Latymer gave him the particulars and thought how greatly he had changed. He looked far more than five years older. When not smiling he had an aspect of settled sadness, probably now so habitual that it might only strike a stranger, In the old days he had often been moody, but this was nothing so transient; it indicated the prevailing hue and tenor of his thoughts. The failure of the pottery could not entirely account for it. There must be some more deep-seated, more abiding, sorrow. That broken engagement might explain it if he had been genuinely in love with the beauty. Yet Ellen had never seemed to think so.
Otherwise nothing at Stretton Priors had altered. The roses blooming in the flower garden outside might have been there ever since that last evening when seven couples had danced from sunset to moonlight. It was hard to remember that those petals had fallen five times, to be blown away by the autumn gales. Above the fireplace hung a great old picture by some unknown Dutchman, which had given them all a great deal of trouble to take down. Romilly’s grandfather had bought it, asserting that it must be elevating since the subject was scriptural, but Romilly, Latymer and George had disagreed with him. An adipose woman, naked and very blue as to flesh tints, writhed amidst some bed-clothes. A gentleman dressed from head to foot in black velvet, a feathered hat on his head and a white ruff round his neck, ran from her in pious horror.
‘I see you’ve still got Potiphar’s wife,’ said Latymer. ‘How is the Brandon Arabian? Is he still in the dining-room?’
‘The horse? Oh yes. He’s always been there, you know.’
‘You meant, at one time, to throw him into the canal.’
‘Did I? I’d forgotten that.’
Having finished the letter, Romilly rang the bell and gave orders for its conveyance. Again there was a marked alteration in his manner. Not only did he give orders less abruptly, he asked if they had given the man something to eat. Five years ago the fellow would have been packed off, dinner or no dinner.
Yet it was that smile which disturbed Latymer most. During dinner he was very cheerful, laughing at them, teasing them, and skilfully curbing his mother’s inclination for tears. He seemed to rejoice with them, as a man may do who has so completely relinquished all hope of happiness for himself that he can view felicity in others with an easy genial detachment.
No early opportunity for comment on this occurred. Next morning he took Latymer and Ellen to the Parsonage to call on the Wilmotts and to explain the business of the special licence. Later he went off on some errand with Giles, leaving the lovers to walk home together.
‘Romilly! He’s changed out of all knowledge,’ began Latymer at once. ‘What is it? What has happened to him? When he smiles he reminds me … I could not remember at first, but I remember now … he reminds me of a poor fellow, our first officer on the Ariadne, who had seen his wife and children drown before his eyes. Is it all this business of the pottery? Surely not?’
‘No. It’s not only that. Although, if that scheme had been a success I think it would have been a comfort to him. But the whole story is something which I could never write in a letter. Besides, I ought not to have told it to you unless we were engaged. Even so, it’s very hard to explain.’
Latymer found it hard to understand. The little that he could recall of poor Jenny Newbolt cast no light on it.
‘And then there was the loss of the little boy. He searched and searched. He had enquiries made all over the country. Never a word! He fancied, still fancies, such terrible things. I think he threw himself into the pottery scheme partly to make amends. He felt that he had caused great misery and could never now set it right, but he still hoped that somebody might be the better, if he exerted himself. And that was all a failure too.’
‘I don’t quite understand. Did the boy go with the old gentleman?’
‘Oh no. Not together. There was no connection. Dickie ran off first. I suppose immediately after the funeral. And Dr. Newbolt went some time later.’
‘And what became of the other daughter? Venetia?’
‘I believe she went to India. Charlotte, who always manages to find things out, Charlotte says so. They sent her out to the brother who is in the East India Company. I daresay she has married a Nabob.’
‘Poor Brandon. That escape is the only piece of good luck he’s had. And I don’t suppose he suffers less because …’
He hesitated and she finished for him:
‘All his own fault? I know. Yet he’s so good. So kind. You saw how he played backgammon with Mama last night. He does that every night, though it must bore him dreadfully. He would never have been so patient in the old days.’
‘Nobody could have been kinder to me.’
‘Or to me. If it were not for him we should never have met. He’s been a benefactor to us.’
‘Yet I don’t suppose he would have brought me here if he’d foreseen the future. It’s enough to frighten one … some chance action, taken without thought, may have such tremendous consequences for other people.’
‘Yes, indeed. You and I, happy for the rest of our lives, thanks to him. And the people at Cranton’s, for whom he sacrificed so much, turned off to starve, cursing him and shaking their fists at him.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose it was as bad as that.’
‘But it was. He was riding through the forest and he met a party of them coming away, with their wives and children. And when they saw him they cursed him. And some of them sang a song. He says it’s a song the convicts sing. Here’s to You and Yours. You know it?’
‘Yes. I’ve heard them. They sing it in the carts going down to the hulks. It makes one glad to think they’re being taken to the other side of the world.’
‘Is it so bad? What does it say?’
Latymer pondered and then said:
‘I believe it runs something like this:
Here’s to you and yours,
And here’s to us and ours.
Look well to you and yours,
For if it’s in our powers
We’ll do as much for you and yours
As you for us and ours.’
She shivered, and hoped that those songsters would go a long way off.
‘He goes out so little now,’ she lamented. ‘He hardly sees anybody. He has nothing to do. Nothing to think about.’
‘Yes, poor fellow. He must be lost without an Object.’
After a moment’s hesitation she went on.
‘Edward … dearest … should you … I was wondering if you would think it very strange … I believe it might do him a great deal of good. To ask him to come on our wedding tour.’
He did think it very strange, but saw that she was eager for his sympathy.
‘By all means, my darling, if you think it would cheer him up. But wouldn’t he think it an odd invitation? One doesn’t generally take an extra man on these occasions.’
‘I know. One takes a girl. A bridesmaid. Charlotte took Sophy and Sophy took Bet. Amabel ought to have taken me, but she got out of it by saying she owed it to one of her new sisters-in-law. People will expect us to take Bet. Do you want to take Bet? I don’t.’
From what he could remember of Bet she was the last person whom he desired to take. This custom of a travelling bridesmaid struck him, for the first time, as absurd and a nuisance. To have some smirking, simpering Miss continually at one’s elbow, just when one has at last got one’s girl to oneself must be intolerable. Ten to one she would get up confoundedly early in the morning. A man would be more likely to enter into a bridegroom’s feelings. He would take himself off pretty often, to inspect old ruins. The bride’s brother would be far less trouble, in most cases.
Not that he could see why he and Ellen should be obliged to take anybody at all. Other girls, torn from their families, and sent off with a strange man, might need a sister or cousin to keep them company until they had been broken in to the married state, but he and Ellen were not strangers.
‘Why do they take a girl?’ he exclaimed. ‘One would have thought that an older
woman … a married woman …’
‘Oh no. If the husband turns out to be very disagreeable it puts the wife in spirits if she has a girl with her, to whom she is superior, you know, because she’s married.’
‘Good God!’
‘Sophy told Amabel that she would have run away from Mr. Sykes within forty-eight hours if Bet had not been with them. She felt obliged to put on a good face before Bet.’
‘And what if I turn out to be disagreeable?’
‘If Romilly is there he’ll call you out. I believe he would be very much pleased if we ask him. And we might trust him to leave us alone a great deal.’
‘In that case let’s ask him.’
A faint shadow fell upon Latymer’s spirits. It was soon thrown off, but he felt for a moment a qualm of uneasiness which only very fortunate men can permit themselves to feel. Had he been less certain of his own happiness he would have denied that he felt it. But he was secure enough to glance at the enormous risks run by his sex amongst these supposedly tender creatures.
3
THE INVITATION GAVE great pleasure to Romilly. After some show of protest he accepted, resolving that they should not have cause to repent of it. He would keep out of their way and run errands for them.
The thought of losing Ellen was hard to bear, for he had grown exceedingly fond of her. During those years of slow, paralysing disappointment her affection and good humour had made life endurable. Stretton would be very dreary without her. He had lost touch with all his old friends and had found no new ones. The local gentry thought him a fool. He had run out of Objects. The charge in Jenny’s letter, which he kept over his heart, was still paramount with him: ‘We must challenge misery, even though it is always too strong for us. We must still defy it and cry out against it.’ But, having failed with his pottery, he could think of no further challenge save to shut himself up and do nothing at all, lest he might do more harm. Backgammon with his mother of an evening was safe enough; she would be very unhappy if he went away and she would miss Ellen cruelly. There he could perceive a clear duty, and he shrank from anything more positive. He had been born with money, power and considerable capacities. Yet it seemed to him that he had lived for half his allotted span with no positive record save one of injury to others.
The young couple planned to make a tour in the West, a part of the country which Latymer had never explored. The wedding took place with all possible despatch and they set off from the church door to Salisbury where they were, at Romilly’s suggestion, to spend a day or two quite alone. He himself escorted his mother on a journey to visit Amabel, near Winchester, before he joined them.
In Salisbury he found them, absent, smiling, sleepy, and unable to say whether they had yet inspected the stone carving in the cathedral chapter-house. At his suggestion they decided to dawdle their way into Dorsetshire.
‘We have no obligation to get as far as St. Michael’s Mount,’ he pointed out one morning when, as usual, they apologised for a delayed start.
‘You said you’d like to see it,’ remembered Ellen.
‘It can wait. I merely want to find out if it looks towards Bayonne.’
‘It don’t,’ said Latymer. ‘I’ve seen it from the sea. I should say, at a guess, that it looks towards Trinidad. Who says it looks towards Bayonne?’
‘Milton. “Where the great vision of the guarded Mount looks towards Namancos and Bayona’s hold.” We can settle for something nearer, you know.’
‘The Cheddar Gorge?’ remembered Latymer. ‘They say one should see that.’
Into Somerset therefore they went. Romilly looked at the Cheddar Gorge. Ellen and Latymer looked at one another.
This they were able to do without interruption since Romilly established himself as their courier. He chose the rooms at the inns, ordered the dinner and paid the bills. He made Ellen’s comfort his care. At Glastonbury they were disturbed by people singing and dancing in a great barn just under their windows. Ellen expressed a fear lest this shouting and stamping should go on all night; it was, so a waiter told them, a frolic got up amongst the inn servants since two trampers, one of whom played the fiddle, were sleeping in the stables. Romilly at once sent down a couple of guineas, one for the fiddler, with a request to go away, and the other for the disappointed dancers that they might drink the lady’s health. Ellen and Latymer were grateful to him, but thought this liberality excessive. A complaint to the landlord would have been a cheaper way to silence the fiddler.
They went from Glastonbury to Bridgwater, where it rained. In better weather they came to Porlock, which all voted to be a sweet place. Ellen and Latymer were beginning to emerge from their first dazed dream. They sometimes took notice of the scenery. They answered questions intelligibly and laughed at jokes, whereas they had formerly been disposed to laugh for no reason at all. They became more energetic: having decided to drive over Exmoor, they scrambled up to Dunkery Beacon.
Romilly was a little sorry to see this first stage of the tour coming to an end. For a while their happiness had transformed them into creatures inhabiting some other world. As though possessing already the substance of things hoped for, they had shed the defences, the tones, the gestures, the caution, the compromise, needed for existence on this earth. Such felicity it was almost in his power to share since it had nothing in common with the workaday contentments and satisfactions which, as he believed, could never now be his. They were, in themselves, a challenge to misery, and he rejoiced to behold them. Strangers, sojourners, exiles in the wilderness, they raised a song of home. Now the glory was fading. They were becoming themselves, Latymer and Ellen, an excellent couple, good-humoured, honest, courageous, warm-hearted and energetic — likely to thrive in the wilderness.
At supper, on the day that they had climbed Dunkery, an argument sprang up amongst them. Latymer mentioned a Captain Collet, under whom he had served, and Romilly remembered meeting this man in London.
‘A very pleasant fellow,’ said Romilly. ‘I liked him extremely. But I should have thought he had too much sensibility … too much for keeping strict discipline?’
‘Sensibility!’ snorted Latymer. ‘You might call it that. He thinks nothing of flogging his men. Flogs as often as any commander in the Navy, I fancy. But never sees it done.’
‘Do you see it done?’ asked Romilly earnestly.
‘Why, yes. It makes me sick. I never have a man flogged if I can avoid it. But if I think such a measure necessary I’ve no business to be so nice that I won’t see it.’
‘And you do think it necessary?’
‘Yes. In some cases.’
‘H’m! The rack and the stake were once thought necessary.’
‘That was in the olden days,’ said Ellen, ‘when everybody was quite barbarous. Now we are enlightened.’
‘Someday we may be thought barbarous.’
‘If anyone thinks Edward barbarous they will know nothing at all about him.’
‘Edward! Yes. We’d better leave Edward out of it. But not all captains are as humane as he is.’
‘Some are great brutes,’ agreed Latymer. ‘Their men are out of luck to be serving under brutes. But that’s not to say flogging is unnecessary.’
‘So necessary that power must be given to brutes?’
‘I think,’ said Latymer, ‘most men would sail under a flogging captain sooner than with one who failed to know his business. Whole skins wouldn’t profit them much if he very humanely drowned ’em all by accident one fine day. Flogging captains an’t the most unpopular.’
Romilly could believe that, remembering how he had himself very humanely deprived his potters of their livelihood. Cranton might have been a brute but was, from their point of view, a better master.
‘It’s the way of the world, I suppose,’ he said sadly.
‘I don’t think this world is such a bad place,’ protested Ellen. ‘People who deserve to prosper and be happy generally are so. Don’t you think so, Edward?’
‘No,’ said Latymer. ‘I
can’t say that I do. A man’s luck and his deserts don’t always square. It’s mostly luck in this world, you know, Romilly. A man must take his luck as he finds it. You can’t alter luck by legislation.’
‘An excellent philosophy for those whose luck is good.’
‘Why, what would you do about it? Abolish bad luck by Act of Parliament?’
‘No. I suppose not. But … the necessary … the inevitable … must these for ever be taken for granted? We tolerate evils which we have declared to be inevitable. Don’t we do so because toleration suits us? Ought not the inevitable to trouble us? To be continually on our minds? Even though we can see no remedy?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Latymer. ‘We should be fit for nothing if we trouble ourselves to no end. When it’s in our power to do good, we should exert ourselves. When we can do nothing we’d better harden our hearts a little.’
‘And so continue to believe that nothing can ever be done? Here’s Ellen claims that we are enlightened. Who enlightened us? Those who cried out against barbarity, against the rack and the stake, gave themselves no rest, gave others no rest, until these horrors were abolished. They cried: Intolerable! Until the rest of the world began to say: Unnecessary!’
Ellen was ruffled because she thought that Romilly had criticised the Navy and had accused Edward of barbarism. She said, a little sharply:
‘And who is to make all this pother about flogging in the Navy? You’d not like it if Partridge took to giving himself no rest and you no rest. A fine thing you’d think it if your morning chocolate never appeared because Partridge was bawling “Intolerable!” down in the pantry. You’d turn him off.’
‘Touché,’ agreed Romilly good-humouredly. ‘We can’t spare Partridge for work of that sort.’
‘Only people who have nothing better to do …’ began Ellen, but a quick look from Latymer silenced her.
Edward is too kind, she thought impatiently. He won’t defend himself. Here he is, leading a hard and useful life, often in danger, dependent only on himself and his own exertions! Whilst Romilly, who can do nothing in the world save make himself miserable, presumes to … it’s too bad! Poor Rom! Not his fault. As Edward says, the wonder is that he should be so amiable, spoilt as he was. But he should recognise which is the superior. And now Edward will reason with him as though he were talking sense.
A Night in Cold Harbour Page 19