I believe all this was said in a sleepwalking voice. Men should be poets—I understand that now, Edmund, Edmund, thou scurvy politician!
Anderson was giving a brief account of Colley—how intemperate he had been and how at last after a shocking escapade he had succumbed to a low fever. But my determination to defend the memory of Mr Colley was a distant thing. My journal did that well enough and I put the thought aside. The lightning stroke, the coup de foudre, was all.
“The rumour went, Miss Chumley, that you was a prodigy which word I discounted but now I see it was no more than the truth.”
“Prodigy, Mr Talbot?”
“Prodigy, Miss Chumley!”
Her answer was a peal of laughter silvery as the flowers round her neck.
“The word was wrongly reported to you, sir. Lady Somerset is sometimes kind enough to refer to me as her ‘protégée’.”
“For me, Miss Chumley, a prodigy, ever and always.”
She still smiled but looked slightly puzzled—as well she might; for whatever the lightning had done to me, for her it had been no more than the experience of something—someone—unexpectedly and impossibly familiar; I mean familiar in the sense of recognized to be known, and perhaps also encroaching! Indeed, having guessed that this was so I immediately had proof of it.
“We have not met before, sir?”
“Indeed, Miss Chumley, I should remember if we had!”
“Of course. Then since we are unknown to each other—”
She paused, looking away, laughed uncertainly, then looked back and was silent. So was I; and we both examined the other’s face with a serious intentness. I was the first to speak.
“We have—and have not!”
She glanced down and I saw that my left hand held her right one. I was not conscious of taking it and let go with a gesture of apology which she dismissed with a shake of the head.
I was aware of Sir Henry speaking by no means in the voice with which he had greeted Miss Chumley.
“Oh, come straight in, for heaven’s sake, Janet! You need not be scared nor say anything, for you was only brought in to make up the numbers.”
“Dearest Janet! There, if you please, between Captain Anderson and Sir Henry.”
I drew back a chair for Lady Somerset who insinuated herself. Sir Henry did the same for Miss Chumley and I suppose Anderson did the same for the invaluable and unfortunate Janet. I could not but be involved with my hostess for a while and made a sad business of it, for most of my attention was on Sir Henry who was telling Miss Chumley what a pity it was that she could not sing in the entertainment and let the people hear what was meant by real singing. Fortunately Lady Somerset had the social perceptions which seem natural to women of any race or clime. For she turned away and engaged Anderson in a trivial conversation which nevertheless must have been a relief to him. He had been staring glumly and silently at Janet whose eyes were deep in her plate. Satisfied, I think, that Anderson was being looked after, Sir Henry began to eat with an assiduity which fully explained the rotundity of his person. Miss Chumley was pushing a little food round her plate with a fork but I did not see any of it touch her mouth.
“You are not hungry?”
“No.”
“Then neither am I.”
“All the same, sir, you must trifle with your fork, so. Is that not elegant?”
“It is charming. But, Miss Chumley, if you persist in declining food you will become even more ethereal.”
“You could not have said anything more flattering to a young person, sir, nor held out a happier prospect!”
“For you perhaps; but for me the happiest prospect would be—no, forgive me. I presume on—dare I say—oh, indeed I must! An immediate sympathy, a recognition—”
“‘We have—and have not’?”
“Oh, Miss Chumley! I am dazed—no—dazzled! Rescue me, for heaven’s sake!”
“That is easily done, sir. If we are to entertain each other let me tell you quickly what you have in hand. I am an orphan, sir, learned my three R’s, considerable French, some Italian and Geography at an establishment for the children of clergymen in Salisbury Close. I am also able to recite you the Kings of England, ending with ‘George, the third of that name whom may God preserve’. I am, of course, pious, modest, clever with my detestable needle and can sing very nearly in tune.”
“I beg you to eat at least a little, for all these accomplishments need to be sustained!”
The wondrous creature actually leaned a little towards me. Our heads came intoxicatingly close.
“Be easy, Mr Talbot. I am also a little devious and at the moment not at all hungry!”
“Miss Chumley, do not say it! Oh no! Biscuits in your cabin!”
The genuine and silvery laughter rang round the stateroom.
“Mr Talbot, I thought the secret would not disgust you!”
“You have bewitched me already. You must have done so before—when we last met, in—oh, Cathay, Tartary, Timbuctoo, where was it?”
Sir Henry interrupted his mastication for a moment.
“You have travelled, Talbot?”
“No, Sir Henry.”
“Well I am sure Marion has not.”
She laughed again.
“Mr Talbot and I are making up a fairy story, uncle. You must none of you listen, for it is great nonsense.”
“Nonsense, Miss Chumley? You cut me to the quick.”
Our heads drew together again.
“I would never do that, Mr Talbot. And fairy tales are not nonsense to some.”
I still cannot tell why tears came to my eyes! A grown man, a sane, really rather calculating man, a political creature to have water spring up behind his eyelids so that he is hard put to it to keep them from falling out down his face!
“Miss Chumley, you make me—inexpressibly happy. I rejoice to be wholly defenceless.”
There was a pause while I swallowed not food but tears. Oh yes, it was my wounded head, my sleeplessness, it must have been—it could not have been what I knew it was!
But she was murmuring.
“We go too fast. Forgive me, sir, I have said more than I should and you too, I believe.” Then looking round: “We have silenced the table! Helen!”
But Lady Somerset, dear woman, came to my rescue.
“And what have we older ones to say that is more important? Enjoy yourselves, my dears, while you may!”
Anderson and Sir Henry talked. It was professional, of course—who had been made post and so on. Lady Helen smiled and nodded and, bless her, ignored us.
So there I was, wishing with a sudden urgency that my wounds were real—not injuries but wounds! I wished I had led a forlorn hope and come back heroically wounded, wounded so severely that I must be nursed and by whom but this discovered angel? I desired with as much urgency as the other that I might have a uniform with which to dazzle her, or an order; and cursed inwardly the world that hangs ornaments on old men who no longer have a use for them! Yet I felt even in those first minutes that she was a girl of wit and understanding and not to be won by a confection of blue broadcloth and gold braid—oh, God, what have I said? She would not—
What did we talk about? I cannot now remember because our words meant little compared with the tides of feeling that swept through that strange drawing-room! At times I swear there was a living silence between us which was infinitely sweet. Like Lady Somerset we had become, I suppose, or I had become, by the power and influence of my feelings, a sensitive! I did really feel the very being of Marion beside me, a new thing in life, a new knowledge, means of it, awareness; and she I swear again was in the same way aware of me. The voices growled on in the stateroom but we were in a silver bubble of our own.
A bubble! I passed those blessed hours like a spendthrift heir who thinks that money grows on trees and he need do nothing but bid his man of business wave a wand to make guineas fall instead of leaves. How I squandered those two hours which should rather have been divided into one hun
dred and twenty minutes, seven thousand two hundred seconds, each second, each instant to have been valued, savoured—no, that is too gross a word—every instant should have been prized—precious is a good word and so is enchantment. Like some knight in an old tale Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, with his whole career to make, spent those hours asleep on his shield in the ruined chapel of love! Forgive a young man, a young fool, his ardours and ecstasies! I understand now that the world will only give ear to them in the mouth of genius.
So what do I remember? Nothing clearly of that magic time but only its ending when we were brought out of it by hearing Anderson growl something about “the confounded ball”.
“The ball—Miss Chumley, we are forgetting! There is to be a ball! A ball, do you hear? We shall dance the night away. You must promise me your hand for—oh, for what? For every dance of course, well if not, for some of them—most of them—for the longest dance—what is the longest dance? There will be a cotillion! Yes! And an allemande—shall we be allowed to dance the valse?”
“I do not think so, Mr Talbot. Lady Somerset as a devotee of Lord Byron cannot possibly countenance a valse, can you, Helen?”
“Lady Somerset, I implore you! Byron is a nonsensical fellow and if he will not allow the valse it is because he is lame and eating sour grapes!”
The argument became general, Marion agreeing with me and declaring (with Shakespeare hors concours) that there was no poet in the English tongue to equal Pope, Sir Henry declaring that most of what was written was rubbish, Anderson grunting, Lady Somerset quoting—“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!”
“Helen! No! Do you desire to send me straight back to my couch?”
The bubble had burst.
Lady Somerset broke off in the middle of “ten thousand fleets”.
“Sir Henry,” I cried. “Should we not proceed in company to the Cape at least? Captain Anderson will tell you how hard put to it we were to make even a show of defence!”
“I would do my best to oblige you, Mr Talbot, but it is not in my power. Besides you need fear nothing, for we are now good friends with the French!”
“I did not mean—”
Anderson turned to me.
“Alcyone is a flyer to have made such time out of Plymouth. She would be hull down within hours.” Then turning to Sir Henry, “You must have judged what she would carry to a hair, sir!”
“Why, as far as Gib, Captain Anderson, she was positively snoring. I tell you, now and then I had to take a look aloft! My first lieutenant would have the main course off her at a catspaw. I have had to tell him; Bellamy, I have said, this is a frigate, curse it, not a damned company ship. How does your man?”
“Well enough. I have no complaints, Sir Henry, a happy ship, you know. He knocked some sense into the people while we were windbound at Spithead.”
“Windbound, was it? You should have been with us back of Plymouth Sound, over across from Shit Creek. They took us out with a steam tug. Good God, I have never been so astonished in my life.”
“The smoke,” moaned Lady Somerset, “the smoke from that metal chimney. My coach cloak was soiled by it. Marion says her pillow was black.”
“Helen!”
“You did, my dear. Cannot you remember what trouble we had with your scalp?”
“Come, Lady Somerset,” I cried, “Miss Chumley is not a Red Indian! But what is a steam tug?”
“It is an extraordinary invention, Mr Talbot,” said Sir Henry, “and I swear nothing but the inventive genius of our country could have brought it forth! It is a craft with a steam boiler, the force from which makes great paddle wheels rotate on either beam. It would throw up fountains of water were the wheels not cased.”
“There is too much fire below,” said Anderson. “I cannot like the things. If they should explode they might touch off a fleet like tinder.”
“And if the paddles should carry away,” said Sir Henry, “they have neither sail nor sweep. I tell you, Anderson, all the while I was in tow till we cast off on the starboard tack to pass east of the Eddystone I had anchors hanging fairly by the hawse with such a swing, crash and bangle we lost a man clean out of the heads on a fluke and the seat with him.”
“They are building a larger one at Portsmouth,” said Anderson. “They will be the ruin of real seamanship.”
“They appear to have a limited application,” said Miss Chumley. “Their appearance is quite horrid.”
“They make a devil of a mess,” said Sir Henry, “but there’s no denying they towed us out against the wind in two hours when it would have taken all day kedging.”
I gathered my wits.
“Might not a larger vessel operate on the High Seas?”
“I suppose it is possible, Mr Talbot, but there is not the necessity. Once given sea room a ship may do well enough for herself.”
“Might we not have steam warships then, that paddle out of harbour and seek the enemy?”
Both naval gentlemen roared with laughter . . . indeed, I have never seen Captain Anderson so animated. For a few moments we heard nothing from them but an exchange of fragmentary Tarpaulin. At last Sir Henry wiped his eyes.
“A glass of wine with you, Mr Talbot, and when you come into government I beg you to accept any post but that of the Admiralty!”
Miss Chumley (and it was so moving to hear how she sprang to my defence) spoke up like a little heroine.
“But you have not answered Mr Talbot’s question, uncle! I am sure he would make a splendid admiral or whatever it is!”
“Mr Talbot shall not be laughed at,” said Lady Somerset, “and I am most anxious, Sir Henry, to hear what you have to say to him.”
“Well, Lady Somerset,” said Sir Henry, “it is the first time I have heard you express an interest in the subject. I believed you was interested in nothing naval but yellow hair, heroics and poetry! Good God, if we was to have these steam tugs large enough to engage an enemy we should need double the crews to keep them clean, let alone feed them with coal!”
Miss Chumley’s defence had fortified me.
“The mechanical genius of the British would overcome all difficulties, I am sure.”
“Speak up, Captain,” said Sir Henry. “You have as much brains as there is to be found in the service, I think.”
Captain Anderson, I thought, looked a little indignant at being accused of intelligence. It was, after all, next door to clever!
“The real objection,” he said, “if you will have an answer to a preposterous question, is this. We may stay at sea for months. A vessel propelled by steam would consume her coal as she moved. Since the possible length of a ship is limited by the possible length of timber suitable for her construction she can never move more than a distance fixed by the amount of coal she can carry in her hull. Then secondly, if she is to be a warship, a paddle wheel on either side will reduce her broadside, that is, the weight of metal she is able to throw. And thirdly, during an engagement, if a single ball should strike the flimsy members of her paddle wheel she will be rendered uncontrollable.”
“We are answered, Mr Talbot,” said Miss Chumley. “We are beaten from the field.”
Oh, the sweetness of that “we”!
“For my part, I could not understand you, Captain Anderson,” said Lady Somerset, “for I declare I was the greatest addle-pate in the schoolroom.”
“Nothing,” said Miss Chumley, the corners of her mouth rising and a delicious dimple appearing in what (with my exposure to Tarpaulin) I was about to call her starboard cheek, “positively nothing is so becoming in a young person as a proper degree of ignorance.”
But after her last remark, Lady Somerset gave a significant glance at the other two ladies so that we three gentlemen rose at once. The ladies departed and Sir Henry showed us where to go. So there I was, an exile from paradise, standing by Captain Anderson and relieving nature into Lord Byron’s “dark blue ocean”. I found my deprivation from that upturned mouth insupportable and—oh, Lord, how I do go on! It w
as what I had always thought a myth, a stage convention, love at first sight, the coup de foudre, a fairy tale—but as she said, some people believe them!
It may be so. Yes, it may be so.
I hastened back to the stateroom and brandy. The ladies had not appeared and I had a dreadful fear that we had seen the last of them. I talked inanely but remained since the other two gentlemen did. They were deep in Tarpaulin. I heard about our possibly drawn gudgeons, about Alcyone’s sweet run aft, about topmasts and a drunken lieutenant whose negligence enabled Sir Henry to turn a handsome compliment, since it was a fortunate circumstance which had enabled him to overtake us. Both gentlemen agreed that if we found a capful of wind during the day neither looked forward to people giving grudging service for being cheated of their fun. I found that Captain Anderson, though approached by a deputation, had refused to splice the main brace even though the news had been so tremendous. He would only do so at anchor, for two doses of rum in one day was the quickest way to indiscipline. So it went on. I was almost in despair when at last the ladies came back. The stateroom of a frigate naturally enough has to serve as both dining and drawing room. It was surely by Lady Somerset’s contrivance that I found myself—against all protocol—seated again by Miss Chumley in what I would have called a window seat, since it was under the great stern window of the ship, but is probably called something quite different—a stern thwart perhaps, but what does it matter? God bless Lady Somerset!
My talk I fear was wild. It was not the brandy. It was not entirely the endless time I seemed to have been without sleep. It was the most tragic of all intoxications, the most ridiculous, the sweetest.
“Miss Chumley, I beg the allemande of you—and the quadrille—and the round dance—and the cotillion—”
“Which shall I choose?”
“All if you please! I cannot bear—”
“It would be improper, sir. You must know that surely!”
“Then I am an advocate of impropriety. We shall dance the allemande round the mainmast and the cotillion from one end of the waist to the other and the—”
To the Ends of the Earth Page 30