by Bartimeus
*XXV.*
*WHY THE GUNNER WENT ASHORE.*
The evening mail had come, and Selby sat alone in his cabin mechanicallyreading and re-reading a letter. Finally he tore it up into very smallpieces and held them clenched in his hand, staring very hard at nothingin particular.
He was engaged to be married: or to be more precise, he had beenengaged. The letter that had come by the evening mail said that thiswas not so any longer.
The girl who wrote it was a very straight-forward person who hatedconcealment of facts because they were unpleasant. It had becomenecessary 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 thatshe should tell him about Someone Else as well.
It was all very painful, and the necessity for thus putting things toSelby in their proper light, had cost her sleepless nights, red eyes,and much expensive notepaper, before the letter was finally posted. Butshe did hope he would realise it was For the Best, ... and some day hewould be so thankful.... It had all been a Big Mistake, because shewasn't a bit what he thought, ... and so forth. A very distressingletter to have to write, and, from Selby's point of view, even moredistressing 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 wasadded 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 lovinghim.... He was insufficient unto the day.
Critics with less biassed judgment might have taken a different point ofview: might have said she was a jilt, or held she acted a littlecruelly: gone further, even, and opined he was well out of it. ButSelby was one of those who walk the earth under a ban of idealism andhad never been seriously in love before. She was the Queen who could dono wrong. It was he who had been weighed and found wanting. If only hehad acted differently on such and such an occasion. If, in short,instead of being himself he had been somebody quite different allalong....
Succeeding days and nights provided enough matches and sulphur of thissort to enable him to fashion a sufficiently effective purgatory, inwhich his mind revolved round its hurt like a cockchafer on a pin.
When a man depends for the efficient performance of his duties upongetting his just amount of sleep (Selby was a watch-keeping Lieutenantin a battleship of the line), affairs of this sort are apt to end indisaster. 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 heapplied for and obtained a week's leave, bought a map of the surroundingdistrict, packed a few necessaries into a light knapsack, and set off towalk away his troubles.
For a day he followed the coast--it was high summer--along a path thatskirted the cliffs. The breeze blew softly off the level _lapis-lazuli_of the Channel, sea-gulls wheeled overhead for company, and followingthe curve of each ragged headland in succession, the creamy edge of thebreakers lured him on towards the West. He walked thirty miles that dayand slept dreamlessly in a fishing village hung about with nets andpopulated by philosophers with patched breeches.
He struck inland the second day, to plunge into a confusion of lanesthat led him blindfold for a while between ten-foot hedges. These openedlater into red coombes, steeped to their sunny depths with the scent offern and may, and all along the road bees held high carnival above thehedgerows. Then green tunnels of foliage, murmurous with wood-pigeon,dappled him at each step with alternate sunlight and shadow, and passedhim on to villages whose inns had cool, flagged parlours, and cider inblue-and-white mugs. An ambient trout-stream held him company most ofthe long afternoon, with at times a kingfisher darting along itstortuous course like a streak from the rainbow that each tiny waterfallhad caught and held.
He supped early in a farm kitchen off new-made pasties, apple tart andyellow-crusted cream, and walked on till the bats began wheelingoverhead in the violet dusk. His ship was sixty miles away when he creptinto 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. Theexercise and strong salt wind had driven the sad humours from him, andthe affairs of life were beginning to resume their right perspective; somuch so that when, about noon, a sore heel began abruptly to make itselffelt (in the irrational way sore heels have), Selby sat down and pulledout 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 someneighbouring village where he could rest a day or so until the chafedfoot was healed.
After a while he turned east, and, leaving the high moorland, discernedthe smoke of chimneys among some trees in the valley. He descended asteep road that seemed to lead in the right direction, and presentlycaught a glimpse of a square church tower among some elms; later on thebreeze bore the faint cawing of rooks up the hillside. A stream dividedthe valley: the few cottages clustered on the opposite side huddledclose together as if reluctant to venture far beyond the shadow of thegrey church. The green of the hillside behind them was gashed in oneplace by an old quarry; but the work had long been abandoned, and Naturehad already begun to repair the red scar with impatient furz andwhinberry.
So much Selby took in as he descended past the grey church and cawingrooks; once at the bottom and across the quaint, square-arched bridge,he found there was a small inn amongst the huddled cottages, where theywould receive him for a night or two.
He lunched, did what he could to the blistered heel with a darningneedle and worsted (after the fashion of blistered sailormen), and tooka light siesta in the lavender-smelling bedroom under the roof until itwas time for tea. Tea over, he lit a pipe, borrowed his host's little 9ft. trout rod that hung in the passage, and limped down to the meadowsskirting the stream beyond the village.
The light occupation gave him something to think about; and, held by thepeace of running water, he lingered by the stream till evening. Thensomething of his old sadness came back with the dimpsey light,--a gentlemelancholy that only resembled sorrow "as the mist resembles the rain."He wanted his supper, too, and so walked slowly back to the village withthe 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 forsupper for 'ee now.... Yes, 'tis nice li'l rod--cut un meself: li'lhickory 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 thegloaming with his pipe and a mug of beer. The old stained chancelwindows of the church beyond the river were lit up and choir practiceappeared to be in progress. The drone of the organ and voices upliftedin familiar harmonies drifted across to him out of the dusk. The poolbelow the bridge still mirrored the last gleams of day in the sky: a fewold men were leaning over the low parapet smoking, and down the streetone or two villagers stood gossiping at their doorsteps. A dog came outof the shadows and sniffed Selby's hands: then he flopped down in thewarm dust and sighed to himself. The strains of the organ on the otherside of the valley swelled louder:--
"... Holy Ghost the Infinite, Comforter Divine..."
sang the unseen choir. How warm and peaceful the evening was, reflectedSelby, puffing at his pipe, one hand caressing the dog's ear.Extraordinarily peaceful, in fact.... He wondered what sort of a man thevicar was, in this tiny backwater of life, and whether he found itdull....
While he wondered, the vicar came down the road and stopped abreast ofhim.
"Good evening," he said, half hesitating, and came nearer. "Pleasedon't get up.... I don't want to disturb you, but I--they told me thisafternoon that a stranger was staying here. I thought I would makemyself known to you: I am the rector of this little pa
rish." He smiledand named himself.
Selby responded to the introduction. "Won't you sit down for a fewminutes? 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 ofmaking your acquaintance."
"It was most kind of you." Selby wondered if all parsons in this faircountry were as attentive to the stranger within their gates. "Mostkind," he repeated. "I--I was on a walking tour, and"--he indicated aslipper of his host's that adorned his left foot--"one of my heels beganto chafe--only a blister, you know; but I thought I'd take things easyfor a day or two....
"Quite so, quite so. An enforced rest is sometimes very pleasant. Iremember once, my throat.... However, that was not what I came to seeyou about. I believe, Mr Selby, er--am I right in supposing that youare 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 topry into other people's affairs. "Yes," he repeated, "I'm aLieutenant," and he named his ship.
The rector made a little deprecatory gesture. "Please don't think I amtrying to acquire the materials for gossip; and I am not asking out ofinquisitiveness. The good people here told me this afternoon--this isan out-of-the-way place, and strangers, distinguished ones, if I may sayso," he made a little inclination of the head, "do not come here veryfrequently: they mentioned it to me as I was passing on my way to hold aconfirmation 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 plugtobacco. He carried a bit in his knapsack with a view to just suchsmall courtesies. "That's the stuff, sir," the man had said, loadinghis pipe. "We wondered, me an' the missus, was you a Navalgentleman...?"
But while his mind busied itself over these recollections his companionwas talking on in his, gentle way.
"... He is not a very old man: but the Doctor tells me he has lived alife of many hardships, and not, I fear, always a temperate one.However, 'Never a sinner, never a saint,' ... and now he is fast--to useone of his own seafaring expressions--'slipping his cable.' He retiredfrom the Navy as a Gunner, I think. That would be a Warrant Officer'srank, would it not?"
Selby nodded. "Yes. Has he been retired long, this person you speakof?"
"Yes, he retired a good many years ago, and has a small pension quitesufficient for his needs. He settled here because he liked thequiet----" The speaker made a little gesture, embracing the hollow inthe hills, sombre now in the gathering darkness. "He lives a verylonely life in a cottage some little distance along the road. Aneccentric old man, with curious ideas of beautifying a home.... However,I am digressing. As far as I know he has no relatives alive, and nofriends ever visit him. He has been bed-ridden for some time, and thewife of one of my parishioners, a most kindly woman, looks in severaltimes a day, and sees he has all he wants.
"Now I come to the part of my story that affects you. Lately, in factsince he took to his bed and the Doctor was compelled to warn him of hisapproaching 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 Servicebeing in the vicinity, to bring him to the cottage. And this afternoon,hearing quite by accident that a Naval Officer was in our midst,"--againthe rector made his courteous little inclination of the head--"it seemedan opportunity of gratifying the old fellow's wish--if you could spare afew moments some time to-morrow...?"
"I should be only too glad to be of any service," said Selby. "Perhapsyou would call for me some time to-morrow morning, and we could go roundtogether----?"
The rector rose. "You are most kind. I was sure when I saw you--I knewI should not appeal in vain...." He extended his hand. "And now I willsay good-night. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time with anold man's concerns. One can do so little in this life to bringhappiness 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 injudgment of this mild divine. "Good-night, sir," and stood lookingafter him till he disappeared along the road into the luminous summernight.
Selby had finished breakfast, and was leaning over the pig-sty wallwatching his host ministering to the fat sow and her squealing litter,when his acquaintance of the previous night appeared. Seen in the broaddaylight he was an elderly man, short and spare, with placid blue eyes,and a singularly winning smile. A bachelor, so the inn-keeper hadinstructed 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 afterthe blistered heel, and then after an ailing member of the fat sow'slitter. "And now, if you are ready and still of the same mind, shall webe strolling along?" he inquired.
Selby fetched his stick, and together they set out along a road madearomatic in the morning sunlight by the scents of dust and floweringhedgerow. Half a mile beyond the village the rector stopped before agate-way. A dogcart and cob stood at the roadside, and a small boy incharge touched his cap.
"The Doctor is here, I see," said the clergyman, and opened the gate inthe hedge. Selby caught a glimpse of a flagged path leading through anorchard to a whitewashed cottage. But his attention from the outset hadbeen arrested by a most extraordinary assortment of crockery, glass andearthenware vases, busts, statuettes, and odds and ends of ironwork thatoccupied every available inch of space round the gateway, bordering thepath, and were even cemented on to the front of the house itself. Abovethe gateway a defaced lion faced an equally mutilated unicorn across theRoyal Arms of England. Arranged beneath, cemented into the pillars ofthe arch, were busts of Napoleon, Irving, Stanley, and GeorgeWashington; an earthenware jar bearing the inscription, "HOT POT"; alittle group representing Leda and the Swan in white marble; and agrinning soapstone joss, such as is sold to tourists and sailors atports on the China coast. Interspersed with these were cups withouthandles, segments of soup-plates, china dolls'-heads, lead soldiers, anda miscellaneous collection of tea-pot spouts, ... all firmly plasteredinto 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, cementedtogether into a sort of hedge. The general effect was as if theknock-about comedians of a music-hall stage (who break plates anddomestic crockery out of sheer joy of living) had combined with dementedgraveyard 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 theapple-trees, responded with a musical tinkling. The sound broughtrecollections of a Japanese temple garden, and Selby paused to lookabout him.
"What an extraordinary place!"
The vicar, leading the way up the tiled walk, seemed suddenly to becomeaware of the strangeness of their surroundings. Long familiarity withthe house had perhaps robbed the fantastic decorations of theirincongruity. He stopped and smiled. "To be sure.... Yes, I hadforgotten; to a stranger all this must seem very peculiar. I think Ihinted 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 ofit 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 thegate--let me introduce you...." The introduction accomplished, heinquired after the patient. The medical man shook his head.
"Won't last much longer, I'm afraid: a day or so at the most. Noorganic disease, y'know, but just"--he made a little gesture--"like aclock that's run down. Not an old man either, as men go. But these Navymen age so quickly.... Well, I must get along. I shall look in againthis evening, but there is nothing one can do, really. He's quitecomfortable.... Good-morning," and the D
octor passed down the path tohis trap.
The vicar opened the cottage door, and stood aside to allow Selby toenter. The room was partly a kitchen, partly a bedroom; occupying thebed, with a patchwork quilt drawn up under his chin, was a shrunkenlittle old man, with a square beard nearly white, and projecting craggyeyebrows. He turned his head to the door as they entered; in spite ofthe commanding brows they were dull, tired old eyes, without interest orhope, or curiosity in them.
"I've brought you a visitor, Mr Tyelake," said the vicar. "Some oneyou'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 thincolourless 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'mdyin'." He made the statement with the simple pride of one who has atlast achieved a modest distinction.
The vicar asked a few questions touching the old man's comfort, andopened the little oriel window to admit the morning air. "LieutenantSelby 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'mafraid.... I don't know if you'd care to stay a few minutes longer andchat?"
"Certainly," said Selby, and drew a chair near the bed. "If Mr Tyelakedoesn't mind, I'd like to stay a little while...." He sat down, and thevicar took his departure, closing the door behind him. In a corner bythe dresser a tall grandfather clock ticked out the deliberate seconds;a bluebottle sailed in through the open window and skirmished round thelow 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 theirtoilworn helplessness. Every now and again the wind brought into thelittle room the tinkle of the glass ornaments pendent in the apple-treesoutside: 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 speakingto himself. "Heaps of 'em. An' some said one thing an' some said theother." His old blank eyes followed the gyrations of the fly upon theceiling. "An' I dunno.... Buddhas an' Me-'ommets, Salvation Armies, an'Bush Baptists, ... an' some says one thing an' some says the other. Idunno..." He shook his head wearily. "But many's the pot of galvanisedpaint I used up outside there ... an' goldleaf, in the dog-watchesa-Saturdays."
This, then, was the explanation of the fantastic decorations outside.Altars to the unknown God! The old man turned his head towards hisvisitor. "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. Iwas in the Navy--Mr Tyelake's my name. Thirty year a Gunner; an' Navybeef----" For a while the old man rambled on, seemingly unconscious ofhis visitor's presence, of ships long passed through the breakers'yards, of forgotten commissions all up and down the world, of beef andrheumatism 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 acup. Selby rose to go. "I'll come again," he said, touching thepassive hands covered with faint blue tattooing. "I'll come and see youagain this evening." The old man roused himself from his reveries."Come again," he repeated, "that's right, come again--soon. When she'sgone--she an' her fussin' about," and for the first time an expressioncame into his eyes, as he watched the woman with the cup, an expressionof malevolence. "I don't hold with women ... fussin' round. An' I'vegot something to tell you: something pressin'. You must come soon; I'mslippin' my cable.... Navy beef _an'_ the rheumatics--an' it's to youradvantage...."
The shadows of the alders by the river were lengthening when Selby againwalked up the bricked path leading to the cottage. The old man wasstill lying in contemplation of his hands: the grandfather clock hadstopped, and there was a great stillness in the little room.
His gaze was so vacant and the silence remained unbroken so long thatSelby doubted if the old man recognised him.
"I've come back, you see. I've come to see you again." Still thefigure in the bed said nothing, staring dully at his visitor. "I'vecome to see you again," Selby repeated.
"It's to your advantage," said the old man. His voice was weaker, and itwas 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 ofdrawers the scrubbed wooden "ditty-box" in which sailors keep their moreintimate and personal possessions: he fetched it and placed it on thepatchwork quilt; the old man fumbled ineffectually with the lid.
"Tip 'em out," he said at length, and Selby inverted the box to allow aheap of papers and odds and ends to slide on to the old man's hands. Itwas a pathetic collection, the flotsam and jetsam of a sailor's life:faded photographs, certificates from Captains scarcely memories with thepresent generation, a frayed parchment, letters tied up with an oldknife-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. Atlength he found what he wanted, a soiled sheet of paper that had beenfolded 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 torelate to details of prison routine and the number of prisonersvictualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that wasnow faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of thecompass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard andenclosed 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 Portdes Reines." He lay silent for a while, as if trying to arrange hisscattered ideas; presently the weak voice started again.
"There's a prison at Trinidad, and my father was a warder there ... longtime ago: time the old _Calypso_ was out on the station...." He talkedslowly, with long pauses. "They was sent to catch a murderer who washidin' among the islands--a half-breed: pirate he must ha' been ...murderer an' I don't know what not.... They caught him an' they broughthim to Trinidad where my father was warder in the prison ... when I waslittle...." The old man broke off into disconnected, rambling whispers,and the shadows began gathering in the corners of the room. A thrush inthe orchard outside sang a few long, sweet notes of its Angelus and wassilent. Selby waited with his chin resting in his hand. The old mansuddenly turned his head: "She ain't comin'----? She an' herfussin'...? I've got something important----"
"No, no," said Selby soothingly, "there's no one here but me. And youwanted 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 tohim before he was hanged ... I can't say what he did, but bein'kind-hearted naturally, it might have been anything ... not takin' intoaccount of him being a pirate an' murderer. Jewels he had, an' ringsan' such things hidden away somewhere; an' before he was hanged he toldmy father where they was buried, 'cos father was kind to him before hewas hanged.... Port des Reines cemetery ... in the grave what's markedon that chart, he'd buried the whole lot. Seventy thousand pounds, hesaid...."
There was a long silence. "Father caught the prison fever an' died justafterwards. My mother, she gave me the paper ... joined the Navy: an' Inever went to des Reines but the once ... then I went to the wrongcemetery to dig: ship was under sailin' orders--I hadn't time.Afterwards I heard there was two cemeteries: priest at Martinique toldme. I was never there but the once.... Seventy thousand pounds: an' meslippin' me cable...."
Selby sat by the bed in the darkening room holding the soiled sheet ofpaper in his hand, piecing together bit by bit the fragments of thisremarkable narrative, until he had a fairly connected stor
y in his head.
Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had beencaptured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, andthere sentenced to death. "Time the old _Calypso_ was out on theStation." ... That would be in the 'forties or thereabouts. The oldman's father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and hadperformed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange forwhich the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of hisplunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reinescemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuablepiece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to acemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did notfind out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder wasvalued at L70,000.
Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me todo with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? Itseems to me----"
The old man shook his head faintly. "I've got no relatives alive--norfriends. They're all dead ... an' I'm dyin'. That's for you, thatthere 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 furthestfrom the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there."
"But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I--I'm a totalstranger to you.... If all this was true----"
"You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcelyraised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that camealong. You came, an' you were kind to me. It's yours--an' to youradvantage...."
There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in thedusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was allthe hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him thepaper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its beinga prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the storywas very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slippedoff into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures stilllying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, andput the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had beena prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the womanwho had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.
Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, andpassed down the path. "I'll come again to-morrow," he added at thegate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, havingascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help,Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the roadthat led up on to the moor.