Chapter Sixty One.
Ralph is placed in an awkward predicament being put upon his trial to prove his identity, and having no witnesses to call but himself—All voices against him but his own.
At this period, every day, nay, almost every hour, seemed to bring its startling event. Ere good digestion had followed our very good appetites, bustle and agitation pervaded the whole ship. It had been telegraphed from on shore that one of the junior lords of the Admiralty was coming on board immediately. There was blank dismay in our berth. How could my mess-mates possibly go on the quarter-deck, and assist to receive the dignified personage? Much did I enjoy the immunity that, I supposed, being a prisoner gave to me.
The portentous message came down that “the young gentlemen, in full uniform, are expected to be on the quarter-deck to receive the lord of the Admiralty.” All the consolation that I could give was quoting to them the speech of Lady Macbeth to her guests—“Go, nor stand upon the order of your going.” The firing of the salute from the main-deck guns announced the approach, and the clanking of the muskets of the marines on the deck, after they had presented arms, the arrival of the lord plainly to me, in my darksome habitation. Ten minutes had not elapsed, during which I was hugging myself with the thought that all this pomp and circumstance could not annoy me, when, breathless with haste, there rushed one, two, three, four messengers, each treading on the heels of the other, telling me the lord of the Admiralty wished to see me immediately in the captain’s cabin.
“Me! see me! What, in the name of all that is disastrous, can he want with me?” I would come when I had made a little alteration in my dress. Trusting that he was as impatient as all great men usually are when dealing with little ones, I hoped by dilatoriness to weary him out, and thus remain unseen. Vain speculation! A minute had scarcely elapsed, when one of the lieutenants came down, in a half-friendly, half-imperative manner, to acquaint me that I must come up immediately.
The scene that ensued—how can I sufficiently describe it? Had I not been sustained by the impudence of desperation, I should have jumped overboard directly I had got on deck. I found myself, not well knowing by what kind of locomotion I got there, in the fore-cabin, where was spread a very handsome collation, round which were assembled some fifteen officers, all in their full-dress uniforms, in the midst of which a feeble, delicate-looking, and excessively neatly dressed old gentleman stood, in plain clothes. His years must have been far beyond seventy. He was fidgety, indeed, to that degree that would induce you to think that he was a little palsied.
I cannot answer for the silent operations that take place in other men’s minds, but in my own, even under the greatest misfortunes a droll conceit will more rally my crushed spirits than all the moral consolations that Blair ever penned.
“If this be the junior lord of the Admiralty,” thought I, “how venerably patriarchal must be his four seniors!” I smiled at the idea as I bowed.
Let us describe the person that smiled and bowed to this august assembly.
Figure to yourself a tall youth, attired in a blue cotton jacket, with the uniform button, a once white kerseymere waistcoat, and duck trousers, on which were mapped, in cloudy colours—produced by stains of black-strap, peasoup, and the other etceteras that may be found in that receptacle of abominations, an ill-regulated midshipman’s berth—more oceans, seas, bays, and promontories, than nature ever gave to this unhappy globe. Beneath these were discovered a pair of dark blue worsted stockings, terminated by a pair of purser’s shoes—things of a hybrid breed, between a pair of cast-off slippers and the ploughman’s clodhoppers, fitting as well as the former, and nearly as heavy as the latter. Now, this costume, in the depth of winter, was sufficiently light and bizarre; but the manner in which I had contrived to decorate my countenance soon riveted all attention to that specimen of the “human face divine,” marred by the hand of man. Thanks to the expertness of Mr Pigtop, my eyes were singularly well blackened, and the swelling of my face, particularly about the upper lip, had not yet subsided. Owing to my remaining so much, since my arrest, in the obscurity of the between-decks, and perhaps to some inflammation in my eyes, from my recent beating, I blinked upon those before me like an owl.
“As-ton-ish-ing!” said my Lord Whiffledale. “Is that Mr Ralph Rattlin?”
“The same, my lord,” said Captain Reud. “Shall I introduce him to your lordship?”
“By no manner of means—yet—for his father’s sake—really—ridiculous!—Henry, the fifth baron of Whiffledale—ah! black eyes, filthy costume, very particularly filthy, upon my honour. How is this, Captain Reud? Of course, my present visit is not official, but merely to satisfy my curiosity as a gentleman; how is it that your first-lieutenant permits the young gentlemen to so far disgrace—I must use the word—the service—as you see—in—in my young friend, there, with the worsted stockings, and swelled lip, and—black eyes—”
When I first made my appearance, all the captains then and there collected, had looked upon me with anything but flattering regards; some turned up their noses, some grinned, all appeared astonished, and all disgusted. At the conclusion of this speech, I was surprised at the benignity which beamed upon me from under their variously shaped and coloured eyebrows. There was magic in the words “for his father’s sake,” and “my young friend.”
Captain Reud replied, “It is not, my lord, so much the fault of Mr Rattlin as it would, at the first blush, appear to be. He himself pressed a wicked, mischievous young blackguard, who was appointed the young gentleman’s servant. Incredible as the fact may appear, my lord, he contrived, in a manner that Dr Thompson can best explain to you, to destroy all the clothes of his young master merely in the wantonness of his malice. I know that Mr Rattlin is well provided with money, and that he will take the first opportunity again to assume the garb of a gentleman; and I do assure your lordship that no man becomes it better.”
“Sir, if this youth be Mr Rattlin—I believe it—the very oldest blood in the country flows in his veins—but it does seem a kind of species of miracle how a scion of that noble house should stand before me, his father’s friend, with two black eyes and a ragged jacket—there may be some mistake, after all. I was going, Mr Rattlin, to take you with me to my hotel, having matters of the utmost importance to communicate to you; but, oh no!—I am not fastidious, so we had better first have a little private conference in the after—gentlemen, will you excuse us?”—bowing round—“Captain Reud will perhaps do me the favour to be of the party?”
So, into the after-cabin we three went, I burning with impatience, and speechless with agitation, supposing that the much-coveted secret of my parentage would be at length unfolded to me.
Lord Whiffledale and Captain Reud being seated with their backs to the cabin-windows, and I standing before them with the light full upon my disfigured face, I must have had a great deal more the look of a battered blackguard, being tried for petty larceny, than a young gentleman on the eve of being acknowledged the heir to greatness by a very noble lord.
There was a pause for some minutes, during which Lord Whiffledale was preparing to be imposing, and the light of mischief began to beam with incipient insanity in Reud’s eye. “Certainly,” I said to myself, “he will not dare to practise one of his mad pranks upon a lord of the Admiralty!” What will not madness dare?
His lordship, having taken snuff very solemnly, and looked round him with a calm circumspection, fixing his dull eye upon me, and wagging his head, with an equable motion, slowly up and down, spoke as follows:—
“There is a Providence above us all. It is seen, Mr Rattlin, in the fall of a sparrow—it has protected our glorious institutions—it has sanctified the pillars of the State. Providence is, Mr Rattlin—do you really know what Providence is? I ask you the question advisedly—I always speak advisedly—I ask you, do you know what Providence is? Do not speak; interruptions are unseemly—there are few who interrupt me. Providence, young man, has brought me on board this frigate to-day—the wind is north-easterly, what there is of it may increase my catarrh—there is the hand of Providence in everything. I promised my most honourable friend that I would see you as you are—how equipped, how lodged, how ‘cabined, cribbed, confined.’ Apt quotation!—you are cabined—you are cribbed—you are confined—cribbed—look at your countenance—as I said before, ’tis the hand of Providence—”
“Begging your lordship’s pardon,” said Reud, submissively, with the dubious twinkle in his eye for interrupting a nobleman who is so seldom interrupted—“I rather think that it was the fist of Pigtop.”
“Pigtop!—Providence—my quotation. Captain Reud, I have not really the pleasure of understanding you. This young gentleman who has been so lately under the chastening hand of Providence—”
“Pigtop.”
“Is now about to receive from that bountiful hand some of the choicest gifts it is in the happiness of man to receive—rank, wealth, a father’s blessing. Oh! ’tis too much—I am affected—what can I possibly do with him with those black eyes? Mr Ralph Rattlin, you have not yet spoken to me—indeed, how can you? What words would be sufficiently expressive of—of—what you ought to express! Captain Reud, don’t you find this scene rather affecting? Young gentleman, I am here to verify you—are you fully prepared, sir, to be, as it were, verified?”
“My lord, my lord, I am bursting with impatience!”
“Bursting with impatience! The scene is affecting, certainly—touching—complete, with the exception of the black eyes. What would not Miss Burney make of it in one of her admirable novels! But you might have made use of a better word than bursting—I am ready to dissolve with emotion at this tender scene—the discovery of his parentage to a tall, ingenuous youth—bursting—you might have used, first, burning—secondly, glowing—thirdly, consuming—fourthly, raging—fifthly, dying—sixthly, there is perishing; but I will not much insist upon the last, though it is certainly better than bursting. You mean to say that you are burning, not bursting, with impatience—it is a natural feeling, it is commendable, it is worthy of a son of your most honourable father—I will faithfully report to him this filial impatience, and how eager I was to remove it. I do not say satisfy it—a person less careful of the varieties of language would have said satisfy—an impatience satisfied is what? a contradiction of terms; but an impatience removed is—is—the removal of an impatience. This interview will grow very touching. Those blackened eyes—I would that there were a green shade over them. Are you prepared to be verified?”
I bowed, fearing that any other expression of my wishes would lead to further digression. His lordship then, putting on his spectacles, and reading from a paper, commenced thus, I, all the while, trembling with agitation:
“Are you the person who was nursed by one Rose Brandon, the wife of Joseph Brandon, by trade a sawyer?”
“I am.”
“What name did you go by when under the care of those persons?”
“Ralph Rattlin Brandon.”
“Right, very good. I shall embrace him shortly—my heart yearns towards him. Were you removed to a school, by a gentleman in a plain carriage, from those Brandons?”
“I was.”
“To where?”
“To Mr Roots’ academy.”
“Right—a good boy, an amiable boy, he was removed to Mr Roots’: and, having there imbibed the rudiments of a classical education, you were removed to where?”
“To a boarding-school kept by a French gentleman at Stickenham, where, in his wife, I thought I had found a mother—”
“Stop, we are not come to that yet, that is too affecting—of that anon, as somebody says in some play. Have you, Captain Reud, a glass of water ready, should this amiable youth or myself feel faint during this exciting investigation?”
“Perfectly ready,” said the Creole, decidedly in one of his insane fits; for he immediately skipped behind his lordship, and, jumping upon the locker, stood ready to invert a glass of water upon his nicely-powdered head, containing at least three gallons, this glass being a large globe, containing several curious fish, which swung, attached to a beam, directly over my interrogator.
Here was a critical situation for me! A mad captain about to blow the gampus (i.e. souse) a lord of the Admiralty, that same lord, I firmly believed, about to declare himself my father. I was, in a manner, spell-bound. Afraid to interrupt the conference, I bethought me that my Lord Whiffledale would be no less my father wet or dry, and so I determined to let things take their course. So I permitted his lordship to go on with his questions, at every one of which Captain Reud, looking more like a baboon than a human being, canted the globe more and more.
“All very satisfactory—all very satisfactory, indeed! And now, Ralph, on whom have you been in the habit of drawing for your allowance while you were in the West Indies?”
“Mr —, of King’s Bench Walk, in the Temple.”
“Perfectly correct—perfectly”—(still reading).
“Are you a well-grown youth for your age?”
“I am.”
“Of an interesting physiognomy?”
Here the malicious madman grinned at me in the most laughable manner, over the devoted head of the ancient lord.
“I hope you will think so, my lord, when I have recovered my usual looks.”
“Ugh—hum—ha—of dark brown hair, approaching to black?”
“With intensely black eyes.”
“No.”—“Yes.” Mine was the negative, Captain Reud’s the affirmative, spoken simultaneously.
At this crisis his lordship had made a very proper and theatrical start. Captain Reud grasped the glass with both hands; and the severe, bright eye of Dr Thompson fell upon the prank-playing captain. The effect was instantaneous: he slunk away from his intended mischief; completely subdued. The fire left his eye, the grin his countenance; and he stood beside his lordship in a moment, the quiet and gentlemanly post-captain, deferentially polite in the presence of his superior. I understood the thing in a moment—it was the keeper and his patient.
“I am particularly sorry, my lord,” said the doctor—“I am very particularly sorry, Captain Reud, to break in upon you unannounced; the fact is, I did knock several times but I suppose I was not heard. This letter, my lord, I hope will be a sufficient apology.”
His lordship took the letter with a proud condescension. Captain Reud said, “Dr Thompson’s presence is always acceptable to me.”
Lord Whiffledale read this letter over three times distinctly; then, from his usual white he turned a palish purple, then again became white. In no other manner did he seem to lose his self-possession.
“Dr Thompson,” said he, at length, very calmly, “let me see some of these documents immediately.”
“Anticipating the request, my lord, I have them with me.” The doctor then placed in his hands several letters and papers. At length, his lordship exclaimed:
“I am confounded. It is wholly beyond my comprehension—I know not how to act. It is excessively distressing. I wish, on my soul, I had never meddled in the business. Can I see the young man?”
“Certainly, my lord; I will bring him to you immediately.”
During Dr Thompson’s short absence, his lordship walked up and down with a contracted brow, and much more than his usual fidgety movements. Not wholly to my surprise, but completely to my dismay, the doctor reappeared with my arch and only enemy by his side—Joshua Daunton.
The contrast between him and me was not at all in my favour. Not in uniform, certainly, but scrupulously clean, with a superfine blue cloth jacket and trousers, white neckerchief; and clean linen shirt; he looked not only respectable, but even gentlemanly. I have before described my appearance. I may be spared the hateful repetition.
“And so,” said his lordship, turning to Joshua, “you are the true and veritable Ralph Rattlin?”
“I am, my lord,” said the unblushing liar. “The young gentleman near you is my illegitimate brother; his mother is a beautiful lady, of the name of Causand, a most artful woman. She first contrived to poison Sir Reginald’s mind with insinuations to my disfavour; and, at last, so well carried on her machinations as to drive me first from the paternal roof, and, lastly, I confess it with horror and remorse, into a course so evil as to compel me to change my name, fly from my country, and subject me to the lash at the gangway. If these documents, that I confide to your hands, and to yours only, will not remove every doubt as to the truth of my assertions, afford me but a little time, till I can send to London, and every point shall be satisfactorily cleared up.”
He then placed in Lord Whiffledale’s hands the papers that had been so convincing to Dr Thompson. Captain Reud, now reduced by the presence of the good doctor to the most correct deportment, stepped forward, and assured his lordship that I, at least, was no impostor, and that, if imposition had been practised, I had been made an unconscious instrument.
“Perhaps,” said his lordship, after scrutinising the papers, and returning them to Joshua, “the young gentleman with the blackened eyes will do us the favour, in a few words, to give us his own version of the story; for, may I die consumptive, if I can tell which is the real Simon Pure!”
Placed thus in the embarrassing situation of pleading for my own identity, I found that I had very little to say for myself. I could only affirm that, although always unowned, I had been continuously cared for; and that the bills I had drawn upon Mr —, the lawyer in the King’s Bench Walk in the Temple, had always been honoured. My lord shook his head when I had finished, diplomatically. He took snuff. He then eyed me and my adversary carefully. He now waved his head upwards and downwards, and at length opened his mouth and spoke:
“Captain Reud, I wash my hands of this business. I cannot decide. I was going to take on shore with me the legitimate and too-long neglected son of my good old friend, Sir Reginald. Where is that son? I come on board the Eos, and I ask him at your hands, Captain Reud. Is that person with the discoloured countenance my friend’s son? Certainly not. Is that other person his son—a disgraced man? Knowing the noble race of my friend, I should say certainly not. Where is Sir Ralph’s (?Sir Reginalds’s) son? He is not here; or, if he be here, I cannot distinguish him. I wash my hands of it—I hate mysteries. I will take neither of them to London. I am under some slight obligations to Sir Reginald—and yet—I cannot decide. The weight of evidence certainly preponderates in favour of the new claimant. Captain Reud, perhaps, will permit him to land, and he may go up to town immediately, and have an interview with Mr —, the lawyer; and, if he can satisfy that person, he will receive from him further instructions as to his future proceedings.”