whatever little acts of courtesy the duties of a host would appear to
render necessary, in a company where all seemed to be equally at their
ease and at home. This gentleman was in the decline of life, though his
erect carriage, quick movements, and steady hand, equally denoted that
it was an old age free from the usual infirmities. In his dress, he
belonged to that class whose members always follow the fashions of the
age anterior to the one in which they live, whether from disinclination
to sudden changes of any kind, or from the recollections of a period
which, with them, has been hallowed by scenes and feelings that the
chilling evening of life can neither revive nor equal. Age might
possibly have thrown its blighting frosts on his thin locks, but art had
labored to conceal the ravages with the nicest care. An accurate outline
of powder covered not only the parts where the hair actually remained,
but wherever nature had prescribed that hair should grow. His
countenance was strongly marked in features, if not in expression,
exhibiting, on the whole, a look of noble integrity and high honor,
which was a good deal aided in its effect by the lofty receding
forehead, that rose like a monument above the whole, to record the
character of the aged veteran. A few streaks of branching red mingled
with a swarthiness of complexion, that was rendered more conspicuous by
the outline of unsullied white, which nearly surrounded his prominent
features.

Opposite to the host, who it will at once be understood was Colonel
Howard, was the thin yellow visage of Mr. Christopher Dillon, that bane
to the happiness of her cousin, already mentioned by Miss Plowden.

Between these two gentlemen was a middle-aged hard-featured man, attired
in the livery of King George, whose countenance emulated the scarlet of
his coat, and whose principal employment, at the moment, appeared to
consist in doing honor to the cheer of his entertainer.

Occasionally, a servant entered or left the room in silence, giving
admission, however, through the opened door, to the rushing sounds of
the gale, as the wind murmured amid the angles and high chimneys of the
edifice.

A man, in the dress of a rustic, was standing near the chair of Colonel
Howard, between whom and the master of the mansion a dialogue had been
maintained which closed as follows. The colonel was the first to speak,
after the curtain is drawn from between the eyes of the reader and the
scene:

"Said you, farmer, that the Scotchman beheld the vessels with his own
eyes?"

The answer was a simple negative.

"Well, well," continued the colonel, "you can withdraw."

The man made a rude attempt at a bow, which being returned by the old
soldier with formal grace, he left the room. The host turning to his
companions, resumed the subject.

"If those rash boys have really persuaded the silly dotard who commands
the frigate, to trust himself within the shoals on the eve of such a
gale as this, their case must have been hopeless indeed! Thus may
rebellion and disaffection ever meet with the just indignation of
Providence! It would not surprise me, gentleman, to hear that my native
land had been engulfed by earthquakes, or swallowed by the ocean, so
awful and inexcusable has been the weight of her transgressions! And yet
it was a proud and daring boy who held the second station in that ship!
I knew his father well, and a gallant gentleman he was, who, like my own
brother, the parent of Cecilia, preferred to serve his master on the
ocean rather than on the land. His son inherited the bravery of his high
spirit, without its loyalty. One would not wish to have such a youth
drowned, either."

This speech, which partook much of the nature of a soliloquy, especially
toward its close, called for no immediate reply; but the soldier, having
held his glass to the candle, to admire the rosy hue of its contents,
and then sipped of the fluid so often that nothing but a clear light
remained to gaze at, quietly replaced the empty vessel on the table,
and, as he extended an arm toward the blushing bottle, he spoke, in the
careless tones of one whose thoughts were dwelling on another theme:

"Ay, true enough, sir; good men are scarce, and, as you say, one cannot
but mourn his fate, though his death be glorious; quite a loss to his
majesty's service, I dare say, it will prove."

"A loss to the service of his majesty!" echoed the host—"his death
glorious! no, Captain Borroughcliffe, the death of no rebel can be
glorious; and how he can be a loss to his majesty's service, I myself am
quite at a loss to understand."

The soldier, whose ideas were in that happy state of confusion that
renders it difficult to command the one most needed, but who still, from
long discipline, had them under a wonderful control for the disorder of
his brain, answered, with great promptitude:

"I mean the loss of his example, sir. It would have been so appalling to
others to have seen the young man executed instead of shot in battle."

"He is drowned, sir."

"Ah! that is the next thing to being hanged; that circumstance had
escaped me."

"It is by no means certain, sir, that the ship and schooner that the
drover saw are the vessels you take them to have been," said Mr. Dillon,
in a harsh, drawling tone of voice. "I should doubt their daring to
venture so openly on the coast, and in the direct track of our vessels
of war."

"These people are our countrymen, Christopher, though they are rebels,"
exclaimed the colonel. "They are a hardy and brave nation. When I had
the honor of serving his majesty, some twenty years since, it was my
fortune to face the enemies of my king in a few small affairs, Captain
Borroughcliffe; such as the siege of Quebec, and the battle before its
gates, a trifling occasion at Ticonderoga, and that unfortunate
catastrophe of General Braddock—with a few others. I must say, sir, in
favor of the colonists that they played a manful game on the latter day;
and this gentleman who now heads the rebels sustained a gallant name
among us for his conduct in that disastrous business. He was a discreet,
well-behaved young man, and quite a gentleman. I have never denied that
Mr. Washington was very much of a gentleman."

"Yes!" said the soldier, yawning, "he was educated among his majesty's
troops, and he could hardly be other wise. But I am quite melancholy
about this unfortunate drowning, Colonel Howard. Here will be an end of
my vocation, I suppose; and I am far from denying that your hospitality
has made these quarters most agreeable to me."

"Then, sir, the obligation is only mutual," returned the host, with a
polite inclination of his head: "but gentlemen who, like ourselves, have
been made free of the camp, need not bandy idle compliments about such
trifles. If it were my kinsman Dillon, now, whose thoughts ran more on
Coke upon Littleton than on the gayeties of a mess-table and a soldier's
life, he might think such formalities as necessary as his hard words are
to a deed. Come, Borroughcliffe, my dear fellow, I believe we have given
an honest glass to each of the royal family (God bless them all!), let
us swallow a bumper to the memory of the immortal Wolfe."

"An honest proposal, my gallant host, and such a one as a soldier will
never decline," returned the captain, who roused himself with the
occasion. "God bless them all! say I, in echo; and if this gracious
queen of ours ends as famously as she has begun, 'twill be such a family
of princes as no other army of Europe can brag of around a mess-table."

"Ay, ay, there is some consolation in that thought, in the midst of this
dire rebellion of my countrymen. But I'll vex myself no more with the
unpleasant recollections; the arms of my sovereign will soon purge that
wicked land of the foul stain."

"Of that there can be no doubt," said Borroughcliffe, whose thoughts
still continued a little obscured by the sparkling Madeira that had long
lain ripening under a Carolinian sun; "these Yankees fly before his
majesty's regulars, like so many dirty clowns in a London mob before a
charge of the horse-guards."

"Pardon me, Captain Borroughcliffe," said his host, elevating his person
to more than its usually erect attitude; "they may be misguided,
deluded, and betrayed, but the comparison is unjust. Give them arms and
give them discipline, and he who gets an inch of their land from them,
plentiful as it is, will find a bloody day on which to take possession."

"The veriest coward in Christendom would fight in country where wine
brews itself into such a cordial as this," returned the cool soldier. "I
am a living proof that you mistook my meaning; for had not those loose-
flapped gentlemen they call Vermontese and Hampshire-granters (God grant
them his blessing for the deed) finished two-thirds of my company, I
should not have been at this day under your roof, a recruiting instead
of a marching officer; neither should I have been bound up in a
covenant, like the law of Moses, could Burgoyne have made head against
their long-legged marchings and countermarchings. Sir, I drink their
healths, with all my heart; and with such a bottle of golden sunshine
before me, rather than displease so good a friend, I will go through
Gates' whole army, regiment by regiment, company by company, or, if you
insist on the same, even man by man, in a bumper."

"On no account would I tax your politeness so far," returned the
colonel, abundantly mollified by this ample concession; "I stand too
much your debtor, Captain Borroughcliffe, for so freely volunteering to
defend my house against the attacks of my piratical, rebellious, and
misguided countrymen, to think of requiring such a concession."

"Harder duty might be performed, and no favors asked, my respectable
host," returned the soldier. "Country quarters are apt to be dull, and
the liquor is commonly execrable; but in such a dwelling as this, a man
can rock himself in the very cradle of contentment. And yet there is one
subject of complaint, that I should disgrace my regiment did I not speak
of—for it is incumbent on me, both as a man and a soldier, to be no
longer silent."

"Name it, sir, freely, and its cause shall be as freely redressed," said
the host in some amazement.

"Here we three sit, from morning to night," continued the soldier;
"bachelors all, well provisioned and better liquored, I grant you, but
like so many well-fed anchorites, while two of the loveliest damsels in
the island pine in solitude within a hundred feet of us, without tasting
the homage of our sighs. This, I will maintain, is a reproach both to
your character, Colonel Howard, as an old soldier and to mine as a young
one. As to our old friend, Coke on top of Littleton here, I leave him to
the quiddities of the law to plead his own cause."

The brow of the host contracted for a moment, and the sallow cheek of
Dillon, who had sat during the dialogue in a sullen silence, appeared to
grow even livid; but gradually the open brow of the veteran resumed its
frank expression, and the lips of the other relaxed into a Jesuitical
sort of a smile, that was totally disregarded by the captain, who amused
himself with sipping his wine while he waited for an answer, as if he
analyzed each drop that crossed his palate.

After an embarrassing pause of a moment, Colonel Howard broke the
silence:

"There is reason in Borroughcliffe's hint, for such I take it to be—"

"I meant it for a plain, matter-of-fact complaint," interrupted the
soldier.

"And you have cause for it," continued the colonel. "It is unreasonable,
Christopher, that the ladies should allow their dread of these piratical
countrymen of ours to exclude us from their society, though prudence may
require that they remain secluded in their apartments. We owe the
respect to Captain Borroughcliffe, that at least we admit him to the
sight of the coffee-urn in an evening."

"That is precisely my meaning," said the captain: "as for dining with
them, why, I am well provided for here; but there is no one knows how to
set hot water a hissing in so professional a manner as a woman. So
forward, my dear and honored colonel, and lay your injunctions on them,
that they command your humble servant and Mr. Coke unto Littleton to
advance and give the countersign of gallantry."

Dillon contracted his disagreeable features into something that was
intended for a satirical smile, before he spoke as follows:

"Both the veteran Colonel Howard and the gallant Captain Borroughcliffe
may find it easier to overcome the enemies of his majesty in the field
than to shake a woman's caprice. Not a day has passed these three weeks,
that I have not sent my inquiries to the door of Miss Howard as became
her father's kinsman, with a wish to appease her apprehensions of the
pirates; but little has she deigned me In reply, more than such thanks
as her sex and breeding could not well dispense with."

"Well, you have been, as fortunate as myself, and why you should be more
so, I see no reason," cried the soldier, throwing a glance of cool
contempt at the other: "fear whitens the cheek, and ladies best love to
be seen when the roses flourish rather than the lilies."

"A woman is never so interesting, Captain Borroughcliffe, said the
gallant host," as when she appears to lean on man for support; and he
who does not feel himself honored by the trust is a disgrace to his
species."

"Bravo! my honored sir, a worthy sentiment, and spoken like a true
soldier; but I have heard much of the loveliness of the ladies of the
abbey since I have been in my present quarters, and I feel a strong
desire to witness beauty encircled by such loyalty as could induce them
to flee their native country, rather than to devote their charms to the
rude keeping of the rebels."

The colonel looked grave, and for a moment fierce, but the expression of
his displeasure soon passed away in a smile of forced gayety, and, as he
cheerfully rose from his seat, he cried: