"My eyes--hurt ... frightfully." Thus the Periwinkle, striving to hedge
with Destiny.
"Do they?" sympathised the Sister. "I'll tell the Surgeon when he comes
round to-night, and he'll give you something for them. I shouldn't read
for the present if I were you."
The Periwinkle smiled grimly, as if she had made a joke, and lay back,
every nerve in his body strung to breaking-point.
"Can't see, eh?" The visiting Surgeon who leaned over his bed a few
hours later looked at him from under puzzled brows. "Can't see--d'you
mean...." He picked up an illustrated paper, holding it about a yard
away, and pointed to a word in block type: "What's this word?"
The Periwinkle stared past him with a face like a flint. "I can't see
the paper. I can't see you ... or the room, or--or--anything.... I'm
blind." His voice trembled.
To the terror by night that followed was added physical pain past
anything he had experienced or imagined in his short life. It almost
amazed him that anything could hurt so much and not rob him of
consciousness. The next room held a sufferer who raved in delirium:
cursing, praying, and shrieking alternately. The tortured voice rose in
the stillness of the night to a howl, and the Periwinkle set his teeth
grimly. He was not alone in torment, but his was still the power to
meet it like a man.
By the end of a week the pain had left him. At intervals during this
period he was guided to a dark room--for the matter of that, all rooms
were dark to him--and unseen beings bandied strange technicalities about
his ears. "Optic neuritis ... retrobulbar ... atrophy." The words
meant nothing to the boy, and their meaning mattered less. For nothing,
they told him, could give him back his sight. After that they left him
alone, to wait with what patience he might until the next P. & O.
steamer passed through.
His first visitor was the Chaplain, the most well-meaning of men, whose
voice quavered with pity as he spoke at some length of resignation and
the beauty of cheerfulness in affliction. On his departure, the
Periwinkle caught the rustle of the Sister's dress.
"Sister," said the boy, "will you please go away for a few minutes. I'm
afraid I have to swear--out loud."
"But you mustn't," she expostulated, slightly taken aback. "It's--it's
very wicked."
"Can't help that," replied the Periwinkle austerely. "Please go at
once; I'm going to begin."
Scandalised and offended--as well she might be--she left the Periwinkle
to his godless self, and he swore aloud--satisfying, unintelligible,
senseless lower-deckese. But when she brought him his tea an hour later
she found he had the grace to look ashamed of himself, and forgave him.
They subsequently became great friends, and at the Periwinkle's
dictation she wrote long cheerful letters that began: "My dear Mother,"
and generally ended in suspicious-looking smudges.
Every one visited the Periwinkle. His brethren from the Fleet arrived,
bearing as gifts strange and awful delicacies that usually had to be
confiscated, sympathising with the queer, clumsy tenderness of boyhood.
The Flag-Lieutenant came often, always cheerful and optimistic,
forbearing to voice a word of pity: for this the Periwinkle was
inexpressibly grateful. He even brought the Fairest of All the Pippins,
but the boy shrank a little from the tell-tale tremor she could never
quite keep out of her voice. Her parting gift was an armful of roses,
and on leaving she bent over till he could smell the faint scent of her
hair. "Good-bye," she whispered; "go on being brave," and, to his
wrathful astonishment, kissed him lightly on the mouth.
There was the Admiral's wife too--childless herself--who, from long
dealings with men, had acquired a brusque, almost masculine manner. As
soon as he had satisfied himself that she evinced no outward desire to
"slobber," the Periwinkle admitted her to his friendship. He
subsequently confessed to the Sister that, for a woman, she read aloud
extremely well. "Well, I must be goin'," she said one day at parting.
"I'll bring John up to see you to-morrow." When she had gone, the
Periwinkle smote his pillow. "John!" he gasped.
"John" was the Admiral.
Even the crew of his cutter--just the ordinary rapscallion duty-crew of
the boat he had commanded--trudged up one sweltering Sunday afternoon,
and were ushered with creaking boots and moist, shiny faces into his
ward.
"Bein' as we 'ad an arfternoon orf, sir," began the spokesman, who was
also the Coxswain of the boat. But at the sight of the wavering,
sightless eyes, although prompted by nudges and husky whispers, he
forgot his carefully-prepared sentences.
"We reckoned we'd come an' give you a chuck-up, like, sir," concluded
another, and instead of the elaborate speech they had deemed the
occasion demanded, they told him of their victory in a three-mile race
over a rival cutter. How afterwards they had generously fraternised
with the vanquished crew,--so generously that the port stroke--"'im as
we calls 'Nobby' Clark, sir, if you remembers"--was at that moment
languishing in a cell, as a result of the lavish hospitality that had
prevailed. Finally, the Periwinkle extended a thin hand to the
darkness, to be gripped in turn by fourteen leathery fists, ere their
owners tiptoed out of the room and out of his life.
*III.*
The Periwinkle found blindness an easier matter to bear in the ward of a
hospital than on board the P. & O. Liner by which he was invalided home.
A Naval Sick-berth Steward attended to his wants, helped him to dress,
and looked after him generally. But every familiar smell and sound of
ship-life awoke poignant memories of the ship-life of former days, and
filled him with bitter woe. He was morbidly sensitive of his blindness,
too, and for days moped in his cabin alone, fiercely repelling any
attempt at sympathy or companionship. Then, by degrees, the ship's
doctor coaxed him up into a deck-chair, and sat beside him, warding off
intruders and telling stories with the inimitable drollery that is the
heritage of the surgeons of P. & O. Liners. And at night, when the
decks were clear, and every throb of the propellers was a reminder of
the home they were drawing near to, he would link his arm loosely within
the boy's and together they would walk to and fro. During these
promenades he invariably treated the Periwinkle as a man of advanced
years and experience, whereby was no little balm in Gilead.
Many people tried to make a fuss of the boy with the sullen mouth, whose
cheek-bones looked as if they were coming through the skin, and who had
such a sad story. Wealthy globe-trotters, Anglo-Indians, missionaries,
and ladies of singular charm and beauty, all strove according to their
lights to comfort him. But by degrees they realised he never wanted to
play cat's-cradle or even discuss his mother, and so left him in peace.
But the boy had a friend beside the doctor, a grizzled major from an
Indian Frontier regiment, returning home on furlough with a V.C. tacked
on to his unpretentious name. At first the Periwinkle rather shrank from
a fresh acquaintance--it is a terrible thing to have to shake hands with
an unknown voice. But he was an incorrigible little hero-worshipper, and
this man with the deep steady voice had done and seen wonderful things.
Further, he didn't mind talking about them--to the Periwinkle; so that
the boy, as he sat clasping his ankles and staring out to sea with
sightless eyes, was told stories which, a week later, the newspaper
reporters of the Kingdom desired to hear in vain.
He was a philosopher too, this bronzed, grey-haired, warrior with the
sun-puckered eyes: teaching how, if you only take the trouble to look
for it, a golden thread of humour runs through all the sombre warp and
woof of life; and of "Hope which ... outwears the accidents of life and
reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death."
This is the nicest sort of philosophy.
But for all that it was a weary voyage, and the Periwinkle was a
brown-faced ghost, all knees and elbows and angularities by the time
Tilbury was reached. The first to board the ship was a lady, pale and
sweetly dignified, whom the doctor met at the gangway and piloted to the
Periwinkle's cabin. He opened the door before he turned and fled, and
so heard, in her greeting of the Periwinkle, the infinite love and
compassion that can thrill a woman's voice.
* * * * *
In a corner of the railway carriage that carried them home, the
Periwinkle--that maimed and battered knight--still clung to the haft of
his broken sword. "I meant to do so jolly well. Oh, mother, I meant
you to be so jolly proud of me. The Flag-Lieutenant said I might have
been ... if only it had been an arm or a leg--deaf or dumb ... but
there's nothing left in all the world ... it's empty--nothing remains."
She waited till the storms of self-pity and rebellion passed, leaving
him biting his fingers and breathing hard. Then little by little, with
mysterious tenderness, she drew out the iron that had entered the boyish
soul. And, at the last, he turned to her with a little fluttering sigh,
as a very tired child abandons a puzzle. She bent her head low--
"This remains," she whispered.
*XIII.*
*THE TIZZY-SNATCHER.*
In the beginning he was an Assistant Clerk--which is a very small potato
indeed; his attainments in this lowly rank were limited to an extensive
and intimate knowledge of the various flavours of gum employed in the
composition of envelopes. Passing straight from a private school, he
began life in the Gunroom of a sea-going ship, and was afraid with a
great amazement.
The new conditions amid which in future he was to have his being
unfolded themselves in a succession of crude disillusionments. He found
himself surrounded by Midshipmen: contemporaries, but, as they took care
to remind him, men in authority--beings with vast, dimly conceived
responsibilities: barbarous in their manners, incomprehensive of speech.
To the pain of countless indignities was added the fear of personal
chastisement (had he not read of such things?), and, having been
delicately nurtured, it is to be feared that the days of his earlier
service were not without unhappiness.
With the experience of a commission abroad, however, things began to
assume their proper perspective. He became a Clerk, R.N., and blossomed
into the dignity of a frock-coat and sword at Sunday morning Divisions,
whereby was no small balm in Gilead.
Your Midshipman differs but little in point of thoughtless cruelty from
his brethren of "Quad" and school bench. But the mess-mates who
(obedient to the boyish dictates of inhumanity, and for the good of his
immortal soul) had chaffed and snubbed him into maturity, now
appreciated him for the even temper and dry sense of humour he acquired
in the process.
Having mastered the queer sea-oaths and jargon of a Gunroom, he learned
to handle an oar and sail a boat without discredit. The Sub. took him on
deck in the dog-watches, and punched into him the rudiments of the art
of self-defence; and, lastly, under the tutorship of a kindly Paymaster,
he came to understand dimly the inner workings of that vast and complex
organisation that has its seat in Whitehall, by whose mouths speak the
Lords of Admiralty.
His twenty-first birthday confronted him with the ordeal of an
examination, which, successfully passed, entitled him to a commission in
His Majesty's Fleet with the rank of Assistant Paymaster.
For the next four years he continued to live in the Gunroom, where, by
reason of an alleged unholy intimacy with the King's Regulations and
Admiralty Instructions, his advice was commonly sought on questions
pertaining to the Service. His mode of speech had become precise--as
befitted a wielder of the pen in life's battle, and one versed in the
mysteries of Naval Correspondence. The ship's Office was his kingdom,
where he was Lord of the Ledgers, with a lack of tan on face and hands
that told of a sedentary life in confined spaces: not infrequently he
wore glasses.
Some day he will become a Paymaster, warden of the money-chest, and
answerable for the pay, victualling, and clothing of every man on board.
The years will bring three gold rings to his cuff, a Fleet Paymaster's
grey hairs, and a nice perception between the digestible and otherwise
in matters of diet.
* * * * *
The A.P. leaned back in his chair and threw down his pen: in the glare
of the electric light his face looked white and tired. Beside him the
Chief Writer sat totalling a column of figures: on deck a bell struck
midnight.
"What d'you make it?" asked the A.P. wearily. The Writer named a sum.
"Penny out," replied the A.P. laconically, picking up his pen again.
Outside the Office door, where the hammocks of the guard were slung, a
Marine muttered in his sleep.
The two great ledgers that lay open on the desk contained the names of
every man on board. They were duplicates, worked independently, and by
a comparison of the two mistakes could be detected and rectified.
Opposite the names were noted the credits of pay and allowances,
adjusted for different charges, the period borne, and all particulars
affecting the victualling of each man.
"Ah!" The missing penny had been found. "It's in the account of that
confounded Ordinary Seaman who broke his leave and got seven days
cells," said the A.P. "No. 215." He gave a sigh of relief and closed
the ledger. Perhaps he experienced something of the satisfaction an
author might feel on writing the magic word "Finis." It was his
creation, every word and figure of it, working as irrevocably as Destiny
towards its appointed end: and on the morrow eight hundred men would
file past the pay tables, and in less than twenty minutes have received,
in coin or postal orders, the balance of pay due to them.
"I'm going to turn in now," said the A.P. "We'll coin to-morrow."
Now the coins on a Paymaster's charge are of certain
denominations--usually sovereigns, half-sovereigns, florins, shillings,
and sixpenny bits. Each man is paid, as a rule, to the nearest
shilling, and the odd pence, if any, are carried forward to the
succeeding quarter. Thus the pay due to a man is, say, L3, 19s. 4d. He
receives three sovereigns, a half-sovereign, four florins, and a
shilling; the four pence are brought on to the next ledger. A Paymaster
is thus enabled to foretell with some degree of accuracy the number of
coins that he must demand from time to time.
Having coined the total amount to be paid out in wages, and ascertained
the number of coins of each denomination required, the pay-trays were
laid on the desk in the Office. Each tray was made up of compartments
large enough to hold a man's pay.
The Paymaster divested himself of his coat, lit a pipe, and arranged
side by side the two bags containing sovereigns and half-sovereigns. The
A.P. similarly disposed of the florins and shillings, so that he could
reach them easily. They contained the exact total amount required for
the payment in the requisite coins.
"Ready, sir?" he asked.
"Right," said the Paymaster.
The Chief Writer read out the amount due to the first man. Quick as a
flash the amount had clinked into the first division of the tray, both
officers making mental calculations as to the coins required. For the
next half-hour the only sounds in the Office were the voice of the Chief
Writer and the tinkle of the coins as each one was slipped into its
compartment. In an incredibly short time the piles of gold and silver
had melted away; as a tray was filled it was placed in a box and locked
up in readiness for the payment. The three faces grew anxious as the
piles dwindled and the number of empty compartments lessened.... The
last total was reached: the Paymaster threw down two sovereigns; the
A.P. added a florin and a shilling. The bags were empty: would it "pan
out"?
"Two pounds three," read out the Chief Writer, craning his neck to see
the result.
"Thank the Lord," murmured the A.P.
* * * * *
On the quarter-deck, facing aft, the ship's company were mustered:
seamen, stokers, artisans, cooks, and police, one after another, as
their names were called by the A.P., stepped briskly up to the pay
table, where the Captain and the Commander stood, scooped their wages
into their caps and hurried away. The Marines followed, receiving their
pay in their hands, with a click of the heels and a swinging salute.
At the break of the forecastle an Ordinary Seaman stood regarding a few
silver coins in his grimy palm. Having broken his leave during the
month and been awarded cells in consequence, he had received
considerably less pay than usual--a penalty he had not foreseen and did
not understand.
"Bloomin' tizzy-snatcher," he muttered, slipping the coins into his
trousers-pocket.
He referred to the A.P.
*XIV.*
*"C/O G.P.O."*
The bell above the door of the village post-office tinkled and the
Postmistress looked up over her spectacles.
"Is it yourself, Biddy?"
A barefooted country girl with a shawl over her head entered and shyly
tendered an envelope across the counter.
"Can you tell me how much it will be, Mrs Malone?" she queried. There
was anxiety in the dark-blue eyes.
The Postmistress glanced at the address. "Sure, it'll go for a penny,"
she said reassuringly.
"That's a terrible long way for a penny," said the girl. "Sure, it's a
terrible long way."
From under her shawl she produced a coin and stamped the envelope. It
took some time to do this, because a good deal depended on the exact
angle at which the stamp was affixed. In itself it carried a message to
the recipient.
"It's grand writin' ye've got," said the Postmistress, her Celtic
sympathy aroused. "An' himself will be houldin' it in his hands a month
from now."
The girl blushed. "Father Denis is after learnin' me; an' please for a
bit o' stamp-paper, Mrs Malone," she pleaded softly, "the way no one
will be after opening it an' readin' it in them outlandish parts." It
was the seal of the poor, a small square of stamp-paper gummed over the
flap of the envelope.
As she was concluding this final rite the bell tinkled again. A
fair-haired girl in tweeds, carrying a walking-stick, entered with a
spaniel at her heels.
She smiled a greeting to both women. "A penny stamp, please, Mrs
Malone." She stamped a letter she carried in her hand, and turned the
face of the envelope towards the Postmistress. "How long is this going
to take getting to its destination?"
The Postmistress beamed. "Sure, himself--" she began, and recollected
herself. "A month, me lady--no more." Outside, the girl with the shawl
over her head was standing before the slit of the post-box; the other
girl came out the next moment, and the two letters started on their long
journey side by side. As the two women turned to go, their eyes met for
an instant: the country girl blushed. They went their way, each with a
little smile on her lips.
* * * * *
The Destroyer, that for three hours had been slamming through a head
sea, rounded the headland and came in sight of the anchored Fleet.
The Yeoman of Signals on the Flagship's bridge closed his glass with a
snap. "She's got mails for the Fleet," he called to the Leading
Signalman. "I'll report to the Flag-Lieutenant." As he descended to
the quarterdeck he met the Officer of the Watch.
"Destroyer coming in with mails, sir." The Lieutenant's face
brightened; he called an order to the Boatswain's Mate, who ran forward
piping shrilly. "A-wa-a-ay picket-boat!" he bawled.
The Flag-Lieutenant was reading in his cabin when the Yeoman made his
report. Snatching up his cap, he hastened in to the Admiral's
apartments. "Destroyer arriving with mails for the Fleet, sir." The
Admiral glanced at the calendar. "Ah! Eight days since we had the
last. Thank you."
The Flag-Lieutenant poked his head inside the Secretary's Office. "Now
you fellows will have something to do--the mail's coming in!"
"Thank you," replied the Secretary's Clerk. "But, Flags, _try_ not to
look quite so inanely pleased about it. She's probably forgotten all
about you by now."
The Destroyer with rime-crusted funnels drew near, and men working on
the upper decks of the Fleet ceased their labours to watch her approach.
One of the side-party, working over the side in a bowline, jerked his
paint-brush in her direction. "If I don't get no letter this mail--so
'elp me I stops me 'arf pay," he confided grimly to a "Raggie," and spat
sententiously. In the Wardroom the married officers awoke from their
afternoon siesta and began to harass the Officer of the Watch with
inquiries. The news spread even to the Midshipmen's Schoolplace, and
the Naval Instructor found straightway that to all intents and purposes
he was lecturing on Spherical Trigonometry to deaf adders.
With the eyes of the Fleet upon her, the Destroyer anchored at last, and
the Flagship's picket-boat slid alongside to embark the piles of bloated
mail-bags. As she swung round on her return journey the Yeoman on the
Flagship's bridge glanced down at a signal-boy standing beside the
flag-lockers, and nodded. Two flags leaped from the lockers and sped to
the masthead. Instantly an answering flutter of bunting appeared on
each ship.
"Send boats for mails." The Flagship had spoken.
* * * * *
In Wardroom and Gunroom a rustling silence prevailed. Each new-comer as
he entered rushed to the letter-rack and hurriedly grabbed his pile of
letters: there is a poignant joy in seeing one's name on an envelope
twelve thousand watery miles away from home, no matter whose hand penned
the address. In some cases, though, it mattered a good deal.
The Flag-Lieutenant retired to his cabin like a dog with a bone, and
became engrossed with closely-written sheets that enclosed several
amateur snapshots. One or two portrayed a slim, fair-haired girl in
tweeds; others a black spaniel. The Flag-Lieutenant studied them
through a magnifying-glass, smiling.
The Admiral, busy over his private correspondence, was also smiling. He
had been offered another group of letters to tack after his name (he had
five already). The agent of his estate at home had a lot to say about
the pheasants.... His wife sprawled an account of life at Aix across
eight pages. He had been invited to be the executor of one man's will
and godfather to another's child. But a series of impressionist
sketches by his youngest daughter (_aetat._ 5), inspired by a visit to
the Zoo, was what he was actually smiling over.
Up on the after-bridge the Yeoman of the Watch leaned over the rail and
whistled to the signal-boy. "Nip down to my mess an' see if there's a
letter for me."
The boy fled down the ladder and presently returned with a letter. The
Yeoman took it from him and turned it over in his hands, scanning it
almost hungrily.
The stamp was cryptically askew and the flap of the envelope ornamented
by a fragment of stamp-paper.
"An' what the 'ell are _you_ grinnin' at?" he began. The boy turned and
scampered down the ladder into safety. The Yeoman of Signals stood
looking after him, the letter held in his hand, when a bell rang outside
the signal-house. He put his ear to the voice-pipe. The
Flag-Lieutenant was speaking.
"Yes, sir?"
"Make the following signal to the Destroyer that brought our mails--
"To Commanding Officer. Admiral requests the pleasure of your company
to dinner to-night at eight o'clock."
"Aye, aye, sir." He turned away from the voice-pipe. "_An'_ 'e could
'ave my tot on top o' that for the askin'."
*XV.*
*THE "LOOK-SEE."*