Rivers of Ice by Robert Michael Ballantyne (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

his trouser-pockets; "I'll do my best."

While these two were slowly wending their way through Kensington Gardens, Emma Gray arrived at the Captain's villa--California Cottage, he called it--and rang the bell. The gate was opened by Netta White, who, although not much bigger than when first introduced to the reader, was incomparably more beautiful and smart. Mrs Stoutley had reason to be proud of her.

"I did not know that _you_ were to be here, Netta?" said Emma, in surprise, as she entered.

"It was a very sudden call, Miss," said Netta, with a smile. "Captain Wopper wrote a note to me, begging me to ask Mrs Stoutley to be so good as lend me to him for a day to help at his house-warming. Here is the letter, Miss."

Emma laughed as she glanced carelessly at the epistle, but became suddenly grave, turned white, then red, and, snatching the letter from the girl's hand, gazed at it intently.

"La! Miss, is anything wrong?"

"May I keep this?" asked Emma.

"Certainly, Miss, if you wish it."

Before she could say anything more, they were interrupted by the entrance of Dr Lawrence. With a surprised look and smile he said--

"I have been invited to dine with our friend Captain Wopper, but did not anticipate the pleasure of meeting Miss Gray here."

Emma explained that she also had been invited to dine with the Captain, along with her mother and brother, but had supposed that that was all the party, as he, the Captain, had mentioned no one else, and had been particular in begging her to come an hour before the time, for the purpose of going over his new villa with him, and giving him her private opinion of it.

"I am punctual," she added, consulting her watch; "it is just four o'clock."

"Four! Then what is the dinner hour?"

"Five," answered Emma.

"The Captain's wits must have been wool-gathering," rejoined Lawrence, with a laugh. "He told me to come punctually at four. However, I rejoice in the mistake, as it gives me the great pleasure of assisting you to form an unprejudiced opinion of the merits of the new villa. Shall we begin with an exploration of the garden?"

Emma had no cause to blush at such an innocent proposal, nevertheless a richer colour than usual mantled on her modest little face as she fell in with the Doctor's humour and stepped out into the small piece of ground behind the house.

It was of very limited extent and, although not surrounded too closely by other villas, was nevertheless thoroughly overlooked by them, so that seclusion in that garden was impossible. Recognising this fact, a former proprietor had erected at the lower end of the garden a bower so contrived that its interior was invisible from all points except one, and that was a side door to the garden which opened on a little passage by which coals, milk, meat, and similar substances were conveyed from the front to the rear of the house.

Dr Lawrence and Emma walked round and round the garden very slowly, conversing earnestly. Strange to say, they quite forgot the object which had taken them there. Their talk was solely of Switzerland. As it continued, the Doctor's voice deepened in tones and interest, and his fair companion's cheek deepened in colour. Suddenly they turned into the bower. As they did so, Gillie White chanced to appear at the garden door above referred to, which stood ajar. The spider's countenance was a speaking one. During the five minutes which it appeared in the doorway, it, and the body belonging to it, became powerfully eloquent. It might have conveyed to one's mind, as it were, a series of _tableaux vivants_. Gillie's first look was as if he had been struck dumb with amazement (that was Lawrence suddenly seizing one of Emma's hands in both of his and looking intently into her face). Then Gillie's look of amazement gave place to one of intense, quite touching--we might almost say sympathetic--anxiety as he placed a hand on each knee and stooped (that was the Doctor's right hand stealing round Emma's waist, and Emma shrinking from him with averted face). The urchin's visage suddenly lighted up with a blaze of triumph, and he seized his cap as if about to cheer (that was the Doctor's superior strength prevailing, and Emma's head, now turned the other way, laid on his shoulder). All at once Gillie went into quiet convulsions, grinned from ear to ear, doubled himself up, slapped his thigh inaudibly--_a la_ Captain Wopper--and otherwise behaved like an outrageous, yet self-restrained, maniac (that was--well, we have no right to say what _that_ was). As a faithful chronicler, however, we must report that one-half minute later the stooard found Captain Wopper in the villa drawing-room, and there stated to him that it was "hall right; that he didn't need for to perplex hisself about Doctor Lawrence and Miss Hemma Gray, for that they was as good as spliced already, having been seen by him, Gillie, in the bower at the end of the garding a-blushin' and a--" Here the spider stopped short and went into another fit of convulsions--this time unrestrained.

Is it necessary to say that Captain Wopper sat at the foot of his own table that day--Mrs Stoutley being at the head--with his rugged visage radiant and his powerful voice explosive; that he told innumerable sea-stories without point, and laughed at them without propriety; that, in the excess of his hilarity, he drank a mysterious toast to the success of all sorts of engagements, present and future; that he called Mrs Stoutley (in joke) sister, and Emma and Lewis (also in joke) niece and neffy; that he called Doctor Lawrence neffy, too, with a pointedness and a sense of its being the richest possible joke, that covered with confusion the affianced pair; and with surprise the rest of the company; that he kicked the stooard amicably out of the room for indulging in explosions of laughter behind his chair, and recommending him, the Captain, to go it strong, and to clap on sail till he should tear the mast out of 'er, or git blowed on his beam-ends; that the stooard returned unabashed to repeat the offence unreproved; that towards the end, the Captain began a long-winded graphic story which served to show how his good friend and chum Willum Stout in Callyforny had commissioned him to buy and furnish a villa for the purpose of presenting it to a certain young lady in token of his gratitood to her for bein' such a good and faithful correspondent to him, Willum, while he was in furrin' parts; also, how he was commissioned to buy and furnish another villa and present it to a certain doctor whose father had saved him from drownin' long long ago, he would not say _how_ long ago; and how that this villa, in which they was feedin', was one of the said villas, and that he found it quite unnecessary to spend any more of Willum's hard-earned gains in the purchase of the other villa, owing to circumstances which had took place in a certain bower that very day! Is it necessary, we again ask, to detail all this? We think not; therefore, we won't.

When reference was made to the bower, Emma could stand, or sit, it no longer. She rose hastily and ran blushing into the garden. Captain Wopper uttered a thunderous laugh, rose and ran after her. He found her in the bower with her face in her hands, and sat down beside her.

"Captain Wopper," she suddenly exclaimed, looking up and drawing a note from her pocket, "do you know this?"

"Yes, duckie," (the Captain was quite reckless now), "it's my last billy-doo to Netta White. I never was good at pot-hooks and hangers."

"And do you know _this_ letter?" said Emma, holding up to the seaman's eyes her uncle William's last letter to herself.

The Captain looked surprised, then became suddenly red and confused.

"W'y--ye-es, it's Willum's, ain't it?"

"The same pot-hooks and hangers _precisely_!" said Emma, "are they not? Oh!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms round the Captain's neck and kissing him, "uncle William, how _could_ you deceive us so?"

The Captain, to use his own expressions, was taken aback--fairly brought up all standin'.

It had never occurred to his innocent mind that he should commit himself so simply. He felt an unconquerable objection to expressions of gratitude, and perceiving, with deep foresight that such were impending, his first impulse was to rise and fly, but Emma's kiss made him change his mind. He returned it in kind but not in degree, for it caused the bower to resound as with a pistol shot.

"Oh! wot a cracker, ain't it just? you're a nice man, ain't you, to go poachin' on other fellers--"

The Captain seized his opportunity, he broke from Emma and dashed wildly at the spider, who incontinently fled down the conduit for coals, cheering with the fury of a victorious Ashantee chief!


CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.


THE LAST.

Humbly confessing to Emma Gray that he had no talent whatever for plotting, Captain Wopper went off with a deprecatory expression of countenance to reveal himself to Mrs Roby. Great was his anxiety. He entered her presence like a guilty thing. If, however, his anxiety was great, his surprise and consternation were greater when she received his revelation with tears, and for some time refused to be comforted!

The workings of the human mind are wonderful. Sometimes they are, as the Captain said, bamboozling. If analysed it might have been discovered that, apart altogether from the shock of unexpectedness and the strain on her credulity, poor Mrs Roby suffered--without clearly understanding it--from a double loss. She had learned to love Captain Wopper for his own sake, and now Captain Wopper was lost to her in William Stout! On the other hand William, her darling, her smooth-faced chubby boy, was lost to her for ever in the hairy savage Captain Wopper! It was perplexing as well as heart-rending. Captain Wopper was gone, because, properly, there was no such being in existence. William Stout was gone because he would never write to her any more, and could never more return to her from California!

It was of no use that the Captain expressed the deepest contrition for the deception he had practised, urging that he had done it "for the best;" the old woman only wept the more; but when, in desperation, the Captain hauled taut the sheets of his intellect, got well to wind'ard of the old 'ooman an' gave her a broadside of philosophy, he was more successful.

"Mother," he said, earnestly, "you don't feel easy under this breeze, 'cause why? you're entirely on the wrong tack. Ready about now, an' see what a change it'll make. Look 'ee here. You've _gained_ us both instead of lost us both. Here am I, Willum Stout yours to command, a trifle stouter, it may be, and hairier than I once was, not to say older, but by a long chalk better able to love the old girl who took me in, an' befriended me when I was a reg'lar castaway, with dirty weather brewin', an' the rocks o' destitootion close under my lee; and who'll never forget your kindness, no never, so long as two timbers of the old hulk hold together. Well then, that's the view