by Bartimeus
*IX.*
*A TITHE OF ADMIRALTY*
It was the hour preceding dinner, and a small boy in the uniform of aNaval Cadet stood on the balcony of an hotel at Dartmouth.
Earlier in the day a tremendous self-importance had possessed his soul;it was begotten primarily of brass buttons and a peaked cap, and itsoutward manifestation at Paddington Station had influenced ashort-sighted old lady in her decision that he was a railway official ofvast, if premature, responsibilities. He leaned over the balustrade andlooked up harbour; beyond the scattered yachts and coal-hulks, blackagainst the path of the sunset, lay the old _Britannia_. She wasmoored, this cradle of a generation's Naval destiny, where the Dartcommenced to wind among green hills crowned by woods and red-brownplough lands; and as he stared, the smaller vanities of the morningpassed from him.
He was barely fifteen, and his ideas were jumbled and immature, but in aconfused sort of way he thought of the thousands of other boys thosewooden walls had sheltered, and who, at the bidding of unknown powers,had gone down to the sea in ships.
He pictured them working their pinnaces and cutters--as he would someday--soaked and chilled by winter gales. Others departed for theMediterranean, where, if the testimony of an aunt (who had once spent awinter at Malta) was to be accepted, life was all picnics and dances.He saw them yet farther afield, chasing slavers, patrollingpirate-infested creeks, fighting through jungle and swamp, lying starkbeneath desert stars, ... and ever fresh ones came to fill the vacantplaces, bred for the work--even as he was to be--on the placid waters ofthe Dart, amid Devon coombes. It was all a little vainglorious,perhaps; and if his imagination was coloured by the periodicals andliterature of boyhood, who is to blame him?
Why it was necessary for these things to be he understood vaguely, if atall. But in some dim way he realised it was part of his new heritage, asort of brotherhood of self-immolation and hardship into which he wasgoing to be initiated.
His thoughts went back along the path of the last few years that hadfollowed his father's death. With a tightening of the heart-strings hesaw how an Empire demands other sacrifices. How, in order that menmight die to martial music, must sometimes come first an even greaterheroism of self-denial. Years of thrift and contrivance, new clothesforesworn, a thousand renunciations--this had been his mother's part,that her son might in time bear his share of the Empire's burden.
She came out on to the balcony as the sun dipped behind the hills, andthe woods were turning sombre, and slipped a thin arm inside his. It israrely given to men to live worthy of the mothers that bore them; afew--a very few--are permitted to die worthy of them. Perhaps it wassome dim foreknowledge of the end that thrilled him as he drew hercloser.
They had dinner, and with it, because it was such a great occasion, abottle of "Sparkling Cider," drunk out of wine-glasses to theinscrutable Future. Another boy was dining with his parents at adistant table, and at intervals throughout the meal the embryo admiralsglanced at one another with furtive interest. After dinner the motherand son sat on the balcony watching the lights of the yachts twinklingacross the water, and talked in low voices scarcely raised above thesound of the waves lapping along the quay. At times their heads werevery close together, and, since in the star-powdered darkness there werenone to see, their hands met and clung.
She accompanied him on board the following day, to be led by agrave-faced Petty Officer along spotless decks that smelt of tar andresin. She saw the chest-deck, where servants were slinging hammocksabove the black-and-white painted chests--the chest-deck with its widecasement ports and rows of enamelled basins, and everywhere that smellof hemp and scrubbed woodwork.
"Number 32, you are, sir," said the Petty Officer; and as he spoke sheknew the time had come when her boy was no longer hers alone.
They bade farewell by the gangway, under the indifferent eyes of asentry, and Number 32 watched the frail figure in the waterman's boattill it was out of sight. Then he turned with a desperate longing forprivacy--anywhere where he could go and blubber like a kid. But fromthat time onwards (with the rare exceptions of leave at home) he wasnever to know privacy again.