Shifting Winds | Page 2

a lion
by reason of the wind, which blew a hurricane outside, and shook the
family mansion, a small wooden hut, to its foundations.
The hour was midnight. This fact was indicated by the family clock--a
Dutch one, with a face which had once been white, but was now
become greenish yellow, probably from horror at the profanity of the
artist who had painted a basket of unrecognisable fruit above it, an irate
cockatoo below it, and a blue church with a pink steeple as near to the
centre of it as the hands would admit of.
The family circle, consisting of a stout good-looking woman of thirty
or thereabouts, and a little boy and girl, were of the fisher class,
obviously so to the senses of sight and smell. They sat by the fire.
It was an unusual hour for supper, but then it was an unusually wild
night, and the frequent glance cast by the woman at the Dutch clock
with the horrified countenance, showed clearly that the board was not
spread for the family meal, but that they waited up for some absent one.
I have said that the family circle sat by the fire, but this is not strictly
correct. One member of it, the little boy, stood in the middle of the
room, howling!--howling so violently that his fat face had changed
from its wonted bright red to deep purple. Looking at him--as he stood
there arrayed in his uncle's red night-cap, his own night-shirt, which
was also a day-shirt and much too small, and his father's pea-jacket,
which was preposterously too large--one could not avoid the alarming
surmise that there might be such a thing as juvenile apoplexy, and that
that boy was on the point of becoming a living, if not a dead, example
of the terrible disease.
Oh! it was a sweet child, a charming infant, altogether a delightful
creature to look upon, that son of Stephen Gaff, as it stood there yelling
like a hyena, stamping like a mad bull, washing its dirty hands in tears
on its dirtier cheeks, cramming its little knuckles into its swollen eyes
as if it sought to burst the organs of vision in their sockets, and
presenting, generally, an appearance of rampant rage and woe that
baffles all capacity of conception, and therefore defies all power of

description.
This cherub's name was Billy,--Billy Gaff; more familiarly known
amongst his friends as "The Bu'ster," owing to his tendency to explode
into tears, or laughter, or mischief, or fun, as the case might be. He
was about eleven years of age.
My own name, reader, is Bingley. Having retired on half-pay from the
Royal Navy, I reside in a pleasant cottage in the suburbs of the
well-known and important seaport town of Wreckumoft, situate on the
east coast of England. My front windows command a magnificent view
of the sea; my back windows command an equally magnificent view of
landscape. I have a magnificent wife, and she commands the household,
myself included. There was a time--I reflect on it with melancholy pride
and subdued satisfaction--when I commanded a British seventy-four. I
command nothing now but my temper. That, however, is a stronghold
from which nothing terrestrial can drive me.
My friends style me "The Captain," but I am not the hero of this tale.
No, by no means. I am altogether unheroic in my nature, commonplace
in my character. If a novelist were to describe me, he would write me
down a stout little old gentleman, with a bald head and a mild
countenance; mentally weak in expression, active in habits, and
addicted to pipes and loose clothing.
Do not imagine that this is my account of myself; no, it is an ideal
resulting from the oft-repeated assurances of my wife, who is a
strong-minded woman, a few inches taller than myself, somewhat
raw-boned and much more powerful, physically, though less rotund. In
fact, if I were to attempt a brief comprehensive description of her, I
would say, without the most distant feeling of disrespect of course, that
she is square and skinny--singularly so!
Mrs Bingley's contempt for my intellect is excelled, I might almost say
redeemed, by her love for myself. How she manages to separate
between myself and my intellect I have never been able to understand;
but then she is strong-minded, which perhaps accounts for her seeing
farther into this millstone than I can. She tells me, not unfrequently,

that I am weak-minded. She even goes the length at times of calling me
imbecile; but she is a dear good affectionate woman, and I have no
sympathy with the insolent remark I once overheard made by an
acquaintance of mine, to the effect that it was a pity Mrs Bingley had
not been born with a