* * * * *
"And thereto I plight thee my troth."
How warm and steady the small hand was, lying in his: then gently
withdrawn. Torps was trying to attract attention--What was his trouble?
The ring--Of course, the ring....
* * * * *
"_Those whom, God hath joined together let no man put asunder._"
* * * * *
Life's haven at last! Or had all life been a cruise within the harbour:
and this the beat to open sea ... The Brave Adventure?
* * * * *
"_The peace of God which passeth all understanding ... remain with you
now and for evermore._"
* * * * *
There was a whisper of silken petticoats, and the clink of swords seems
to fill the church: then, dominating all other sounds for a moment, the
old Colonel blowing his nose vehemently....
Down the aisle again, the organ thundering familiar strains--familiar,
yet suddenly imbued with a personal and intimate message,--Millicent's
arm resting on his, trembling ever so lightly....
In the warm, bouquet-scented gloom of the vestry they gathered, and
Torps wrung the Bridegroom's hand in a hard, unaccustomed grip--Torps
with his winning, half-sad smile, and the hair over his temples showing
the first trace of grey.... The bride finished signing the register,
and rose smiling, with the veil thrown back from her fair face. In
later years he found himself recalling a little sadly (as the happiest
of bachelors may do at times) the queer, shining gladness in her eyes.
He bent and touched the warm cheek with his lips.
Then for a minute every one seemed to fall a-kissing. Father and
daughter, Mother and son, newly-made brothers- and sisters-in-law sought
each other in turn. The Bridegroom's Lady Mother kissed the Indiarubber
Man because no one else seemed to want to, and they were such old
friends. The Clergyman kissed two of the Bridesmaids because he was
their uncle, and the Colonel (who had stopped blowing his nose and was
cheering up) kissed the other two because he wasn't. In the middle of
all this pleasant exercise Torps, who had vanished for a minute,
reappeared to announce that the Arch of Swords was ready and the
carriages were alongside.
So the procession formed up once more: Bride and Bridegroom, the Colonel
and the Bridegroom's Lady Mother: Torps leading the Bridegroom's new
sister-in-law (and a very pretty sister-in-law she was), the Flapper and
the Indiarubber Man, a girl called Etta Someone on the Junior
Watch-keeper's arm, and another called Doris Somebody Else under the
escort of the A.P. They all passed beneath the arch of naked blades
held up by the Bridegroom's messmates and friends, to receive a running
fire of chaff and laughing congratulation; to find outside in the golden
afternoon sunshine that the horses had been taken from the
carriage-traces, and a team of lusty blue-jackets, all very perspiring
and serious of mien, waiting to do duty instead.
*IV.*
Private Phillips, R.M.L.I., in all subsequent narrations of the events
of the day--and they were many and varied--was wont to preface each
reminiscence with "Me an' the Torpedo Lootenant..." And indeed he did
both indefatigable workers bare justice. Whether it was opening
carriage doors or bottles of champagne, fetching fresh supplies of
glasses or labelling and strapping portmanteaux, Private Phillips
laboured with the same indomitable stertorous energy. He accepted
orders with an omniscient and vehement nod of the head; usurped the
duties of enraptured maid-servants with, "You leave me do it, Miss--I
bin married meself. I knows the routine, as you might say...."
And Torps, superintending the distribution of beer to panting
blue-jackets (whose panting, in some cases, was almost alarming in its
realism); fetching cups of tea for stout dowagers, and ices for giggling
schoolgirls; begging a sprig from the bridesmaids' bouquets; tipping
policemen; opening telegrams; yet always with an attention ready for the
Bridegroom's aunt who remembered Guns as such a _little_ boy....
Helpful even to the ubiquitous reporter of the local paper....
"A picturesque ceremony--if I may say so. A _most_ picturesque
ceremony." The reporter would feel for his notebook. "Might I ask who
that tall Officer is with the medals...? My Paper----" And Torps, with
his gentle manners and quiet smile, would supply the information to the
best of his ability, conscious that at a wedding there are harder lots
even than the Best Man's....
The Indiarubber Man drifted disconsolately about in the crush, finally
coming to a momentary anchorage in a corner beside his Bridesmaid.
"Miss Betty, no one loves me, and I'm going into the garden"--he dropped
his voice to a confidential undertone--"to eat worms."
The girl giggled weakly. "Please don't make me laugh any more! Won't
you stay here and have an ice instead? I'm sure it would be much better
for you."
"Would it, d'you think? I've been watching the sailors drinking beer.
Have you ever seen a sailor drink beer, Miss Betty? It's a grim sight."
She shook her head, and there was both laughter and reproach in the
young eyes considering him over the bouquet. "You forsook me--and a
nice Midshipman had pity on my loneliness and brought me an ice."
The Indiarubber Man eyed her sorrowfully. "I turn my back for a moment
to watch sailors drink beer--I am a man of few recreations--and return
to find you sighing over the memory of another and making shocking bad
puns. Really, Miss Betty--Ah! _Now_ I can understand...."
A small and pink-faced Midshipman approached with two brimming glasses
of champagne. The Indiarubber Man faded discreetly away, leaving his
charge and her new-found knight pledging each other with sparkling eyes.
The Bride touched her husband's sleeve in a lull in the handshaking and
congratulations. "Isn't it rather nice to see people enjoying
themselves! Don't you feel as if you wanted everybody to be as happy as
we?--_Look_ at Betty and that boy.... Champagne, if you please! How
ill the child will be; and she's got to go back to school to-morrow...."
Her husband laughed softly. "Pretty little witch.... Torps has taken
it away from her and given her some lemonade instead. Where's
Mother?--Oh, I see: hobnobbing with the Colonel over a cup of tea. What
a crush! Dear, can't we escape soon....?"
"Very soon now--poor boy, are you very hot in those things?"
"Not very. The worst part's coming--the rice and slippers and
good-byes. Are you very tired, darling...?"
* * * * *
"Good-bye--Good-bye! Good-bye, Daddie.... Yes, yes.... I will....
Good-bye, Betty darling.... Good-bye----"
* * * * *
"Good-bye, Mother mine.... Torps, you've been a brick..... So-long!
Good-bye! ... Not down my neck, Betty! ... Yes, I've got the tickets----
Good-bye, Good-bye!----"
* * * * *
The lights of Dover were twinkling far astern. Two people, a man and a
woman, walked to the stern of the steamer and stood close together,
leaning over the rail.
"What a lot of Good-byes we've said to-day," murmured the woman,
watching the pin-points of light that vanished and reappeared. She fell
silent, as if following a train of thought, "And after all, we're only
going to Paris!"
"We're going further than that----" The man took possession of her
slim, ungloved hands, and the star-powdered heavens alone were witness
to the act. "All the way to El Dorado, darling!"
She gave him back the pressure of his fingers, and presently sighed a
little, happily, as a child sighs in its sleep. "And we haven't any
return tickets...."
*V.*
The members of the wedding party returned to the ship and straggled into
the Mess. Each one as he entered unbuckled his sword-belt, loosened his
collar, and called for strong waters. A gloom lay upon the gathering:
possibly the shadow of an angel's wing.
"I feel as if I'd been to a funeral," growled the Paymaster. "Awful
shows these weddings are!"
"Poor old Guns!" said the A.P. lugubriously.
"She's a jolly nice girl, any way," maintained the Young Doctor.
"Yes," sighed the Junior Watch-keeper, "but still.... He _was_ a good
chap...."
The Indiarubber Man was the last to enter. He added his sword to the
heap already on the table, glanced at the solemn countenances of his
messmates, and lit a cigarette.
"_Sunt rerum lachrimae_. I am reminded of a harrowing story," he began,
leaning against the tiled stove, "recounted to me by a--a lady.
"We met in London, at a place of popular entertainment, and our
acquaintance was, judged by the standards of conventionality, perhaps
slender." The Indiarubber Man paused and looked gravely from face to
face. "However," he continued, "encouraged by my frank open countenance
and sympathetic manner, she was constrained to tell the story of how she
once loved and lost...."
The narrator broke off and appeared to have forgotten how the story went
on, in dreamy contemplation of his cigarette. The mess waited in
silence: at length the Junior Watch-keeper could bear it no longer.
"What _did_ she tell you?"
The Indiarubber Man thoughtfully exhaled a cloud of smoke. "She said:
'Pa shot 'im.... Sniff!--_'Ow_ I loved 'im.... Sniff!--Lor', 'ow 'e did
bleed.' ..."
*XXV.*
*WHY THE GUNNER WENT ASHORE.*
The evening mail had come, and Selby sat alone in his cabin mechanically
reading and re-reading a letter. Finally he tore it up into very small
pieces and held them clenched in his hand, staring very hard at nothing
in particular.
He was engaged to be married: or to be more precise, he had been
engaged. The letter that had come by the evening mail said that this
was not so any longer.
The girl who wrote it was a very straight-forward person who hated
concealment of facts because they were unpleasant. It had become
necessary to tell Selby that she couldn't love him any longer, and,
faith, she had told him. Further, by her creed, it was only right that
she should tell him about Someone Else as well.
It was all very painful, and the necessity for thus putting things to
Selby in their proper light, had cost her sleepless nights, red eyes,
and much expensive notepaper, before the letter was finally posted. But
she did hope he would realise it was For the Best, ... and some day he
would be so thankful.... It had all been a Big Mistake, because she
wasn't a bit what he thought, ... and so forth. A very distressing
letter to have to write, and, from Selby's point of view, even more
distressing to have to read.
Few men enjoy being brought up against their limitations thus abruptly,
especially where Women and Love are concerned. In Selby's case was
added the knowledge that another had been given what he couldn't hold.
He had made a woman love him, but he couldn't make her go on loving
him.... He was insufficient unto the day.
Critics with less biassed judgment might have taken a different point of
view: might have said she was a jilt, or held she acted a little
cruelly: gone further, even, and opined he was well out of it. But
Selby was one of those who walk the earth under a ban of idealism and
had never been seriously in love before. She was the Queen who could do
no wrong. It was he who had been weighed and found wanting. If only he
had acted differently on such and such an occasion. If, in short,
instead of being himself he had been somebody quite different all
along....
Succeeding days and nights provided enough matches and sulphur of this
sort to enable him to fashion a sufficiently effective purgatory, in
which his mind revolved round its hurt like a cockchafer on a pin.
When a man depends for the efficient performance of his duties upon
getting his just amount of sleep (Selby was a watch-keeping Lieutenant
in a battleship of the line), affairs of this sort are apt to end in
disaster. But his ship went into Dockyard hands to refit, and Selby,
who was really a sensible enough sort of fellow, though an idealist,
realised that for his own welfare and that of the Service it were
"better to forget and smile than remember and be sad." Accordingly he
applied for and obtained a week's leave, bought a map of the surrounding
district, packed a few necessaries into a light knapsack, and set off to
walk away his troubles.
For a day he followed the coast--it was high summer--along a path that
skirted the cliffs. The breeze blew softly off the level _lapis-lazuli_
of the Channel, sea-gulls wheeled overhead for company, and following
the curve of each ragged headland in succession, the creamy edge of the
breakers lured him on towards the West. He walked thirty miles that day
and slept dreamlessly in a fishing village hung about with nets and
populated by philosophers with patched breeches.
He struck inland the second day, to plunge into a confusion of lanes
that led him blindfold for a while between ten-foot hedges. These opened
later into red coombes, steeped to their sunny depths with the scent of
fern and may, and all along the road bees held high carnival above the
hedgerows. Then green tunnels of foliage, murmurous with wood-pigeon,
dappled him at each step with alternate sunlight and shadow, and passed
him on to villages whose inns had cool, flagged parlours, and cider in
blue-and-white mugs. An ambient trout-stream held him company most of
the long afternoon, with at times a kingfisher darting along its
tortuous course like a streak from the rainbow that each tiny waterfall
had caught and held.
He supped early in a farm kitchen off new-made pasties, apple tart and
yellow-crusted cream, and walked on till the bats began wheeling
overhead in the violet dusk. His ship was sixty miles away when he crept
into the shelter of a hayrick and laid his tired head on his knapsack.
The third day found him up on the ragged moors, steering north. The
exercise and strong salt wind had driven the sad humours from him, and
the affairs of life were beginning to resume their right perspective; so
much so that when, about noon, a sore heel began abruptly to make itself
felt (in the irrational way sore heels have), Selby sat down and pulled
out his map. The day before yesterday he would have pushed on doggedly,
almost welcoming the counter-irritant of physical discomfort. To-day,
however, he accepted the inevitable and searched the map for some
neighbouring village where he could rest a day or so until the chafed
foot was healed.
After a while he turned east, and, leaving the high moorland, discerned
the smoke of chimneys among some trees in the valley. He descended a
steep road that seemed to lead in the right direction, and presently
caught a glimpse of a square church tower among some elms; later on the
breeze bore the faint cawing of rooks up the hillside. A stream divided
the valley: the few cottages clustered on the opposite side huddled
close together as if reluctant to venture far beyond the shadow of the
grey church. The green of the hillside behind them was gashed in one
place by an old quarry; but the work had long been abandoned, and Nature
had already begun to repair the red scar with impatient furz and
whinberry.
So much Selby took in as he descended past the grey church and cawing
rooks; once at the bottom and across the quaint, square-arched bridge,
he found there was a small inn amongst the huddled cottages, where they
would receive him for a night or two.
He lunched, did what he could to the blistered heel with a darning
needle and worsted (after the fashion of blistered sailormen), and took
a light siesta in the lavender-smelling bedroom under the roof until it
was time for tea. Tea over, he lit a pipe, borrowed his host's little 9
ft. trout rod that hung in the passage, and limped down to the meadows
skirting the stream beyond the village.
The light occupation gave him something to think about; and, held by the
peace of running water, he lingered by the stream till evening. Then
something of his old sadness came back with the dimpsey light,--a gentle
melancholy that only resembled sorrow "as the mist resembles the rain."
He wanted his supper, too, and so walked slowly back to the village with
the rod on his shoulder. The inn-keeper met him at the door: "Well done,
sir! Well done! Yu'm a fisherman, for sure! Missus, she fry 'un for
supper for 'ee now.... Yes, 'tis nice li'l rod--cut un meself: li'l
hickory rod, 'tis.... Where did 'ee have that half-pounder, sir?
There's many a good fish tu that li'l pool...."
Selby had finished supper and repaired to a bench outside in the
gloaming with his pipe and a mug of beer. The old stained chancel
windows of the church beyond the river were lit up and choir practice
appeared to be in progress. The drone of the organ and voices uplifted
in familiar harmonies drifted across to him out of the dusk. The pool
below the bridge still mirrored the last gleams of day in the sky: a few
old men were leaning over the low parapet smoking, and down the street
one or two villagers stood gossiping at their doorsteps. A dog came out
of the shadows and sniffed Selby's hands: then he flopped down in the
warm dust and sighed to himself. The strains of the organ on the other
side of the valley swelled louder:--
"... Holy Ghost the Infinite,
Comforter Divine..."
sang the unseen choir. How warm and peaceful the evening was, reflected
Selby, puffing at his pipe, one hand caressing the dog's ear.
Extraordinarily peaceful, in fact.... He wondered what sort of a man the
vicar was, in this tiny backwater of life, and whether he found it
dull....
While he wondered, the vicar came down the road and stopped abreast of
him.
"Good evening," he said, half hesitating, and came nearer. "Please
don't get up.... I don't want to disturb you, but I--they told me this
afternoon that a stranger was staying here. I thought I would make
myself known to you: I am the rector of this little parish." He smiled
and named himself.
Selby responded to the introduction. "Won't you sit down for a few
minutes? I was listening to your choir----"
"They are practising--yes: I have just come down from the church and,"
he hesitated. "I hoped I should find you in--to have the opportunity of
making your acquaintance."
"It was most kind of you." Selby wondered if all parsons in this fair
country were as attentive to the stranger within their gates. "Most
kind," he repeated. "I--I was on a walking tour, and"--he indicated a
slipper of his host's that adorned his left foot--"one of my heels began
to chafe--only a blister, you know; but I thought I'd take things easy
for a day or two....
"Quite so, quite so. An enforced rest is sometimes very pleasant. I
remember once, my throat.... However, that was not what I came to see
you about. I believe, Mr Selby, er--am I right in supposing that you
are in the Navy?"
"Yes." A note of chilliness had crept into Selby's voice. After all,
his clerical acquaintance was only an inquisitive old busybody, agog to
pry into other people's affairs. "Yes," he repeated, "I'm a
Lieutenant," and he named his ship.
The rector made a little deprecatory gesture. "Please don't think I am
trying to acquire the materials for gossip; and I am not asking out of
inquisitiveness. The good people here told me this afternoon--this is
an out-of-the-way place, and strangers, distinguished ones, if I may say
so," he made a little inclination of the head, "do not come here very
frequently: they mentioned it to me as I was passing on my way to hold a
confirmation class...."
Selby hastened to put him at his ease. After all, why shouldn't he ask?
And then he remembered offering the inn-keeper a fill of hard, Navy plug
tobacco. He carried a bit in his knapsack with a view to just such
small courtesies. "That's the stuff, sir," the man had said, loading
his pipe. "We wondered, me an' the missus, was you a Naval
gentleman...?"
But while his mind busied itself over these recollections his companion
was talking on in his, gentle way.
"... He is not a very old man: but the Doctor tells me he has lived a
life of many hardships, and not, I fear, always a temperate one.
However, 'Never a sinner, never a saint,' ... and now he is fast--to use
one of his own seafaring expressions--'slipping his cable.' He retired
from the Navy as a Gunner, I think. That would be a Warrant Officer's
rank, would it not?"
Selby nodded. "Yes. Has he been retired long, this person you speak
of?"
"Yes, he retired a good many years ago, and has a small pension quite
sufficient for his needs. He settled here because he liked the
quiet----" The speaker made a little gesture, embracing the hollow in
the hills, sombre now in the gathering darkness. "He lives a very
lonely life in a cottage some little distance along the road. An
eccentric old man, with curious ideas of beautifying a home.... However,
I am digressing. As far as I know he has no relatives alive, and no
friends ever visit him. He has been bed-ridden for some time, and the
wife of one of my parishioners, a most kindly woman, looks in several
times a day, and sees he has all he wants.
"Now I come to the part of my story that affects you. Lately, in fact
since he took to his bed and the Doctor was compelled to warn him of his
approaching end, he has been very anxious to meet some one in the Navy.
He so often begs me, if I hear of any one connected with the Service
being in the vicinity, to bring him to the cottage. And this afternoon,
hearing quite by accident that a Naval Officer was in our midst,"--again
the rector made his courteous little inclination of the head--"it seemed
an opportunity of gratifying the old fellow's wish--if you could spare a
few moments some time to-morrow...?"
"I should be only too glad to be of any service," said Selby. "Perhaps
you would call for me some time to-morrow morning, and we could go round
together----?"
The rector rose. "You are most kind. I was sure when I saw you--I knew
I should not appeal in vain...." He extended his hand. "And now I will
say good-night. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time with an
old man's concerns. One can do so little in this life to bring
happiness to others that when the opportunity arises..."
"Yes, _rather_----!" said Selby a little awkwardly, and shook hands,
conscious of more than a slight compunction for his hastiness in
judgment of this mild divine. "Good-night, sir," and stood looking
after him till he disappeared along the road into the luminous summer
night.
Selby had finished breakfast, and was leaning over the pig-sty wall
watching his host ministering to the fat sow and her squealing litter,
when his acquaintance of the previous night appeared. Seen in the broad
daylight he was an elderly man, short and spare, with placid blue eyes,
and a singularly winning smile. A bachelor, so the inn-keeper had
instructed Selby; a man of learning and of no small wealth, who,
moreover, dressed and threw as pretty a fly as any in the county.
He saluted Selby with a little gesture of his ash-plant, inquired after
the blistered heel, and then after an ailing member of the fat sow's
litter. "And now, if you are ready and still of the same mind, shall we
be strolling along?" he inquired.
Selby fetched his stick, and together they set out along a road made
aromatic in the morning sunlight by the scents of dust and flowering
hedgerow. Half a mile beyond the village the rector stopped before a
gate-way. A dogcart and cob stood at the roadside, and a small boy in
charge touched his cap.
"The Doctor is here, I see," said the clergyman, and opened the gate in
the hedge. Selby caught a glimpse of a flagged path leading through an
orchard to a whitewashed cottage. But his attention from the outset had
been arrested by a most extraordinary assortment of crockery, glass and
earthenware vases, busts, statuettes, and odds and ends of ironwork that
occupied every available inch of space round the gateway, bordering the
path, and were even cemented on to the front of the house itself. Above
the gateway a defaced lion faced an equally mutilated unicorn across the
Royal Arms of England. Arranged beneath, cemented into the pillars of
the arch, were busts of Napoleon, Irving, Stanley, and George
Washington; an earthenware jar bearing the inscription, "HOT POT"; a
little group representing Leda and the Swan in white marble; and a
grinning soapstone joss, such as is sold to tourists and sailors at
ports on the China coast. Interspersed with these were cups without
handles, segments of soup-plates, china dolls'-heads, lead soldiers, and
a miscellaneous collection of tea-pot spouts, ... all firmly plastered
into the ironwork of the pillars.
On each side of the path, banked up to the height of about three feet,
was a further indescribable conglomeration of bric-a-brac, cemented
together into a sort of hedge. The general effect was as if the
knock-about comedians of a music-hall stage (who break plates and
domestic crockery out of sheer joy of living) had combined with demented
graveyard masons, bulls in china shops, and all the craftsmen of Murano,
to produce a nightmare. A light summer breeze strayed down the valley,
and scores of slips of coloured glass, hanging in groups from the
apple-trees, responded with a musical tinkling. The sound brought
recollections of a Japanese temple garden, and Selby paused to look
about him.
"What an extraordinary place!"
The vicar, leading the way up the tiled walk, seemed suddenly to become
aware of the strangeness of their surroundings. Long familiarity with
the house had perhaps robbed the fantastic decorations of their
incongruity. He stopped and smiled. "To be sure.... Yes, I had
forgotten; to a stranger all this must seem very peculiar. I think I
hinted that the old man had very curious ideas of beautifying the home.
This was about his only hobby--and yet, oddly enough, he rarely spoke of
it to me."
At that moment the cottage door opened and a tall florid man came out.
The vicar turned. "Ah, Doctor Williams--that was his trap at the
gate--let me introduce you...." The introduction accomplished, he
inquired after the patient. The medical man shook his head.
"Won't last much longer, I'm afraid: a day or so at the most. No
organic disease, y'know, but just"--he made a little gesture--"like a
clock that's run down. Not an old man either, as men go. But these Navy
men age so quickly.... Well, I must get along. I shall look in again
this evening, but there is nothing one can do, really. He's quite
comfortable.... Good-morning," and the Doctor passed down the path to
his trap.
The vicar opened the cottage door, and stood aside to allow Selby to
enter. The room was partly a kitchen, partly a bedroom; occupying the
bed, with a patchwork quilt drawn up under his chin, was a shrunken
little old man, with a square beard nearly white, and projecting craggy
eyebrows. He turned his head to the door as they entered; in spite of
the commanding brows they were dull, tired old eyes, without interest or
hope, or curiosity in them.
"I've brought you a visitor, Mr Tyelake," said the vicar. "Some one
you'll be glad to see: an Officer in the Navy."
The old man considered Selby with the same vacant, passionless gaze.
"Have you ever ate Navy beef?" he asked abruptly. It was a thin
colourless voice, almost the falsetto of the very old. Selby smiled.
"Oh yes, sometimes."
"Navy beef--that's what brought me here--an' the rheumatics. I'm
dyin'." He made the statement with the simple pride of one who has at
last achieved a modest distinction.
The vicar asked a few questions touching the old man's comfort, and
opened the little oriel window to admit the morning air. "Lieutenant
Selby was most interested in your unique collection of curios outside,
Mr Tyelake. Perhaps you would like to tell him something about them."
He looked at his watch, addressing Selby. "I have a meeting, I'm
afraid.... I don't know if you'd care to stay a few minutes longer and
chat?"
"Certainly," said Selby, and drew a chair near the bed. "If Mr Tyelake
doesn't mind, I'd like to stay a little while...." He sat down, and the
vicar took his departure, closing the door behind him. In a corner by
the dresser a tall grandfather clock ticked out the deliberate seconds;
a bluebottle sailed in through the open window and skirmished round the
low ceiling.
The old man lay staring at his hands as they lay on the patchwork quilt;
twisted, nubbly hands they were, with something pathetic about their
toilworn helplessness. Every now and again the wind brought into the
little room the tinkle of the glass ornaments pendent in the apple-trees
outside: the faint sound seemed to rouse the occupant of the bed.
"I've seen a mort of religions," he said in a low voice, as if speaking
to himself. "Heaps of 'em. An' some said one thing an' some said the
other." His old blank eyes followed the gyrations of the fly upon the
ceiling. "An' I dunno.... Buddhas an' Me-'ommets, Salvation Armies, an'
Bush Baptists, ... an' some says one thing an' some says the other. I
dunno..." He shook his head wearily. "But many's the pot of galvanised
paint I used up outside there ... an' goldleaf, in the dog-watches
a-Saturdays."
This, then, was the explanation of the fantastic decorations outside.
Altars to the unknown God! The old man turned his head towards his
visitor. "But don't you tell the parson. He wouldn't hold with it....
I tell you because you're in the Navy, an' p'r'aps you'd understand. I
was in the Navy--Mr Tyelake's my name. Thirty year a Gunner; an' Navy
beef----" For a while the old man rambled on, seemingly unconscious of
his visitor's presence, of ships long passed through the breakers'
yards, of forgotten commissions all up and down the world, of beef and
rheumatism and Buddha, while Selby sat listening, half moved by pity,
half amused at himself for staying on.
About noon a woman came in and fed the old man with a spoon out of a
cup. Selby rose to go. "I'll come again," he said, touching the
passive hands covered with faint blue tattooing. "I'll come and see you
again this evening." The old man roused himself from his reveries.
"Come again," he repeated, "that's right, come again--soon. When she's
gone--she an' her fussin' about," and for the first time an expression
came into his eyes, as he watched the woman with the cup, an expression
of malevolence. "I don't hold with women ... fussin' round. An' I've
got something to tell you: something pressin'. You must come soon; I'm
slippin' my cable.... Navy beef _an'_ the rheumatics--an' it's to your
advantage...."
The shadows of the alders by the river were lengthening when Selby again
walked up the bricked path leading to the cottage. The old man was
still lying in contemplation of his hands: the grandfather clock had
stopped, and there was a great stillness in the little room.
His gaze was so vacant and the silence remained unbroken so long that
Selby doubted if the old man recognised him.
"I've come back, you see. I've come to see you again." Still the
figure in the bed said nothing, staring dully at his visitor. "I've
come to see you again," Selby repeated.
"It's to your advantage," said the old man. His voice was weaker, and it
was evident that he was, as he said, slipping his cable fast.
"Give me that there ditty-box," continued the thin, toneless voice.
Selby looked round the room, and espied on a corner of the chest of
drawers the scrubbed wooden "ditty-box" in which sailors keep their more
intimate and personal possessions: he fetched it and placed it on the
patchwork quilt; the old man fumbled ineffectually with the lid.
"Tip 'em out," he said at length, and Selby inverted the box to allow a
heap of papers and odds and ends to slide on to the old man's hands. It
was a pathetic collection, the flotsam and jetsam of a sailor's life:
faded photographs, certificates from Captains scarcely memories with the
present generation, a frayed parchment, letters tied up with an old
knife-lanyard, a lock of hair from which the curl had not quite departed
... ghost of a day when perhaps the old man did "hold with" women. At
length he found what he wanted, a soiled sheet of paper that had been
folded and refolded many times.
"Here!" he said, and extended it to Selby. It was a printed form,
discoloured with age, printed in old-fashioned type, and appeared to
relate to details of prison routine and the number of prisoners
victualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that was
now faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of the
compass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard and
enclosed by a line. One of the figures was marked with a cross.
"That's a cemetery," said the old man; "cemetery at a place called Port
des Reines." He lay silent for a while, as if trying to arrange his
scattered ideas; presently the weak voice started again.
"There's a prison at Trinidad, and my father was a warder there ... long
time ago: time the old _Calypso_ was out on the station...." He talked
slowly, with long pauses. "They was sent to catch a murderer who was
hidin' among the islands--a half-breed: pirate he must ha' been ...
murderer an' I don't know what not.... They caught him an' they brought
him to Trinidad where my father was warder in the prison ... when I was
little...." The old man broke off into disconnected, rambling whispers,
and the shadows began gathering in the corners of the room. A thrush in
the orchard outside sang a few long, sweet notes of its Angelus and was
silent. Selby waited with his chin resting in his hand. The old man
suddenly turned his head: "She ain't comin'----? She an' her
fussin'...? I've got something important----"
"No, no," said Selby soothingly, "there's no one here but me. And you
wanted to tell me about your father----"
"Warder in the prison at Trinidad," said the old man, "my father was,
an' a kind-hearted man. There was a prisoner there, a pirate an'
murderer he was, what the _Calypso_ caught ... an' father was kind to
him before he was hanged ... I can't say what he did, but bein'
kind-hearted naturally, it might have been anything ... not takin' into
account of him being a pirate an' murderer. Jewels he had, an' rings
an' such things hidden away somewhere; an' before he was hanged he told
my father where they was buried, 'cos father was kind to him before he
was hanged.... Port des Reines cemetery ... in the grave what's marked
on that chart, he'd buried the whole lot. Seventy thousand pounds, he
said...."
There was a long silence. "Father caught the prison fever an' died just
afterwards. My mother, she gave me the paper ... joined the Navy: an' I
never went to des Reines but the once ... then I went to the wrong
cemetery to dig: ship was under sailin' orders--I hadn't time.
Afterwards I heard there was two cemeteries: priest at Martinique told
me. I was never there but the once.... Seventy thousand pounds: an' me
slippin' me cable...."
Selby sat by the bed in the darkening room holding the soiled sheet of
paper in his hand, piecing together bit by bit the fragments of this
remarkable narrative, until he had a fairly connected story in his head.
Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had been
captured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, and
there sentenced to death. "Time the old _Calypso_ was out on the
Station." ... That would be in the 'forties or thereabouts. The old
man's father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and had
performed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange for
which the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of his
plunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reines
cemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuable
piece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to a
cemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did not
find out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder was
valued at L70,000.
Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me to
do with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? It
seems to me----"
The old man shook his head faintly. "I've got no relatives alive--nor
friends. They're all dead ... an' I'm dyin'. That's for you, that
there bit of paper. Keep it, it's to your advantage.... Some day,
maybe, you'll go to Port des Reines, an' it's the old cemetery furthest
from the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there."
"But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I--I'm a total
stranger to you.... If all this was true----"
"You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcely
raised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that came
along. You came, an' you were kind to me. It's yours--an' to your
advantage...."
There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in the
dusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was all
the hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him the
paper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its being
a prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the story
was very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slipped
off into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures still
lying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, and
put the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had been
a prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the woman
who had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.
Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, and
passed down the path. "I'll come again to-morrow," he added at the
gate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, having
ascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help,
Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the road
that led up on to the moor.
*II.*
It was tea-time, and the Mess had gathered round the Wardroom table; a
signalman came down from the upper deck and pinned a signal on the
baize-covered notice-board.
"Hullo," said some one, "signal from the Flagship! What's the news?"
The Assistant Paymaster, who was sitting with his back to the
notice-board, relinquished the jam-pot, and tilting up his chair,
scrutinised the paper over his shoulder. "Flag-General: Let fires die
out. Usual leave may be granted to Officers."
The Major of Marines, who had finished his tea, rose from the table and
tucked the novel he had been reading under his arm. "Thanks very much,"
he said, "now we're all happy." He stared out through the rain-smeared
scuttle at an angry grey sea and lowering sky. "I can see a faint blur
on the horizon--would that be the delectable beach we're invited to
repair to?"
"That's it," said the First Lieutenant, stirring the leaves in his
tea-pot with the spoon. He had just spent three-quarters of an hour on
the forecastle, mooring ship in a cold, driving rain. "It's not more
than three miles away, and it's only blowing about half a gale--there's
a cutter to go ashore in; time some of you young bloods were climbing
into your 'civvy'[#] suits."
[#] Lowerdeckese = Civilian.
"So much for the joys of a big Fleet in the North Sea. I'd like to
bring some of these fellows, who are always writing to the papers about
it, for a little yachting trip," grumbled the Fleet Surgeon, who had
just returned from two successively placid commissions in the West
Indies. "Never anchor in sight of land--always blowing, always raining;
never get ashore, and when you do, you wish you were on board again....
It's the limit."
"Well, thank Heaven for a fire and an arm-chair, anyway," said the
Paymaster, and drifted towards the smoking-room, filling his pipe as he
went.
"Who'll make a four at Bridge?" asked the Major. "Come on, Number One,"
and so the Mess dispersed, some to arm-chairs round the fire, others to
the Bridge-table, others again to write letters in their cabins.
About half an hour before dinner, as was his wont, the Captain came down
from his cabin and joined the group round the smoking-room fire. The
occupants of the arm-chairs made room and smiled greetings.
"Hullo," said the Captain, "none of you ashore! Thought you all came
into the Navy to see life!"
The Commander laughed. "We're beginning to forget there is such a thing
as the beach."
The Captain lit a cigarette. "Not a bad principle either--saves your
plain-clothes from wearing out." He settled down in an arm-chair
somebody had vacated. "Like an old Gunner of a small ship I was in once
in the West Indies; he only went ashore three times during the
commission--once at Trinidad, and once at Bermuda, and each time when he
returned he had to be hoisted on board in a bowline." There was a
general laugh. "What about the third time, sir?" asked the Engineer
Commander.
"Third time--ah, that was rather mysterious. We never discovered why he
did go ashore that day. I don't know now." The Mess scented a yarn;
thrice-blessed was their Captain in that he could tell a yarn.
"We were cruising round that fringe of islands, part of the Windward
Group, showing the Flag, and the Skipper decided to look in at a place
called ... h'm'm. Can't remember what it's called--Port des something
... Port des Reines, that's it,--what did you say, Selby?"
"Nothing, sir, go on..."
"The last place ever made, this Port des Reines, and it's not finished
yet--just a mountain and the remains of an old French settlement. Well,
we anchored off this God-forsaken hole, and as soon as the Skipper had
had a look at it he decided to up killick and out of it; as far as I can
remember he had to go and lunch with the Consul, but he was to come off
in a couple of hours' time; so we banked fires, and off went the Captain
in the galley.
"No sooner had he gone than the Gunner--this funny old boy I've been
telling you about--came to my cabin (I was by way of being First
Lieutenant of that ship--we'd no Commander) and asked for leave to go
ashore.
"I was rather startled: couldn't imagine what on earth he wanted to do.
I told him we were under sailing orders, and only staying a couple of
hours, and that it was an awful hole: had he any friends staying there,
I asked him. No, he said, he had no friends there, but he particularly
wanted to land there for an hour or so on urgent private affairs, as he
called it.
"Well, he seemed in rather a stew about something, so I gave him leave
and lowered a boat. Off he went in his old bowler hat (he always went
ashore in a bowler hat and a blue suit) armed with something wrapped up
in paper; this turned out afterwards to be a sort of pick or jemmy he
had got the blacksmith to make for him a couple of days before; that
must have been when he heard the ship was going to Port des Reines; it
was the only clue we ever had.
"Two hours later, at the expiration of his leave, he returned, looking
very dusty and dejected, and reported himself. I chaffed him a bit
about going ashore, but nothing could I get out of him, and he never
volunteered an explanation to any one, as far as I know."
A Lieutenant who had finished playing Bridge and had joined the group of
listeners round the fire leaned forward suddenly.
"D'you remember his name, sir?"
"No," said the Captain, "can't say I do. Never can remember names."
"Not a Mr Tyelake by any chance, sir?"
The Captain threw away the end of his cigarette and turned towards the
speaker. "Good Lord! Yes, that was it--Tyelake. But look here,
Selby,----"
The Lieutenant rose and walked towards the door. "If you'll wait a
second, sir, I'll show you why he went ashore." He left the mess and
returned with a soiled sheet of paper in his hand; it was creased by
much folding and discoloured with age.
The Captain turned it over and examined it. "But this doesn't explain
much, does it? And how do you come to know old Tyelake? All this
happened twelve--fifteen--nearly twenty years ago, and he was pensioned
soon after. And anyhow, what's this got to do with it?"
"That," Selby turned the paper over, "that's the cemetery at Port des
Reines, sir,"--and then he told them of a walking tour in the West
Country (omitting the reason for it and other superfluous details) some
two years before, and of the old man who had since solved, it is to be
hoped to his satisfaction, his religious perplexities.
The Assistant Paymaster removed his glasses and blinked excitedly, as
was his habit when much moved. "But ... why couldn't he find it when he
went ashore? And why didn't----"
"Because he went to the wrong cemetery; there were two, d'you see, and
he dug up the wrong one and didn't find out there was another one till
after they'd sailed. He never went there again."
"No," said the Captain. "That's right, we didn't."
The First Lieutenant laughed. "But just imagine him in that climate,
tearing off the tombstones in his bowler hat and serge suit, with one
eye on his watch all the time, and only finding coffins...!"
"And then hearing when it was too late that he'd backed the wrong
horse," added the Major of Marines.
"But...." began the A.P. again, "_How_ much did you say? Seventy
thousand pounds! My Aunt! Selby, have _you_ been there yet?"
Selby smiled and shook his head. "I? No, I've been 'Channel-groping'
ever since; in fact, I'd forgotten all about it until the Captain
mentioned Port des Reines. He was a very old man, and his wits were
failing----"
The Engineer Commander examined the plan. "But there may be something
in the yarn, Selby. It seems almost worth while----"
"A treasure hunt!" broke in the A.P. "Let's all put in for a couple of
months' half-pay, and go out there! Hire a schooner, like they do in
books."
"Schooner!" ejaculated the Major. "I can see myself setting sail for
the Antilles in a schooner! Ugh! It makes me feel queer to think of
it!"
"You'd look fine in a red smuggler's cap and thigh-boots, Major," said
the First Lieutenant. "That's what treasure-hunters always wear."
"With a black patch over one eye, and the skull and cross-bones
embroidered on your brisket," supplemented an imaginative Watch-keeper.
"'Yo! ho! and a bottle of rum!'--can't you see yourself, Major? Only
you ought to have a wooden leg."
"Has anybody in the Mess ever been there?" inquired the Commander.
"Why, the P.M.O.'s just come home from the West Indies; where is he?"
At that moment the Fleet Surgeon entered, to be assailed by a volley of
questions.
"P.M.O.! You're just the man! Where's Porte des Reines?"
"We're all going treasure-hunting in a schooner with the Major!"
"With the Jolly Roger at the fore!"
"P.M.O., have you ever been to Porte des Reines?"
"How many cemeteries are there there?"
"What's the law about digging up graves in the West Indies?"
"----And treasure trove?"
The Fleet Surgeon looked a little bewildered. "What are you all talking
about? Porte des Reines? Yes, I've been there. I don't know about the
cemeteries, but I've got some photographs of the place, if you're all so
anxious to see it--they're in my cabin."
He left the Mess, and the storm of conjecture and speculation broke out
afresh.
"I shall chuck the Service and buy a farm," said the First Lieutenant,
"with my share."
"S-sh! Don't make such a row! One of the Servants will hear, and we
don't want it to get all over the ship! These things are much better
kept quiet. If there's anything in it, the fewer----"
The A.P.'s voice rose above the turmoil: "An' I shall buy a cycle-car
... and a split-cane, steel-centred grilse-rod ... _and_ go to
Switzerland next winter--I----"
The Fleet Surgeon reappeared with a bulky album under his arm; he laid
it on the card-table and turned the pages. "Now--there's Port des
Reines: what's left of it after the earthquake."
"Earthquake!" The Mess gathered round and leaned breathlessly over the
table.
"Yes; two years ago they had that awful earthquake, and the mountain
shifted almost bodily; there's a million tons of rock on top of--well,
you can see!"
They scanned the scene of desolation in silence. "It swallowed the
whole town," said some one in awestruck tones. The magnitude of a
calamity had somehow never come home to them before quite so forcibly.
"Yes," replied the Fleet Surgeon calmly. "Town, such as it was, and
church and cemeteries, mountain toppled down on top of them!"
There was a long, tense silence. "But----" began the A.P., still
clinging to his dreams of a split-cane grilse-rod with a steel centre.
"_Dry_ up!" snapped the First Lieutenant irritably.
"Oh Death, where is thy sting!" murmured the Major of Marines. "Seventy
thousand pounds buried under a mountain!"
The Captain rang the bell and ordered a sherry and bitters. "Well," he
said, "thank Heaven I know at last why the Gunner went ashore!"