The two men then passed on.
"Who dares to say that the industrious millions have no gratitude?" murmured the Blackamoor to himself, as he also pursued his way. "O Arthur! you are now indeed worthy of the proud name which you bear: and I likewise exclaim from the very bottom of my heart, 'May God bless you!'"
CHAPTER CII.
A STATE OF SIEGE.
Return we now to Frank Curtis, his excellent wife, and Captain O'Blunderbuss, who were living in a complete state of siege at the house in Baker Street.
The captain was the commandant of the garrison, and superintended all the manœuvres and the devices which it was necessary to adopt to keep out the enemy. The front-door was constantly chained inside; and every time there was a knock or a ring, John the footman reconnoitred from the area. Whenever any one was compelled to go out to order in provisions, the captain stood at the door, armed with the kitchen poker, and looking so grim and terrible that the officers who were prowling about in different disguises, dared not hazard an encounter with the warlike gentleman.
The grocer, the butcher, and the baker lowered their respective commodities down the area by means of a rope and basket provided for the purpose; but they all took very good care to receive the cash first. The milkman and pot-boy were enabled to supply their articles through the opening afforded by the door with the chain up inside; and they likewise strenuously advocated the ready-money principle.
This condition of siege was a source of great delight to Captain O'Blunderbuss. He was completely in his element. Little cared he for the opinion of neighbours: his feelings were by no means concerned. The house, from the first moment he set foot in it, was in a state of perpetual excitement. He was constantly ordering the servants to do something or another: a dozen times a-day did he perform what he called "going his rounds," armed with the poker in case a bailiff should have crept into the place through some unguarded avenue;—and it was indeed with the greatest difficulty that Mrs. Curtis could divert him from a plan which he had conceived and which he declared to be necessary—namely, the drilling of all the inmates of the house, male and female, including the five children, for an hour daily in the yard. As it was, he compelled John, the footman, to mount sentry in the yard aforesaid, every morning while the housemaid was dusting her carpets and so forth—indeed during the whole time that the domestic duties rendered it necessary to have the back-door open. If John remonstrated, the captain would threaten, with terrible oaths, to try him by a court-martial; and once, when the poor fellow respectfully solicited his wages and his discharge, the formidable officer would certainly have inflicted on him the cat-o'-nine-tails, if the cook had not begged him off—she being the footman's sweetheart.
Mrs. Curtis took a great fancy to the captain, and allowed him to do pretty well as he chose. She considered him to be the politest, genteelest, bravest, and most amusing gentleman she had ever known; and it soon struck her that his various qualifications threw her husband considerably into the shade. Whenever she felt low-spirited, he had a ready remedy for her. If it were in the forenoon, he would exclaim, "Arrah and be Jasus, Mim, it's no wonther ye're dull, with the inimy besaging us in this way: and it's a nice mutton chop and a glass of Port-wine that'll be afther sitting ye to rights, Mim." Then forthwith he would ring the bell, and order three chops, so that himself and Frank might keep the dear lady company. If it were in the evening that Mrs. Curtis was attacked by those unwelcome visitors termed "blue devils," the captain would recommend "a leetle dhrop of the potheen, brewed afther the fashion in ould Ireland;" and while he exhausted all his powers of eloquence in assurances that it should be "as wake as wather, and not too swate," he would mix the respectable lady such a stinger, that her eyes would fill with tears every time she put the glass near her lips. Sometimes he would undertake to amuse the children up in the nursery, by going on all fours and allowing them to play at horse-soldiers by riding on his back; and then, what with his shouting and bawling, and their laughing and screaming, it was enough to alarm the whole neighbourhood—and very frequently did.
All these little attentions on the part of the captain either to herself or her children, gave Mrs. Curtis an admirable opinion of him; and he rose rapidly in her favour. His success in obtaining the five hundred pounds from Sir Christopher Blunt was considered by her as sublime a stroke of mingled policy and daring as ever was accomplished; and his tactics in opposing a successful foil to all the stratagems devised by the sheriff's-officers to obtain admission into the dwelling, made her declare more than once that had he commanded the Allied Army at Waterloo, it would have been all up with the French in half-an-hour.
The female servants in the house did not altogether admire the position in which they were placed; but, they were so dreadfully frightened at the captain, that they never uttered a murmur in his hearing. They moreover had their little consolations; for Sir Christopher's five hundred pounds enabled the besieged to live, as the captain declared, "like fighting-cocks,"—so that the kitchen was as luxuriously supplied with provender as the parlour; and no account was taken of the quantity of wine and spirits consumed in the establishment.