Джеймс Фенимор Купер – The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (страница 21)

“He is drowned, sir.”

“Ah! that is the next thing to being hanged; that circumstance had escaped me.”

“It is by no means certain, sir, that the ship and schooner that the drover saw are the vessels you take them to have been,” said Mr. Dillon, in a harsh, drawling tone of voice. “I should doubt their daring to venture so openly on the coast, and in the direct track of our vessels of war.”

“These people are our countrymen, Christopher, though they are rebels,” exclaimed the colonel. “They are a hardy and brave nation. When I had the honor of serving his majesty, some twenty years since, it was my fortune to face the enemies of my king in a few small affairs, Captain Borroughcliffe; such as the siege of Quebec, and the battle before its gates, a trifling occasion at Ticonderoga, and that unfortunate catastrophe of General Braddock – with a few others. I must say, sir, in favor of the colonists that they played a manful game on the latter day; and this gentleman who now heads the rebels sustained a gallant name among us for his conduct in that disastrous business. He was a discreet, well-behaved young man, and quite a gentleman. I have never denied that Mr. Washington was very much of a gentleman.”

“Yes!” said the soldier, yawning, “he was educated among his majesty’s troops, and he could hardly be other wise. But I am quite melancholy about this unfortunate drowning, Colonel Howard. Here will be an end of my vocation, I suppose; and I am far from denying that your hospitality has made these quarters most agreeable to me.”

“Then, sir, the obligation is only mutual,” returned the host, with a polite inclination of his head: “but gentlemen who, like ourselves, have been made free of the camp, need not bandy idle compliments about such trifles. If it were my kinsman Dillon, now, whose thoughts ran more on Coke upon Littleton than on the gayeties of a mess-table and a soldier’s life, he might think such formalities as necessary as his hard words are to a deed. Come, Borroughcliffe, my dear fellow, I believe we have given an honest glass to each of the royal family (God bless them all!), let us swallow a bumper to the memory of the immortal Wolfe.”

“An honest proposal, my gallant host, and such a one as a soldier will never decline,” returned the captain, who roused himself with the occasion. “God bless them all! say I, in echo; and if this gracious queen of ours ends as famously as she has begun, ‘twill be such a family of princes as no other army of Europe can brag of around a mess-table.”

“Ay, ay, there is some consolation in that thought, in the midst of this dire rebellion of my countrymen. But I’ll vex myself no more with the unpleasant recollections; the arms of my sovereign will soon purge that wicked land of the foul stain.”

“Of that there can be no doubt,” said Borroughcliffe, whose thoughts still continued a little obscured by the sparkling Madeira that had long lain ripening under a Carolinian sun; “these Yankees fly before his majesty’s regulars, like so many dirty clowns in a London mob before a charge of the horse-guards.”

“Pardon me, Captain Borroughcliffe,” said his host, elevating his person to more than its usually erect attitude; “they may be misguided, deluded, and betrayed, but the comparison is unjust. Give them arms and give them discipline, and he who gets an inch of their land from them, plentiful as it is, will find a bloody day on which to take possession.”

“The veriest coward in Christendom would fight in country where wine brews itself into such a cordial as this,” returned the cool soldier. “I am a living proof that you mistook my meaning; for had not those loose-flapped gentlemen they call Vermontese and Hampshire-granters (God grant them his blessing for the deed) finished two-thirds of my company, I should not have been at this day under your roof, a recruiting instead of a marching officer; neither should I have been bound up in a covenant, like the law of Moses, could Burgoyne have made head against their long-legged marchings and countermarchings. Sir, I drink their healths, with all my heart; and with such a bottle of golden sunshine before me, rather than displease so good a friend, I will go through Gates’ whole army, regiment by regiment, company by company, or, if you insist on the same, even man by man, in a bumper.”

“On no account would I tax your politeness so far,” returned the colonel, abundantly mollified by this ample concession; “I stand too much your debtor, Captain Borroughcliffe, for so freely volunteering to defend my house against the attacks of my piratical, rebellious, and misguided countrymen, to think of requiring such a concession.”

“Harder duty might be performed, and no favors asked, my respectable host,” returned the soldier. “Country quarters are apt to be dull, and the liquor is commonly execrable; but in such a dwelling as this, a man can rock himself in the very cradle of contentment. And yet there is one subject of complaint, that I should disgrace my regiment did I not speak of – for it is incumbent on me, both as a man and a soldier, to be no longer silent.”

“Name it, sir, freely, and its cause shall be as freely redressed,” said the host in some amazement.

“Here we three sit, from morning to night,” continued the soldier; “bachelors all, well provisioned and better liquored, I grant you, but like so many well-fed anchorites, while two of the loveliest damsels in the island pine in solitude within a hundred feet of us, without tasting the homage of our sighs. This, I will maintain, is a reproach both to your character, Colonel Howard, as an old soldier and to mine as a young one. As to our old friend, Coke on top of Littleton here, I leave him to the quiddities of the law to plead his own cause.”

The brow of the host contracted for a moment, and the sallow cheek of Dillon, who had sat during the dialogue in a sullen silence, appeared to grow even livid; but gradually the open brow of the veteran resumed its frank expression, and the lips of the other relaxed into a Jesuitical sort of a smile, that was totally disregarded by the captain, who amused himself with sipping his wine while he waited for an answer, as if he analyzed each drop that crossed his palate.

After an embarrassing pause of a moment, Colonel Howard broke the silence:

“There is reason in Borroughcliffe’s hint, for such I take it to be – –”

“I meant it for a plain, matter-of-fact complaint,” interrupted the soldier.

“And you have cause for it,” continued the colonel. “It is unreasonable, Christopher, that the ladies should allow their dread of these piratical countrymen of ours to exclude us from their society, though prudence may require that they remain secluded in their apartments. We owe the respect to Captain Borroughcliffe, that at least we admit him to the sight of the coffee-urn in an evening.”

“That is precisely my meaning,” said the captain: “as for dining with them, why, I am well provided for here; but there is no one knows how to set hot water a hissing in so professional a manner as a woman. So forward, my dear and honored colonel, and lay your injunctions on them, that they command your humble servant and Mr. Coke unto Littleton to advance and give the countersign of gallantry.”

Dillon contracted his disagreeable features into something that was intended for a satirical smile, before he spoke as follows:

“Both the veteran Colonel Howard and the gallant Captain Borroughcliffe may find it easier to overcome the enemies of his majesty in the field than to shake a woman’s caprice. Not a day has passed these three weeks, that I have not sent my inquiries to the door of Miss Howard as became her father’s kinsman, with a wish to appease her apprehensions of the pirates; but little has she deigned me In reply, more than such thanks as her sex and breeding could not well dispense with.”

“Well, you have been, as fortunate as myself, and why you should be more so, I see no reason,” cried the soldier, throwing a glance of cool contempt at the other: “fear whitens the cheek, and ladies best love to be seen when the roses flourish rather than the lilies.”

“A woman is never so interesting, Captain Borroughcliffe, said the gallant host,” as when she appears to lean on man for support; and he who does not feel himself honored by the trust is a disgrace to his species.”

“Bravo! my honored sir, a worthy sentiment, and spoken like a true soldier; but I have heard much of the loveliness of the ladies of the abbey since I have been in my present quarters, and I feel a strong desire to witness beauty encircled by such loyalty as could induce them to flee their native country, rather than to devote their charms to the rude keeping of the rebels.”

The colonel looked grave, and for a moment fierce, but the expression of his displeasure soon passed away in a smile of forced gayety, and, as he cheerfully rose from his seat, he cried: “You shall be admitted this very night, and this instant, Captain Borroughcliffe, We owe it, sir, to your services here, as well as in the field, and those forward girls shall be humored no longer. Nay, it is nearly two weeks since I have seen my ward myself; nor have I laid my eyes on my niece but twice in all that time, Christopher, I leave the captain under your good care while I go seek admission into the cloisters, we call that part of, the building the cloisters, because it holds our nuns, sir! You will pardon my early absence from the table, Captain Borroughcliffe.”