By Celia's Arbour. A tale of Portsmouth Town. Reprinted from the 'Graphic.'

Front matter

BY CELIA'S ARBOUR. il %tlc of HLoton. (Reprinted from the "Graphic."] BY WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE, AUTHORS OF "READY-MONEY MORTIBOY," "THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY," "MY LITTLE GIRL," "WITH HARP AND CROWN," " THIS SON OF VULCAN," "THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT," "WHENTHE SHIP COMES HOME," " THE MONKS OF THELEMA," ETC, etc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : SAMPSON LOAV, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1878. (AU Rights Reserved.) CONTENTS OF VOL. I. chapter tag:-: I. ON THE QUEEN'S BASTION I II. THE CAPTAIN 1 7 III. VICTORY ROAV . . . . • jO IV. THIRTY YEARS AGO .... 45 V. THE YOUNG PRINCE .... 62 VI. CELIA 79 VII. AUGUSTUS IN THE LEGAL . . 94 VIII. THE UNFORTUNATE YOUNG NOBLE- MAN 108 IX. HOPES AND FEARS . . . . I23 X. WAR 135 XL THE WAR, AND AFTER . . . Contents.

CHAPTKK PAGE XII. THE BRAMBLER FAMILY . . . l6$ XIII. A FLOAVER OF LOVE . . . . iSo XIV. ON THE SEA-SHORE . . . -194 XV. LA VIE DE PROA'INCE. . . . 209 XVI. A DINNER-PARTY .... 225 XVII. AN OLD PROMISE . . . . 24 1 XVIII. FROM THE ORGAN-LOFT . . . 256 XIX. THE PONTIFEX COLLECTION . .

Chapter I. Ox The Queen's Bastion

WO boys and a girl, standing together in the north-west corner of the Queen's Bastion on the old toAvn wall. Leonard, the elder boy, leans on an old fashioned 32 pounder which points through an embrasure, narrow at the mouth and wide at the end, straight up the harbour. vol.. I. Should any enemy attempt to cross the lagoon of mud which forms the upper harbour at Ioav tide, that enemy Avould, as Leonard often explained, be " raked " by the gun. Leonard is a lad between seventeen and eighteen, tall, and Avell-grown. As yet his figure is too slight, but that will fill out; his shoulders are broad enough for the strength a year or tAvo more will give him ; he has short brown hair of quite a common colour, but lustrous, and with a natural curl in it ; his eyes are hazel, and they are steadfast ; Avhen he fought battles at school those eyes looked like winning ; his chin is strong and square ; his lips are firm.

Only to look upon him as he passed, you Avould say that you had seen a strong man in his youth. People turned their heads after he had gone by to have another look at such a handsome boy. He leans his back, now, against the gun, his hands resting lightly upon the carriage on either side, as if to be ready for immediate action ; his straAv hat lies on the grass beside him. And he is looking in the face of the girl. She is a mere child of thirteen or fourteen, standing before him and gazing into his face with sad and solemn eyes. She, too, is bareheaded, carrying her summer hat by the ribbons. I suppose no girl of fourteen, Avhen girls are bony, angular, and big footed, can properly be described as beautiful ; but Celia was always beautiful to me. Her face re mains the same to me through the changes of many years — always lovely, always SAveet and win some.

Her eyes Avere light blue, and yet not shal- Ioav ; she had a pair of mutinous little lips Avhich were generally, but not to-night, laughing; her hair hung over her shoulders in the long and unfettered tresses which so Avell become young maidens ; and in her cheek was the prettiest little dimple ever seen. But noAV she looked sad, and tears A\-ere gathered in her eyes. As for me, I was lying on the parapet of the Avail, looking at the other two. Perhaps it will save trouble if I state at once who I was, and Avhat to look upon. In the year 1853 I was sixteen years of age, about tAvo years older than Celia, nearly tAvo years younger than Leonard. I believe I had already arrived at my present tall stature, which is exactly five feet one inch. I am a hunchback. An accident in infancy rounded my shoulders and arched my back, giving me a projection Avhich causes my coats to hang loosely where other men's fit tight, forcing my neck fonvard so that my head bends back where other people's heads are held straight upon their necks.

It Avas an unfortunate accident, because I should, but for it, have grown into a strong man ; my limbs are stout and my arms are muscular. It cost me nothing as a boy 1 — to climb up ropes and posts, to clamber hand over hand along a rail, to get up into trees, to do any thing where I could get hold for a single hand or for a single foot. I was not — through my unlucky back, the distortion of my neck, and the length of my arm — comely to look upon. All the years of my childhood, and some a good deal later, were spent in the miserable effort to bring home to my self the plain fact that I was disgracie. The come liness of youth and manhood could be no more mine than my father's broad lands ; for, besides being a hunchback, I was an exile, a Pole, the son of a Polish rebel, and therefore penniless.

My name is Ladislas Pulaski. We were standing, as I said, in the north-west corner of the Queen's Bastion, the spot Avhere the grass was longest and greenest, the wild convol vulus most abundant, and where the noblest of the great elms which stood upon the ramparts — " to catch the enemy's shells," said Leonard — threw out a gracious arm laden with leafy foliage to give a shade. We called the place Celia's Arbour. If you looked out over the parapet, you saw be fore you the whole of the most magnificent harbour in the world ; and if you looked through the em brasure of the wall, you had a splendid framed picture — water for foreground, old ruined castle in middle distance, blue hill beyond, and above blue sky. We were all three silent, because it was Leonard's last evening with us. He was going away, our com panion and brother, and we were there to bid him God speed.

It was after eight ; suddenly the sun, which a moment before Avas a great disc of burnished gold, sank below the thin line of land between sky and sea. Then the evening gun from the Duke of York's Bastion proclaimed the death of another day with a loud report, Avhich made the branches in the trees above us to shake and tremble. And from the barracks in the town ; from the Harbour Admiral's flagship; from the Pert Admiral's flagship; from the flagship of the Admiral in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, then in harbour ; from the tower of the old church, there came such a firing of muskets, such a beating of drums, playing of fifes, ringing of bells, and sounding of trumpets, that you Avould have thought the sun Avas setting once for all, and receiving his farewell salute from a Avorld he Avas leaving for ever to roll about in darkness.

The evening gun and the tintamarre that followed roused us all three, and Ave involuntarily turned to look across the parapet. Beyond that was the moat, and beyond the moat was a ravelin, and be yond the ravelin the sea-wall ; beyond the Avail a smooth and placid lake, for it was high tide, four miles long and a couple of miles wide, in which the splendour of the west was reflected so that it looked like a furnace of molten metal. At low tide it Avould have been a great flat level of black mud, unlovely even with an evening sky upon it, inter sected with creeks and streams which, I suppose, were kept full of water by the drainage of the mud-banks. At the end of the harbour stood the old ruined castle, on the very margin and verge of the water. The Avails were reflected in the calm bosom of the lagoon ; the water-gate opened out upon the Avave lets of the lapping tide ; behind rose the great don jon, square, grey, and massive; in the tourney-yard stood the old church, and we needed no telling to make us think of the Avails behind, four feet broad, rugged and Avorn by the tooth of Time, thickly blossoming with gilly-flowers, clutched and held on all sides by the tight embrace of the ivy.

There had been rain in the afternoon, so that the air was clear and transparent, and you could see every stone in the grand old keep, every dentation of the wall. Behind the castle lay the low curved line of a long hill, green and grassy, which made a back- Ou the Queen's Bastion. 7 ground to the harbour and the old fortress. It stretched for six miles, this hill, and might have been monotonous but for the chalk quarries Avhich studded its side Avith frequent intervals of white. Farther on, to the west, there lay a village, buried in a great clump of trees, so that you could see nothing but the tower of a church and the occa sional smoke of a chimney. The village was so far off, that it seemed like some outlying fort, an ad- A'ance Avork of civilisation, an outpost such as those which the Roman conquerors have left in the desert.

When your eye left the village among the trees and travelled southwards, you could see very little of land on the other side by reason of the ships which intervened — ships of every age, of every class, of every colour, of every build ; frigates, three-deckers, brigs, schooners, cutters, launches, gunboats, paddle wheel steamers, screw steamers, hulks so old as to be almost shapeless — they were lying ranged in line, or they Avere moored separately ; some in the full flood of the Avaning sunset, some in shadow, one behind the other, making deep blacknesses in the golden water. There Avas not much life at this late hour in the harbour. Here and there a boat pulled by two or three lads from the town ; here and there a great ship's gig, moving heavily through the water, pulled by a crew of sailors, roAving with their slow and measured stroke, and the little middy sitting in the stern ; or perhaps a wherry coming down from Fareham Creek.

But mostly the harbour Avas silent, the bustle even at the lower end having ceased with the sunset. " What do you see up the harbour, Leonard ?'" asked the girl, for all of us were gazing silently at the glorious sight. " I am looking for my future, Cis, and I cannot make it out." " Tell us what you think, Leonard " Five minutes ago it looked splendid. But the glory is going off the water. See, Cis, the castle has disappeared — there is nothing to be made out there but a low black mass of shade; and the ships are so many black logs lying on grey water that in ten minutes will be black too. Nothing but black ness. Is that my future ?" " I can read you a better fortune out of the sun set than that," I interposed. " Do, Laddy," said Celia. " Don't let poor Leo nard go away Avith a bad omen." "If you look above you, Leonard," I went on.

" you will see that all the splendours of the earth have gone up into the heavens. Look at the brightness there. Was there ever a more glorious sunset ? There is a streak of colour for you ! — the one above the belt of salmon — blue, with just a suspicion on the far edge of green. Leonard, if you belieA'ed in visions, and wished for the best possible, you could have nothing better than that before you. If your dreams were to get money and rubbish like that " — it will be remembered that I who enunciated this sentiment, and Celia Avho clapped her hands, and Leonard Avho nodded gravely, were all three very young — "such rubbish, it Avould lead you to disappointment, just as the golden water is turning black. But up above the colours are brighter, and they are lasting ; they never fade." " They are fading now, Laddy."

" Nonsense. Sunsets never fade. They are for ever moving westwards round the world. Don't you knoAv that there is always sunset going on somewhere? Gold in evening clouds for us to sec, and a golden sunrise for some others. So, Leo nard, Avhen your dreams of the future were finished you looked up, and you saAv the sky brighter than the harbour. That means that the future will be brighter than you ever dreamed." Leonard laughed. " You agree with Laddy, Cis ? Of course you do. As if you two ever disagreed yet !" " I must go home, Leonard ; it is nearly nine, And, oh ! you are going away to-night, and when -when shall Ave see you again ?" " I am going aAvay to-night, Cis. I have said good-bye to the Captain, God bless him, and I am going to London by the ten o'clock train to seek my fortune."

" But you will write to us, Leonard, won't you ? You will tell us what you are doing, and where you are, and all about yourself?" He shook his head. " No, Cis, not even that. Listen. I have talked it all over with the Captain. I am going to make my fortune — somehow. I don't know how, nor does he, the dear old man. But I am going to try. Perhaps I shall fail, perhaps I shall succeed. I must succeed." His face grew stern and a little hard. " Because everything depends upon it, whether I shall be a gentleman, or what a gutter child ought to expect." " Don't, Leonard." " Forgive me, Laddy, but everybody knows that you are a gentleman by birth and descent, and very few know that I am too. Give me five years. In five years' time, if I live, and unless it is abso lutely impossible for me to get home, I promise to meet you both again.

It will be June the 21st in the year 1858. We will meet at this time — sunset — and on this same spot, by Celia's Arbour." '• In five years. It is half a lifetime. What will have happened to us all in five years ? But not a single letter ? Oh, Leonard, promise to Avrite one letter, only one, during all the years, to say that you are Avell. Not leave us all the time Avithout a single Avord." He shook his head. " Not one, Cis, my child. I am not going to write you a single letter. One thing only I have promised the Captain. If I am in danger, sickness, or any trouble, I am to Avrite to him. But if you get no news of me set it down to good news." " Then, if you will not write there is nothing to look forward to but the end of the five years. Laddy, don't you feel as if you were a convict be ginning a five years' sentence ?

I do, and perhaps you will forget all about us, Leonard, when you are away over there, in the great Avorld." " Forget you, Cissy ?" He took her hands, and drew the girl to himself. "Forget you? Why, there is nothing else in all the Avorld for me to remember except you, and Laddy, and the Cap tain. If I could forget the seventeen years of my life, the town, and the port, the ships, and the sailors, the old Avails, and the bastions — if I could rid my memory of all that is in it now, why — then, perhaps I could forget little Cissy. Other men belong to families. I have none. Other men have brothers and sisters. I have none. Laddy is my brother, and you are my sister. Never think, Cis, that I can forget you for one moment." " No, Leonard. We will try to feel always that you are thinking about us.

The Captain says nothing is better for people than always to remem ber what others would like them to say, and think, and do. Stay, Leonard." She had made a little bouquet of daisies, and the sweet wild convolvulus which spread itself over all the slopes of the walls Out of this she picked two or three blossoms, tied them up with a tendril, and laid them in a paper " That is my French exercise for to-morrow. Never mind. There, Leonard, carry that away with you, to remember me by." " I Avill take it, Cis, but I want nothing to re member you by." "And now, Leonard, make your promise over again. Say after me, ' In five years' time ' " " In five years' time " ' In rags or in velvet' — be very particular about that, Leonard, you are neither to be too proud to come nor too ashamed, in rags or in velvet."

" In rags or in velvet." " ' In poverty or in riches.' ' " In poverty or in riches." " ' In honour or' no, there can be no dis honour — 'in honour or before the honour has been reached, I will return.' " " I AviU return," echoed Leonard. " And we will meet you here, Laddy and I." He held her hands while she dictated the words of this solemn promise, looking up at him with earnest and pleading face. Then the church clock struck nine, and from the Port Admiral's flagship boomed a solitary gun, which rolled in short, sharp echoes along the walls, and then slowly thundered up the shores of the harbour. Then there was a pause. And then the bells began their customary evening hymn. They struck the notes slowly, and as if with effort. But the hymn-tune was soft and sad, and a carillon is always sweet.

That finished, there came the cur few bell, which has been rung every night in the old town since the time of the great Norman king. The day was quite done now, and the twilight of the summer night was upon us. Gleams of grey lay in the west reflected in the untroubled sheet of the harbour, the cloudless sky looked almost as blue as in the day, and the stars were faint and pale. Venus alone shone brightly ; the trees, in the warm, calm night, looked as if they were sleep ing, all but one — a great elm which stood at the end of the Avail, where it joined the dockyard. It was shaped in the black profile of the evening something like the face of a man, so that it stood like a giant sentry looking every night across the harbour. " I must go," said Celia. " Good-bye, Leonard Good-bye, dear Leonard.

Forgive me if I have teased you. We shall look forward — Oh ! how eagerly Ave shall look forward to the end of the five years. Good-bye." He took her in his arms, and kissed her again and again. She cried and sobbed. Then he let her go, and without a word she fled from us both, flying down the grassy slope across the green. In the twilight we could catch the glimmer of her white dress as she ran home, until she reached her father's garden gate, and was lost. "Walk with me to the station, Laddy," said Leonard. We walked away from the quiet walls where there was no one but ourselves, out from the shadow of the big elms, and the breath of dewy grass, and the peacefulness of the broad Avaters, down into the busy streets. Our way lay through the narrowest and the noisiest. Shops were open. especially places which sold things to eat and to drink.

Hundreds of men — chiefly young men — were loafing about, pipes in their mouths, among the women, who were buying in a street market, consisting almost entirely of costers' carts and barrows, and where the principal articles exposed for sale appeared to be hot cooked things of pun gent and appetising odour, served and dressed with fried onions. Every night, all the year round, On the Queen s Bastion. 15 that market went on ; every night that incense of fried onions arose to the much-enduring skies, every night the crowd jostled, pushed, and enjoyed their jokes around these barrows, lit by candles stuck in bottles, protected by oiled paper. " Look at them," said Leonard, indicating a little knot of young fellows laughing together at each other's gros mots. " Look at them. If it had not been for the Captain I might have been like them."

" So might I, for that matter." " What a life ! No ambition ! No hope to get beyond the pipe and beer ! If I fail it will be better than never to have tried. Laddy, I mean to make a spoon or spoil a horn, as the Scotch say." " How, Leonard ?" " I do not know quite. Somehow, Laddy. Here we are at the station. You AviU be good to the old man, won't you ? Of course you will, Laddy, a great deal better than I could ever be, because you are so much more considerate. Keep up his spirits, make him spin yarns. And you will look sharp after the little girl, Laddy. She is your great charge. I give her into your keeping. Why, when I come back she will be nineteen, and I shall be four-and-twenty. Think of that. Laddy, be fore I go I am going to tell you a great secret. Keep it entirely to yourself. Let no one hear a word of it, not even the Captain."

" Not even Cis ?" "Why, that would spoil all. Listen. If I come back in five years' time, a gentleman, a real gentle man by position as I am by birth, I mean to — to ask little Celia to marry me." I laughed. " How do you know you will care for her then ?" " I know that very well," he replied. " I shall never care in the same way for any other girl. That is quite certain. But oh, what a slender chance it is ! I am to make myself a gentleman in five years. Celia has got to get through these five years without falling in love Avith anybody else. Of course all the fellows in the place will be after her. And I have got to please her when I do come back. Wish me luck, Laddy, and good-bye, and God bless you all three." He squeezed my hand, and rushed into a carriage as the engine whistled, the bell rang, and the train moved away. Then I realised that Leonard was really gone, and that we should not see him again for five long years.

Chapter II. The Captain

I WALKED home sadly enough, thinking how dull life for the next five years was going to be. It was half-past ten when I arrived, but the Captain was sitting up beyond his usual hour, Avaiting to hear the last news of Leonard. He was at the open Avindow overlooking his garden ; before him stood his glass of grog, empty, and his evening pipe was finished. " You saw him off, Laddy ?" he asked with a little eagerness, as if Leonard might possibly be lurking in the hall. " You are quite sure he got safely into the train" — five-and-twenty years ago people were not so familiar with railway-trains, and they were generally regarded even by old sailors as things uncertain about going off, as well as un trustworthy when you were in them. " Poor lad ! VOL. I. At Winchester by this time, very nearly. Thirty miles from salt water."

The Captain at this time Avas about sixty years of age. He was a man of short and sturdy build, with a broad and rosy face like an apple, and per fectly white hair. His Avhiskers, equally white, were cut to the old-fashioned regulation " mutton chop," very much like Avhat has now come into fashion again. They advanced into the middle of the cheek, and were then squared off in a line which met the large stiff collar below at an angle of forty-five. Round the collar, the Captain wore a white cravat, which put on many folds as the weather grew cold. He never appeared except in some sort of uniform, and paraded his profession habitually, as was the custom among sailors of his standing, by a blue frock with anchor buttons. In winter, he wore loose blue trousers, which, when the warmer days returned, he exchanged for white ducks.

Upstairs he kept a uniform of surpassing splendour, with epaulettes, sword-belt, sAvord, gold lace, and an innumerable number of buttons. But this was reserved for ceremonies, as when a ship Avas launched, or when the Port Admiral invited the Captain to dinner, or when the Queen visited the Yard. On all other occasions, the blue frock with brass buttons formed the Captain's only Avear. He had great white beetling eyebroAvs which The Captain. 19 would have lent him a ferocious aspect but for the twinkling blue eyes beneath them. There were crows'-feet lying thick about those eyes which gave them a curiously humorous look, not belied by the mobile lips below. You might see, by the light of the single pair of candles, that it was a plainly-furnished room, having in it little besides a small square table, a horsehair sofa, a wooden arm-chair, a bookshelf with a hundred volumes or so, most of them boys' school-books, and a piano which was mine, given me by Mr. Tyrrell.

The walls were decorated with pictures of naval engagements and ships, cut out of illustrated papers, or picked up at second-hand shops, mounted and framed by the Captain himself. Above the mantelshelf was a print of the Battle of Navarino, showing the Asia engaged with two Egyptian and Turkish men-of-war, one on each side of her, the rest of the action being invisible by reason of the smoke. The Captain would contemplate that picture with a satisfaction quite beyond the power of words. " 'Twas in '27," he Avould say ; " I was Lieutenant then : Sir EdAvard Codrington was Admiral. We sailed into Navarino harbour at 2 p.m. after dinner. Gad ! it was a warm afternoon we had, and lucky it was the lads dined before it. Something to re member afterwards. Don't tell me that Turks can't 2 — fight.

A better fight was never made even by the French in the old days. But their ships, of course, Avere not handled like ours, and out of eighty odd craft, which made up their fleet, we didn't leave a dozen fit for sea again." And on the mantelshelf was a model, made by the Captain, of the Asia herself. The piano, I explained above, was my own. Everything else I had in the world came from the Captain ; the clothes I wore were bought by him ; it was he who brought me up, educated me, and lifted me out of the mire. I am bankrupt in grati tude to the Captain. I have no words to say Avhat I owe to him. I can never repay by any words, acts, or prayers, the load of obligation under Avhich I rejoice to be towards that good man. It began, his incomparable benevolence to Leo nard and to me, like a good many other important things, with a crime.

Not a very great crime ; nor was the criminal a very important person ; but, as the Rev. Mr. Pontifex once said of it, it was em phatically a Wrong Thing, and like all Wrong Things ought to be remembered with Repentance. Mr. Pontifex, although he had never had the op portunity of reading a certain great Bishop's Treatise on the Sinfulness of Little Sins, was as uncompromising as that Prelate could Avish, and I hope that Leonard, who Avas the criminal, has long Tlie Captain. 21 since repented. Certainly, it was the infraction of a commandment. Now Mr. Pontifex has repeatedly asserted, and his wife approved, that he who breaks one commandment breaks all. This is what Avas done. The Captain's house, one of a row, stood separated from the street by the respectability of three feet clear and an iron railing.

It was close to St. Faith's Square, a fashionable and almost aristocratic quarter, inhabited by retired naval officers, a few men who had made fortunes in business, and a sprinkling of lawyers. It was a plain square red brick house, with nothing remarkable about it but the garden at the back. This was not a large garden, and, like others in the old town, was originally intended as a drying ground — all builders in those days were accustomed to consider a house as, in the first instance, a family laundry. The garden was planted with raspberry canes, gooseberry bushes, and currant-trees. Peaches and plums Avere trained along the Avails. There were one or two small pear-trees, and there was a very fine mulberry. In the spaces the Captain culti vated onions, radishes, and lettuce with great success.