CHAPTER XXVII.
“With look like patient Job's, eschewing evil;
With motions graceful as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That ere clinched fingers in a captive's hair.”
HALLECK.
There was about an hour of daylight, when I left the compting-house of the consignees, and pursued my way up Wall Street to Broadway. I was on my way to the City Hotel, then, as now, one of the best inns of the town. On Trinity Church walk, just as I quitted the Wall Street crossing, whom should I come plump upon in turning, but Rupert Hardinge? He was walking down the street in some little haste, and was evidently much surprised, perhaps I might say startled, at seeing me. Nevertheless, Rupert was not easily disconcerted, and his manner at once became warm, if not entirely free from embarrassment. He was in deep mourning; though otherwise dressed in the height of the fashion.
“Wallingford!” he exclaimed—it was the first time he did not call me “Miles,”—“Wallingford! my fine fellow, what cloud did you drop from?—We have had so many reports concerning you, that your appearance is as much a matter of surprise, as would be that of Bonaparte, himself. Of course, your ship is in?”
“Of course,” I answered, taking his offered hand; “you know I am wedded to her, for better, for worse, until death or shipwreck doth us part.”
“Ay, so I've always told the ladies—'there is no other matrimony in Wallingford,' I've said often, 'than that which will make him a ship's husband.' But you look confoundedly well—the sea agrees with you, famously.”
“I make no complaint of my health—but tell me of that of our friends and families? Your father—”
“Is up at Clawbonny, just now—you know how it is with him. No change of circumstances will ever make him regard his little smoke-house looking church, as anything but a cathedral, and his parish as a diocese. Since the great change in our circumstances, all this is useless, and I often think—you know one wouldn't like to say as much to him—but I often think, he might just as well give up preaching, altogether.”