My grand-uncle pushed the decanter of brown sherry: a stout old-fashioned
decanter, with shoulders almost as square as his own, and a silver chain
about them bearing a silver label--not unlike the badge and collar which
he himself wore on full ceremonial occasions.
"Three times round the world," he said, "and as yet only twice around the
table. You must do it justice, gentlemen."
"A great wine, Admiral!" said the Rector, filling and sipping, with
half-closed eyes. "They have a brown sherry at Christ Church which may
challenge it, perhaps . . . The steward remembers my weakness when I go up
to preach my afternoon sermon at St. Mary's. There was talk in
Congregation, the other day, of abolishing afternoon sermons, on the
ground that nobody attended them; but this, as one speaker feelingly
observed, would deprive the country clergy of a dear privilege. . . ."
The Rector took another sip. "An heroic contest, between two such wines!"
"Talking of heroic contests, mine came to me by means of a prize-fight,"
said my grand-uncle, with a glance down the table at us two youngsters who
were sipping and looking wise, as became connoisseurs fresh from the small
beer of a public school. At the word 'prize-fight,' Dick and I pricked up
our ears. To us the Admiral was at once a prodigiously fine fellow and a
prodigiously old one--though he dated after Nelson's day, to us he reached
well back to it, and in fact he had been a midshipman in the last two
years of the Great War. Certainly he belonged to the old school rather
than to the new. He had fought under Codrington at Navarino. He had
talked with mighty men of the ring--Tom Cribb, Jem Mace, Belcher, Sayers.
"What is more," said he, "though paid late, the wine you're drinking is
the first prize-money I ever took; in my first ship, lads, and within
forty-eight hours of joining her. . . . Youth, youth!"--as the decanter
came around to him he refilled his glass.--"And to think that I was a good
two years younger than either of you!"
"A prize-fight? You'll tell us about it, sir?" ventured Dick eagerly.
"The Rector has heard the yarn before, I doubt?" said the old man, with a
glance which told that he only needed pressing.
"That objection," the Rector answered tactfully, "has been lodged against
certain of my sermons. I never let it deter me."
"There's a moral in it, too," said my grand-uncle, visibly reassured.
Well, as for the moral, I cannot say that I have ever found it, to swear
by. But here is my grand-uncle's story.
If you want a seaman, they say, you must catch him young, and I will add
that the first hour for him is the best. Eh? Young men have talked to me
of the day when they first entered Oxford or Cambridge--of the moment,
we'll say, when the London coach topped the Shotover rise in the early
morning, and they saw all the towers and spires at their feet.
I am willing to believe it good. And the first kiss,--when you and she
are young fools and over head and ears in love,--you'll know what I mean,
you boys, when you grow to it, and I am not denying that it brings heaven
down to earth and knocks their heads together. But for bliss--sheer
undiluted bliss--match me the day when a boy runs upstairs and sees his
midshipman's outfit laid out on the bed--blue jacket, brass buttons, dirk,
yes, and in my sea time a kind of top-hat that fined away towards the top,
with a cockade. I tell you I spent an hour looking at myself in my poor
mother's cheval-glass, and then walked out across the common to show
myself to my aunts,--rest their souls!--who inhabited a cottage about a
mile from ours, and had been used hitherto, when entertaining me, to ask
one another in French if the offer of a glass of beer would, considering
my age, be permissible. I drank sherry with them that afternoon, and left
them (I make no doubt) with a kind of tacit assurance that, come what
might, they were henceforward secure of protection.
The next day--though it blew a short squall of tears when I took leave of
my mother and climbed aboard the coach--was scarcely less glorious.
I wore my uniform, and nursed my toasting-fork proudly across my knees;
and the passengers one and all made much of me, in a manner which I never
allowed to derogate into coddling. At The Swan with Two Necks, Cheapside,
when the coach set me down, I behaved as a man should; ordered supper and
a bed; and over my supper discussed the prospects of peace with an
affable, middle-aged bagman who shared my box. He thought well of the
prospects of peace. For me, I knitted my brows and gave him to understand
that circumstances might alter cases.
From The Swan with Two Necks I took coach next morning--proceeding from
the bar to the door between two lines of smiling domestics--and travelled
down to the Blue Posts, the famous Blue Posts, at Portsmouth. In the Blue
Posts there was a smoking-room, and across the end of it ran a sofa on
which (tradition said) you might count on finding a midshipman asleep.
I was not then aware of the tradition; but sure enough a midshipman
reclined there when I entered the room. He was not asleep, but engaged in
perusing something which he promptly, even hastily, stowed away in the
breast of his tunic--a locket, I make no doubt. He sat up and regarded
me; and I stared back at him, how long I will not say, but long enough for
me to perceive that his jacket buttons were as glossy as my own.
I noted this; but it conveyed little to me, for my imagination clothed in
equal splendour everyone in his Majesty's service.
He appeared to be young, even delicately youthful; but I felt it necessary
to assert my manhood before him, and rang for the waiter.
"A glass of beer, if you please," said I.
The waiter lifted his eyebrows and looked from me to the sofa.
"_One_ glass of beer, sir?" he asked.
"I hardly like to offer--" I began lamely, following his glance.
"It is more usual, sir. _In_ the Service. Between two young gentlemen
as, by the addresses on their chestes, is both for the _Melpomeny_: and
newly joined."
"Hulloa!" said I, turning round to the sofa, "are you in the same fix as
myself?"
Reading in his face that it was so, I corrected my order, and waved the
waiter to the door with creditable self-possession. As soon as he had
withdrawn, "My name's Rodd," said I. "What's yours?"
"Hartnoll," he said; "from Norfolk."
"I come from the West--Devonshire," said I, and with an air of being proud
of it; but added, on an afterthought, "Norfolk must be a fine county,
though I've never seen it. Nelson came from there, didn't he?"
"His place is only six miles from ours," said Hartnoll. "I've seen it
scores of times."
And with that he stuck his hands suddenly in his pockets, turned away from
me, and stared very resolutely out of the dirty bow-window.
When the waiter had brought the drinks and retired again, Hartnoll
confessed to me that he had never tasted beer. "You'll come to it in
time," said I encouragingly: but I fancy that the tap at the Blue Posts
was of a quality to discourage a first experiment. He tasted his, made a
face, and suggested that I might deal with both glasses. I had, to begin
with, ordered the beer out of bravado, and one gulp warned me that bravado
might be carried too far. I managed, indeed--being on my mettle--to drain
my own glass, and even achieved a noise which, with Hartnoll, might pass
for a smacking of the lips: but we decided to empty his out of window, for
fear of the waiter's scorn. We heaved up the lower sash--the effort it
cost went some way to explaining the fustiness of the room--and Hartnoll
tossed out the beer.
There was an exclamation below.
While we craned out to see what had happened, the waiter's voice smote on
our ears from the doorway behind us, saying that young gentlemen would be
young gentlemen all the world over, but a new beaver hat couldn't be
bought for ten shillings. Everything must have a beginning, of course,
but the gentleman below was annoyed, and threatened to come upstairs.
It wasn't perhaps exactly the thing to come to the Port Admiral's ears:
but if we left it to _him_ (the waiter) he had a notion that ten
shillings, with a little tact, might clear it, and no bones broken.
Hartnoll, somewhat white in the face, tendered the sum, and very pluckily
declined to let me bear my share. "You'll excuse me, Rodd," said he
politely, "but I must make it a point of honour." Pale though he was, I
believe he would have offered to fight me had I insisted.
Our instructions, it turned out, were identical. We were to be called for
at the Blue Posts, and a boat would fetch us off to the _Melpomene_
frigate. Her captain, it appeared, was a kind of second cousin of
Hartnoll's: for me, I had been recommended to him by a cousin of my
father's, a member of the Board of Admiralty. Captain the Hon. John
Suckling treated us, nearly or remotely as we might be connected with him,
with impartiality that night. No boat came off for us. We learned that
the _Melpomene_ was lying at Spithead, waiting (so the waiter told us) to
carry out a new Governor with his suite to Barbados; which possibly
accounted for her captain's neglect of such small fry as two midshipmen.
The waiter, however, advised us not to trouble ourselves. He would make
it all right in the morning.
So Hartnoll and I supped together in the empty coffee-room; compared
notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became
boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the
aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange
confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of
rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers.
I remember crossing my knees, holding up my glass to the light, and
remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows.
Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you took 'em. We lauded Norfolk and
Devon as sporting counties, and somehow it was understood that they
respectively owed much of their reputation to the families of Hartnoll and
Rodd. Hartnoll even hinted at a love-affair: but here I discouraged him
with a frown, which implied that as seamen we saw that weakness in its
proper light. I have wondered, since then, to what extent we imposed upon
one another: in fact, I daresay, very little; but in spirit we gave and
took fire. We were two ardent boys, and we meant well.
"Here's to the Service!" said I, holding up my glass.
"To the Service!" echoed Hartnoll; drained his, set it down, and looked
across at me with a flushed face.
"With quick promotion and a plenty of prize-money!" said a voice in the
doorway. It was that diabolical waiter again, entering to remove the
cloth: and for a moment I felt my ears redden. Recovering myself, I told
him pretty strongly not to intrude again upon the conversation of
gentlemen; but added that since he had presumed to take part in the toast,
he might fetch himself a tankard of beer and drink to it. Whereupon he
thanked me, begged my pardon for having taken the liberty, and immediately
took another, telling me that anyone having _his_ experience of young
gentlemen could see with half an eye that I was born to command.
"Tell you what," said I to Hartnoll when the waiter had left us,
"that fellow has given me a notion, with his talk about prize-money.
I don't half like owing you my share of that ten shillings, you know."
"I thought we were agreed not to mention it again," said Hartnoll, firing
up.
Said I, "But there's my view of it to be considered. Suppose now we put
it on to our first prize-money--whoever makes the first haul to pay the
whole ten shillings, and if we make it together, then each to pay five?"
"That won't do," said Hartnoll. "My head don't seem able to follow you
very clearly, but if we make our first haul together, the matter remains
where it is."
"Very well," I yielded. "Then I must get ahead of you, to get quits."
"You won't, though," said Hartnoll, pushing back his chair, and so
dismissing the subject.
Now the evening being young, I proposed that we should sally forth
together and view the town--in other words (though I avoided them) that we
should flaunt our uniforms in the streets of Portsmouth. Hartnoll
demurred: the boat (said he) might arrive in our absence. I rang for the
waiter again, and took counsel with him. The waiter began by answering
that the Blue Posts, though open day and night, would take it as a favour
if gentlemen patronising the house would make it convenient to knock-in
before midnight, and, if possible, retire to their rooms before that hour.
He understood our desire to see the town; "it was, in fact, the usual
thing, under the circumstances." If I would not take it as what he might
call (and did) call a libbaty, there was a good many bad characters
knocking about Portsmouth, pickpockets included, and especially at
fair-time.
"Fair-time?" I asked.
"At the back of the town--Kingston way--you will find it," said he, with a
jerk of the thumb.
"But," said I, "the frigate might send off a boat for us."
"Not a chance of it to-night, sir," said the waiter. "The southerly
breeze has been bringing up a fog these two hours past, and the inside of
the harbour is thick as soup. More by token, I've already sent word to
the chambermaid to fill a couple of warming-pans. You're booked with us,
gentlemen, till to-morrow morning."
Sure enough, descending to the street, we found it full of fog; and either
the fog was of remarkable density, or Portsmouth furnished with the worst
street-lamps in the world, for we had not walked five hundred yards before
it dawned on me that to find our hostelry again might not be an entirely
simple matter. Maybe the port wine had induced a haze of its own upon my
sense of locality. I fancied, too, that the fresh air was affecting
Hartnoll, unless his gait feigned a sea-roll to match his uniform.
I felt a delicacy in asking him about it.
Another thing that surprised me was the emptiness of the streets. I had
always imagined Portsmouth to be a populous town . . . but possibly its
inhabitants were congregated around the fair, towards which we set
ourselves to steer, guided by the tunding of distant drums. It mattered
little If we lost our bearings, since everybody in Portsmouth must know
the Blue Posts.
"Tell you what it is, Rodd," said Hartnoll, pulling up in a by-street and
picking his words deliberately,--"tell you what accounts for it,"--he waved
a hand at the emptiness surrounding us. "It's the press. Very night for
it; and the men all hiding within doors."
"Nonsense," said I. "It's a deal likelier to be the Fat Woman or the
Two-headed Calf."
"It's the press," insisted Hartnoll: and for the moment, when we emerged
out of a side lane upon a square filled with flaring lights, the crashing
of drums and cymbals, and the voices of showmen yelling in front of their
booths, I had a suspicion that he was right. One or two women, catching
sight of our uniforms, edged away swiftly, and, as they went, peered back
into the darkness of the lane behind us. A few minutes later, as we
dodged around the circumference of the crowd in search of an opening,
we ran up against one of the women with her man in tow. She was arguing
with him in a low, eager sort of voice, and he followed sulkily. At sight
of us again she fetched up with a gasp of breath, almost with a squeal.
The man drew himself up defiantly and began to curse us, but she quickly
interrupted him, thrusting her open hand over his mouth, and drew him away
down a dark courtyard.
After this we found ourselves in the glare immediately under the platform
of a booth; and two minutes later were mounting the rickety steps, less of
our own choice than by pressure of the crowd behind. The treat promised
us within was the Siege of Copenhagen with real fireworks, which as an
entertainment would do as well as another. On the way up Hartnoll
whispered to me to keep my hands in my breeches pockets, if I carried my
money there; and almost on the same instant cried out that someone had
stolen his dirk. He stood lamenting, pointing to the empty sheath, while
a stout woman at a table took our entrance-money with an impassive face.
The Siege of Copenhagen was what you youngsters nowadays would call a
'fizzle,' I believe: or maybe Hartnoll's face of woe and groanings over
his lost dirk damped the fireworks for me. But these were followed by a
performing pony, which, after some tricks, being invited by his master to
indicate among the audience a gentleman addicted to kissing the ladies and
running away, thrust its muzzle affectionately into my waistcoat; whereat
Hartnoll recovered his spirits at a bound, and treacherously laughed
louder than any of the audience. I thought it infernally bad taste, and
told him so. But, as it happened, I had a very short while to wait for
revenge: for in the very next booth, being invited to pinch the biceps of
the Fat Woman, my gentleman-of-the-world blushed to the eyes, cast a wild
look around for escape, and turned, to fall into the arms of a couple of
saucy girls who pushed him forward to hold him to his bargain. His eyes
were red--he was positively crying with shame and anger--when we found
ourselves outside under the torchlights that made flaming haloes in the
fog.
"Hang it, Rodd! I've had enough of this fair. Let's get back to the
Posts."
"What's the time?" said I, and felt for my watch.
My watch had disappeared.
It had been my mother's parting gift, and somehow the loss of it made me
feel, with a shock, utterly alone in the world. Why on earth had I not
clung to the respectable shelter of the Blue Posts? What a hollow mockery
were these brazen cymbals, these hoarse inviting voices, these coarse
show-cloths, these lights!
Curiously enough, and as if in instant sympathy with my dejection, the
cymbals ceased to clash. The showmen began to extinguish their torches.
I had lost my watch; Hartnoll did not own one. But we agreed that, at
latest, the hour could not be much more than ten. Yet the shows were
closing, the populace was melting away into the fog.
"I've had enough of this. Let's get back to the Posts," Hartnoll
repeated. His eyes told me that up to two days ago, when he left home,
nine o'clock or thereabouts had been his regular bedtime. It had been
mine also.
One of the two saucy girls, happening to pass an instant before the booth
above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came
forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest
way to the Blue Posts.
I will give you her exact answer. She said--"Turn up on your right hand
at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry,
at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the
Blue Postesses."
I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare's
_Merchant of Venice_, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look,
with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one,
however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide.
"Poor lads!" she went on, "you'll certainly never reach it without help,
though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I'd go with you
myself if I weren't due at the theatre in ten minutes' time. I have to
call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss
it will mean losing an engagement." She puckered her brow thoughtfully,
and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy
no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from
that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I'll wager that girl
had a good heart. "Your best plan," she decided, "is to step along with
me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we'll soon
find somebody to put you in the way."
But here a small figure stepped out against us from the shadow of the
platform, and a small shrillish voice piped up--
"For a copper, miss--or a copper apiece if they'll trust me. Find the
Blue Postesses? W'y, I'd walk there on my head with my eyes bound!"
We stared down at her--for it was a small girl, a girl so diminutive that
Hartnoll and I, who were not Anaks by any means, topped her by head and
shoulders. She wore no shoes, no stockings, no covering for her head.
Her hair, wet with the fog, draggled down, half-hiding her face, which was
old for its age (as they say), and chiefly by reason of her sharp,
gipsy-coloured eyes.
"For a copper apiece, miss, and honour bright!" said the waif.
The young actress turned to us with a laugh. "Why not?" she asked.
"That is, if you're not above being beholden to the child? But I warn you
not to pay her till you get to the Blue Posts."
I answered that any port was good in a storm, and the child should have
sixpence if she proved as good as her word.
"So long, then, my pair of seventy-fours. I'm late for the theatre
already. Good-night! and when you tuck yourselves in to bye-low don't
forget to dream of your mammies." Bending quickly, she kissed Hartnoll on
the cheek, and was in the act to offer me a like salute when I dodged
aside, angered by her last words. She broke into a laugh like a chime of
bells, made a pretty pout at me with her lips and disappeared into the
darkness. Then it struck me that I need not have lost my temper; but I
was none the more inclined to let Hartnoll down easily.
"I call that pretty meek," said I, as we walked off together, the child
pattering, barefoot, beside us.
"What's the matter?" asked Hartnoll.
"Why, to let that girl kiss you--like a baby!"
"Sure you're not thinking of sour grapes?"
"I take you to witness," said I, "that she tried it on and I wouldn't let
her."
"The more fool you!" retorted Hartnoll, edging away from me in dudgeon--
but I knew he was more than half ashamed. Just at that moment to my
astonishment I felt the child at my side reach up and touch my hand.
"Ugh!" said I, drawing it away quickly. "Paws off, please! Eh?--what's
this?" For she was trying to thrust something into it and to close my
fingers upon it.
"Hush!" she whispered. "It's your watch."