THE seaside institution to which Bobbie, with an attention that could not
have been exceeded if he had been paying money recklessly to everybody
around him, found himself conveyed, exactly fitted his desires. The
cool, calm order of the place, the quiet service of serene women
attendants in their dark gowns and white aprons, the well-chosen table,
the pure white linen in spotless bedrooms—all these things, that might
have irritated the boy had he been perfectly well, were, in his
convalescent state, precisely what he required. The days had become
warmer, and it was possible to spend a good deal of time on the wooden
balconies of the Swiss-like building. From these balconies he could look
away across the green waters, with their patches of dark purple; could
watch the Channel steamer puffing its way across, presently to enter the
harbour below. The harbour itself never ceased to delight him. There it
was that steamers rested in a dignified manner when off duty, submitting
themselves to an energetic washing of decks and rubbing of brasswork;
near them, brown-sailed fishing vessels for ever going out to sea or
coming back from sea, manned by limited crews, who shouted in the dialect
of the Kentish coast, and whose aim in life it appeared to be not so much
to do work themselves as to tell others to do it. The scent of the sea
came up to the balconies, and most of the boys in varying stages of
repair who inhaled it, declared their intention, once they had regained
possession of that health which for the moment eluded them, of becoming
admirals in her Majesty’s navy. Bobbie Lancaster on this subject said
nothing, which was his way when engaged in making up his mind.
Stages marked the progress of improvement. One of the earliest came on
permission being granted to walk about the green-grassed lawn around the
Home, with its summer-houses, where, over the fence in the evenings, you
could observe sons of mariners wooing, with economic speech, daughters of
other mariners, and kissing them, under the impression that no one but a
Martello tower looked on.
Here Bobbie himself fell in love.
A breezy curate attached to the church close by, for ever flying in and
out of the Home with no hat, and an appearance of having another
engagement of a highly urgent character for which he was a little late,
hurried in one day to look round the sitting-room where the guests played
dominoes, and found Bobbie well enough to go out; so well, indeed, that
he had arranged to go down the long road towards the white cliffs in
company with an adult patient, who, being in ordinary times a stoker on a
London Bridge and Greenwich steamboat, posed as authority on all matters
concerning the navy, and arbitrator in disputes concerning that branch of
the service. Breezy Curate, in less than no time at all, found other
work for the naval authority, gained the necessary permission from the
Lady Superintendent, and was away with Bobbie, walking so fast that he
had to run back now and then in the manner of a frisky terrier, in order
that Bobbie should keep up with him. Ere the boy had time or breath to
ask questions they arrived at the door of a round squat Martello tower
(called by elderly acquaintances Billy Pitt’s Mansion), where he was
lugged in and introduced to the coastguardsman who lived there;
introduced also to coastguardsman’s immense niece, who appeared to
Bobbie, panting on a chair, like a very large angel, only better dressed
and much better looking, and who, it appeared, came in daily to make tidy
her uncle’s tower. Breezy Curate, before hastening off for a fly along
the cliffs, made the boy a friend of Coastguard and Coastguard’s niece,
and promised to call back for him in an hour.
“Reckon you’ve been ’avin’ games, young man, ain’t you?” said Coastguard
sternly. “What made you fall down and step on yerself in that manner
for, eh?”
Bobbie explained. When he described the fire in Margaret Ward, the large
angel, making tea and toasting bread that filled the small room with most
appetizing odours, looked up.
“Bravo,” said the young woman. “Come here and I’ll give ye a kiss for
that.”
Bobbie hesitated.
“Go on, lad,” counselled her uncle; “there’s them that wouldn’t want to
be asked twice to do that, jigger me if they would.”
“Uncle!” said the large angel reprovingly. “Do give over.”
Bobbie considered it proof of the young woman’s angelic nature that,
seeing he did not stir, she came to him, toasting-fork in hand, gave him
a hug and then went back to her work at the fire. Coastguard, enormously
amused at this, slapped his knee, saying that seeing kisses were cheap,
jigger him if he wouldn’t have one, and a kiss he therefore took, and the
three sat down to tea in great good-humour. By an effort, Bobbie
determined to retain the correct behaviour that he had learnt in the
Cottage Homes and at Margaret Ward; Coastguard, delighted with the boy’s
respectful manner, declared that an earl could not comport himself
better. From this, Coastguard passed, by easy transition, to a review of
the Royal Family of his country, a review that became a glowing eulogy.
The angel, too, preparing to cut cake, expressed so much affection for
the younger members of the family, portraits of whom were on the walls of
the little room of the Martello tower, that the boy found himself
impressed, and convinced by views in regard to Royalty that were novel to
him.
“Old Lady,” declared Coastguard, blowing at his tea, “will have the best.
She don’t mind what she pays for her Navy, but she will ’ave it good.”
“I see what you mean,” said Bobbie.
“Do you like the outside or the inside?” asked the angel at the cake.
“Both, Miss,” said Bobbie.
“None of your ne’er-do-wells for her,” went on Coastguard. “None of your
thieving—”
“You’ve dropped your knife on the floor, little boy,” said the angel.
“That’s a sign you’re not careful.”
“‘None of your bad characters, none of your criminals for my Navy,’ she
ses, ‘if you please.’ And jigger me,” said Coastguard explosively,
“jigger me if the old Lady ain’t right.”
“You ought to call her ‘Her Majesty,’ uncle. You’d look silly if she
happened to be listening.”
“Go’ bless my soul,” said Coastguard with enthusiasm, “she wouldn’t mind
it from me. She knows my way of talking.”
“And,” stammered Bobbie, “is it—is it true then that you can’t get into
the Navy if you’ve done anything wrong?”
“Devil a bit,” answered Coastguard. “Old Lady’d think it was a piece of
impudence to try it on. Looey, my gell, whilst I’m havin’ my pipe jest
give us a toon on the old harmonium.”
The large niece, seated at the harmonium, seemed, to the thoughtful
Bobbie, more like an angel than ever; the music she produced helped to
distract his troubled thoughts. Presently, however, the angel found a
Moody and Sankey book and, having propped it on the ledge before her,
picked out on the keys as with her foot she moved the pedals, a hymn that
gave the boy memories. The Coastguard rolled his head to the rhythm; now
and again taking his pipe from his mouth to growl a note or two and thus
give his niece encouragement.
“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to—”
Bobbie sat forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the broad bending back
of the young lady at the harmonium, and thought of Ely Place. What a
long way off Ely Place seemed now; Bat Miller, and Mrs. Bat Miller, and
the Fright; all these were misty figures that for years had visited his
memory infrequently. Bat Miller’s time would be up in a year or two.
Bobbie shivered to think what he should do were Bat Miller’s face to
appear suddenly at the window. For a few moments he dared not glance at
the window, fearful that this impossible event might happen; when at the
end of the hymn he nerved himself to look in that direction he felt
almost surprised to find no face peering in.
“Gi’ us,” said the Coastguard cheerfully, “Gi’ us ‘Old the Fort.’ That’s
the one I’m gone on. There’s a swing about ‘Old the Fort.’”
It seemed to the boy that already he had lived two lives; that the first
had been broken off short on the day he turned out of Worship Street
Police Court. He could not help feeling a vague admiration for that
first boy because the first boy had been a fine young dare-devil, never
trammelled by rules of behaviour; at the same time it was as well,
perhaps, that the first boy had ceased to live, for he was not the kind
of lad Bobbie could have introduced to the angel.
“And now,” said the Coastguard, “jigger my eyes if I mustn’t on with my
jacket and find my spy-glass and see what’s going on outside. Where’s
that young curate got to, I wonder?”
The Coastguard went presently, after telling Bobbie that he might call
again at the Martello tower, and that if he behaved he should one day go
out to the Coastguard Station and see, by aid of the telescope, the coast
of France. Bobbie, alone with the angel, and allowed to seat himself at
the end of the harmonium, behaved with a preciseness and a decorum that
in any other lad would have been held by Bobbie as good justification for
punching that boy’s head. The angel’s right hand remaining on the higher
keys for a space in order to give full effect to a final chord, he bent
and kissed it. The scent of brown Windsor soap ever afterwards reminded
him of this first essay in affection.
“What ye up to?” demanded the angel.
“Only kissin’ your ’and,” said Bobbie confusedly.
“We don’t kiss hands down in these parts,” said the large young lady.
“That ain’t Kentish fashion.”
“I like you,” remarked the boy shyly.
“My goodness!” said the angel with affectation of much concern, “this
won’t do. I mustn’t be catched alone with a young man what says things
like that. I’d better be seeing about taking you back to the home, I
reckon.”
The curate not returning (having, as it proved, flown away to a
neighbouring parish and forgotten all about the boy), this course had to
be adopted, and the two walked back along the road on the edge of the
white cliffs—Bobbie in a state of proud ecstasy, which reached its
highest point, when a boy, in passing them, called out to him, “Why doan’
you marry the girl?” The angel herself spoke of the amount that the
starting of a household cost; of the relative advantages of a house with
folding doors but no bay windows, compared with a house having bay
windows, but no folding doors; all in a manner that seemed to the boy,
strutting by her side, highly encouraging, and, under the circumstances,
as much as on such brief acquaintance a man could reasonably expect. At
the home, any trouble that might have arisen by reason of the boy’s
extended absence was removed by the fact that the angel had once been a
highly-esteemed servant at the Institution; the Lady Superintendent met
them without a frown. The large young lady found herself lugged into the
kitchen by two of the white-aproned maids for a chat, and when presently
she looked in to say good night, at the reading-room where Bobbie was
finishing a sea story, she kissed him, to the great envy of the other
convalescent young students.
“Serve us all alike, Miss,” begged a lad with crutches.
“You be quiet,” ordered Bobbie, “unless you want your head punched.”
“Give me ’alf a one,” urged the lad with crutches.
“No fear,” said the angel cheerfully. She nodded her head to Bobbie.
“He’s my young man.”
“Should have thought you’d got better taste, Miss.”
“You leave off talking to that lady,” growled Bobbie, “or I’ll spoil your
features for you.” The large young lady waved her hand and disappeared
through the swing doors. “If you ain’t a gentleman, do, for goodness
sake, try to ’ide the fact.”
In the few weeks of Bobbie’s residence, the Coastguard became his very
good friend. The boy learned the secrets of flags, listened with an
interest that he had never felt at school to the accounts of British
victories by sea in the past, absorbing with great appetite the
Coastguard’s figures illustrating the current state of the Navy. In his
young heart patriotism was born.
Permitted to see through the telescope the coast of France, he commenced
to realize actualities that he had never gained from maps. In the school
of the Cottage Homes the general impression amongst incredulous small
boys had been that no such places as foreign countries really existed;
that these were fictions invented by adults for the more complete
annoyance and trouble of children. Now the line of cliffs where on
bright days tiny black specks could be seen moving, brought conviction;
the boy found that he had much to learn, and something to forget. One
Sunday afternoon, being allowed to go down to the sleeping harbour, and
over the line, and along the quay by the Customs House, he met, by happy
chance, the angel, in white, with green sunshade, who, it appeared,
waited for some one who would be free as soon as the baggage had been
cleared; together they watched the Channel steamer bustle in and wake up
the harbour, saw ropes thrown, gangways fixed, and presently heard the
arriving passengers chattering in a language which the angel told him was
French.
“Ignorant set, ain’t they?” asked Bobbie.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the large young lady tolerantly.
“I ’aven’t got much opinion of foreigners,” said the boy. “For one
thing, why don’t they learn a decent language like ourn?”
“I s’pose they get on all right without it.”
“Do you know any French?”
“A bit,” said the angel modestly.
“Tell us some!”
“Je vous aime,” said the angel. On Bobbie demanding a translation, the
large young lady, shading her face with the green parasol, furnished
this.
“Who learnt it you?” demanded Bobbie jealously.
“Ah,” said the angel acutely, “that’s tellings.”
It galled him considerably on the last occasion that the breezy young
curate took him under his wing to fly away with him along the cliff and
look in at the Martello tower for a picture of a ship which the
Coastguard had promised to him, to find the small room almost wholly
occupied by a tall bashful young Customs officer, with limbs so long that
when he sat down his knees came up in a manner which Bobbie considered
eminently ridiculous. The angel had not arrived, but was expected; when
the curate insisted upon Bobbie coming away with him, his picture of the
ship under his arm, in order that they might skirt the cliffs
swallow-like once more, Bobbie complied with hesitation, being thus
denied the joy of seeing the lady of his heart.
“I’d like to stay ’ere all me bloomin’ lifetime,” said Bobbie to the Lady
Superintendent that night.
Nevertheless, the next day he had to listen to the voice of
reasonableness, to pack up the books that had been given him by the
curate, the picture that Coastguard had presented, and a marvellous
four-bladed knife from the angel, for which he had paid to that young
lady the sum of one halfpenny, in order that the knife might not, in its
keenness, sever friendship. He said good-bye to the Lady Superintendent,
remembering (just in time) to say, “Thank you,” a phrase with which he
had become on intimate terms, and walked stolidly down to the station,
where a train would take him back to London and the Homes. As he looked
at the contents of the bookstall (he had begun in those days to feel an
appetite for reading, and a strange craving when not furnished with
something in the form of printed words) to him appeared:—
First, the angel! Bobbie had felt confident that the large young lady
would not allow him to depart without giving him an opportunity of
formally declaring his love; he had already decided on the form of his
address.
Second, the curate! Curate flying in through the booking office,
skimming restlessly up and down the platform, chatting with porters,
chucking babies under the chin, and telling the station-master how a
railway ought to be managed.
Third, Coastguard. Jiggering everything at frequent intervals; handing
over to Bobbie as final gifts a parcel of huge ham sandwiches and a model
clockwork steamer.
Fourth, as the train signalled from the preceding station, an entirely
unnecessary person in the shape of the tall Customs officer, rather shy,
but taking up, as it seemed to Bobbie, the unwarrantable attitude of
being a friend of the family, and brushing from the angel’s brown cape a
few specks of dust with a calmness for which Bobbie, circumstances
willing, could have felled him to the platform.
“I say,” said Bobbie, leaning out of the carriage window, when he had
been helped into the train, “I want to speak to you.”
“Me?” asked the Customs.
“You?” said Bobbie, with infinite scorn. “Good ’Eavens, no. I mean
her.” The angel stepped forward. “I want to ask you something,” he said
rather unsteadily.
“I know what it is,” declared the angel gaily. “You want me to remember
to send you some of the cake.”
“What cake?”
“Oh, as if you didn’t know,” said the angel reproachfully. “Why, my
weddin’ cake, of course. Don’t say you haven’t heard that me and him,”
indicating the tall Customs officer, “are going to be married next month
at—. Now you’re off. Good-bye, dear.”
“Be a good lad,” cried Coastguard, as the train moved.
“Be sure to get out at Cannon Street,” called the curate, flying along
the platform, “and don’t forget to say your prayers at night.”
When, two hours later, the train ran into the London terminus, porters
surveyed with critical eye each compartment, and having made hurried
selections, staked out their claim by seizing a carriage handle as they
trotted along till the train stopped. Bobbie, rather ill-tempered on the
journey because his affairs of the heart had been so brutally checked,
had his head out of the window as the train slowed up.
“Any luggage?” asked the porter breathlessly.
Bobbie shook his head, and the porter hurried on in search of a more
encumbered traveller. Bobbie, walking down the crowded platform to the
barrier, found the word luggage remaining in his mind. It recalled
evenings with Bat Miller at stations on the other side of the City,
followed sometimes by an interesting review of the contents of a
portmanteau or a lady’s dressing-case in Ely Place. Around the guard’s
van, now disgorging its contents hurriedly and confusedly, passengers
stood as though at an auction, and when they saw an article of luggage in
tune with their desires, held up a hand, and the article being knocked
down to them, they bore it off without further question. In the centre,
one of the busy porters acting as auctioneer held up a bright brown
portmanteau with initials painted boldly.
“Anybody claim this?” demanded the harried porter. “Anybody claim a bag
with—. A bundle of rugs, lady? I’ll look after it in ’alf a moment, if
you’ll only leave off prodding me in the back with that gamp of yours.”
“I want,” said Bobbie’s voice, “a bag marked L. C. E.”
“Why,” grumbled the porter, handing it over to Bobbie, “’ere ’ave I been
the last five minutes trying to find a owner for it? Want a cab?”
“No,” said Bobbie, “I’ll carry it.”
“It’s a bit lumpy,” remarked the porter warningly.
“I know,” said the boy.
He gave up his ticket at the barrier and lugged the heavy bag across to a
departure platform.
It was, as the porter had said, a heavy bag, and anxious as the boy felt
to get away with it, he found himself obliged to rest for a moment when
he had reached the platform. Then he started on again, the heavy
portmanteau bumping against his knee. Through his alert little head a
scheme had already danced; a scheme necessitating an empty compartment to
permit of a selection from the articles which the bag contained, and the
disposal of the bag itself. This would have the advantage of deferring
the awkward duty of returning to the Cottage Homes that day. A nurse
walked by on the platform, with flowing cloak and white bands; Bobbie’s
mind was recalled to Sister Margaret. From Sister Margaret his thoughts
went to his other friends. He sat down on the portmanteau; his breath
came quickly.
“They’d all look pretty straight,” he said to himself, “if they knew.”
He rose slowly, and gripped the stout leather handles of the bag.
“’Owever, I ain’t going to be copped. There’s plenty that do a thing
like this quietly and never so much as—”
He stopped. Across the line on the wall a large portrait in an
advertisement frame had—a cloud of engine smoke disappearing—come into
view. Bobbie stared at it.
“The old Lady,” he muttered.
The portrait of her Majesty the Queen of England and Great Britain looked
across at Bobbie with, as it seemed to him, a look of surprise, mingled
with reproof. A train whistled, a ticket collector shouted, “North Kent
train to Blackheath,” but the boy did not move. When the train had
started, and the smoke had cleared away, Bobbie found his attention still
held by the portrait on the other platform.
“The old Lady,” he quoted, under his breath, “will ’ave the best. She
don’t mind what she pays for her navy, but she will ’ave it good. None
of your criminals for her navy, if you please.”
He started up, his face white and perspiring. Lugging the weighty
portmanteau back to the arrival barrier, he staggered determinedly
through.
“Tell you what,” a young officer lad was saying fiercely. “If you
porters don’t find that fearful bag of mine I’ll—”
“’Scuse me,” interrupted Bobbie, placing the portmanteau at the feet of
its owner. “My mistake. Took it off in the hurry, instead of me own.”
“I’m really most fearfully obliged,” declared the officer lad effusively.
“It has my dress suit, don’t you know, and I should have looked such a
fearfully silly fool this evening without it.”
“You’re saved from that now, sir,” said the inspector, pointedly.
“What I mean to say is, I’m so fearfully indebted to you that really—”
“Don’t name it,” said Bobbie. “Glad I brought it back in time.”
“Good-bye, old chap,” said the officer lad, shaking hands with the boy.
“I’m most fearfully glad to have met you. Can’t give you a lift, I
suppose, anywhere, can I, what?”
“Thanks, fearfully,” said Bobbie. “My brougham’s waiting outside for me.
Ta-ta!”