CHAPTER IITHE BRANDY HOLE
EDMUND’S appearance on arrival was a surprise.
Instead of the fo’c’sle kit, or the uniform of a needy officer of the mercantile marine, which had disfigured his previous appearances, he came arrayed in blue serge. He wore a suit designed by a tailor with a soul for his art, somehow suggesting an association with the sea in lines that everywhere emphasised the grace and strength of his figure, while conforming to the strictest tradition of Savile Row. Everything about him was in keeping. His luggage, that great index of a man’s prosperity, was of the solidest and richest leather, not too new, and with the exquisite surface and the rich tone that leather acquires under the hands of a first-rate servant.
I had never seen Edmund like this. His air of distinction disconcerted me. It made me proud of him, but shy also. This was such a new, strange Edmund. And yet just the same in his warm affection.
His presence blew away all the mists of distrust and resentment as though they were a miasma of my own creation, the remembrance of which shamed me to a feeling of meanness. I felt paltry in my own eyes.
I remembered what he had said of life, and felt myself an empty wagon on a side-track.
A queer shudder of apprehension went down my spine at the thought that he had but to couple me to his motive force and I would be a helpless thing to be dragged behind him.
Then I bethought me I had got the metaphor wrong. I would be on a track no longer, but in tow to him on the high seas of life—a thing terrifying to a middle-aged parson who had long ago found a backwater and bobbed at anchor in it. All these ideas, unformulated, passed through my mind in the fuss of his arrival and our greetings.
At dinner he made merry over the pretentiousness of the wine.
“Confess, now, you would not have had champagne up for a poor devil of a deck-hand!”
“I wouldn’t have had it in any case. It was Bates insisted.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said Bates.
Bates had so got into the habit of talking to me during my usual solitary meals, that he committed the unpardonable indiscretion in a servant of having ears and a voice. It was plain he did not regard Edmund as “company.”
“Well you didn’t actually say anything,” I admitted in justice to him.
Edmund laughed, evidently a little triumphant at the devotion of Bates. He insisted on his bringing another glass and pledging him.
Informal as the occasion was, Bates was a little self-conscious at this.
“My best respects, sir,” he said as he lifted the glass.
I watched Edmund, wondering what was the new expression in his face that somehow dissatisfied me.
His experiences, whatever they were, had made little change in him. His charm was undiminished, perhaps increased. But there was some change that would have eluded anyone less intimate than myself.
“A portrait painter would catch it,” I thought, seeking for the word to clarify my impression.
As he nodded over his glass to Bates, it came to me.
“Surrender!” I almost spoke it.
What could he have surrendered? Something that had been precious I was certain.
All our talk was of trivial things at home as though by mutual avoidance of any discussion of his adventures; we were dominated by the fencing shyness that comes over men, however intimate, when a discussion of importance is inevitable between them.
There was a silence as we tasted the first glass of the precious port, I wondering if he would say that it had passed its prime.
Then, as though from beneath the table, came a sound, to me familiar and somehow pleasant in its way, but puzzling, even disconcerting to strangers: the distant, muffled ring of iron upon iron. It was the unmistakable thud of a blacksmith’s hammer on soft red iron followed by the clear taps on the cold resonant anvil, repeated in regular rhythm.
“What the deuce is that?” asked Edmund, listening.
“They’re working late at the smithy.”
“Is there a new smithy?”
“As a matter of fact it’s a very old one. But, of course, it was closed when you were here before. It’s been going about a year now. I’ve got quite accustomed to the sound. In fact it’s company sometimes.”
“But the old smithy was right down near the beach?”
“It’s there still, but it’s not 400 yards in a straight line from here. Our hearing the sound is because it is built over an old passage or tunnel which used to open into the cellar under this room. It is said to connect with an opening in the cliff over the beach. It’s a relic of the old smuggling days. We are rather proud of it.”
“I should say it looks a bit fishy for some of your reverend predecessors.”
“Fortunately for the credit of the Church this was not always the vicarage. I believe it was the Dower-house of the Manor, and very likely some dear old dowagers eked out their jointures by a little ‘free-trading.’ Shall we have coffee in the study?”
“Wait a bit,” said Edmund, “I’m rather fascinated by this noise. I suppose you have explored the passage?”
“No. I’ve opened the old door in the cellar and gone down the steps leading into it. But I hate underground places. I fear I suffer from what the doctors call claustro-phobia.”
“Is that cob-webs?”
“Well, mental cob-webs I suppose! Anyhow, smugglers’ passages are a bit out of my line. But I have found the opening in the cliff, at least I think so. It’s cunningly hidden from the front by a mass of chalk. I was led to it by what I suppose was the smugglers’ old track. One of my birds landed exhausted on the cliff after a cross-channel flight, and I had to rescue him.”
“Well, I should have been right down that passage and out at the other end if I’d been you. Any objection to my exploring it to-morrow with Bates?”
“None whatever, so long as you bring Bates back undamaged.”
“Oh, Bates!” he said laughing, “It doesn’t matter about me.”
“Not so much, old man. You’ve made me get used to doing without you. But without Bates I should be as a pelican in the wilderness. Come on, if you’ve finished your wine, for I must hear your story, and what you have been doing.”
My diary contains a very complete record of my talk with Edmund on this occasion, and looking back it seems to me that he paid me a great compliment. I see now how perfectly sincere he was. Then I was too absorbed in trifles and pettifogging distrusts to rejoice in what he said at all. I had to precipitate the conversation, and I did it bluntly by asking him why he had left me so long without a letter.
“Don’t you understand,” he asked me, “that I have come to look on you as the ‘friend born for adversity’?”
I told him I didn’t quite follow.
He said, “It’s hard to explain. Potty little things like money come into it so much. But every time I’ve written to you I’ve been in trouble of some sort. You’ve never given me advice. If it’s only been money, you’ve always forked out. But the point is, you’ve always been there—just yourself—someone to be responsible to. Damn it, I can’t explain. But it’s kept me—well—no—I can’t say straight, exactly, but reasonably decent. So that Icouldcome back and shake your hand, anyhow.”
“And you have prospered, after all?”
“Well, I didn’t lose everything, but darned nearly. You were right not to trust me aboutthat Far Eastern Trade. I was very young and very cock-sure, and it was some time before I discovered there were too many sharks in those waters. Lord, what a young ass I was! Those Hong-Kong fellows had me weighed up to an ounce. I had a bad time kicking myself, but I managed to pull out my last £200. That annoyed them desperately. I got a little of my own back in some other ways too. But I don’t think you’d like that story. It was then I met Welfare.”
“Welfare? Who’s he? It’s rather a jolly name.”
“Yes. The name influenced me. He’s my partner. Captain Welfare he calls himself. You must meet him.”
I saw the look I didn’t quite understand become accentuated in Edmund’s face.
“I didn’t know you had a partner. Partner in what? What is your business? Let’s have the tale from the beginning.”
“It’s too long. We’re in the Levant fruit trade. Welfare’s a rum old chap. The sort one simply can’t explain to people at home. He’s always knocked about, mostly at sea. Calls himself Captain, but I don’t believe he’s ever commanded anything. He knows damn-all about navigation; but he can handle a ship all right.
“He’s admitted having been a steward on a liner. He got his start by collecting paper money from passengers—changing it, you know. Always getting hold of paper at a discount and unloading it at some port where it was up a few points. It’s extraordinary how paper money values fluctuate with latitude. Welfare had the whole thing worked out so that he was on velvet every time. As he says, it’s a nice safe line, but dull. And he didn’tlike being a steward. The old boy has got his pride, and the tips went against the grain, I fancy. He was in the Pacific for a time and did pretty well with copra.
“Then he thought he was man enough for the Eastern coasting business. When I met him he had just been stung by some merchants in Shanghai. He was taking it badly—oh, rottenly! I found him in an opium shebeen and broke his collar bone getting him on a rickshaw. I got hold of a decent European doctor man. Old Welfare carried on frightfully about his collar bone while he was crazy, but the little doctor got him round all right. He used to come and stick a needle into him and squirt stuff into him—atropine and all sorts of poisons. Old Crippen’s stuff he told me he used when Welfare was rowdy. Anyhow, Welfare got all right, only beastly sentimental.”
Edmund paused to light another cigar, and I did not interrupt him. I find it is impossible in writing to convey any idea of the casual way in which his narrative dribbled out.
Only that morning one of my old ladies in the parish had been much more impressive about the quality of some dried peas she had bought from our local grocer—a relentless monopolist, but a sidesman and communicant.
To her I knew exactly what to say, how to sympathise. But Edmund made me feel as if I had swallowed a bound volume ofThe Boy’s Own Paper.
I waited until his cigar was fairly under way.
“You have not yet told me what you are doing now,” I said.
“No. I must come to that. We’re all right now. Certainly I did old Welfare a good turn, but hehas more than repaid it. We had both been stung, but we found we could put up about £500 between us. He said he had always kept this Levant business up his sleeve, and it was absolutely ‘It’ for people with a small capital, like us. He had a pal, a Dutchman, who kept a hotel in Alexandria. Well, we went down there. The Dutchman was all right but very cautious. Things hung fire a bit. I had to keep myself and I didn’t want to touch my capital. There wasn’t much left to touch. Well, the fact is I ‘managed’ a steam laundry there for three months. Made it pay, too.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Yes—you should have seen the steam! and the natives blowing water from their mouths on the stuff while it was ironed! Nice clean women’s frocks! I couldn’t stick it.”
“It sounds very unpleasant.”
“Oh, it was rotten! Summer weather too. However, the luck turned then and we bought theAstartewith the help of the Dutchman. We’ve paid him off now and she’s all our own.”
“And what on earth is theAstarte?” I asked.
“I thought I had told you. She’s our boat of course. A rum-looking thing in these waters. But just what I’ve always dreamed of. I am master and part owner, and I told you years ago that was what I was setting out to be; only I didn’t think it would be in the Mediterranean.”
There was a long pause in our talk, I looking at Edmund, thinking of him as he should have been, rising from step to step in the Navy, carrying on the old family tradition of service and duty.
I could not help noticing a restraint in his manner, as though he were making careful selection of the parts of his story he chose to tell me. And therewas that look on his face, the look of surrender, a subtle weakening about the mouth and chin; and in his eyes, I fancied, the mere shrewdness of the merchant elbowing out the look of command that had been natural to him.
“Tell me about theAstarteand the trade,” I said.
“Ah, the littleAstarteis the best part of the story,” said Edmund with a return of enthusiasm. “We got her for an old song and we’ve made a dandy ship of her. She’s a Levantine schooner, Greek really, about 150 tons. Wood, of course, but we have a good new copper bottom on her. She’s a bit slow, but stiff as a poker in a breeze, and comfortable as a country pub! And she’ll point as near the wind as anything I ever sailed. Rum-looking though, when you’re not used to the type. Any amount of free-board sloping up to long high bows and an enormous jib-boom. She carries a flight of head-sails like a skein of geese. She has two big leg-o’-mutton sails, and we can shove a couple of square sails on the foremast when we want to. Oh, she’s pretty, I can tell you, and head-room enough for a giraffe in the saloon. You must come for a cruise in her.”
“I’d love to. Where is she now?”
“She’s in Tilbury at present. Old Welfare’s there with her on some business. He looks after the trade mostly. I do the yachting. I tell you, it’s just owning a yacht that keeps herself and her owners too!”
“And how do you make all the money?”
“Well—mostly fruit. Welfare’s great idea was trading direct with the Arabs on the Egypt and Palestine coast. In the season we load up their dates and figs and melons, and take them and sell almost direct to the consumers. So we are our ownmiddle-men and collar all the profits. Then there are lots of odds and ends in the East. Curios and cheap fabrics, brass ware, Gaza pottery, jewellery. No end of things that would sell like hot cakes in this country. We have collected stacks of things. In fact that’s partly what brought us home. And what I’m afraid you won’t like is that, following up our direct trading principles, we’re going to run a shop of our own. Like those places in Port Said, you know. If you saw the prices those fellows get!”
“But why on earth shouldn’t I like it? Especially if it brings you home oftener. Why, my dear fellow, shop-keeping is rapidly passing into the hands of the aristocracy while the bourgeoisie buy up the old estates!”
I was greatly relieved, thinking this was the secret of his slight embarrassment and the look that had puzzled me.
All his story was perfectly plausible to me. Looking back now I do not really see that any country parson, ignorant alike of commerce and of the near East, could be blamed for finding nothing suspicious in it.
“Then you wouldn’t mind our business being in Brighton?” he asked. “It’s a bit near you. But of course our name won’t be over the window. No need for anyone to know you’ve any association with it at all. Welfare wants to call it ‘Oriental Bazaar’ or some old stale thing like that. He was wild with me for suggesting ‘Fakes Limited.’ One reason he wants Brighton is because theAstartecould stand in near enough to be seen from the front and send in boat-loads of stuff under the eyes of the populace. Then it’s handy for London, and of course the real trade must go throughLondon. But of course the main reason for striking Brighton is that its season is all the year round. It’s always full of people with more money than brains.”
“I think it’s a splendid idea,” I said, and I really meant it. “Everything you sell, whatever its price, will be the genuine thing—straight from the East. We associate shop-keeping with the huckstering ideas of a servile class. I’ve often wanted to prove that shop-keeping, all trade, can be ennobled. But what can a mere shareholder do? What does he know even of the things that are done in his name?”
“Wait a minute, old man. I don’t want to give you any impression that we’re out for the purification of trade, or anything of the sort. We’re out for money—and fun. At least I am. Welfare’s out for money.”
“Quite,” said I, in my new-born enthusiasm. “And it’s all the better. I don’t want any amateur things. They’re all quack things. Edmund, I’d like to be a partner in this. If you want capital, you know I can find it.”
To my surprise Edmund looked rather distressed.
“It might seem cheap,” I continued, “to offer you money now when you are prospering and probably can get it without difficulty. I mean after I refused to finance you before. But I’m sure you know me better than to think it’s only security I have in mind.”
“I do, old man,” said Edmund, “I know you too well. I know you would give me all the money we want and more. And as a financial proposition I could honestly advise you to do it. But somehow I don’t want you to. Money after all is a very secondary thing—when you have got it. Welfarecan raise all we want, he says, in the city.You keep out of it.”
“But I want to be in it! Can’t you imagine a little craving for romance, even at my advanced age? And the Levant! Do you know I correspond in Latin with monasteries there? That I have always promised myself a trip there and have been too lazy to go? Couldn’t I go to Scutari in theAstarteif I were a partner? And I have a dear friend in Aleppo whom I have never seen. I wonder what a monk’s Latin would sound like, spoken? This man I believe started life as an Albanian.”
“I don’t know,” said Edmund. “I never tried talking Latin to an Albanian monk. As a matter of fact I never got beyond ‘mensa’ myself. I started ‘dominus’ and switched on to the modern side, just when I arrived at the genitive plural. Of course we could go up the Dardanelles and you could get ashore and explore about. But if it’s business, you must talk it over with Welfare. He’s coming to Brighton.”
“Well, let’s have him here.”
“You could have him here if you like, of course,” said Edmund merrily. “He won’t actually deafen you with the crash of falling H’s, and he won’t get puzzled among the forks on the dinner table. But I’ve told you—he’s not what you and I call a gentleman. And unfortunately he’s what they call, I believe, a convinced Nonconformist.”
I looked at Edmund, but he was perfectly serious.
To me it was as though I had been told that Odysseus had been a homœopath.
“If he doesn’t mind being the guest of the Established Church I expect we’ll get on very well. I’m not exactly bigoted on doctrinal points.”
“No. But I’m wondering how Bates would stick him?”
“Really, Edmund, I know I spoil Bates, and so do you when you’re here, but I have not got the length of allowing him to choose my guests.”
“Well, old Welfare will enjoy it. As a matter of fact he’ll be enormously flattered. He’ll take you for a sort of ‘swell,’ to use his own language. And he’ll be tremendously interested in that underground passage.”
“Why?” I queried, in surprise.
If this were a play or a novel I suppose the stage direction would be that “Edmund bit his lip.” Of course he didn’t do anything of the sort. I don’t suppose any sane human being ever did, though I have myself bitten my tongue accidentally. I did however get an impression that Edmund somehow felt he had committed an indiscretion, which I suppose is what the novelists and playwrights mean. He went on a little embarrassed.
“I suppose it’s a desire for romance on his part too. He likes poking his nose into anything of that sort. No cob-webs about him! Anyhow, I’ll spend a good deal of to-morrow working through that passage and find out if there’s anything to show him. We might find hidden treasure in it—The smugglers’ hoard! If they left any brandy there it would be worth drinking by now.”
I was at a loss to understand his eagerness about this passage, and some instinct made me resent it a little. I put it to myself that I did not want the peace of my home disturbed. I did not want foul air and dust coming up into the house. I preferred to go elsewhere for the details of romance. I knew that these were not my real reasons. But I had always avoided the tunnel withoutknowing why, and I did not want it disturbed now.
“You will probably find there is no tunnel at all,” I said. “It may be just a village tradition.”
“But you have seen both ends of it. And how else could the noise come from the forge? Anyhow, I’ll know all about it to-morrow.”
I brought the conversation back to the more congenial topic of theAstarteand my projected cruise.
I had always been a keen yachtsman, and the novelty and the unconventional nature of the trip appealed to me.
There was nothing to prevent my finding a suitable man to take charge of the parish for a few weeks or more. Edmund’s attitude was a little discouraging. He was certainly not enthusiastic.
“We must see how you and Welfare get on,” he said. “It’s close quarters with a man if you don’t just hit it with him. It’s a queer ship’s company, anyhow. All the crew are Arabs. You see their food costs next to nothing; flour and lentils and the milk of a couple of goats, mostly. And they work like niggers for a couple of piastres a day. We have a sort of skipper over them called Jakoub, I don’t know any other name for him. He’s a magnificent sailor-man, knows all our boat and everybody in it. He rules his men with—well, the Arab equivalent of a rod of iron, acts as interpreter and saves us all bother with natives. In fact he’s practically invaluable, and I firmly believe, an ineffable blackguard.”
“He doesn’t live with you, I presume?”
“Good God, no! He’s a native.”
“It will be an education to me to meet him.”
“Then the Eastern end of the Mediterranean would be too hot for you in summer, and in winterone is liable to get a dusting in the Bay that I’m afraid you wouldn’t enjoy; not in a little tub like theAstarte.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d mind that. Anyhow, I could go overland and pick you up at Marseilles or wherever you are calling.”
“Yes. You could do that. I’ll tell you what, you’d better try a short cruise first to see how you like it. We could have a look round the Channel Isles. In fact we want to go to Guernsey. We’ll talk it over with Welfare.”
I went to bed cherishing a hope that Edmund might forget or abandon his proposed exploration of the tunnel. But an inveterate ringing of the anvil during our breakfast, and Edmund’s evident attention to it, warned me that such hopes were vain.
He instructed Bates to procure a pick and shovel and a lantern, and demanded what time he would be at liberty to assist him in exploring.
“I could be finished for an hour perhaps about ten o’clock,” said Bates, “unless Mr. Davoren wants me for anything special.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I shall be busy all morning.”
I could see the fellow was as keen as a schoolboy on this nonsensical burrowing, and that the quick instinct of a servant had somehow detected that I did not care about it. But I felt it was better to surrender with a good grace.
Presently I watched the two of them disappear down into the cellars with pick and shovel, some gardener’s baskets, a stable lamp and an electric torch.
I found a sympathiser in Mrs. Rattray.
“It’s likely the two of them will be suffocated with foul air,” she said, “and Bates wanting to take the bird-cage with the canary in it, becausehe read in the papers they took them down after explosions in the mines, when all the poor women would be waiting on the top. ‘You’d be the easier spared of the two,’ I told him, and the dirt they’ll be bringing up on their feet—they’re like a pair of children, sir.”
“No better indeed, Mrs. Rattray. Perhaps the door mat from the hall?”
I escaped into the study, only to be driven out by the muffled sound of blows and horrid scrapings of the shovel. I retreated to the pigeon-loft.
This kind of thing went on all that day and the next.
Edmund was late for all meals and brought to them an earthy smell. Bates was never available when I wanted him.
Edmund reported the passage as being evidently of great antiquity, and quite roomy. It was only blocked in places, he said, and they had had no difficulty in clearing these so far.
“We are propping the roof where it has fallen in or looks dicky,” he said, “otherwise we should have been through by now. I’m sure we’ll find the other opening all right because the air’s pretty fresh and we’ve found a lot of bats hanging up. You must come down to-morrow.”
“No thanks, the bats have decided me. There is between them and me what Lamb calls an ‘imperfect sympathy.’”
“Oh, rot! We’ll get rid of them for you.”
On the second afternoon they had triumphantly emerged on the cliff over the beach. I met them there and found the opening was the place I had suspected. It was about four feet high and the same width, but a great detached mass of chalk completely hid it from below, or from the sea. Therough path that led up to it seemed to have been hewn out of the face of the cliff, but had been much worn and weathered away so that it was quite an awkward scramble to reach it now, and impossible for children. This may account for the curious fact that none of the present villagers seemed to know its whereabouts, though there was a strong tradition of a “brandy hole” somewhere on the beach.
I was tempted to penetrate a little distance into this end of the tunnel and was surprised at its spaciousness. A few yards from the opening one could stand upright, and it was quite five feet in width. Edmund said it was the same size all the way. In places the chalk face had been plastered, and I strongly suspected that this might be the remains of Saxon work. It was certainly of immemorial age, though it very probably had been adopted and used by the smugglers. There were remains of Saxon masonry in my church of which, as a parish, we were very proud. And I was the more inclined to date the digging of the passage to this remote period because I knew of nothing in the history of the parish in later times to account for it. Altogether the discovery was much more interesting than I had expected; but I refused to face the bats, so we walked home by the village.
“We must report this to the Archæological Society,” I said. “If, as I think, it proves to be Saxon there will be great excitement over it.”
“Oh, hang the Archæological Society,” said Edmund. “Let’s keep it to ourselves for a bit, till I have finished my investigations anyhow.”
A sudden vision of streams of hungry and extremely boring archæologists claiming the hospitality of the vicarage quenched my new-born ardour.
“Yes, it’s really your show,” I agreed. “You can write a paper on it yourself in your own time.”
“Thanks. I think I see myself.”
At home Edmund found a letter from Captain Welfare dating from the Ship Hotel at Brighton. He had found what he thought suitable premises for the new shop, and wanted Edmund to go over and see them.
“Then you can bring him back here for as long as he likes, and we can talk everything over,” I said.
So it was settled.