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 how we've settled it," replied Gingham.
"Can't be," said Capsicum. "Thought you knew all headquarters' rules, regulations, and observances."
"Thought I did know something about them," replied Gingham.
"Well, then," replied Capsicum, "don't you know what department young Johnny here belongs to?"
"Your department, the commissariat department, I always understood," replied Gingham; "saw his name put down so in the list of passengers per packet at Falmouth. If Mr Y – will oblige me by referring to a document, which I had the honour of handing him before dinner, he will find himself there designated accordingly."
Sure enough, so it was: "G. Y – , Esq., Commissary-General's Department, in A. C., with Gingham Gingham."
"But didn't you happen to know that Mr Y – , as you call him," said Capsicum, "was John Barrymore's own nephew?"
"Of that circumstance I was not cognisant," replied Gingham, "till I happened to become aware of it by the conversation during dinner. Still I retained my former impression, that Mr Y – belonged to your department, not to the military chest."
"The long and the short of it," said I to Gingham, "is this. Shirty here, I am sorry to say, gives me to understand that, at headquarters, as I am attached to the military chest, and not to the commissariat, I cannot have the pleasure of stretching my legs under your table, when you give a spread. My regret is undissembled and profound."
"Nor," said Gingham, "while we both retain our present positions, can we be more than common acquaintance."
The shock of this dénouement was diverted by Capsicum. Spite of his sea-sickness he had purpled up; his eyes flashed and twinkled beneath his massive and contracted brows; he growled, he grunted, he wheezed, he snorted, he puffed; for a time he could not articulate. Either he performed admirably, or he was regularly riled. At length, recovering his breath, not once looking at me, but leaning over to Gingham on the table, he whispered hurriedly, "What does he mean by that? Shirty? Who's Shirty?" Again he turned very green, and sat back in his chair, panting, and swaying his head, like a man ready to faint.
I was sorry to see him so ill, and begged to apologise. He with the greatest propriety might call me "Johnny Newcome," yet it ill became me to call him "Shirty." The name was casually suggested by his profusion of frill, &c. &c. &c.
"I'll tell you what, Mr Johnny," said Capsicum, "it's well for you I'm so bad as I am: wish I was better, for your sake. Wouldn't I pitch into you at once, and give you a precious good hiding? Oh dear! oh me! I am so very bad!" Then, rallying again: "Ah, I wish you did belong to my department! Wouldn't I detach you on outpost duty? Wouldn't I make you ride till you had no leather left? Wouldn't I send you bullock-hunting over the sierras? Oh, dreadful! dreadful! What a horrid sensation this sea-sickness is! Well, good night. I suppose I shall be called Shirty as long as I live." He tottled off to his berth.
"Yes, you may say that," said Joey, from behind his curtain. Joey was right. Ten years after, I heard an old Peninsular speak of Capsicum by the name of Shirty.
There is certainly something very adhesive in a sobriquet; that is, if it happens to stick when first applied. A lubberly big boy once gave me a thrashing at school; and I gave him the only redress in my power, as we were not allowed to throw stones – the name of "Buttons." He had cheated me at the game; and he had many on his jacket. "Buttons" was his name, to his dying day.
Gingham and I remained at the table. "Mr Capsicum is quite right," said Gingham. "Very proper it should be so. Not the less sorry on that account. At Lisbon, you will, in fact, have joined. From the time we land, then, our communications must be limited to the ordinary civilities of social life: until," he added, with a confidential look, "having digested my grand financial project, with Lisbon as the basis of my operations, I am prepared to promulgate it, as authorised, at the headquarters of the British army. Then," said he, proudly, "I shall take such an entirely different footing, so high above the vulgar imputations which always attach to a dealer in bills, that, without exposing either you or myself to criticism, I may again permit myself the pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance, on our present terms of friendship – I may say, intimacy. At any rate, while we remain on board the packet, that intimacy, I trust, will experience no diminution. Good night, sir."
We shook hands: his manner, I thought, a little stiff.
Left alone in the cabin, leaning on the table, the night-lamp shedding a dim and dubious light, my small modicum of brandy-and-water expended, and the time gone by for brewing another, as the steward had turned in, I sat and ruminated. Gingham, watching his opportunity, had benevolently endeavoured to make me sensible, that, as a clerk on actual service, I should soon be engaged in duties which could not be performed to my own credit, without care and circumspection; and that I might find myself, ere long, in some responsible situation, demanding the utmost caution and energy, to compensate my inexperience. Since the morning, for we had been much together during the day, through his friendly suggestions, I had, in a measure, become conscious of all this: I was beginning to feel the value of such a monitor; and now, it appeared, he was lost to me in that character! Then there were other considerations of a deeper kind. I remembered the dinner at the hotel; I remembered the breakfast; I thought of the travelling store-closet. To have lost such a companion of my first campaign – it was, indeed, a loss! Had I never dined with him, I could have better borne it!
At length I came to this conclusion; that, as all the other passengers had retired to rest, I – had better do the same. I was about to put my decision in execution, when my attention was arrested by a lamentable cry, which issued from the berth of poor Mr Commissary Capsicum. "I can't – I can't – I'm stuck! – weak as a rat! Oh, I am so very bad! Here, steward! steward! –
