The Blue Pavilions | Page 3

bottle in a choppy sea, it hardly affected his pace. Here and there he snapped out a greeting to some ship's captain or townsman of his acquaintance, or growled testily at a row of soldiers bearing down on him three abreast. His angry green eyes seemed to clear a path before him, in spite of the grins which his hump and shambling legs excited among strangers. In this way he darted along High Street, turned up by the markets, crossed Church Street into West Street, and passed under the great gate by which the London Road left the town.
Beyond this gate the road ran through a tall ravelin and out upon a breezy peninsula between the river and the open sea. And here Captain Barker halted and, tugging off hat and wig, wiped his crown with a silk handkerchief.
Over the reedy marsh upon his right, where a windmill waved its lazy arms, a score of larks were singing. To his left the gulls mewed across the cliffs and the remoter sandbanks that thrust up their yellow ridges under the ebb-tide. The hum of the little town sounded drowsily behind him.
He gazed across the sandbanks upon the blue leagues of sea, and rubbed his fingers softly up and down the unshaven side of his face.
"H'm," he said, and then "p'sh!" and then "p'sh!" again; and, as if this settled it, readjusted his wig and hat and set off down the road faster than ever.
A cluster of stunted poplars appeared in the distance, and a long thatched house; then, between the trees, the eye caught sight of two other buildings, exactly alike, but of a curious shape and colour. Imagine two round towers, each about forty feet in height, daubed with a bright blue wash and surmounted with a high-pitched, conical roof of a somewhat darker tint. Above each roof a gilt vane glittered, and a flock of white pigeons circled overhead or, alighting, dotted the tiles with patches of silver.
A bend of the road broke up this cluster of trees and buildings. The long thatched house fell upon the left of the highway, and in front of it a sign-post sprang into view, with a drinking-trough below. Directly opposite, the two blue roofs ranged themselves side by side, with long strips of garden and a thick privet hedge between them and the road. And behind, in the direction of the marsh, the poplars stretched in an irregular line.
Now the nearer of these blue pavilions was the home of Captain Barker, who for more than two years had not crossed its threshold. Yet he neither paused by its small blue gate nor glanced up the gravelled path. Nor, though thirsty, did he turn aside to the porch of the Fish and Anchor Inn; but kept along the privet hedge until he came to the second blue gate. Here he drew up and stood for a moment with his hand on the latch.
A trim lawn stretched before him to the door of the pavilion, and here, on a rustic seat before an equally rustic table, sat a long lean gentleman, in a suit of Lincoln green faced with scarlet, who gazed into a pewter tankard. His sword lay on the turf beside him, and a hat of soft cloth edged with feathers hung on the arm of the bench.
This long gentleman looked up as the gate clicked, stretched out his legs, rose, and disappeared within the pavilion, returning after a minute with a jug of beer and a fresh tankard.
"Paid off your crew already?"
The little hunchback took a pull, answered "No" as he set down the tankard, and looked up at the weathercock overhead.
"Wind's in the south-east."
The long man looked at the little one and pursed up his mouth. His face proclaimed him of a like age with Captain Barker. It did not at all match his figure, being short as a bull-dog's; and like a bull-dog he was heavily jowled. Many weathers had tanned his complexion to a rich corn-colour. His name was Jeremy Runacles, and for two years, that had ended on this very morning, he had commanded the Trident frigate. As he climbed down her ladder into his gig he had left on the deck behind him a reputation for possessing a shorter temper than any three officers in his Majesty's service. At present his steel-blue eyes seemed gentle enough.
"You've something to tell," he said, after a minute's silence.
The hunchback kicked at a plantain in the turf for two minutes longer, and asked--
"How's the little maid, Jemmy?"
"Grown. She's having her morning nap."
"She want's a mother."
"She'll have to do with a nurse."
"You don't want to marry again?"
"No."
"That's a lie."
Before Captain Runacles could resent this, the little man turned his back and took six paces to the party hedge and six paces