General Bounce; Or, The Lady and the Locusts. G. J. Whyte-Melville
that Mrs. Kettering, who, though a bustling, was an undecided woman, could never quite make up her mind to complete her will. It was a matter of the greatest importance; so first she made it, and then tore it up, and then constructed a fresh one, which she omitted to sign until things were more certain, and eventually mislaid; while, in the meantime, Blanche and “Cousin Charlie” were growing up to that age at which young people, more especially in matters of love-making, are pretty resolutely determined to have a will of their own.
The bridegroom presumptive, however, was one of those young gentlemen in whose heads or hearts the idea of marriage is only contemplated as a remote possibility, and a dreaded termination to a life of enjoyment—in much the same light as that in which the pickpocket views transportation beyond the seas. He believes it to be the common lot of mankind, but that it may be indefinitely postponed with a little circumspection, and in some cases of rare good fortune even eluded altogether.
It is curious to observe at what an early age the different instincts of the sexes develop themselves in children. Little Miss can scarcely waddle before she shoulders a doll, which she calls her baby, and on which she lavishes much maternal care, not without certain wholesome correction. From her earliest youth, the abstract idea of wife and motherhood is familiar to her mind; and to be married, though she knows not what it is, as natural and inevitable a destiny as to learn music and have a governess. Young Master, on the contrary, has no idea of being a “pater familias.” His notion of being grown up is totally unconnected with housekeeping. When “he is a man, he means to be a soldier, or a sailor, or a pastry-cook—he will have a gun and hunters, and go all day to the stable, and eat as much as he chooses, and drink port wine like papa;” but to bring up children of his own, and live in one place, is the very last thing he dreams of. “Cousin Charlie” entertained the usual notions of his kind. Although an orphan, he had never known the want of a parent—uncle and aunt Kettering supplying him with as kind and indulgent a father and mother as a spoilt little boy could desire. And although he had his childish sorrows, such as parting from Blanche, going to school, being whipped according to his deserts when there, and thus smuggled through that amusing work, the Latin Grammar; yet, altogether, his life was as happy as any other child’s of his own age, on whom health, and love, and plenty had shone from the day of its birth.
Of course, old John Kettering sent him to Eton, that most aristocratic of schools, where Charlie learnt to swim—no mean accomplishment; arrived at much perfection in his “wicket-keeping” and “hitting to the leg,” as, indeed, he deserved, for the powers of application he evinced in the study of cricket; was taught to “feather an oar” in a method which the London watermen pronounced extremely inefficient; and acquired a knack of construing Horace into moderately bad English, with a total disregard for the ideas, habits, prejudices, and intentions of that courtly bard. Of course, too, he was destined for the army. With his prospects, in what other profession could he get through his allowance, and acquire gentlemanlike habits of extravagance in what is termed good society? Old Kettering wanted to make his nephew a gentleman—that was it. When asked how Charlie was getting on at Eton, and what he learnt there, the uncle invariably replied, “Learn, sir! why, he’ll learn to be a gentleman.”
It is a matter for conjecture whether the worthy merchant was capable of forming an opinion as to the boy’s progress in this particular study, or whether he was himself a very good judge of the variety he so much admired. Our own idea is, that neither birth, nor riches, nor education, nor manner, suffice to constitute a gentleman; and that specimens are to be found at the plough, the loom, and the forge, in the ranks, and before the mast, as well as in the officers’ mess-room, the learned professions, and the Upper House itself. To our fancy, a gentleman is courteous, kindly, brave, and high-principled—considerate towards the weak, and self-possessed amongst the strong. High-minded and unselfish, “he does to others as he would they should do unto him,” and shrinks from the meanness of taking advantage of his neighbour, man or woman, friend or foe, as he would from the contamination of cowardice, duplicity, tyranny, or any other blackguardism. “Sans peur et sans reproche”—he has a “lion’s courage with a woman’s heart”; and such a one, be he in a peer’s robes or a ploughman’s smock—backing before his sovereign or delving for his bread—we deem a very Bayard for chivalry—a very Chesterfield for good breeding and good sense. We are old-fashioned though in our ideas, and doubtless our sentiments may be dubbed slow by the young, and vulgar by the great. Still, even these dissentients would, we think, have been satisfied with “Cousin Charlie’s” claims to be considered a “gentleman.”
Nature had been beforehand with old Kettering, and had made him one of her own mould. Not all the schools in Europe could have spoiled or improved him in that particular. And his private tutor’s lady discovered this quality, with all a woman’s intuitive tact, the very first evening he spent at the vicarage of that reverend Crichton, who prepared young gentlemen of fifteen years and upwards for both the universities and all the professions.
“What do you think of the new pupil, my dear?” said Mr. Nobottle to his wife—a dean’s daughter, no less!—as he drew up the connubial counterpane to meet the edge of his night-cap. “He was a wild lad, I hear, at Eton. I am afraid we shall have some trouble with him.”
“Not a bit of it,” was the reply; “he is a gentleman every inch of him. I saw it at once by the way he helped Tim in with his portmanteau. Binks, of course, was out of the way—and that reminds me, Mr. Nobottle, you never will speak to that man—what’s the use of having a butler? And then, he’s such a remarkably good-looking boy—but I daresay you’re half asleep already.”
And, sure enough, patient Joseph Nobottle was executing a prolonged and marital snore.
Mrs. Nobottle found no occasion to recant her predictions; and Charlie was now spending his summer vacation with Mrs. Kettering at St. Swithin’s.
We have left the party so long in their boat, that they have had ample time to “trim” or sink her. Neither of these events, however, took place; and after pulling round a Swedish brig, an enormous tub, very wholesome-looking, as Hairblower said, and holding a polyglot conversation with an individual in a red night-cap, who grinned at the ladies, and offered them “schnapps,” they turned the little craft’s head towards the shore, and taking “the flood,” as Charlie had previously threatened, bent themselves to their work, and laid out upon their oars in a style that satisfied even the seaman, and enraptured the lad.
“What a dear boy it is!” thought Mrs. Kettering, as she looked at Charlie’s open countenance, and his fair golden curls, blowing about his face, browned by the weather to a rich manly hue, and lit up with the excitement and exercise of his work. Many qualms of conscience crossed Mrs. Kettering’s mind, in the transit of that mile and a half of blue water which sparkled between “the Swede” and the shore. Much she regretted her want of decision and habits of delay in not completing the important document that should at once make that handsome boy the head of his family; and firmly she resolved that not another week should pass without a proper consultation of the universal refuge, “her family man-of-business,” and a further legal drawing-up of her last will and testament. Then she remembered she had left one unfinished, that would make an excellent rough draft for the future document; then she wondered where she had put it; and then she thought what a husband the handsome cousin would make for her own beautiful girl; and rapidly her ideas followed each other, till, in her mind’s eye, she saw the wedding—the bridesmaids—the procession—the breakfast—and, though last, not least, the very bonnet, not too sombre, which she herself should wear on the occasion.
Not one word did Mrs. Kettering hear of a long-winded story with which Hairblower was delighting Blanche and Charlie; and which, as it seemed to create immense interest and sympathy in his young listeners, and is, besides, a further example of the general superstition of sailors as to commencing any undertaking on a Friday, we may as well give, as nearly as possible, in his own words.
“Blown, Master Charles?” said the good-humoured seaman, in answer to a question from hard-working Charlie. “Blown? Not a bit of it; nor yet tired; nor you neither. I was a bit bamboozled though once somewhere hereaway. It’s a good many years past now; but I don’t think as I