The Virginians | Page 8

who are you? After these, in a minute or two, came a
coach-and-six, a ponderous vehicle having need of the horses which
drew it, and containing three ladies, a couple of maids, and an armed
man on a seat behind the carriage. Three handsome pale faces looked
out at Harry Warrington as the carriage passed over the bridge, and did
not return the salute which, recognising the family arms, he gave it.
The gentleman behind the carriage glared at him haughtily. Harry felt
terribly alone. He thought he would go back to Captain Franks. The

Rachel and her little tossing cabin seemed a cheery spot in comparison
to that on which he stood. The inn-folks did not know his name of
Warrington. They told him that was my lady in the coach, with her
stepdaughter, my Lady Maria, and her daughter, my Lady Fanny; and
the young gentleman in the grey frock was Mr. William, and he with
powder on the chestnut was my lord. It was the latter had sworn the
loudest, and called him a fool; and it was the grey frock which had
nearly galloped Harry into the ditch.
The landlord of the Three Castles had shown Harry a bedchamber, but
he had refused to have his portmanteaux unpacked, thinking that, for a
certainty, the folks of the great house would invite him to theirs. One,
two, three hours passed, and there came no invitation. Harry was fain to
have his trunks open at last, and to call for his slippers and gown. Just
before dark, about two hours after the arrival of the first carriage, a
second chariot with four horses had passed over the bridge, and a stout,
high-coloured lady, with a very dark pair of eyes, had looked hard at
Mr. Warrington. That was the Baroness Bernstein, the landlady said,
my lord's aunt, and Harry remembered the first Lady Castlewood had
come of a German family. Earl, and Countess, and Baroness, and
postillions, and gentlemen, and horses, had all disappeared behind the
castle gate, and Harry was fain to go to bed at last, in the most
melancholy mood and with a cruel sense of neglect and loneliness in
his young heart. He could not sleep, and, besides, ere long, heard a
prodigious noise, and cursing, and giggling, and screaming from my
landlady's bar, which would have served to keep him awake.
Then Gumbo's voice was heard without, remonstrating, "You cannot go
in, sar--my master asleep, sar!" but a shrill voice, with many oaths,
which Harry Warrington recognised, cursed Gumbo for a stupid, negro
woolly-pate, and he was pushed aside, giving entrance to a flood of
oaths into the room, and a young gentleman behind them.
"Beg your pardon, Cousin Warrington," cried the young blasphemer,
"are you asleep? Beg your pardon for riding you over on the bridge.
Didn't know you--course shouldn't have done it--thought it was a
lawyer with a writ--dressed in black, you know. Gad! thought it was

Nathan come to nab me." And Mr. William laughed incoherently. It
was evident that he was excited with liquor.
"You did me great honour to mistake me for a sheriff's-officer, cousin,"
says Harry, with great gravity, sitting up in his tall nightcap.
"Gad! I thought it was Nathan, and was going to send you souse into
the river. But I ask your pardon. You see I had been drinking at the Bell
at Hexton, and the punch is good at the Bell at Hexton. Hullo! you,
Davis! a bowl of punch; d'you hear?"
"I have had my share for to-night, cousin, and I should think you have,"
Harry continues, always in the dignified style.
"You want me to go, Cousin What's-your-name, I see," Mr. William
said, with gravity. "You want me to go, and they want me to come, and
I didn't want to come. I said, I'd see him hanged first,--that's what I said.
Why should I trouble myself to come down all alone of an evening, and
look after a fellow I don't care a pin for? Zackly what I said. Zackly
what Castlewood said. Why the devil should he go down? Castlewood
says, and so said my lady, but the Baroness would have you. It's all the
Baroness's doing, and if she says a thing, it must be done; so you must
just get up and come." Mr. Esmond delivered these words with the
most amiable rapidity and indistinctness, running them into one another,
and tacking about the room as he spoke. But the young Virginian was
in great wrath. "I tell you what, cousin," he cried, "I won't move for the
Countess, or for the Baroness, or for all the cousins in Castlewood."
And when the landlord entered the chamber with the bowl of punch,
which Mr. Esmond had ordered, the young