Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 410, December 1849. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
vessel way, the wind was soft, and at times scarcely perceptible. The waves heaved lazily; the ship surmounted them with measured rise and fall; and, though the heavens were overcast, a light, different from that of day, clear but faint, was equably diffused on all sides. The tremulous surface of the ocean, dark, but distinguishable to the horizon, was there sharply outlined against the pale but still luminous sky.
Since we left port in the morning, what with showers and spray, wind and sunshine, I had been more than once wet through and dry again. The consequences were now perceptible. I shivered inwardly. My mind, too, was ill at ease. After much reflection, and some self-examination, I came to this conclusion: that something was requisite, something was indispensable, in my actual condition both of mind and body. What that something was, did not instantly occur to me. I asked myself the question point-blank – I answered it. The problem was solved: I wanted – a nightcap. Down I rushed into the cabin. "Steward, bring me some hot water and a little brandy." – "Yes, sir; a glass of hot brandy and water, sir; coming directly, sir." – "No, no, steward; that's not what I called for. Bring the brandy and the hot water separate. I'll mix for myself."
"Quite right," growled a feeble voice. It was poor, unhappy, still-very-far-from-perfectly-recovered Mr Capsicum's. The falling of the wind had so far abated the ship's movements, that his worst symptoms were now relieved. Still, however, he was far, very far, from well. Most of the passengers had turned in; but there, by lamplight, sat poor Capsicum at the cabin table, from sheer listlessness, destitute of sufficient energies to put himself to bed, a lamentable spectacle.
"Suppose you join me, then," said I. "Do you good."
"Can't, can't," said he, plaintively. "Couldn't get it down, if I knew it would make me well this instant. Wish I could. I'll see you take yours, though. That'll be some comfort, anyhow."
The steward now brought hot water, half a lemon, lump-sugar, tumbler half full of capital brandy. – "Here, steward, you may take the lemon away with you. Don't want it."
"Quite right," grunted Capsicum, who thought himself a connoisseur in all things eatable and drinkable. "Quite right; no rum, no lemon." Spite of his pitiful plight, he now, con amore, set himself to watch my operations critically; as if, from the brewing, he would form an estimate of my judgment, capabilities, taste, character, and general attainments.
With the silver tongs I extracted a lump of crystal sugar, the largest in the basin. The present "without" system was not then in vogue, nor have I adopted it yet. But now there was a hitch – how to melt the sugar. In the tumbler it must not go – there was the brandy: that had been an infringement of all the laws of potatory combination. I felt that I was under observation, and that my character was at stake. I placed the sugar in the spoon. "Quite right," said Capsicum.
Yet neither, according to the modern practice, did I wash the sugar, half melted, from the spoon into the tumbler, with a stream of hot water. That, I submit, is an approximation to the error of immersing the sugar in the unmixed brandy. No, no. Holding the spoon over the tumbler, I carefully dropped upon the sugar three drops of the boiling water. It was enough. The sugar gradually subsided into a pellucid liquid, which filled the spoon. Capsicum, who, sick as he was, still watched my proceedings with the deepest interest, and with a patronising air of mild benignity, repeated his testimonial – "Quite right."
Waiting till the sugar was wholly dissolved, I then at length infused sufficient hot water to scald the raw spirits, then added the sugar. Two or three stirs sufficed; not a bead floated on the surface. The mixture was made – tumbler about half an inch from full – a "stiff un." Capsicum raised himself from the table on which he had been leaning, with folded arms, like a cat watching a mouse, and gave a snort of approbation.
"You and that white fellow old acquaintance?" said Capsicum.
"Our acquaintance," replied I, "commenced at Falmouth about a week ago."
"Oh! thought perhaps he was some family connexion," said Capsicum.
"The connexion is quite recent, as I tell you," said I; "but I certainly don't mean to cut it. Hope to dine with him at headquarters, every day I'm disengaged."
"Dine with him at headquarters?" replied Capsicum. "You'll do nothing of the kind, I can tell you that, sir. That is, you'll dine with him at my table; pretty often, too, I trust. Hope I shall frequently have the pleasure of seeing you both. But at his own table, if you're twenty years at headquarters, you won't dine with him once; take my word for that. John Barrymore wouldn't suffer it." Here was a blow!
"Well, but that's a thing I can't understand," said I.
"Well then, I must make you understand it," replied Capsicum. "You are going out on an appointment as clerk in John Barrymore's Department. Isn't it so?" I bowed assent.
"Very well. That white chap does business in commissariat bills. When he gets a bill, he's dying to get the cash. Your Department pays the cash. Don't you see, my dear sir? It wouldn't do. It would be utterly at variance with all the rules of propriety, for any man in your Department to be on terms of intimacy with any man who does business in bills. Besides, it would be contrary to headquarters etiquette; everybody would talk about it. Now," added Capsicum, with a self-approving air, "now I've done my duty by John Barrymore. Noticed you were very thick. Thought I'd tell you, the first opportunity. Oh me! oh me!" (sighing, panting, gasping, pressing his hands on his stomach, and swaying his head from side to side,) "how very ill I do, feel! Such a horrid sensation! a don't-know-howishness – a sort of a come-overishness! The exertion of talking has made me quite bad again. Here, steward! steward! I must go on deck this instant." He turned ghastly green.
"Yet," said I, hoping he would soon be better, "Mr Gingham, it seems, can dine with you, without any breach of propriety."
"Yes, yes, to be sure he can," said Capsicum; "and so can you. Our Department don't finger the cash. Don't you see? That makes all the difference. Hope you'll both dine with me often."
"Shall be very happy," replied I: "much obliged for your kind invitation. But still I can't understand. Mr Gingham has been at headquarters before, and knows headquarters. He also knows, I suppose, that your humble servant is a clerk of the military chest. Yet it was he himself who made the proposal that he and I should campaign together."
"Can't explain that," said Capsicum; "must leave him to explain that as he can. Oh! here he comes."
Gingham, before he turned in, had been on deck, to take a last look at the weather, to commune with the silent night, to scrutinise the horizon, to soliloquise with the clouds, and perhaps for some better and more solemn purposes: for Gingham, with all his oddities, was a man of religious principle, and of devotional feeling, and cared not who knew it. He now approached, and seated himself with us at the cabin table.
"Saw you at Cadiz," said Capsicum. "Think I saw you at Madrid."
"I saw you at Canton," coolly replied Gingham. Capsicum looked a little queer.
"At Canton?" said Capsicum. "Saw me at Canton? Did you, though? Come, come, now you're joking, you know. Did you though, really? How was I dressed?"
"You were dressed like what you were; not exactly as you are dressed now. You had a long, taper pigtail, reaching down to your heels; no hair on your head besides. You had slippers, scarlet and gold, turned up at the toes. You carried a fan; and didn't I once or twice see you followed by a fellow who carried a parasol over your head at the top of a long pole? You had – "
"I'll tell you what," said Capsicum precipitately; "I'm a Christian for all that, and my father was an Englishman. True, I was bred at Canton; but I wasn't born there. Born at Macao. My mother – "
Here, in a voice which ran through all the notes of the gamut, not however in due order, but like the cat's minuet, high and low alternately, Gingham struck up a strange outlandish sort of utterance, whether talking or singing I could not tell; but, if singing, it was the rummest song I ever heard – a jumping, dissonant compound of bass and treble. Capsicum responded in a similar fugue. The two funny rogues were speaking Chinese! The discovery of Capsicum's semi-gentile extraction tickled my fancy not a little.
"So," said Capsicum to Gingham, "you and Johnny intend to make a joint concern of it at headquarters."
"That's