The Cock and Anchor

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

"My lord," said young Ashwoode, "have the goodness to conduct the ladies to the lobby—I will join you in a moment."

This direction was promptly obeyed, and at the same moment the young man caught the fellow, already half into the box, by the neckcloth, dragged his body across the wooden parapet, and while he struggled helplessly to disengage himself—half strangled, and without the power to get either up or down—with his heavy cane, the young gentleman—every nerve, sinew, and muscle being strung to tenfold power by fury—inflicted upon his back and ribs a castigation so prolonged and tremendous, that before it had ended, the scoundrel was perfectly insensible, in which state Henry Ashwoode flung him down again into the pit, amid the obstreperous acclamations of all parts of the house—an uproar of applause in which the spectators in the pit joined with such hearty enthusiasm, that at length, touched with a kindred heroism, they turned upon the associates of the fallen champion, and fairly kicked and cuffed them out of the house.

This feat accomplished, the young gentleman went down the stairs to the street-entrance, and, after considerable delay, succeeded, with the assistance of the footman who had attended him into the house, in finding out their carriage, and having it brought to the door—not judging it expedient that the ladies should return to their places, where they would, of course, be exposed to the gazing curiosity of the multitude. He found the party in the lobby quite recovered from whatever was unpleasant in the excitement of the scene, the more violent part of which they had not witnessed. Lord Aspenly and Emily Copland were laughing over the adventure; and Mary, flashed and agitated, was looking better than she had before upon that night. Taking his cousin under his own protection, and consigning his sister to that of Lord Aspenly, young Ashwoode led the way to the carriage. As they passed slowly along the lobby, the quick eye of Mary Ashwoode discerned a form, at sight of which her heart swelled and throbbed as though it would burst—the colour fled from her cheeks, and she felt for a moment on the point of swooning; the pride of her sex, however, sustained her; the tingling blood again mounted warmly to her cheeks, her eye brightened, and she listened, with more apparent interest than perhaps she ever did before, to Lord Aspenly's remarks—the form was O'Connor's. As she passed him, she returned his salute with a slight and haughty bow, and saw, and felt the stern, cold, proud expression which marked his pale and handsome features. In another moment she was seated in the carriage; the doors were closed, crack went the whip, and clatter go the iron hoofs on the pavement—but before they had traversed a hundred yards on their homeward way, poor Mary Ashwoode sunk back in her place, and fainted away.

CHAPTER XX.

THE LODGING—YOUNG MELANCHOLY AND OLD REMEMBRANCES—AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE YEW HEDGES OF MORLEY COURT.

"There is no more doubt—no more hope"—said O'Connor, as, wrapt in his cloak, he slowly pursued his way homeward—"the worst is true—she is quite estranged from me—how deceived—how utterly blind I have been—yet who could have thought it? Light-hearted, vain, worthless—it is all, all true—my own eyes have seen it. Well, even this must be borne—borne as best it may, and with a manly spirit. I have been, indeed, miserably cheated"—he continued, with bitter vehemence—"and what remains for me? I've been infatuated—a self-flattered fool, and waken thus to find all lost—but grief avails not—there lie before me many paths of honourable toil, and many avenues to honourable death—the ambition of my life is over—henceforth the world has nothing to offer me. I will leave this, the country of my ill-fated birth—leave it for ever, and end my days honourably, and God grant soon, far away from the only one I ever loved—from her who has betrayed me."

Such were the thoughts which darkly and vaguely hurried through O'Connor's mind as he retraced his steps. Before he had arrived, however, at the "Cock and Anchor," whitherward he had mechanically directed his course, he bethought himself, and turned in a different direction towards the house in which his worthy friend, Mr. Audley—having an inveterate prejudice against all inns, which, without exception, he averred to be the especial sanctuaries of damp sheets, bugs, thieves, and rheumatic fevers—had already established himself as a weekly lodger.

"Pooh, pooh! you foolish boy," ejaculated the old bachelor, with considerable energy, in reply to O'Connor's gloomy and passionate language; "nonsense, sir, and folly, and absurdity—you'll give me the vapours if you go on this way—what the devil do you want of foreign service and foreign graves—do you think, booby, it was for that I came over here—tilly vally, tilly vally—I know as well as you, or any other jackanapes, what love is. I tell you, sirrah, I have been in love, and I have been jilted—jilted, sir! and when I was jilted, I thought the jilting itself quite enough, without improving the matter by getting myself buried, dead or alive." Here the little gentleman knocked the table recklessly with his knuckles, buried his hands in his breeches pockets, and rising from his chair, paced the room with an impressive tread. "Had you ever seen Letty Bodkin you might, indeed, have known what love is"—he continued, breathing very hard—"Letty Bodkin jilted me, and I got over it. I did not ask for razors, or cannon balls, or foreign interment, sir; but I vented my indignation like a man of business, in totting up the books, and running up a heavy arrear in the office accounts—yes, sir, I did more good in the way of arithmetic and book-keeping during that three weeks of love-sick agony, than an ordinary man, without the stimulus, would do in a year"—there was another pause here, and he resumed in a softened tone—"but Letty Bodkin was no ordinary woman. Oh! you scoundrel, had you seen her, you'd have been neither to hold nor to bind—there was nothing she could not do—she embroidered a waistcoat for me—heigho! scarlet geraniums and parsley sprigs—and she danced like—like a—a spring board—she'd sail through a minuet like a duck in a pond, and hop and bounce through 'Sir Roger de Coverley' like a hot chestnut on a griddle;—and then she sang—oh, her singing!—I've heard turtle-doves and thrushes, and, in fact, most kind of fowls of all sorts and sizes; but no nightingale ever came up to her in 'The Captain endearing and tall,' and 'The Shepherdess dying for love'—there never lived a man"—continued he, with increasing vehemence—"I don't care when or where, who could have stood, sate, or walked in her company for half-an-hour, without making an old fool of himself—she was just my age, perhaps a year or two more—I wonder whether she is much changed—heigho!"

Having thus delivered himself, Mr. Audley lapsed into meditation, and thence into a faint and rather painful attempt to vocalize his remembrance of "The Captain endearing and tall," engaged in which desperate operation of memory, O'Connor left the old gentleman, and returned to his temporary abode to pass a sleepless night of vain remembrances, regrets, and despair.