"And thine, I suppose," said Varney, "has had its edge blunted long
since?"
"I cannot remember, sir, that its edge was ever over-keen," replied
Lambourne. "When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed
them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars,
and what remained I washed out in the broad waves of the Atlantic."
"Thou hast served, then, in the Indies?"
"In both East and West," answered the candidate for court service, "by
both sea and land. I have served both the Portugal and the Spaniard,
both the Dutchman and the Frenchman, and have made war on our own
account with a crew of jolly fellows, who held there was no peace beyond
the Line." [Sir Francis Drake, Morgan, and many a bold buccaneer of
those days, were, in fact, little better than pirates.] "Thou mayest do me, and my lord, and thyself, good service," said
Varney, after a pause. "But observe, I know the world--and answer me
truly, canst thou be faithful?"
"Did you not know the world," answered Lambourne, "it were my duty to
say ay, without further circumstance, and to swear to it with life and
honour, and so forth. But as it seems to me that your worship is one who
desires rather honest truth than politic falsehood, I reply to you, that
I can be faithful to the gallows' foot, ay, to the loop that dangles
from it, if I am well used and well recompensed--not otherwise."
"To thy other virtues thou canst add, no doubt," said Varney, in a
jeering tone, "the knack of seeming serious and religious, when the
moment demands it?"
"It would cost me nothing," said Lambourne, "to say yes; but, to speak
on the square, I must needs say no. If you want a hypocrite, you may
take Anthony Foster, who, from his childhood, had some sort of phantom
haunting him, which he called religion, though it was that sort of
godliness which always ended in being great gain. But I have no such
knack of it."
"Well," replied Varney, "if thou hast no hypocrisy, hast thou not a nag
here in the stable?"
"Ay, sir," said Lambourne, "that shall take hedge and ditch with my Lord
Duke's best hunters. Then I made a little mistake on Shooter's Hill,
and stopped an ancient grazier whose pouches were better lined than his
brain-pan, the bonny bay nag carried me sheer off in spite of the whole
hue and cry."