The Launching of Roger Brook

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The Launching of Roger Brook Page 6

by Dennis Wheatley


  ‘Bah! That’s nothing. You’ll soon get used to it and come to love it.’

  ‘I shan’t, Sir. I’ve dreaded this for years and I’ll loathe every moment of it.’

  ‘Hell’s bells, what schoolgirl vapourings!’ the Admiral cried in a fury. ‘Am I but come home to find that I have a coward for a son?’

  ‘I’m not a coward, Sir. I’ll take on any fellow of my own weight, but I don’t want to go to sea.’

  ‘D’you dare to stand there and defy me?’

  Roger was white to the gills and feeling desperately sick again, but the gross injustice of disposing of him against his will had driven him, too, into a fury.

  ‘Yes, since I must,’ he cried. ‘It’s my life and I’ll not be condemned to a slavery worse than the plantations. I won’t go to sea, and you shan’t make me.’

  ‘God!’ roared the Admiral. ‘Such insolence as this is something I never dreamed to meet, and for it I’ll leather the hide off you.’ Suiting the action to the word he snatched up a cane from a potted plant and thrust out a hand to grab Roger by the collar.

  Roger dodged the blow by stepping sideways and, in the semi-darkness, the Admiral tripped over some large flowerpots that were standing on the tiled floor. He fell among them with a clatter but was up again in a moment and made another grab at Roger with a hearty curse.

  ‘’Tis discipline you need, you presumptuous young fool and I’m the man to give it to you. I’ll soon show you who is master in this ship.’

  Next moment he had Roger by the scruff of the neck and forcing him over brought the cane down with a resounding wallop on his buttocks.

  Roger let out a yell and tensed himself for another blow, but it did not come. While the stick was still raised in midair, the Admiral’s action was arrested by three sharp, clear knocks that came out of the night on one of the panes of the conservatory door.

  4

  The Making of a Man

  For a moment they remained as inanimate as though posed in tableau vivant, then with a muttered curse the Admiral released his hold on Roger and, turning, strode to the door. It was still unlocked and pulling it open he stared out into the warm darkness of the summer night.

  A tall, bearded figure stood there and the Admiral’s eyes, already accustomed to the gloom of the conservatory, swiftly took in the knitted stocking cap, woollen jersey, leather breeches and heavy seaboots of his belated visitor.

  ‘E’en’, Cap’n,’ said the man in a gruff voice. ‘Hearin’ ye was back from the wars I thought ye could do with a keg of the best.’

  ‘Why, Dan!’ exclaimed the Admiral, ‘I scarce knew you for the moment, but ‘twas good of you to think of me. What have you brought us, brandy or schnapps?’

  The smuggler tapped with his boot the little two-gallon cask that he had set down beside him. ‘’Tis French cognac, and none better ever came out of the Charente.’

  The smuggling of wines, spirits, lace and perfume from France had been rife for the past eighty years—ever since Lord Methuen had imposed such heavy discriminating duties against the French that the British people, resenting them as an unjust imposition, had resorted to openly flouting the law and become ready buyers of illegal cargoes. For sheep stealing, a man could still be hanged and the sentences inflicted on poachers were often of a barbarous ferocity, but, despite the utmost pressure of the Government, no bench of magistrates would convict a smuggler, however strong the evidence against him.

  The Admiral had now got back his breath and his good humour. ‘How fares it with you, these days?’ he asked. ‘Is the old game as beset with pitfalls as ever, or are the Excise men grown slack?’

  Dan Izzard shook his massive head and the gold earrings in his ears glinted in the half-light. ‘’Twas easier while the war were on, Cap’n. Most o’ the revenue cutters were impressed for the Navy then, but now they’re freed ag’in they’re doing their darnedest to put us down.’

  ‘So the war was good for business, then?’

  ‘Aye! Wars make no difference to the likes o’ us on either side o’ the Channel. An’ all open trading being cut off put prices up. ’Tis fine pickings we’ve had these past few years, but a man has to take his life in his hands to run a cargo now the fighting’s over.’

  Roger knew Dan well, but although he was now standing close behind his father he scarcely took in what they were saying. He felt ghastly and the conservatory seemed to be rolling round him as distressingly as if it were Dan’s lugger in a heavy sea.

  The Admiral stooped and tilting the little cask rolled it in through the open doorway, as he said: ‘Well, thanks, Dan. Look in and see me any time you’re passing, and I’ll settle up with you.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n, I’ll do that. But ’twon’t be for a day or two, as ’tis overlong since I made a trip. Good-night to ’e.’

  As the door closed Roger drew back, fearing a renewed assault from his father; and he had good cause to do so, as the Admiral suddenly said with cold wrath: ‘And now, Sir, I’ll deal with you!’

  At that instant Roger lurched forward, grasped uncertainly at the wooden staging on which stood several rows of pots, and was violently sick.

  Baffled, the Admiral stared at him. He could hardly give the boy a leathering while in such a state. After a moment he turned away to bolt the door, and muttered angrily: ‘Oh, get to bed. I’ll teach you manners in the morning.’

  Stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth, Roger slunk away and stumbled up to his room.

  Having been up at four and it now being two hours past his usual bedtime, neither the tempestuous scene nor his unhappy physical state kept him long awake. After rinsing out his mouth, and sponging his face with cold water he pulled off his clothes and flopped into bed. Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.

  From habit he woke soon after dawn and, but for a slight heaviness in his head, felt little the worse for his violent emotions of the previous night. When he had washed, dressed and done his brown hair as was his custom, by combing it off his forehead and tying the ends with a bow at the back of his neck, he left his room and went up by a short flight of steps to the roof.

  That of the newer portion of the house had two triangular eaves filling the bulk of a square, but a leaded walk ran right round them and a breast-high parapet concealed the eaves from anyone looking up from the gardens below. It was a good place to laze if one favoured solitude on a sunny day and the views from it provided a never-failing interest.

  To the north, farther up the slope, lay the gardens and backs of the largest houses of the old town, in which some activity was always to be seen; to the west lay open, wooded country and to the east, beyond the double row of limes that formed the drive up to the house, lay the little harbour. But the most engaging prospect was to the south. There, through low-lying meadows and mud-flats, where in spring innumerable gulls’ eggs were to be had for the collecting, the river Lym wound its way to the Solent. Across the three-mile-wide stretch of open water rose the island, sometimes so sharply visible that one felt one had only to reach out to touch it with the hand and the jetties of Yarmouth were easily discernible to the naked eye, at others with its heights shrouded in mist, so that only its tree-clad foreshore was visible and it took on the appearance of some mysterious jungle coast in a tropical sea.

  This morning there was a faint haze which gave promise of another glorious day. Roger could see Hurst Castle on the low-lying spit that jutted out from the mainland, but he could only just discern Worsley’s Tower, opposite it on the island. There, the Solent was at its narrowest and for over a thousand years it had been the ill-omened road to the invasion of England. Vespasian had made the crossing in his galleys before capturing Lymington and launching his Roman legions on their conquest of Britain. Right up to Queen Elizabeth’s time the French had frequently held the vulnerable island for months at a stretch, and from it despatched forays that had pillaged and burnt the coast towns as far west as Devon.

  It was for that reason that Baldwin de Redvers, sec
ond Earl of Devon and feudal lord of Lymington, finding this little outpost of his vast domains too expensive to defend, had granted the town its freedom in the year 1150, thus making it one of the first free Boroughs in all England. But for the past two centuries, despite frequent periods of acute alarm, the Burgesses had remained safe behind the shield of the Royal Navy; and day in day out all through the year the vista was now a never-failing reminder that the power of Britain was based upon the sea. Brigs and brigantines, frigates, sloops and great three-deckers were ever to be seen as they tacked and veered on their way to protect our commerce in distant seas, or bringing the wealth that was the envy of the world to England’s shores.

  But today, Roger had no eyes for the barque that was beating to seaward against the gentle sou’-westerly wind. Plunged in misery, his lively imagination was already conjuring up the dreaded interview with his father that was to come. That he was in for a licking, and a hard one, he had no doubt at all. It would be worse too than the spontaneous beating with a bamboo that he had escaped the previous night, since, now that he was on the way to being fully grown, his father would take a whip to him and not spare his blows. That was a foregone and nerve-shaking conclusion, but what was to befall after the licking had been administered? Should he humbly retract or risk further punishment by sticking to his guns?

  He felt terribly alone and wished desperately that he had someone with whom he could talk over his wretched plight. It was useless to go to his mother for, much as she loved and would be sorry for him, she adored his father to distraction and considered that his every decision was for the best. Jack Bond of Buckland, Roger’s best friend, had not yet returned from Eton, and Dick Eddie of Priestlands was, so he had learned the day before, down with the smallpox. He knew a number of other boys in the neighbourhood but did not fed that any of them were intimate enough friends to fill his present need.

  It was then that Georgina Thursby crossed his mind. It would never have occurred to him to go to any ordinary girl for sympathy and support in such a crisis, but Georgina was very far from being an ordinary girl. The Thursbys played no part in local society, for a very good reason, and Roger was the only neighbour who ever visited their house. He had first met Georgina out riding alone in the forest, some two years previously; in itself a most unusual thing for a young girl to be allowed to do, but the Thursbys were a law unto themselves. Roger had struck up an acquaintance with her which had soon ripened into a warm friendship. She was, he knew, a bare-faced coquette, vain, self-willed and tempestuous, but Colonel Thursby had no other children and the solitary existence that she led, uncontrolled by any women, had made her boyish in her outlook, forthright in her opinions and courageous in her acts.

  The more Roger thought of Georgina the more certain he felt that she would understand and with her quick mind even, perhaps, find some way out for him. His father had named no hour for the dreaded interview and was still abed. There was nothing to prevent his leaving the house and he was not even called on to let the servants know where he had gone. To ride over to the Thursbys now would at least be a respite from the ordeal of meeting his parents at a silent and sultry breakfast table. Turning, he made his way cautiously downstairs and out to the stables, saddled his mare himself and trotting up the lane to the town took the road to Highcliffe.

  A seven-mile ride brought him to his destination. The name applied not to a village but the district in which lay the castle where Lord Bute, the King’s ex-tutor and minister, was spending his declining years, and a number of scattered houses. Highcliffe Manor, in which the Thursbys lived, was a comfortable cream-brick mansion with large double mullioned windows looking out on to a well-kept lawn and gardens. The house itself did not stand on high ground but its location could be fixed for many miles in any direction, owing to what was locally regarded as an eccentric foible of the Colonel’s. He was much interested in all new inventions and to test the strength of iron bars, as opposed to wooden beams, as a framework for building had, a few years earlier, erected in that medium a tower a hundred and fifty feet in height, at no great distance from his house. There, tall, thin and square, it reared up from a naked field but it now provided a fine landmark for ships out at sea and the whole surrounding countryside.

  As Roger entered the hall Colonel Thursby was just coming downstairs to breakfast, and he at once invited the visitor to join them. The Colonel was a thin-faced, studious-looking man in the middle fifties. He did not look in the least like a soldier and, in fact, had only been one in his youth because a wealthy father had bought him a Lt.-Colonelcy. On his father’s death he had promptly sold it and spent several years in travelling, visiting even such distant places as Turkey and Russia. On his return he had fallen violently in love with a beautiful girl who was then the toast of the county and, to the delight of all their acquaintances, married her. But their happiness had been short-lived. One night an overturned candle had set the curtains of the poor girl’s bed alight and she had been burned to death before anyone could come to her assistance.

  For some months the Colonel had shut himself up, refusing all consolation. Then scandalous rumours had begun to circulate. It was said that he had a gipsy girl living in the house. With the easy morality of the times none of his neighbours would have condemned him for endeavouring to console himself with a pretty mistress, though it was thought in ill taste to keep the woman in the home to which he had only eighteen months before brought his young bride; but when a few months later he openly announced that he had married the gipsy, the depths of their disapproval were beyond plumbing.

  Henceforth the Colonel was ostracised by all who had known him, and to complete his apparent discomfiture, his gipsy wife had died in bringing a daughter into the world. Actually he was little affected by the county’s condemnation, since he was richer than most of his neighbours, spent much of his time in London and—as he had never been a sporting man—when at his country home was perfectly content to amuse himself pottering in his well-stocked garden or browsing among his fine collection of books.

  If anyone had suffered it was his daughter, since, even when she reached her teens, he had made no attempt to reopen social relations with his neighbours on her account and, although many of them were sorry for the motherless girl, they felt that it was not for them to take the first step.

  Yet Georgina would not have had matters otherwise. She was shrewd enough to know that had local society been open to her she would have had to accept the authority of a governess, and been expected to conform to the simpering manners and unexciting lady-like pursuits of her contemporaries. Her father was wealthy, generous and a man of taste. He ordered her clothes in London, so that her wardrobe put those of the local belles to shame, and had provided her with an education far above that of the average girl of her age by the simple process of long intimate talks and encouraging her to read widely, no book in his library being barred to her.

  The Colonel had scarcely given orders for Roger’s mare to be taken round to the stables when there came a cry of delight from behind them. Turning, he saw Georgina, as fresh and pretty as a red rose with the morning dew still on it, come running down the staircase and with his three-cornered hat still in his hand he made her a most gallant leg.

  She was now seventeen, over a year older than Roger, and well developed for her age. It is doubtful if, when they first met, she would have bothered with him but for her instinctive urge to captivate every male she set her black eyes upon, and the fact that he filled the need she unconsciously felt for a companion who could share her youthful enthusiasms. She had inherited the dark, lush beauty, big dewy eyes and full ripe mouth of her gipsy mother; had a splendid figure and a graceful freedom of carriage born of unrestrained activity in the open air. She rode like a female centaur, swam like a dryad and could climb trees with the agility of a monkey.

  Roger was not in love with her but the feelings she aroused in him were as near love as he had so far got. He admired her dark beauty and at times was conscious o
f an uneasy feeling when he touched her; but she was too abrupt in her changes of mood and too dominating a personality to fit into his vague imaginings, which centred round a dreamy, fair-haired, blue-eyed creature reclining indolently on a settee. His attachment to her was much more in the nature of an honest comradeship, yet flavoured with a romantic desire to be her champion against the slight that he felt her neighbours had put upon her.

  Georgina fully reciprocated the comradeship and accepted his awkward attempts at chivalry with secret mirth. She was, however, fully conscious that he was an embryo man and, for lack of more mature material to practise on, took delight in trying out his reactions to her latest toilettes and, on rare occasions, seeking to see how near she could get to rousing his apparently dormant passions.

  Those passions were actually by no means so dormant as she supposed. Roger had little left to learn theoretically about the tender passion and had so far refrained from its practice only on account of a certain fastidiousness. In those days of easy morals no one thought the worse of a youngster for giving free rein to his budding desires, providing he did not attempt his friends’ sisters, and there were few country girls who did not consider it an honour to be seduced by a son of the quality. Roger knew half a dozen boys of his own age at Sherborne who had found willing initiators into the mysteries in their mothers’ maids, and one much-admired young coxcomb who had even successfully invaded the bed of his married cousin.

  But Roger, having toyed with the idea of both Polly and Nell during his last holidays, had decided to wait until he came across a young girl of less buxom charms and one who would prove more mentally exciting. As far as Georgina was concerned he knew that to think of her in that way was to play with fire, and, since he placed her automatically in the same category as he would have one of his friends’ sisters, he rarely allowed himself to do so.

  Yet now, as they all went into the dining-room, he could not help remarking how much more beautiful she seemed to have become since he had last seen her, and the laughter in her wicked dark eyes gave him a sudden half-guilty thrill.

 

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