“Do, Mr Deverel—Jack? Let me think.”
He sat back and slumped a little as if some strain had gone out of him. He seemed almost respectful as before a Thinker! But the truth was—
“Look, Deverel—”
“It was Jack just now, let alone when we were about to board.”
“Aye! That was a moment we shall remember—eh? Jack, then. But look. I’ve had the devil of a clout or three clouts over the head—I’m really in no condition to think at all. It aches still.”
“A glass—”
I made an involuntary and impatient gesture with my right hand.
“You know—I would like—I will—do what can be done. The first thing is for me to speak to Summers.”
“Good God! The man’s a Methodist!”
“Is he so? I know him deeply concerned with moral questions but had not thought—”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“It’s the first step. I must know what the situation is, I mean in, in naval law. You are too personally involved and do not yet see the thing clearly.”
“You were present!”
“In body, yes, but I was unconscious. The wits had been knocked out of me by a rope’s end.”
“And this is your offer of help?”
“The trouble with you, Deverel, is you want everything done at once.”
“Thank you, Mr Talbot!”
“I am trying to help. You must not expect from me the instant action of a naval officer.”
“By God, I do not!”
“Be easy again! You cannot go at this as if you was boarding an enemy. Haste will ruin all.”
“What? With two post captains and half a dozen lieutenants senior to me in these ships? They can fix me with a court-martial as easy as kiss my arse! Devil take it and you!”
“Jack!”
The word was emollient. Strange again! Though he looked sullen and his breast heaved, nevertheless he spoke in a lower tone. “There is enough of them to fix up a court-martial here and now.”
“When the wind may send us on our way at any moment? You know I am not instructed in naval matters but I would swear they cannot try you at sea. It is no longer wartime and not as if there was a mutiny. You have not offered the man violence! Besides, deuce take it, while the weather holds we are to have a ball and an entertainment and as if that was not enough I am to dine with Sir Henry! Confound it, man, can you not see that with the peace and abdication and this resolution of a great crisis in the affairs of the civilized world—”
Deverel jerked upright between his hands on the edge of the bunk.
“Dinner? Why, man, there’s your opportunity! Anderson will be there, depend on it! A word with him in Sir Henry’s hearing after the drinks have gone round—”
“He hardly drinks at all. Besides—”
All at once I was aware of how my wounded head was humming. No—singing!
“If you knew how my cursed head aches!”
“You’ll do nothing then.”
“I will find out how the land lies—if the expression means anything in this limbo of streaming water! There is much that may be done if we go about it carefully.”
“You mean I must wait. Endure this humiliation from a man my father would not have at his table!”
“I will endeavour my best in your behalf, little though that best may be.”
“There’s no need to get your rag out!”
The cant expression amused me. I had indeed spoken with a degree of warmth. But somehow it made Deverel more likeable. He saw my involuntary smile, misinterpreted it and was about to fire up again, so that I spoke hurriedly and almost at random.
“I will lead the conversation to duelling if Anderson is there and try to find out what his reaction would be to a challenge.”
“Why—he may have a positive horror of being shot at!”
I looked at him in sheer astonishment. Anderson, a post captain who by report had taken part in bloody engagements! Anderson who had boarded as a midshipman and later taken a fire ship into the Basque Roads under Cochrane! There was more here than I had foreseen. Deverel was now excited in a way that a single glass of my brandy could not account for. He was hectic and rubbing his hands and grinning! I tried to bring him down.
“What is more to the point, my dear sir, is that he may have the strength—what some people would call the strength of mind—to reject any challenge out of hand. There is a strong feeling about in the country that it is folly to set life itself at stake in a trivial matter. Not, of course, that your affair is trivial but others may think it so.”
“They do, they do.”
“I will sound him out.”
“No more?”
“At the moment I can do no more.”
“At the moment. It is a convenient phrase, sir.”
I said nothing. Deverel eyed me critically. Then his expression changed to a veritable sneer. I spoke shortly.
“I repeat. I can do no more at the moment.”
He said nothing for a while but looked towards the mirror above my canvas basin. Then—
“Like the others.”
I made no comment. He went on.
“Oh, I know about Gentleman Jack and Dashing Jack, but do you not detect the sneer? Remember when Colley was slung overboard, Summers deliberately delayed telling me the driver should be afted until the rudder nigh on carried away? But I thought you who was a gentleman and not one of the cursed jumped-up lubbers, at least you would be on my side and not set out to ruin me—”
“You must be mad!”
He said nothing but after a few more moments stood up slowly. He looked at me sideways and began to smile unpleasantly, a kind of inward or withdrawn smile as of one who has infinite comprehension and wariness among enemies. He opened the cabin door, glanced quickly this way and that, then fairly darted out of sight. He left me in a state of great perplexity and confusion. The worst of it was I had committed myself to a degree of intimacy with the man and now felt little inclined to interfere with his punishment for what I could not but see as the just result of his neglect of duty. Above all I did not wish to injure in any way the degree of understanding and mutual tolerance which now existed between me and Captain Anderson. It was all most provoking. I had nothing to push me towards engaging in an advocacy in this instance and believed more and more, to use an abrupt phrase, that Deverel was simply not worth it.
I was called back to immediacy by the sound of the ship’s bells. This was the very hour at which we were summoned to the feast! I glanced into the glass, settled my hair round my wound (hesitated for a moment—why go? why not turn in?). However, I settled my clothing and made my way through the new milliner’s shop. As I did so I heard, among all the shuffling of naked feet, the sound of firm and familiar footsteps above my head. I followed the captain to the broad gangway down which he strode. He stood rigid at the bottom, his hat held across his chest. I, following close, had much ado to prevent myself from crashing into him. I had the wit, however, to seize a side rope with my left hand, snatch my hat off with my right, then stand nearly as rigid as the captain. The deck round the foot of the gangway was crowded and the ceremonial nearly as elaborate as that for Colley’s funeral. Here were sideboys with white gloves, boatswains with calls, marines with muskets, more marines with drums and trumpets, some midshipmen, and a lieutenant or two—and glittering at the end of the lane of ceremonial stood Sir Henry Somerset, unkindly wearing full uniform, the ribbon of his order strained into creases across the white splendour of his embonpoint! The trumpets blared, the drums ruffled, the calls screeched, our working parties stood to attention staring into the mist. All this at a man’s stepping from one plank to another! The ceremony came to an end. Captain Anderson was now properly aboard Alcyone and the two crews might go about their business which I myself thought astonishingly various and complex, in view of the state of the weather, for from the gangway we could hardly see either end of the ships. I stepped forward myself,
to be greeted most affably by Sir Henry who had not the privilege of knowing my godfather, though he had, like all the world—and so on. He conducted us towards his own quarters, talking all the time to our captain. Naval warfare is a lottery! Sir Henry is large rather than impressive. His wealth showed everywhere. Any touches of moulding about the poop were gilded. We walked to the ladder—no, I refuse to be seduced—to the stairs, along a pathway of coir matting laid lest our feet should be soiled by the melting seams. There were canvas chimneys leading up from the quarterdeck and secured to the mizzen rigging—devil take it, I find my determination not to speak Tarpaulin almost impossible to sustain!—in an attempt to replace the fetor of a ship’s interior with purer air. We reached the quarterdeck and the end of the coir matting. I looked down and began carefully and unsuccessfully to avoid the seams when Sir Henry took notice of my attempt.
“Do not trouble yourself, Mr Talbot, I beg. There is nothing here to foul your feet.”
Captain Anderson had stopped too and was looking down.
“Splined, by God!”
It seemed my Tarpaulin was to increase just as I was abandoning it.
“Splined, Sir Henry?”
Sir Henry waved a hand in a dismissive way.
“There was a cargo of rare woods among my prizes. Very fortunate. It is ebony, you know.”
“But splined, Sir Henry?”
“It means replacing the tar and oakum which is commonly used, and makes such a damned mess of our feet, by strips of hard wood. The narrow planks are mahogany. I took up the idea from what I saw aboard the royal yacht when I had the honour of being presented to His Royal Highness. Everything is Bristol Fashion there, I can tell you! After you, Captain Anderson, Mr Talbot.”
“After you, sir.”
“Pray, sir—”
We descended to the stateroom. The lady who came towards us did not so much walk, or even float, as swim. Lady Somerset had an immediate claim on any gentleman’s attention. She was a fine and most handsome woman and dressed in the height of fashion—indeed her costume was more suitable, I thought, for the evening than the middle of the day! Was this “informal dress”? On her bosom there glittered a positive appanage of sapphires which matched those at her ears and wrists. Sir Henry must have intercepted the jeweller to the Porte! Her gown was girt high under her bosom in what—but I have not yet learned to talk Milliner. Nor had I more than a moment to take in her appearance, for she was leaning towards me and moaning. I cannot by any other word describe the way in which having acknowledged Anderson’s abrupt attention, abrupt nod down up—she broke from him, insinuated herself in my direction, gazed earnestly up into my eyes as if we were present at an occasion of most moving importance, then insinuated herself back to our captain and murmured in a deep contralto voice, “Such pleasure!” Since she appeared to be about to swoon at the thought of the pleasure, it was perhaps fitting that she should hold out a hand to each of us as if appealing for support. She was, however, a little too fragrant for my taste. Now I was lifting my hand towards hers when with a movement like that of weed in water she swung both hands in the other direction and moaned again.
“Dearest, valuable Janet!”
There was little doubt about the nature of valuable Janet. She held an embroidery frame in one hand with its material—the needle and thread still stuck in the pattern—together with a fan upside down: and in the other hand a book with one finger marking the page from which she had been reading. She held a cushion under her arm and, as if that load were not enough, a length of ribbon was clenched in her teeth. She appeared to me to be a female of extraordinary plainness. Busily sorting these new people according to what information I had, I at once put her in the compartment labelled “companion”. As I did so she made a ducking curtsey, then bolted out of the stateroom.
“Miss Oates,” murmured Lady Somerset, “a kinswoman.”
“A distant kinswoman,” amplified Sir Henry. “Lady Somerset will not be parted from her. It is her generous heart. She will keep her and how could I say no?”
“Dear Sir Henry, he refuses me nothing, but nothing!”
I was about to make the expected gallant reply when Sir Henry’s face brightened and he spoke in a more energetic voice.
“Come in, Marion, come in! I was laying odds that you would be up and about!”
The lightning that struck the top of the mizzenmast ran down, and melted the conductor into white hot drops. The mast split and flinders shot every way into the mist. The deckhead burst open and the electrical fluid destroyed me. It surrounded the girl who stood before me with a white line of light.
(7)
“Captain Anderson, may I present you? Mr Talbot? Miss Chumley. You look delightfully, Marion, quite the belle—if it were not for, of course—This is Mr Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, my dear. Lady Talbot is a FitzHenry and Mr Talbot is proceeding—”
He must have continued to talk, I suppose. I came to as if from another concussion to find that the gentlemen were holding glasses and strangely there was one in my own hand. Since it is clear that I performed the act of taking a glass and continued to hold it in those first few moments of life I can only suppose that I had been talking as well but what my first words were I am quite unable to say. Oh, thou, Marion, rising from the meekest and deepest of curtsies, sum of all music, all poetry, distracted scraps of which with their newly irradiated meaning tumbled through my mind! But it was Sir Henry’s words I heard when I first emerged from my destroyed state.
“Poor Marion has been positively prostrate! The slightest movement, good God, not just a lop but the least shudder at anchor, and up it all comes! Once she is in India, as I tell her, she must stay there for good, for the return journey would surely make an end of her!”
“Alcyone is lively then, Sir Henry?”
“So-so, Captain Anderson. She is long for her top hamper and ‘utmost dispatch’ is ‘utmost dispatch’, you know. How is your ship?”
“Steady as a rock, Sir Henry, and dead beat as a compass card. Why—even when that fool of a lieutenant allowed her to be taken aback she put her rail under for less than ten seconds by my reckoning and in a fresh breeze too!”
“Sir Henry, Captain Anderson, you are making the poor child quite pale! Come, Marion, the gentlemen will say no more about it. The floor is steady as a ballroom and I have seen you happy enough on that!”
“Why,” said Captain Anderson, “I believe we are to hold a ball aboard my ship which is even steadier than this.”
“Alcyone,” moaned Lady Somerset, “anything is steadier than this beautiful, wild creature!”
I found my conscious voice at last.
“I am certain beyond a peradventure that Captain Anderson would offer his vessel as a refuge for the rest of your journey, Miss, Miss—Chumley!”
Miss Chumley smiled—Marion smiled! The corners of her mouth turned up—my very heart jumps at the memory—it is a sweet pleasure to try to record it. Yet even when Marion was not smiling nature had provided her with a mouth which made her look not merely good-humoured but as if she were enjoying a joke of such power it was a source of permanent pleasure. But I had no sooner begun to find that the only cure for staring impolitely at this mouth was to stare even more impolitely—and more helplessly—at the eyes above it, which ignores her little nose—says nothing of those eyebrows that implied astonishment which by reason of the smiling mouth meant that her whole expression was lively and interested—oh, Lord! The trouble is that since the days of Homer the greatest of poets have exercised the utmost of their art in the description of young women. There is no eloquence, not a figure of speech from understatement to hyperbole that has not been laid under contribution! Go outside the common rules of rhetoric—look for an inspired absurdity, the positively insolent magic of a Shakespeare or a Virgil—
I have got in a tangle and am going nowhere. How was she dressed? It did not seem to matter at the time, but now—
Her dress was white. Blue ribbon I think was thr
eaded through the neckline from shoulder to shoulder and round the ruched sleeves just above the elbows. Her earrings were silver flowers and a chain of the same lay round her neck above the promise of her bosom. She was slight, would always be slight, always suggest, imply more than state—like the greatest of poets!
But Captain Anderson was speaking—had spoken. I recall the words I was not then conscious of hearing.
“No, no, Mr Talbot. We are not going to India but Sydney Cove! Besides, our ship is full of emigrants, passengers, cargo—”
“You see, my dear,” said Sir Henry, laughing, “there is no help for it! To India you must go and in Alcyone too!”
“I cannot understand,” said Lady Somerset, “why there should be such an absolute requirement from naval gentlemen of haste now that we have defeated the French. Surely Captain Anderson—”
Both naval gentlemen laughed. Yes, Anderson laughed!
I found my voice again.
“Miss Chumley, if you will take passage with us I will abandon my cabin to you. I will sleep in the orlop or the bilges. I will guarantee to spend the nights pacing the deck on the side opposite to Captain Anderson—but come, sir—we have an empty cabin. I will move there instantly and Miss Chumley shall have mine!”