“If the weather holds. Suppose there is wind. We cannot sail together and dance at the same time!”
“Lady Somerset declares there will not be a wind—she feels there will not be! She is a sensitive. Sir Henry declares that he relies on his ‘little witch’ to make the weather behave. They are a charming and delightful couple. It is said they will entertain some of us to dinner or a luncheon.”
A marked silence ensued. Neither Miss Granham nor I seemed disposed to break it. Finally Mrs Brocklebank broke it herself.
“Lady Somerset has a fortepiano but declares she is sadly out of practice. She presses Miss Chumley to play, who does so delightfully.”
“How do you know all this, ma’am?”
“And who”, said Miss Granham, “is Miss Chumley?”
“Miss Chumley is an orphan and Lady Somerset’s prodigy.”
“Good God, ma’am,” said I. “Can she be as finished a musician as that?”
“They are taking her with them to India where she is to live with a distant relative, for she is quite without fortune, except for her skill.”
Have I reported that conversation in its right place? I cannot remember. Certainly at some point I found myself thinking—all this is absurd, cannot be happening—it is my head that is wrong. How did I get away? I remember being pressed by Miss Granham to try the effect of repose, but I walked instead past my hutch and out into the waist, then up by way of the stairs to the quarterdeck. I cannot tell how long I stayed there staring at the invisible horizon and trying to think! I have never known such a queer condition! I understand now that it was the effect of excitement, fear, and the repeated blows that had kept my head ringing like a bell. At one point Wheeler appeared and suggested that I should get some sleep but I drove him off testily. I heard a muted roar from below the poop and soon Bates came and begged me not to walk the quarterdeck, for the captain was trying to sleep. So away I drifted in a kind of dream.
Wheeler came to me.
“All the other ladies and gentlemen are turned in long ago, sir, and fast asleep.”
“Do you know, Wheeler, what I think about Mrs Brocklebank?”
“You’ve had a thump, sir, they say. But don’t worry, sir. I’ll stay near you.”
“Is this a dagger which I see inside me, its handle—”
“Now come along and lie down, sir, I’ll stay—”
“Keep your hands off me, man! Who has the watch?”
“Mr Cumbershum, sir.”
“We are safe enough then.”
All this inconsequence! But Wheeler must have persuaded or forced me into the lobby. I was surprised to find how the lobby had altered. For one thing, it was lighted by no less than two powerful oil-lamps! Trunks, boxes and bags were piled outside the cabins, my own among them, including, I noticed, the box that held the remainder of my travelling library. Wheeler got me into my chair and pulled off my boots.
“That reminds me. You are a careless fellow, Wheeler. How did you come to fall overboard?”
There was a long pause.
“Wheeler?”
“I slipped, sir. My brass rag blew out of my hand and caught in the main chains. I had to climb outboard for it. Then I slipped, sir, like I said.”
It came to me in the confusion of my head that I knew the truth of the matter. His death had been convenient. He had informed on Billy Rogers and paid for it in the fearful currency of criminals. Yet so strange was my state that I merely nodded and let him continue with his work about me.
“You are a ghost, Wheeler.”
“No, sir.”
“Go and get some sleep.”
“I’ll stay with you, sir, you aren’t fit to be left. I’ll get my head down here on the deck.”
I shouted at him, I think, and he went. As for me, I fell into my bunk.
(6)
THE GREAT DAY
Indeed I can call it no other. That day, from my rising to my strange setting, I could wish to go with me in every detail to my grave. I have little enough skill to preserve it. Words, words, words! I would give them all and live dumb for one moment of—no, I would not. I am absurd.
Only just now I was remembering Colley’s long, unfinished letter. I cannot think that he supposed himself adept in description and narration, yet this very innocence, his suffering and his need for a friend if only a piece of paper, gave his writing a force which I can admire but not imitate.
Now, as I write this, my legs locked into the structure of the chair while the deck heaves and sidles—I wear my greatcoat even in my cabin.
But to return. I woke, sweatily in that humid heat. When I dressed myself it was only that the noise from the lobby was intense and would have kept me from sleep even if I had been capable of it. Moreover the calls of nature pay no attention to such trifles as a cracked head! So after I had dressed, I picked a careful way through the lobby to the privies on the starboard quarter. I mean on the right side at the back of the ship—and returning was like the exploration of a bazaar! There were not only bales and boxes, trunks and bags, but all our female passengers busy among them! They handled a mixed exhibition of stuff fit for an Eastern market. Zenobia was there with little Mrs Pike. Miss Granham rose from among a rainbow of dresses and flashed her smile at me! I had intended to plead my head as a reason for avoiding the ball, but that smile, together with an archly kind look from Mrs Brocklebank—I confess all this freely—changed my mind for me. I told Wheeler to get out my tailed coat and knee-breeches, together with the light suiting, the material for which had been recommended to me by a man who had done a tour in India. By the time I had changed into this last, even the passenger saloon had been turned into a milliner’s shop. There was Miss Granham, just where she had sat the day before and looking, I will not say pretty, but indefinably excited and good-humoured and handsome! She was wearing a dress of dark blue silk and had a large and complicated shawl of lighter blue crossed over her bosom. It seemed more oncoming than was appropriate for a governess. But then, good God, I remembered in time that she was no longer a governess but the financée of a man who, however outrageous his politics, was none the less of considerable substance and unquestionably a gentleman. In short this was Miss Granham come out of her chrysalis!
“Good morning, Miss Granham. Like it, you are radiant.”
“A pretty speech from our gallant defender. It would be prettier if the sun shone.”
“The mists are golden.”
“That was almost poetical. How does your head, sir?”
“I know now what is meant by ‘heart of oak’. I appear to be roofed with it.”
“Your own costume is admirably suited to the climate.”
“I am dressed for comfort. But you ladies are going out of your way to delight us.”
“You do not think highly of the nature of ladies, sir. The melancholy truth is we are prepared for a whole day of festivity. We dine in Alcyone’s wardroom. There is a ball to be given on our own deck, and an entertainment presented to us by our own seamen!”
“Good heavens!”
“I believe it may do some good in this, this—”
“Not entirely happy ship?”
“You have said it, sir, not I.”
“But a ball!”
“Our neighbour has a band.”
“But an entertainment presented by the seamen!”
“I hope it may be edifying but fear it will not.”
“The ball at any rate—Miss Granham, may I claim your hand for a dance?”
“I am flattered but should we not wait? To tell you the truth I am not entirely informed of Mr Prettiman’s views on such activities and until then—”
“Of course, ma’am. I say no more but will hope.”
The door opened and in flew pretty Mrs Brocklebank. Her arms were full of some foaming material. In a second our ladies were deep in a discussion of such technical mysteriousness that I withdrew without interrupting them. If I defined our sailor’s speech as “Tarpaulin”, then I must
define what our ladies were saying (both speaking together) as perfect “Milliner”. It confirmed what I had felt when Pike had talked about the “larboard beam”. I saw my efforts to talk as the seamen did as a crass affectation. I might as well have talked of hems and gores and gussets! Let the rest of the passengers make free with Tarpaulin. I myself would stand out for a landsman’s lingo! So farewell, Falconer and his Marine Dictionary, without a twinge of regret but indeed, with some relief.
I took my hat from my hutch and walked into the waist. The sun was faintly visible in the mist and not yet more than its own diameter above the horizon but already the preparations for our extraordinary day of festivities were well under weigh—I mean in process of being completed. Perhaps “under weigh” is permissible as a phrase which has lost its technical and precise reference and become general? But the scene, though I am persuaded I shall never forget it, must none the less be described. At the height of our mainyard our ship was roofed with awnings—either sails used for the purpose or awnings proper. Though as yet the swiftly rising sun shone levelly under them, in later hours they would provide a grateful shade. Alcyone had her awnings at the same level, though of course higher up the masts. The effect was of two streets side by side—we were a small township, or a village at least, a village out here in this deserted wilderness. It was preposterous. The wild almost mutinous behaviour of our sailors when they heard the tidings of peace had subsided and they worked everywhere in silence and with an apparent goodwill. It was the prospect of an entertainment. Like small children they had entered the world of “let’s pretend” and were, it seemed, satisfied there. Hand flags and larger bunting were being hung from the awnings. There were even flowers—not from the captain’s cabin as I thought at first but most cleverly constructed from scraps of material. From Alcyone came the sounds of a small band at practice! I suppose our two fiddles and a serpent were among them. Yet with all this, the ceaseless business of the ships went on—two men stood at our motionless wheel and two others stood at Alcyone’s. Our odd sailing master paced the quarterdeck, a spyglass under his arm, while a midshipman did the like aboard our neighbour! I had no doubt that above the awnings work still went on at the stumps of our decapitated masts and that somewhere in the fore or the main or the mizzen the lookout stared at the horizon, whence the sun was already drawing up mist. It was all so unexpected and quaint that I forgot the ringing of my head and came near to being myself once again. I now saw that our two streets were kept apart by those huge bundles of wood which are let down the sides of quays to prevent ships damaging themselves with rubbing on stone. The steep gangway formed an alley joining our two ocean streets. It was wide enough to be negotiated even by ladies. Two red marines were stationed at Alcyone’s end of the alley and two plainly disgruntled members of Oldmeadow’s troop in green guarded ours. I went to the rail and looked over. I was in time to see a gunport close, or rather the last furtive inch of its closing! So that was one of the ways the people of both ships could communicate whether their officers wanted them to or no—and, of course, across from mast to mast, yard to yard, the monkeys would swing as in a forest! Small chance of perfect discipline when ships lie together!
A midshipman from Alcyone came up the gangway, saluted and, after enquiring my name, offered me a white and slightly scented note. I unfolded it. Captain Sir Henry and Lady Somerset request the pleasure of the company of Mr Edmund FitzH. Talbot to dinner aboard Alcyone, twelve o’clock, wind and weather permitting. Dress informal, a verbal reply will suffice.
“I accept with pleasure, of course.”
I returned to my hutch. I remember clearly telling myself that all this was not a dream not a phantasy brought on by the wounding of my head. Yet with this extraordinary hamlet or village built a thousand miles from anywhere and wrapped now in a humid mist which seemed to invade my intellect as much as it drifted across our decks, what had gone before and what was to come seemed unimportant, trivial even, so that England at our back and the Antipodes before us were no more than engraved lines on a map. And Wheeler was back, intercepted by a frigate’s course as improbably as that a thread thrown at the eye of a needle should go through it! Here was all. The two streets side by side—and Alcyone’s bell rang, to be echoed immediately by our own, so that it was four bells in the forenoon watch with the cry from her of “Up spirits” duplicated a few yards from me on our deck—the crowds that thronged those decks and the decks below them, the busy yet only half-understood business that was carried on twenty-four hours a day in both ships to keep life supportable—the planking with its black and sometimes bubbling seams—the very parallel lines of them which sometimes would enforce a dreary and sickening substantiality in which their movement was malign—this was all that was real.
What bathos! I have tried to say what I mean and cannot. This tropical nowhere was the whole world—the whole imaginable world. This was a neck of history, the end of the greatest war, was the middle of the longest journey, a . . . a nothing! An all, an astonishment, a cold factuality. I bend the English language in an effort to say what I mean and fail.
“Edmund.”
I swung around in my chair. Deverel was looking in at the door. I must confess to finding his visit unwelcome.
“What is it, Deverel? I am about to—”
“Good God! The man has his own supply of brandy! A glass if you please for the bad boy of the school.”
“Help yourself. But are not you—?”
“Forbidden the drink like the parson’s son? Damn him, it’s peacetime and I’ll not be shackled any longer. If he does not let me out of arrest I’ll snap my sword in his face, go ashore and hey for the open road!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why, my good Edmund, what can he do? Obtain for me the Lord High Admiral’s Displeasure on Vellum? Let him break me; it’s no more than my sword they break, a piece of damned cutlery I’ve no use for now there’s so much peace about!”
“A gentleman’s sword—”
“A white man east of Suez may do well enough.”
“We are not east of Suez.”
Deverel emptied an extraordinary fraction of the tumbler of brandy down his throat. It made him gasp. Then—
“I cannot beg from the man. It would break me as well as my sword to do so. I must have my dignity.”
“So must we all.”
“This is my plan. You are to tell him what I propose.”
“I tell him?”
“Who else? The rest are rabbits. Besides, what have you to lose?”
“The devil of a lot!”
“Tell him that I engage to cause no trouble till we make a port—”
“That’s good.”
“Wait. There I shall resign my commission.”
“Or have it taken from you, Deverel.”
“What’s the odds? You’re not drinking, Edmund, and you’re cursed dull today. Tell him if you like that as soon as I’ve ceased to be an officer you’ll bear him my challenge—”
“I?”
“Don’t you see? Can you imagine old Rumble-guts faced with a challenge?”
“Yes.”
“Why, when we thought Alcyone might be a Frog he was shivering like a tops’l.”
“Are you serious?”
“Did you not see?”
“You underestimate the man.”
“That’s my affair. But you’ll tell him?”
“Look—Deverel—Jack. This is madness.”
“You’ll tell him!”
I was silent for only the briefest moment in which I made up my mind.
“No.”
“No? Just like that?”
“I am sorry.”
“By God, you’re not! I had thought better of you, Talbot!”
“Listen. Try to be sensible. Don’t you understand that I cannot in any circumstances take to the captain what is neither more nor less than an open threat? If you were not in an overexcited state—”
“Do you think I’m drunk? Or in a blue funk?”
“Of course not. Calm down.”
Deverel poured himself another drink, not as large as the first but large enough. The bottle and glass clattered together. It was essential to stop him getting really drunk. I allowed my hand to go out and take the glass from him.
“Thank you, old fellow.”
For a moment I thought he was about to strike me. Then with an odd kind of laugh—
“‘Lord Talbot’. I must say you’re a cool one.”
“Was this for you? I’m sorry—”
“No, no. Have it.”
“The first day of peace. So up spirits!”
I coughed mightily over it. Deverel watched in silence, then slowly seated himself on the further end of my bunk.
“Edmund—”
I looked at him over the glass.
“Edmund—what am I to do?”
Deverel was no longer looking fierce. It was strange but after all the devil-may-care actions of the past twenty-four hours it was as if a far less assured young man had appeared in the place of the one I knew. I saw now how although he was of more than average height he was of a slight build and lightly muscled. As for his face—I saw with astonishment that the forward-projecting sweep of his sidewhiskers was an attempt of which he was quite possibly unaware to compensate for a weak and slightly receding chin. Gentleman Jack, the honourable Dashing Jack! It was a paroxysm of rage and, yes, fright that had given his right arm the momentary strength to sink his blade so deeply in the rail. Comprehension became so complete that I felt as lost and frightened as ever he had been. It is a dreadful thing to know too much. I saw that had it not been for the support of his family name and an air which stemmed more from imitation than worth, he might have been an ostler, a footman, a gentleman’s gentleman! It was confusing to look at this man whom I had once thought the most gentleman-like of the officers—which indeed—the question is such a confusion—which indeed he was! His negligence and intemperance had nothing to do with what I now saw and understood. His latest wild scheme, depending as it did on a physical cowardice in Captain Anderson for which there was less than no evidence, was phantasy. Anderson would treat a challenge from Deverel, civilian or no, with contempt and no one would blame him. Deverel must not be allowed to continue in it!