The Story of Paul Jones. Alfred Henry Lewis
on the lad’s mither, and only because the lad in his favoring makes ye think now and again on Maister Craik? Jeanny Paul, that was Jeanny Macduff, is well kenned to be as carefu’ a wife as ever cooked her man’s breakfast in Arbigland.”
“Ye think so, Tam Bryce?” retorts the incorrigible Lucky. “Much ye s’uld know of the wives of Arbigland, and you to sea eleven months o’ the year! I tell ye, Jeanny came fro’ the Highlands; and it’ll be lang, I trow, since gude in shape of man or woman came oot o’ the Highlands.”
“Guide your tongue, Lucky!” remonstrates the other, in a low tone; “guide your tongue, ye jade! Here comes Gardener Paul himsel’.‘’
“I’ll no stay to meet him,” says Lucky, moving away. “Puir blinded fule! not to see what all Arbigland, ay! and all Kirkbean Parish, too, for that matter, has seen the twal years, that his boy Jack is no mair no less than just the laird’s bairn when all’s said.”
“Ye’ll no mind her, Maister Younger,” says Tom Bryce, pointing after Lucky; “although, to be preceese, what the carline tells has in it mair of truth than poetry.”
“I was no thinking on the dame’s clack,” returns Mr. Younger, his eyes still on the nearing yawl, “or whether yon lad’s a gardener’s bairn or a gentleman’s by-blaw. What I will say, in the face of the sun, however, is that he has in him the rudiments of as brisk a sailorman as ever walked saut water.”
“There’ll be none that’s better,” observes Tom Bryce, “going in and oot o’ Solway Firth.” Then, eyeing the yawl: “He’ll win to the creek’s mouth on the next reach to sta’board.”
Gardener Paul joins Mr. Younger and the fisherman, Tom Bryce.
“We were talking of your son,” says Mr. Younger to Gardener Paul. “What say ye, mon; will ye apprentice him? I’ll send him with Dick Bennison, in my new brig Friendship, to the Virginias and Jamaica.”
John Paul, gardener to the laird, Robert Craik, is a dull man, notably thick of wit, and slow.
“The Virginias!” he repeats. “My son William has been there these sixteen year. He’s head man for my kinsman Jones, on his plantation by the Rappahannock. If Jack sails with Dick Bennison, he’ll meet William that he’s never seen.”
“He’ll see his brother for sure,” returns Mr. Younger. “The Friendship goes from Whitehaven to Urbana, and that’s not a dozen miles down the Rappahannock from your cousin’s plantation.”
The yawl has come safely into the creek’s mouth, and lies rocking at her moorings as lightly as a gull. The lad leaps ashore, and is patted on the back by the fisherman in praise of his seamanship. He smiles through the salt water that drips from his face; for beating to windward is not the driest point of sailing, and the lad is spray-soaked from head to heel.
“And may I go, father?
“This is Mr. Younger, Jack,” says Gardener Paul, as the lad conies up. “He wants ye to sail ‘prentice with Dick Bennison, in the new brig.‘’ The difference to show between Gardener Paul and little Jack Paul, as the pair stand together on the quay, goes far to justify those innuendoes of the scandalous Lucky. Gardener Paul’s heavy peasant face possesses nothing to mark, on his part, any blood-nearness to the boy, whose olive skin, large brown eyes, clean profile and dark hair like silk, speak only of the patrician.
“And may I go, father?” asks Jack, a flush breaking eagerly through the tan on his cheek.
“Ye might as weel, I think,” responds Gardener Paul judgmatically. “Ye’re the born petrel; and for the matter of gardening, being my own and Adam’s trade, I’ve kenned for lang ye’ll no mair touch spade or mattock than handle coals of fire. So, as I was saying, ye might as weel sail ‘prentice with Dick; and when ye meet your brother William, gi’ him his father’s gude word. Ye’ll never have seen William, Jack, for he left hame before ye were born; and so it’ll be a braw fore-gathering between the twa of ye—being brothers that never met before.”
And after this fashion the fisher-boy, John Panl, afterward Admiral Paul Jones, is given his baptism of the sea.
CHAPTER II—IN THE BLACK TRADE
The sun is struggling through the dust-coated, cobwebbed windows, and lighting dimly yet sufficiently the dingy office of Shipowner Younger of Whitehaven. That substantial man is sitting at his desk, eyes fixed upon the bristle of upstanding masts which sprout, thick as forest pines on a hillside, from the harbor basin below. The face of Shipowner Younger has been given the seasoning of several years, since he went to Arbigland that squall-torn afternoon, to pick up a crew for Dick Bennison. Also, Shipowner Younger shines with a new expression of high yet retiring complacency. The expression is one awful and fascinating to the clerk, who sits at the far end of the room. Shipowner Younger has been elected to Parliament, and his awful complacency is that elevation’s visible sign. The knowledge of his master’s election offers the basis of much of the clerk’s awe, and that stipendary almost charms himself into the delusion that he sees a halo about the bald pate of Shipowner Younger.
The latter brings the spellbound clerk from his trance of fascination, by wheeling upon him.
“Did ye send doon, mon,” he cries, “to my wharf, with word for young Jack Paul to come?”
The clerk says that he did.
“Then ye can go seek your denner.”
The clerk, acting on this permission, scrambles to his fascinated feet. As he retires through the one door, young Jack Paul enters. The brown-faced boy of the Arbigland yawl has grown to be a brisk young sailor, taut and natty. He shakes the hand of Shipowner Younger, who gives him two fingers in that manner of condescending reserve, which he conceives to be due his dignity as a member of the House of Commons. Having done so much for his dignity, Shipowner Younger relaxes.
“Have a chair, lad!” he says. “Bring her here where we can chat.”
The natty Jack Paul brings the clerk’s chair, as being the only one in the room other than that occupied by Shipowner Younger. One sees the thorough-paced sailor in the very motions of him; for his step is quick, catlike and sure, and there is just the specter of a roll in his walk, as though the heaving swell of the ocean still abides in his heels. When he has placed the chair, so as to bring himself and Shipowner Younger face to face, he says:
“And now, sir, what are your commands’?”
“I’ll have sent for ye, Jack,” begins Shipowner Younger, portentously lengthening the while his shaven upper-lip—“I’ll have sent for ye, for three several matters: To pay ye a compliment or twa; to gi’ ye a gude lecture; an’ lastly to do a trifle of business wi’ ye, by way of rounding off. For I hold,” goes on Shipowner Younger, in an admonishing tone, “that conversations which don’t carry a trifle of business are no mair than just the crackle of thorns under a pot. Ye’ll ken I’m rich, Jack—ye’ll ken I can clink my gold, an’ count my gold, an’ keep my gold wi’ the warmest mon in Whitehaven?”
Young Jack Paul smiles, and nods his full agreement.
“But ye’ll no ken,” goes on Shipowner Younger, with proud humility, the pride being real and the humility imitated—“ye’ll no ken, I believe, that I’m ‘lected to the Parleyment in Lunnon, lad?” Shipowner Younger pauses to observe the effect of this announcement of his