In Lloyd's coffee-house, or other places of great resort in London, when a placard is exhibited reporting any important news, the restlessness of public impatience seems often as though it would extort an answer to its further curiosity from the inanimate pillar or post to which the placard is affixed: it may be supposed how much more liable to such importunity is the bearer of a placard that happens to be no stone pillar but a living man. Bertram was pressed upon from all sides for his narrative of the catastrophe, which he gave in substance as the reader has already heard it. Of Nicholas, whom he now understood to have been his fellow-passenger, he knew nothing: that some state prisoner, of extraordinary character, was on board--he had indeed casually heard; but had seen nothing of him to his own knowledge; and if he were under hatches and in irons, there was no room to doubt that he must have been amongst those who were most sure to have perished. All that he could certainly report of the final sequel to his own share in the adventure--was that, since his eyes had opened on shore, they had rested on no countenance which he remembered to have seen on board the Halcyon. It is needless to say that a mixed expression of wonder, deep interest in the events, and compassion for the unfortunate sufferers, accompanied Bertram's narrative. The narrator himself was the object of a mingled sympathy of condolence and congratulation--blended however with an air of keen examination directed to his features (now that they were brought nearer to the observers and under a steadier light) which had once before distressed him in the course of the evening, and for which he could find no satisfactory explanation. The prevailing sentiment, which arose at the end of the account, was a lively regret that the near prospect of seeing Edward Nicholas again--so suddenly opened upon them--should have been so suddenly overcast. Nevertheless, such was the general confidence in his good fortune and his unrivalled resources in presence of mind and bodily activity--that considerable odds were offered by many of the company that Nicholas, who had outlived so many desperate storms, both by sea and land, in all climates of the world, would yet be heard of again.
For any of these feelings or considerations Mr. Dulberry had no leisure: the moral, which he drew from this, as from all other events great or small--sad or merry, was exclusively civic and full of patriotic spleen:--"So then," said he, "you see what sort of ships government choose for transporting their state prisoners?"
"But, good God, Mr. Dulberry, you can hardly suppose that the boiler of the Halcyon was in the pay of my Lord Londonderry?"
"The boiler!--No: but where was the engineer that should have been in his pay? Didn't Mr. Bennett propose a year or two ago, that no steam-packet should be lawfully turned off the stocks before it was thoroughly examined by a state engineer? Didn't----"
But here supper was announced, a summons welcome in itself, and at this moment doubly so as putting a stop to the reformer. Even that person condescended to be pleased on the former consideration, though reasonably incensed on the other; and he advanced to the table in a continued ejaculation of inarticulate grunts--a sort of equivocal language in which he designed to convey alike his approbation of supper and displeasure at the interruption.
Bertram took his seat with the rest of the party; but sought an early opportunity of withdrawing himself from a scene of convivial merriment, in which his previous fatigues had by this time wholly disqualified him for sharing with any cordiality. Wearily he followed the person who conducted him to his bedchamber: but, spite of his sleepiness and exhaustion, he was roused to a slight shock of something like terror, by a little incident which occurred on the way:--in one of the galleries, through which they passed, a man was standing at the further end: he was apparently in the act of admitting himself into a bedroom: but something, which embarrassed him about the lock or the key, detained him until they advanced near enough to throw the light of a candle full upon his profile. It was the profile of a face tanned into a gypsey complexion, and for so young a face--weather-beaten, thin, and wasted; but otherwise of Grecian beauty of outline; and, as far as could be judged from so hasty and oblique a glance, remarkably expressive and dignified. The man did not look round or take any other notice of them, as they advanced: and the attendant either had not, or affected not to have, any knowledge of his person: but Bertram felt a bewildering remembrance, as if suddenly snatched and recovered from a dream, of the same features seen under circumstances of some profounder interest. He labored anxiously to recollect in what situation and when; but the events of the last few days had so agitated and bewildered his mind, that he labored in vain; and, the more he thought, the more he entangled himself in a web of perplexity. From this and all other perplexities, however, he was speedily liberated by the sound sleep which seized him the moment he had laid his head on the pillow.
FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER VI.":
[[1]] A joke upon an Irish accentuation of Mr. Croker's, the Secretary to the Admiralty. In his Talavera he accentuated the word Ally Hibernicé, with the accent on the first syllable. On which Mr. Southey playfully called him Ally Croaker.
[[2]] A joke borrowed from ----, by whom it was applied to a better man than himself; one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this age, and whose life has been more romantic than that of Edward Nicholas.