A Night in Cold Harbour

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘I think,’ said Latymer, who had been pondering, ‘that Partridge might count for more than either of you suppose. He might sit on a jury.’

  ‘Juries can be barbarous,’ objected Romilly.

  ‘To be sure. But they speak for their age. I heard an odd thing on the coach coming down to Severnton. Some people were talking of a case … I think it was at the Gloucester Assizes. A fellow stole a horse, for which he should have been hanged, for most horses are worth more than forty shillings. But he wan’t hanged, for they brought it in … what was it? Fraudulent conversion, and that, it seems, is not a hanging matter. The owner, it was said, asked him to hold the horse, upon which he made off with it. And a man on the coach, a lawyer, says: Oh yes. If it’s fraudulent conversion the jury is more ready to convict. They don’t like to hang a man for forty shillings. If the goods can be fixed as worth less, they’ll convict for theft. If not, they’re liable to acquit, whatever the evidence.’

  ‘To hang a man for forty shillings,’ said Romilly, ‘they begin to find that intolerable?’

  ‘It seems so. We hang in order to check theft. But the boot may turn out to be on the other leg if Partridge thinks the penalty unnecessarily severe. He lets the thief off. Milder measures would serve better. If the law comes to be changed, that may not be entirely because your gentlemen in Parliament are sorry for thieves. It might be in order to safeguard property.’

  ‘But did the man steal the horse?’ asked Ellen, who was puzzled.

  ‘I gather that he probably did. The story of the owner entrusting it to him was pretty thin. But the jury decided to believe it.’

  ‘They would have thought very differently if it had been their horse.’

  The two men exchanged glances and smiled. Suddenly she felt that she, not Romilly, was the third party: they had some understanding from which she was excluded. She disliked this and said no more until later, when she was alone with Latymer. Then she exclaimed:

  ‘You can’t really agree with Romilly? To make a great to-do over sad things which can’t be helped, of what use is that?’

  ‘Very little immediate use. But I think that feeling comes before judgement. People who cry out: Intolerable! may be very tiresome, but they might serve some purpose, even if they can’t, themselves, suggest any remedy. The men, and the measures for that, come after.’

  ‘Oh? I see. Unhook my gown, will you?’

  Latymer unhooked her gown but his mind seemed to be somewhat off the business. She found herself growing quite cross.

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘Romilly’s task in life … nobody can accuse him of neglecting it! To distress himself and everybody else. If he feels away hard enough perhaps someday nobody will be flogged and nobody hanged, and poor children will be put to school instead of to work.’

  ‘Poor Romilly! Why are you so hard on him?’

  ‘Because … because you seem to agree with him, not me!’

  ‘Then it’s I who should catch it.’

  ‘I daresay. But I’m a woman, you know, and therefore unreasonable. And I begin to see why one doesn’t take another man on one’s wedding tour.’

  4

  ELLEN WAS RARELY out of temper. This little burst of peevishness sprang from reluctance to believe that the first bliss was over. A fortnight ago Latymer would have been so completely preoccupied with herself that he would not have pursued the discussion. He would have smiled vaguely, agreed with Romilly, and changed the subject. This enchantment could not last. She knew that. But she thought it hard that it should end so soon, merely because he took it into his head to remember a discussion on a coach, driving down to Severnton. She wished Edward and Romilly to love one another because she loved them both. She could see little reason for any other tie between them.

  A growing intimacy, a mutual regard, would have pleased her better could she have understood it. But she had had little experience of men, their ways, and their attitude towards each other. Her world had been entirely feminine, and in that world argument was not thought to be very civil. If possible one agreed with people; to differ was slightly hostile. Love and friendship demanded a perfect concord in opinions. Argument for its own sake, as a means of reaching the truth, puzzled her very much.

  Next day they went to Watchet and argued without stopping, nor could she make out which was in the right. In sympathy she would have been all for Romilly, had he been disputing with anybody save Edward. He was against the Americans, as was very right and proper, since Britain was at war with them. Latymer, although perfectly ready to fight them whenever and wherever he should meet them, maintained that they had good cause for resenting the British attacks on their shipping, and that it was not necessary, when fighting, to regard an opponent as totally in the wrong. On the contrary, he maintained that one fought better if one had a high opinion of the other fellows. They broke off occasionally to tease Ellen, but that did not mend matters. She grew quite melancholy and scarcely said a word on the drive home. Latymer thought that the scramble up Dunkery, the day before, must have been too much for her. Romilly guessed the truth and explained it in private to his brother-in-law, when they got back to Porlock.

  ‘She’s not used to us and our ways. If she had another woman, they could laugh at us, but she’s odd man out, which is a little hard on a bride. Go off by yourselves tomorrow, and talk nonsense. I’ll ride over to Minehead and tell you whether it’s worth a visit.’

  To him the argument at Watchet had been stimulating. It had been a long time since he had attempted to discuss anything with a sensible energetic man. The effort roused him from the lethargy into which he had sunk, secluded and moping, like a sulky child. During his day at Minehead he forced himself to scrutinise, more dispassionately than he had ever done before, the history and causes of his failure at the pottery, and to examine a certain readiness to believe that, since he had failed, nothing could ever be done by anybody. His own melancholy struck him as less excusable after a fortnight spent in Latymer’s company.

  All day he rode, up hill, down dale, into villages, and by the sea shore, scarce knowing where he went. All day he was tossed this way and that by a debate in which the second voice spoke for that self in him which had been paralysed from the day of his breach with Jenny. He had chosen then to turn his back upon truth, and now, when he sought it, he was baffled. He had lied to himself too long.

  He returned to Porlock baffled, believing that he had accomplished nothing. Yet he must at some point on his ride have hit the target, for he found himself putting it all quite clearly to Latymer, late that evening. Ellen had gone upstairs to bed and the two men took a short stroll towards Porlock Weir before parting for the night.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Romilly, ‘about those potters.’

  ‘Why go on doing that?’ said Latymer. ‘That’s over and done with. No mending it now. Think of something else.’

  ‘I might, now that I know what the trouble really was. You know … I’m afraid of poor people. So it was all cant to set up as their friend. They knew it. They knew they owed me nothing. Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘They don’t like charity,’ said Latymer. ‘You can’t blame ’em. We should dislike it.’

  ‘Ay … charity … benevolence … philanthropy … mighty fine names all of them for a guilty conscience. They say the weak fear the strong. I believe the strong fear the weak a good deal more. D’ye know what my mother said when she heard that those fellows thought they should send their own man to Parliament?’ Romilly laughed. ‘She’s a very honest woman, my mother. She said: “That would be very disagreeable for us. There are so many poor people. They would soon get all the power. And then they would take our money from us.” ’

  Latymer laughed too.

  ‘So they would,’ said Romilly. ‘If they had the chance.’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know. They might set out to do so. But they’re lazy devils. Nine men out of ten are bone lazy. And it would be no easy task. We know how to hang on to money, an
d power, better than they do. Sooner than exert themselves they’ll let others rule them: they’ll let us grow rich, so long as their own lot an’t too hard.’

  ‘They might find leaders who don’t fear exertion.’

  ‘They might. Until these leaders collar the money. They’d only change masters.’

  ‘You think so badly of the human race?’

  ‘Badly? No. But only one man in a hundred, one in a thousand, perhaps, likes exertion or undertakes it unless he’s driven. Those who do rule the rest. It’s easy enough to wail that something should be done. To say that something shall be done … a man don’t say that unless he’s bred to it.’

  ‘Then you think they could be no better ruled than they are now?’

  ‘I don’t say that. But they mayn’t care to be better ruled if it’s likely to cost them trouble. They may bawl about liberty and justice, but they must be pretty desperate before they’ll walk a mile to secure either.’

  ‘They need …’ said Romilly earnestly, ‘first of all, perhaps, they need … affiance in each other. That must be fostered. But how? Only if they get leaders of a peculiar cast. Risen from amongst themselves, but bred, as you say, to see that something is done.’

  ‘Men of that sort, if they have the wit to escape the gallows, end by making themselves a pretty fortune. We knight ’em and they give no more trouble.’

  ‘Yet there might be some who would refuse…. I don’t despair. In any case I think better of my potters. They weren’t fools. They said what I’d have said in their shoes. They reason as I do.’

  Latymer forbore to say that they might be fools all the same. He went up and told Ellen that his brother-in-law seemed to be on the mend.

  5

  ELLEN’S SPIRITS WERE quite restored by getting Latymer to herself for a day. She was remorseful over her own petulance and sorry that Romilly should have missed a delightful excursion.

  ‘We found some scenery,’ she reported, ‘which is as good as anything out of a book. It’s truly romantic. You must see it. I’m sure you would like it extremely. We wished you were with us every other minute. We must go again and you must come.’

  ‘What is scenery out of a book like?’ asked Romilly.

  ‘I mean it’s not like England.’

  ‘That it’s not,’ agreed Latymer. ‘Though it’s not quite like any place I’ve seen in any other part of the world either. I don’t know why. Ellen’s right. It’s very poetical. We left the carriage at a farm and followed a lane by a stream. Then we went through a gate …

  ‘And as soon as we were through the gate it was like walking into … into … a book …’ put in Ellen.

  ‘The stream suddenly plunges down, straight into the sea, through thick trees. One can hardly believe trees could grow on a cliff side so steep.’

  ‘But we never got to the sea,’ interrupted Ellen, ‘though we went down and down and down. There it was, always just as far below. We could see it through the tree trunks at our feet. I don’t believe anybody has ever got down there. Thousands and thousands of feet …

  ‘No, Ellen. Scarce one thousand….’

  ‘And it looks so strange and dark down below….’

  ‘That’s because the cliff faces due north. I doubt if the sun ever …’

  ‘Edward will never allow anything to be romantic. He always has some explanation.’

  ‘But I do allow something unusual about this. I’ve said it’s poetical. I should write poetry about it, if I were a poet.’

  ‘You must come, Romilly. We’ll go there again tomorrow and take you.’

  He went, but with some reluctance, for his mind was still upon his potters. A new Object had begun to take shape. Lestrange, growing gouty and continually disappointed in his hopes of getting office, had begun to talk of giving up Parliament. In that case his seat would again be at Romilly’s disposal.

  A political career had never appealed to Romilly, but he was now considering a notion of taking this seat himself for a time, while he looked round for some person whom the potters might have regarded as their own man. He had learnt too much to hope that they would ever consider him as a trustworthy representative, sincerely though he might attempt to fight their battles. They would accept nobody whom they did not feel to be one of themselves, nor would it be an easy task to find a fellow with all the necessary qualifications. Latymer’s comment also stuck in his mind. He might find some promising candidate who would then make use of the opportunity to feather his own nest. Upon the whole he was inclined to dismiss the scheme as springing merely from vanity, the need for self-justification, and the old impatient desire to be doing something.

  In low spirits he drove with the others along a rough track leading westwards over the cliffs from farm to farm. At the last of these farms they left the carriage.

  ‘Now!’ cried Ellen, skipping along the lane. ‘Listen! You can hear it, how it suddenly plunges roaring down.’

  ‘I doubt if it often roars,’ said Latymer. ‘I daresay it’s often a mere trickle. But there was heavy rain last week, you remember, and a lot of water is coming down off the moor.’

  ‘When does the poetry begin?’ demanded Romilly.

  ‘When we get through the gate,’ promised Ellen. ‘Once through the gate and you feel that poetry is true.’

  ‘An’t it true anywhere else then?’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean. Nobody could make poetry out of this lane.’

  ‘I can think of some which suits this lane very well.’

  ‘Then it can’t be an agreeable sort of poetry.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s confoundedly disagreeable and I wish I could describe it as untrue:

  At thirty man suspects himself a fool,

  Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

  At fifty chides his infamous delay;

  In all the magnanimity of thought

  Resolves and re-resolves — and dies the same!’

  ‘Oh, pray stop! Here’s the gate.’

  They passed into the cool shadow of the woods and the poetry began.

  There was no end, no measure, to that descent. Nothing moved save the falling water. No wind stirred in the ravine. All was bright and motionless, like a painted scene. Sunlight striking down picked out, here and there, a bush of green and gold, vivid against the shadow. The falling water woke a thousand echoes as though there had been many streams, not one. Voices from long ago, he thought dreamily, telling of things to come. Far below was the dark sea floor, seen somewhere formerly, and long forgotten. Ellen was right. Seen in some book.

  ‘You’ll agree it’s romantic?’

  Since he did agree he wished that she would not use the word so often.

  Now the stream had vanished. It sang through caverns made by strangely curved, writhing rocks, also seen before, long ago. When they came to the water again Ellen sat down on a mossy rock to rest.

  Latymer climbed about, leapt across the clamouring water, and stood looking at it pensively.

  Romilly remembered.

  ‘Lord Carn!’ he shouted. ‘But you should be sitting cross-legged.’

  When Latymer came back he explained:

  ‘There was an old book. That was the book. Jenny’s father had it.’

  They gave him a startled look. He never spoke of her, if he could help it, although they knew that he continually thought of her.

  ‘This is the scenery. A palace … built by … no … no … it was a screen. An Eastern screen at Corston. When Grandmama was there. Ellen! You must remember it?’

  ‘Oh, Romilly, she died before I was born!’

  ‘Did she? I forgot. This is the same. Water falling. Rocks. Caverns. The twisted trees. The dark sea at the bottom. But the fellow who built the palace, he was in a book. The Travels of Purchas, or some such name.’

  ‘But that was the book Dr. Newbolt lost!’ exclaimed Ellen. ‘He was always talking about it.’

  ‘We … we used to fancy that we might, by some spell, find this place. We were su
re … we were right!’

  ‘It was a great while ago then?’ asked Latymer, puzzled.

  ‘Oh yes. Children. We were children.’

  Tears started to Ellen’s eyes at the sound of his voice. He looked round him with a recognising, joyful stare. They both saw, for a moment, the man he should have been. Then he set off hurriedly down the path as though expecting to meet someone.

  The shadowy sea below drew no nearer. He could not tell whether extreme joy or extreme grief had hold of him. At such a pitch the one could not be distinguished from the other. Yet the unity of all experience had become plain; he knew that one moment in existence, completely filled, embraces all. He had passed beyond time and was no longer alone.

  Later he knew that such felicity is only granted at a hard price. Reassurance so complete must erase all lesser sources of consolation. She had dispensed with them and so must he, returning to life like Lazarus, who dwelt for three days in the light and was then recalled to grope his way through mortal shadows grown doubly strange. Being once gone from this place he might never return, nor must he linger there for long.

  But before he went he smiled and said quietly, as though she had been standing beside him:

  ‘Oh may we soon again renew that song!’

  The shadows had altered when at last he came up the path. Boughs that had been bright had lost their colour and the sun caught the falling water in fresh places.

  The other two were nowhere to be seen. They must have grown tired of waiting. He toiled onward and upward. So soon as he had passed through the gate the sound of singing water died away, behind and below him. He had returned to this wild world. The future stretched before him, a straight and empty road. Whither it led he knew not, but he was aware that his own choice had ceased to be of importance. There would be no further detours in search of an Object.