III.They were greeted at the church door by the beaming Indiarubber Man."Come along in—spot or plain?—I mean Bride or Bridegroom? Bride's friends on the left and Bridegroom's on the right—or is it the other way about? I'm getting so rattled.... I've just put the old caretaker in a front pew under the impression that it was your rich aunt, Guns! What a day, what a day! Got the ring, Torps? Here come the Bridesmaids, bless 'em! Go on, you two, get up into your proper billets.... 'The condemned man walked with unfaltering step'—oh, sorry, I forgot...."The Groomsmen slid into their pew with much rattling of sword-scabbards and nodding of heads and whispering. On their gilded shoulders appeared to lie the responsibility of the whole affair.The Bridegroom took up his appointed place and stood, his hands linked behind his back, looking down the aisle to where the choir was gathering. The church seemed a sea of faces, glinting uniforms, and women's finery. Who on earth were they all? He had no idea he knew so many people.... Quite sure Millicent didn't.... How awful it must be to have to preach a sermon.... The faint scent of lilies drifted up to where he was standing. At his side Torps shifted his feet, and the ferrule of his scabbard clinked on the aisle. Dear old Torps! ... How he must be hating it all.There was a faint stir at the entrance. The Bridesmaids' black velvet hats and white feathers were bobbing agitatedly. He caught a glimpse of a white-veiled figure. People were turning round, staring and whispering. Dash it all! It wasn't a circus.... What did they think they were here for?"There she is," murmured Torps. "Not much longer now."The clergyman was giving out the number of a hymn from the back of the church somewhere, and the deep, sweet notes of the organ poured out over their heads: then the voices of the choir-boys swelled up, drawing nearer.... Again the scent of lilies."Stand by," from Torps, tensely.The choir-boys filed past, singing; one had on a red tie that peeped above his cassock. They glanced at him indifferently as they went by, their heads on a level with his belt-buckle.... Then the white-veiled figure on the Colonel's arm—Millicent: his, in a few short minutes, for ever and aye.... He drew a deep breath."Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God...." Torps touched him lightly on the elbow.* * * * *"I, John Mainprice Edgar...""I, John Mainprice Edgar:""Take thee, Millicent...""Take thee, Millicent:"* * * * *"To have and to hold..."This was simple enough—"To have and to hold:"* * * * *"And thereto I plight thee my troth."How warm and steady the small hand was, lying in his: then gently withdrawn. Torps was trying to attract attention—What was his trouble? The ring—Of course, the ring....* * * * *"Those whom, God hath joined together let no man put asunder."* * * * *Life's haven at last! Or had all life been a cruise within the harbour: and this the beat to open sea ... The Brave Adventure?* * * * *"The peace of God which passeth all understanding ... remain with you now and for evermore."* * * * *There was a whisper of silken petticoats, and the clink of swords seems to fill the church: then, dominating all other sounds for a moment, the old Colonel blowing his nose vehemently....Down the aisle again, the organ thundering familiar strains—familiar, yet suddenly imbued with a personal and intimate message,—Millicent's arm resting on his, trembling ever so lightly....In the warm, bouquet-scented gloom of the vestry they gathered, and Torps wrung the Bridegroom's hand in a hard, unaccustomed grip—Torps with his winning, half-sad smile, and the hair over his temples showing the first trace of grey.... The bride finished signing the register, and rose smiling, with the veil thrown back from her fair face. In later years he found himself recalling a little sadly (as the happiest of bachelors may do at times) the queer, shining gladness in her eyes. He bent and touched the warm cheek with his lips.Then for a minute every one seemed to fall a-kissing. Father and daughter, Mother and son, newly-made brothers- and sisters-in-law sought each other in turn. The Bridegroom's Lady Mother kissed the Indiarubber Man because no one else seemed to want to, and they were such old friends. The Clergyman kissed two of the Bridesmaids because he was their uncle, and the Colonel (who had stopped blowing his nose and was cheering up) kissed the other two because he wasn't. In the middle of all this pleasant exercise Torps, who had vanished for a minute, reappeared to announce that the Arch of Swords was ready and the carriages were alongside.So the procession formed up once more: Bride and Bridegroom, the Colonel and the Bridegroom's Lady Mother: Torps leading the Bridegroom's new sister-in-law (and a very pretty sister-in-law she was), the Flapper and the Indiarubber Man, a girl called Etta Someone on the Junior Watch-keeper's arm, and another called Doris Somebody Else under the escort of the A.P. They all passed beneath the arch of naked blades held up by the Bridegroom's messmates and friends, to receive a running fire of chaff and laughing congratulation; to find outside in the golden afternoon sunshine that the horses had been taken from the carriage-traces, and a team of lusty blue-jackets, all very perspiring and serious of mien, waiting to do duty instead.IV.Private Phillips, R.M.L.I., in all subsequent narrations of the events of the day—and they were many and varied—was wont to preface each reminiscence with "Me an' the Torpedo Lootenant..." And indeed he did both indefatigable workers bare justice. Whether it was opening carriage doors or bottles of champagne, fetching fresh supplies of glasses or labelling and strapping portmanteaux, Private Phillips laboured with the same indomitable stertorous energy. He accepted orders with an omniscient and vehement nod of the head; usurped the duties of enraptured maid-servants with, "You leave me do it, Miss—I bin married meself. I knows the routine, as you might say...."And Torps, superintending the distribution of beer to panting blue-jackets (whose panting, in some cases, was almost alarming in its realism); fetching cups of tea for stout dowagers, and ices for giggling schoolgirls; begging a sprig from the bridesmaids' bouquets; tipping policemen; opening telegrams; yet always with an attention ready for the Bridegroom's aunt who remembered Guns as such alittleboy.... Helpful even to the ubiquitous reporter of the local paper...."A picturesque ceremony—if I may say so. Amostpicturesque ceremony." The reporter would feel for his notebook. "Might I ask who that tall Officer is with the medals...? My Paper——" And Torps, with his gentle manners and quiet smile, would supply the information to the best of his ability, conscious that at a wedding there are harder lots even than the Best Man's....The Indiarubber Man drifted disconsolately about in the crush, finally coming to a momentary anchorage in a corner beside his Bridesmaid."Miss Betty, no one loves me, and I'm going into the garden"—he dropped his voice to a confidential undertone—"to eat worms."The girl giggled weakly. "Please don't make me laugh any more! Won't you stay here and have an ice instead? I'm sure it would be much better for you.""Would it, d'you think? I've been watching the sailors drinking beer. Have you ever seen a sailor drink beer, Miss Betty? It's a grim sight."She shook her head, and there was both laughter and reproach in the young eyes considering him over the bouquet. "You forsook me—and a nice Midshipman had pity on my loneliness and brought me an ice."The Indiarubber Man eyed her sorrowfully. "I turn my back for a moment to watch sailors drink beer—I am a man of few recreations—and return to find you sighing over the memory of another and making shocking bad puns. Really, Miss Betty—Ah!NowI can understand...."A small and pink-faced Midshipman approached with two brimming glasses of champagne. The Indiarubber Man faded discreetly away, leaving his charge and her new-found knight pledging each other with sparkling eyes.The Bride touched her husband's sleeve in a lull in the handshaking and congratulations. "Isn't it rather nice to see people enjoying themselves! Don't you feel as if you wanted everybody to be as happy as we?—Lookat Betty and that boy.... Champagne, if you please! How ill the child will be; and she's got to go back to school to-morrow...."Her husband laughed softly. "Pretty little witch.... Torps has taken it away from her and given her some lemonade instead. Where's Mother?—Oh, I see: hobnobbing with the Colonel over a cup of tea. What a crush! Dear, can't we escape soon....?""Very soon now—poor boy, are you very hot in those things?""Not very. The worst part's coming—the rice and slippers and good-byes. Are you very tired, darling...?"* * * * *"Good-bye—Good-bye! Good-bye, Daddie.... Yes, yes.... I will.... Good-bye, Betty darling.... Good-bye——"* * * * *"Good-bye, Mother mine.... Torps, you've been a brick..... So-long! Good-bye! ... Not down my neck, Betty! ... Yes, I've got the tickets—— Good-bye, Good-bye!——"* * * * *The lights of Dover were twinkling far astern. Two people, a man and a woman, walked to the stern of the steamer and stood close together, leaning over the rail."What a lot of Good-byes we've said to-day," murmured the woman, watching the pin-points of light that vanished and reappeared. She fell silent, as if following a train of thought, "And after all, we're only going to Paris!""We're going further than that——" The man took possession of her slim, ungloved hands, and the star-powdered heavens alone were witness to the act. "All the way to El Dorado, darling!"She gave him back the pressure of his fingers, and presently sighed a little, happily, as a child sighs in its sleep. "And we haven't any return tickets...."V.The members of the wedding party returned to the ship and straggled into the Mess. Each one as he entered unbuckled his sword-belt, loosened his collar, and called for strong waters. A gloom lay upon the gathering: possibly the shadow of an angel's wing."I feel as if I'd been to a funeral," growled the Paymaster. "Awful shows these weddings are!""Poor old Guns!" said the A.P. lugubriously."She's a jolly nice girl, any way," maintained the Young Doctor."Yes," sighed the Junior Watch-keeper, "but still.... Hewasa good chap...."The Indiarubber Man was the last to enter. He added his sword to the heap already on the table, glanced at the solemn countenances of his messmates, and lit a cigarette."Sunt rerum lachrimæ. I am reminded of a harrowing story," he began, leaning against the tiled stove, "recounted to me by a—a lady."We met in London, at a place of popular entertainment, and our acquaintance was, judged by the standards of conventionality, perhaps slender." The Indiarubber Man paused and looked gravely from face to face. "However," he continued, "encouraged by my frank open countenance and sympathetic manner, she was constrained to tell the story of how she once loved and lost...."The narrator broke off and appeared to have forgotten how the story went on, in dreamy contemplation of his cigarette. The mess waited in silence: at length the Junior Watch-keeper could bear it no longer."Whatdidshe tell you?"The Indiarubber Man thoughtfully exhaled a cloud of smoke. "She said: 'Pa shot 'im.... Sniff!—'OwI loved 'im.... Sniff!—Lor', 'ow 'e did bleed.' ..."XXV.WHY THE GUNNER WENT ASHORE.The evening mail had come, and Selby sat alone in his cabin mechanically reading and re-reading a letter. Finally he tore it up into very small pieces and held them clenched in his hand, staring very hard at nothing in particular.He was engaged to be married: or to be more precise, he had been engaged. The letter that had come by the evening mail said that this was not so any longer.The girl who wrote it was a very straight-forward person who hated concealment of facts because they were unpleasant. It had become necessary to tell Selby that she couldn't love him any longer, and, faith, she had told him. Further, by her creed, it was only right that she should tell him about Someone Else as well.It was all very painful, and the necessity for thus putting things to Selby in their proper light, had cost her sleepless nights, red eyes, and much expensive notepaper, before the letter was finally posted. But she did hope he would realise it was For the Best, ... and some day he would be so thankful.... It had all been a Big Mistake, because she wasn't a bit what he thought, ... and so forth. A very distressing letter to have to write, and, from Selby's point of view, even more distressing to have to read.Few men enjoy being brought up against their limitations thus abruptly, especially where Women and Love are concerned. In Selby's case was added the knowledge that another had been given what he couldn't hold. He had made a woman love him, but he couldn't make her go on loving him.... He was insufficient unto the day.Critics with less biassed judgment might have taken a different point of view: might have said she was a jilt, or held she acted a little cruelly: gone further, even, and opined he was well out of it. But Selby was one of those who walk the earth under a ban of idealism and had never been seriously in love before. She was the Queen who could do no wrong. It was he who had been weighed and found wanting. If only he had acted differently on such and such an occasion. If, in short, instead of being himself he had been somebody quite different all along....Succeeding days and nights provided enough matches and sulphur of this sort to enable him to fashion a sufficiently effective purgatory, in which his mind revolved round its hurt like a cockchafer on a pin.When a man depends for the efficient performance of his duties upon getting his just amount of sleep (Selby was a watch-keeping Lieutenant in a battleship of the line), affairs of this sort are apt to end in disaster. But his ship went into Dockyard hands to refit, and Selby, who was really a sensible enough sort of fellow, though an idealist, realised that for his own welfare and that of the Service it were "better to forget and smile than remember and be sad." Accordingly he applied for and obtained a week's leave, bought a map of the surrounding district, packed a few necessaries into a light knapsack, and set off to walk away his troubles.For a day he followed the coast—it was high summer—along a path that skirted the cliffs. The breeze blew softly off the levellapis-lazuliof the Channel, sea-gulls wheeled overhead for company, and following the curve of each ragged headland in succession, the creamy edge of the breakers lured him on towards the West. He walked thirty miles that day and slept dreamlessly in a fishing village hung about with nets and populated by philosophers with patched breeches.He struck inland the second day, to plunge into a confusion of lanes that led him blindfold for a while between ten-foot hedges. These opened later into red coombes, steeped to their sunny depths with the scent of fern and may, and all along the road bees held high carnival above the hedgerows. Then green tunnels of foliage, murmurous with wood-pigeon, dappled him at each step with alternate sunlight and shadow, and passed him on to villages whose inns had cool, flagged parlours, and cider in blue-and-white mugs. An ambient trout-stream held him company most of the long afternoon, with at times a kingfisher darting along its tortuous course like a streak from the rainbow that each tiny waterfall had caught and held.He supped early in a farm kitchen off new-made pasties, apple tart and yellow-crusted cream, and walked on till the bats began wheeling overhead in the violet dusk. His ship was sixty miles away when he crept into the shelter of a hayrick and laid his tired head on his knapsack.The third day found him up on the ragged moors, steering north. The exercise and strong salt wind had driven the sad humours from him, and the affairs of life were beginning to resume their right perspective; so much so that when, about noon, a sore heel began abruptly to make itself felt (in the irrational way sore heels have), Selby sat down and pulled out his map. The day before yesterday he would have pushed on doggedly, almost welcoming the counter-irritant of physical discomfort. To-day, however, he accepted the inevitable and searched the map for some neighbouring village where he could rest a day or so until the chafed foot was healed.After a while he turned east, and, leaving the high moorland, discerned the smoke of chimneys among some trees in the valley. He descended a steep road that seemed to lead in the right direction, and presently caught a glimpse of a square church tower among some elms; later on the breeze bore the faint cawing of rooks up the hillside. A stream divided the valley: the few cottages clustered on the opposite side huddled close together as if reluctant to venture far beyond the shadow of the grey church. The green of the hillside behind them was gashed in one place by an old quarry; but the work had long been abandoned, and Nature had already begun to repair the red scar with impatient furz and whinberry.So much Selby took in as he descended past the grey church and cawing rooks; once at the bottom and across the quaint, square-arched bridge, he found there was a small inn amongst the huddled cottages, where they would receive him for a night or two.He lunched, did what he could to the blistered heel with a darning needle and worsted (after the fashion of blistered sailormen), and took a light siesta in the lavender-smelling bedroom under the roof until it was time for tea. Tea over, he lit a pipe, borrowed his host's little 9 ft. trout rod that hung in the passage, and limped down to the meadows skirting the stream beyond the village.The light occupation gave him something to think about; and, held by the peace of running water, he lingered by the stream till evening. Then something of his old sadness came back with the dimpsey light,—a gentle melancholy that only resembled sorrow "as the mist resembles the rain." He wanted his supper, too, and so walked slowly back to the village with the rod on his shoulder. The inn-keeper met him at the door: "Well done, sir! Well done! Yu'm a fisherman, for sure! Missus, she fry 'un for supper for 'ee now.... Yes, 'tis nice li'l rod—cut un meself: li'l hickory rod, 'tis.... Where did 'ee have that half-pounder, sir? There's many a good fish tu that li'l pool...."Selby had finished supper and repaired to a bench outside in the gloaming with his pipe and a mug of beer. The old stained chancel windows of the church beyond the river were lit up and choir practice appeared to be in progress. The drone of the organ and voices uplifted in familiar harmonies drifted across to him out of the dusk. The pool below the bridge still mirrored the last gleams of day in the sky: a few old men were leaning over the low parapet smoking, and down the street one or two villagers stood gossiping at their doorsteps. A dog came out of the shadows and sniffed Selby's hands: then he flopped down in the warm dust and sighed to himself. The strains of the organ on the other side of the valley swelled louder:—"... Holy Ghost the Infinite,Comforter Divine..."sang the unseen choir. How warm and peaceful the evening was, reflected Selby, puffing at his pipe, one hand caressing the dog's ear. Extraordinarily peaceful, in fact.... He wondered what sort of a man the vicar was, in this tiny backwater of life, and whether he found it dull....While he wondered, the vicar came down the road and stopped abreast of him."Good evening," he said, half hesitating, and came nearer. "Please don't get up.... I don't want to disturb you, but I—they told me this afternoon that a stranger was staying here. I thought I would make myself known to you: I am the rector of this little parish." He smiled and named himself.Selby responded to the introduction. "Won't you sit down for a few minutes? I was listening to your choir——""They are practising—yes: I have just come down from the church and," he hesitated. "I hoped I should find you in—to have the opportunity of making your acquaintance.""It was most kind of you." Selby wondered if all parsons in this fair country were as attentive to the stranger within their gates. "Most kind," he repeated. "I—I was on a walking tour, and"—he indicated a slipper of his host's that adorned his left foot—"one of my heels began to chafe—only a blister, you know; but I thought I'd take things easy for a day or two...."Quite so, quite so. An enforced rest is sometimes very pleasant. I remember once, my throat.... However, that was not what I came to see you about. I believe, Mr Selby, er—am I right in supposing that you are in the Navy?""Yes." A note of chilliness had crept into Selby's voice. After all, his clerical acquaintance was only an inquisitive old busybody, agog to pry into other people's affairs. "Yes," he repeated, "I'm a Lieutenant," and he named his ship.The rector made a little deprecatory gesture. "Please don't think I am trying to acquire the materials for gossip; and I am not asking out of inquisitiveness. The good people here told me this afternoon—this is an out-of-the-way place, and strangers, distinguished ones, if I may say so," he made a little inclination of the head, "do not come here very frequently: they mentioned it to me as I was passing on my way to hold a confirmation class...."Selby hastened to put him at his ease. After all, why shouldn't he ask? And then he remembered offering the inn-keeper a fill of hard, Navy plug tobacco. He carried a bit in his knapsack with a view to just such small courtesies. "That's the stuff, sir," the man had said, loading his pipe. "We wondered, me an' the missus, was you a Naval gentleman...?"But while his mind busied itself over these recollections his companion was talking on in his, gentle way."... He is not a very old man: but the Doctor tells me he has lived a life of many hardships, and not, I fear, always a temperate one. However, 'Never a sinner, never a saint,' ... and now he is fast—to use one of his own seafaring expressions—'slipping his cable.' He retired from the Navy as a Gunner, I think. That would be a Warrant Officer's rank, would it not?"Selby nodded. "Yes. Has he been retired long, this person you speak of?""Yes, he retired a good many years ago, and has a small pension quite sufficient for his needs. He settled here because he liked the quiet——" The speaker made a little gesture, embracing the hollow in the hills, sombre now in the gathering darkness. "He lives a very lonely life in a cottage some little distance along the road. An eccentric old man, with curious ideas of beautifying a home.... However, I am digressing. As far as I know he has no relatives alive, and no friends ever visit him. He has been bed-ridden for some time, and the wife of one of my parishioners, a most kindly woman, looks in several times a day, and sees he has all he wants."Now I come to the part of my story that affects you. Lately, in fact since he took to his bed and the Doctor was compelled to warn him of his approaching end, he has been very anxious to meet some one in the Navy. He so often begs me, if I hear of any one connected with the Service being in the vicinity, to bring him to the cottage. And this afternoon, hearing quite by accident that a Naval Officer was in our midst,"—again the rector made his courteous little inclination of the head—"it seemed an opportunity of gratifying the old fellow's wish—if you could spare a few moments some time to-morrow...?""I should be only too glad to be of any service," said Selby. "Perhaps you would call for me some time to-morrow morning, and we could go round together——?"The rector rose. "You are most kind. I was sure when I saw you—I knew I should not appeal in vain...." He extended his hand. "And now I will say good-night. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time with an old man's concerns. One can do so little in this life to bring happiness to others that when the opportunity arises...""Yes,rather——!" said Selby a little awkwardly, and shook hands, conscious of more than a slight compunction for his hastiness in judgment of this mild divine. "Good-night, sir," and stood looking after him till he disappeared along the road into the luminous summer night.Selby had finished breakfast, and was leaning over the pig-sty wall watching his host ministering to the fat sow and her squealing litter, when his acquaintance of the previous night appeared. Seen in the broad daylight he was an elderly man, short and spare, with placid blue eyes, and a singularly winning smile. A bachelor, so the inn-keeper had instructed Selby; a man of learning and of no small wealth, who, moreover, dressed and threw as pretty a fly as any in the county.He saluted Selby with a little gesture of his ash-plant, inquired after the blistered heel, and then after an ailing member of the fat sow's litter. "And now, if you are ready and still of the same mind, shall we be strolling along?" he inquired.Selby fetched his stick, and together they set out along a road made aromatic in the morning sunlight by the scents of dust and flowering hedgerow. Half a mile beyond the village the rector stopped before a gate-way. A dogcart and cob stood at the roadside, and a small boy in charge touched his cap."The Doctor is here, I see," said the clergyman, and opened the gate in the hedge. Selby caught a glimpse of a flagged path leading through an orchard to a whitewashed cottage. But his attention from the outset had been arrested by a most extraordinary assortment of crockery, glass and earthenware vases, busts, statuettes, and odds and ends of ironwork that occupied every available inch of space round the gateway, bordering the path, and were even cemented on to the front of the house itself. Above the gateway a defaced lion faced an equally mutilated unicorn across the Royal Arms of England. Arranged beneath, cemented into the pillars of the arch, were busts of Napoleon, Irving, Stanley, and George Washington; an earthenware jar bearing the inscription, "HOT POT"; a little group representing Leda and the Swan in white marble; and a grinning soapstone joss, such as is sold to tourists and sailors at ports on the China coast. Interspersed with these were cups without handles, segments of soup-plates, china dolls'-heads, lead soldiers, and a miscellaneous collection of tea-pot spouts, ... all firmly plastered into the ironwork of the pillars.On each side of the path, banked up to the height of about three feet, was a further indescribable conglomeration of bric-à-brac, cemented together into a sort of hedge. The general effect was as if the knock-about comedians of a music-hall stage (who break plates and domestic crockery out of sheer joy of living) had combined with demented graveyard masons, bulls in china shops, and all the craftsmen of Murano, to produce a nightmare. A light summer breeze strayed down the valley, and scores of slips of coloured glass, hanging in groups from the apple-trees, responded with a musical tinkling. The sound brought recollections of a Japanese temple garden, and Selby paused to look about him."What an extraordinary place!"The vicar, leading the way up the tiled walk, seemed suddenly to become aware of the strangeness of their surroundings. Long familiarity with the house had perhaps robbed the fantastic decorations of their incongruity. He stopped and smiled. "To be sure.... Yes, I had forgotten; to a stranger all this must seem very peculiar. I think I hinted that the old man had very curious ideas of beautifying the home. This was about his only hobby—and yet, oddly enough, he rarely spoke of it to me."At that moment the cottage door opened and a tall florid man came out. The vicar turned. "Ah, Doctor Williams—that was his trap at the gate—let me introduce you...." The introduction accomplished, he inquired after the patient. The medical man shook his head."Won't last much longer, I'm afraid: a day or so at the most. No organic disease, y'know, but just"—he made a little gesture—"like a clock that's run down. Not an old man either, as men go. But these Navy men age so quickly.... Well, I must get along. I shall look in again this evening, but there is nothing one can do, really. He's quite comfortable.... Good-morning," and the Doctor passed down the path to his trap.The vicar opened the cottage door, and stood aside to allow Selby to enter. The room was partly a kitchen, partly a bedroom; occupying the bed, with a patchwork quilt drawn up under his chin, was a shrunken little old man, with a square beard nearly white, and projecting craggy eyebrows. He turned his head to the door as they entered; in spite of the commanding brows they were dull, tired old eyes, without interest or hope, or curiosity in them."I've brought you a visitor, Mr Tyelake," said the vicar. "Some one you'll be glad to see: an Officer in the Navy."The old man considered Selby with the same vacant, passionless gaze."Have you ever ate Navy beef?" he asked abruptly. It was a thin colourless voice, almost the falsetto of the very old. Selby smiled. "Oh yes, sometimes.""Navy beef—that's what brought me here—an' the rheumatics. I'm dyin'." He made the statement with the simple pride of one who has at last achieved a modest distinction.The vicar asked a few questions touching the old man's comfort, and opened the little oriel window to admit the morning air. "Lieutenant Selby was most interested in your unique collection of curios outside, Mr Tyelake. Perhaps you would like to tell him something about them." He looked at his watch, addressing Selby. "I have a meeting, I'm afraid.... I don't know if you'd care to stay a few minutes longer and chat?""Certainly," said Selby, and drew a chair near the bed. "If Mr Tyelake doesn't mind, I'd like to stay a little while...." He sat down, and the vicar took his departure, closing the door behind him. In a corner by the dresser a tall grandfather clock ticked out the deliberate seconds; a bluebottle sailed in through the open window and skirmished round the low ceiling.The old man lay staring at his hands as they lay on the patchwork quilt; twisted, nubbly hands they were, with something pathetic about their toilworn helplessness. Every now and again the wind brought into the little room the tinkle of the glass ornaments pendent in the apple-trees outside: the faint sound seemed to rouse the occupant of the bed."I've seen a mort of religions," he said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself. "Heaps of 'em. An' some said one thing an' some said the other." His old blank eyes followed the gyrations of the fly upon the ceiling. "An' I dunno.... Buddhas an' Me-'ommets, Salvation Armies, an' Bush Baptists, ... an' some says one thing an' some says the other. I dunno..." He shook his head wearily. "But many's the pot of galvanised paint I used up outside there ... an' goldleaf, in the dog-watches a-Saturdays."This, then, was the explanation of the fantastic decorations outside. Altars to the unknown God! The old man turned his head towards his visitor. "But don't you tell the parson. He wouldn't hold with it.... I tell you because you're in the Navy, an' p'r'aps you'd understand. I was in the Navy—Mr Tyelake's my name. Thirty year a Gunner; an' Navy beef——" For a while the old man rambled on, seemingly unconscious of his visitor's presence, of ships long passed through the breakers' yards, of forgotten commissions all up and down the world, of beef and rheumatism and Buddha, while Selby sat listening, half moved by pity, half amused at himself for staying on.About noon a woman came in and fed the old man with a spoon out of a cup. Selby rose to go. "I'll come again," he said, touching the passive hands covered with faint blue tattooing. "I'll come and see you again this evening." The old man roused himself from his reveries. "Come again," he repeated, "that's right, come again—soon. When she's gone—she an' her fussin' about," and for the first time an expression came into his eyes, as he watched the woman with the cup, an expression of malevolence. "I don't hold with women ... fussin' round. An' I've got something to tell you: something pressin'. You must come soon; I'm slippin' my cable.... Navy beefan'the rheumatics—an' it's to your advantage...."The shadows of the alders by the river were lengthening when Selby again walked up the bricked path leading to the cottage. The old man was still lying in contemplation of his hands: the grandfather clock had stopped, and there was a great stillness in the little room.His gaze was so vacant and the silence remained unbroken so long that Selby doubted if the old man recognised him."I've come back, you see. I've come to see you again." Still the figure in the bed said nothing, staring dully at his visitor. "I've come to see you again," Selby repeated."It's to your advantage," said the old man. His voice was weaker, and it was evident that he was, as he said, slipping his cable fast."Give me that there ditty-box," continued the thin, toneless voice. Selby looked round the room, and espied on a corner of the chest of drawers the scrubbed wooden "ditty-box" in which sailors keep their more intimate and personal possessions: he fetched it and placed it on the patchwork quilt; the old man fumbled ineffectually with the lid."Tip 'em out," he said at length, and Selby inverted the box to allow a heap of papers and odds and ends to slide on to the old man's hands. It was a pathetic collection, the flotsam and jetsam of a sailor's life: faded photographs, certificates from Captains scarcely memories with the present generation, a frayed parchment, letters tied up with an old knife-lanyard, a lock of hair from which the curl had not quite departed ... ghost of a day when perhaps the old man did "hold with" women. At length he found what he wanted, a soiled sheet of paper that had been folded and refolded many times."Here!" he said, and extended it to Selby. It was a printed form, discoloured with age, printed in old-fashioned type, and appeared to relate to details of prison routine and the number of prisoners victualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that was now faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of the compass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard and enclosed by a line. One of the figures was marked with a cross."That's a cemetery," said the old man; "cemetery at a place called Port des Reines." He lay silent for a while, as if trying to arrange his scattered ideas; presently the weak voice started again."There's a prison at Trinidad, and my father was a warder there ... long time ago: time the oldCalypsowas out on the station...." He talked slowly, with long pauses. "They was sent to catch a murderer who was hidin' among the islands—a half-breed: pirate he must ha' been ... murderer an' I don't know what not.... They caught him an' they brought him to Trinidad where my father was warder in the prison ... when I was little...." The old man broke off into disconnected, rambling whispers, and the shadows began gathering in the corners of the room. A thrush in the orchard outside sang a few long, sweet notes of its Angelus and was silent. Selby waited with his chin resting in his hand. The old man suddenly turned his head: "She ain't comin'——? She an' her fussin'...? I've got something important——""No, no," said Selby soothingly, "there's no one here but me. And you wanted to tell me about your father——""Warder in the prison at Trinidad," said the old man, "my father was, an' a kind-hearted man. There was a prisoner there, a pirate an' murderer he was, what theCalypsocaught ... an' father was kind to him before he was hanged ... I can't say what he did, but bein' kind-hearted naturally, it might have been anything ... not takin' into account of him being a pirate an' murderer. Jewels he had, an' rings an' such things hidden away somewhere; an' before he was hanged he told my father where they was buried, 'cos father was kind to him before he was hanged.... Port des Reines cemetery ... in the grave what's marked on that chart, he'd buried the whole lot. Seventy thousand pounds, he said...."There was a long silence. "Father caught the prison fever an' died just afterwards. My mother, she gave me the paper ... joined the Navy: an' I never went to des Reines but the once ... then I went to the wrong cemetery to dig: ship was under sailin' orders—I hadn't time. Afterwards I heard there was two cemeteries: priest at Martinique told me. I was never there but the once.... Seventy thousand pounds: an' me slippin' me cable...."Selby sat by the bed in the darkening room holding the soiled sheet of paper in his hand, piecing together bit by bit the fragments of this remarkable narrative, until he had a fairly connected story in his head.Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had been captured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, and there sentenced to death. "Time the oldCalypsowas out on the Station." ... That would be in the 'forties or thereabouts. The old man's father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and had performed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange for which the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of his plunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reines cemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuable piece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to a cemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did not find out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder was valued at £70,000.Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me to do with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? It seems to me——"The old man shook his head faintly. "I've got no relatives alive—nor friends. They're all dead ... an' I'm dyin'. That's for you, that there bit of paper. Keep it, it's to your advantage.... Some day, maybe, you'll go to Port des Reines, an' it's the old cemetery furthest from the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there.""But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I—I'm a total stranger to you.... If all this was true——""You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcely raised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that came along. You came, an' you were kind to me. It's yours—an' to your advantage...."There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in the dusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was all the hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him the paper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its being a prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the story was very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slipped off into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures still lying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, and put the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had been a prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the woman who had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, and passed down the path. "I'll come again to-morrow," he added at the gate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, having ascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help, Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the road that led up on to the moor.
III.
They were greeted at the church door by the beaming Indiarubber Man.
"Come along in—spot or plain?—I mean Bride or Bridegroom? Bride's friends on the left and Bridegroom's on the right—or is it the other way about? I'm getting so rattled.... I've just put the old caretaker in a front pew under the impression that it was your rich aunt, Guns! What a day, what a day! Got the ring, Torps? Here come the Bridesmaids, bless 'em! Go on, you two, get up into your proper billets.... 'The condemned man walked with unfaltering step'—oh, sorry, I forgot...."
The Groomsmen slid into their pew with much rattling of sword-scabbards and nodding of heads and whispering. On their gilded shoulders appeared to lie the responsibility of the whole affair.
The Bridegroom took up his appointed place and stood, his hands linked behind his back, looking down the aisle to where the choir was gathering. The church seemed a sea of faces, glinting uniforms, and women's finery. Who on earth were they all? He had no idea he knew so many people.... Quite sure Millicent didn't.... How awful it must be to have to preach a sermon.... The faint scent of lilies drifted up to where he was standing. At his side Torps shifted his feet, and the ferrule of his scabbard clinked on the aisle. Dear old Torps! ... How he must be hating it all.
There was a faint stir at the entrance. The Bridesmaids' black velvet hats and white feathers were bobbing agitatedly. He caught a glimpse of a white-veiled figure. People were turning round, staring and whispering. Dash it all! It wasn't a circus.... What did they think they were here for?
"There she is," murmured Torps. "Not much longer now."
The clergyman was giving out the number of a hymn from the back of the church somewhere, and the deep, sweet notes of the organ poured out over their heads: then the voices of the choir-boys swelled up, drawing nearer.... Again the scent of lilies.
"Stand by," from Torps, tensely.
The choir-boys filed past, singing; one had on a red tie that peeped above his cassock. They glanced at him indifferently as they went by, their heads on a level with his belt-buckle.... Then the white-veiled figure on the Colonel's arm—Millicent: his, in a few short minutes, for ever and aye.... He drew a deep breath.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God...." Torps touched him lightly on the elbow.
* * * * *
"I, John Mainprice Edgar..."
"I, John Mainprice Edgar:"
"Take thee, Millicent..."
"Take thee, Millicent:"
* * * * *
"To have and to hold..."
This was simple enough—"To have and to hold:"
* * * * *
"And thereto I plight thee my troth."
How warm and steady the small hand was, lying in his: then gently withdrawn. Torps was trying to attract attention—What was his trouble? The ring—Of course, the ring....
* * * * *
"Those whom, God hath joined together let no man put asunder."
* * * * *
Life's haven at last! Or had all life been a cruise within the harbour: and this the beat to open sea ... The Brave Adventure?
* * * * *
"The peace of God which passeth all understanding ... remain with you now and for evermore."
* * * * *
There was a whisper of silken petticoats, and the clink of swords seems to fill the church: then, dominating all other sounds for a moment, the old Colonel blowing his nose vehemently....
Down the aisle again, the organ thundering familiar strains—familiar, yet suddenly imbued with a personal and intimate message,—Millicent's arm resting on his, trembling ever so lightly....
In the warm, bouquet-scented gloom of the vestry they gathered, and Torps wrung the Bridegroom's hand in a hard, unaccustomed grip—Torps with his winning, half-sad smile, and the hair over his temples showing the first trace of grey.... The bride finished signing the register, and rose smiling, with the veil thrown back from her fair face. In later years he found himself recalling a little sadly (as the happiest of bachelors may do at times) the queer, shining gladness in her eyes. He bent and touched the warm cheek with his lips.
Then for a minute every one seemed to fall a-kissing. Father and daughter, Mother and son, newly-made brothers- and sisters-in-law sought each other in turn. The Bridegroom's Lady Mother kissed the Indiarubber Man because no one else seemed to want to, and they were such old friends. The Clergyman kissed two of the Bridesmaids because he was their uncle, and the Colonel (who had stopped blowing his nose and was cheering up) kissed the other two because he wasn't. In the middle of all this pleasant exercise Torps, who had vanished for a minute, reappeared to announce that the Arch of Swords was ready and the carriages were alongside.
So the procession formed up once more: Bride and Bridegroom, the Colonel and the Bridegroom's Lady Mother: Torps leading the Bridegroom's new sister-in-law (and a very pretty sister-in-law she was), the Flapper and the Indiarubber Man, a girl called Etta Someone on the Junior Watch-keeper's arm, and another called Doris Somebody Else under the escort of the A.P. They all passed beneath the arch of naked blades held up by the Bridegroom's messmates and friends, to receive a running fire of chaff and laughing congratulation; to find outside in the golden afternoon sunshine that the horses had been taken from the carriage-traces, and a team of lusty blue-jackets, all very perspiring and serious of mien, waiting to do duty instead.
IV.
Private Phillips, R.M.L.I., in all subsequent narrations of the events of the day—and they were many and varied—was wont to preface each reminiscence with "Me an' the Torpedo Lootenant..." And indeed he did both indefatigable workers bare justice. Whether it was opening carriage doors or bottles of champagne, fetching fresh supplies of glasses or labelling and strapping portmanteaux, Private Phillips laboured with the same indomitable stertorous energy. He accepted orders with an omniscient and vehement nod of the head; usurped the duties of enraptured maid-servants with, "You leave me do it, Miss—I bin married meself. I knows the routine, as you might say...."
And Torps, superintending the distribution of beer to panting blue-jackets (whose panting, in some cases, was almost alarming in its realism); fetching cups of tea for stout dowagers, and ices for giggling schoolgirls; begging a sprig from the bridesmaids' bouquets; tipping policemen; opening telegrams; yet always with an attention ready for the Bridegroom's aunt who remembered Guns as such alittleboy.... Helpful even to the ubiquitous reporter of the local paper....
"A picturesque ceremony—if I may say so. Amostpicturesque ceremony." The reporter would feel for his notebook. "Might I ask who that tall Officer is with the medals...? My Paper——" And Torps, with his gentle manners and quiet smile, would supply the information to the best of his ability, conscious that at a wedding there are harder lots even than the Best Man's....
The Indiarubber Man drifted disconsolately about in the crush, finally coming to a momentary anchorage in a corner beside his Bridesmaid.
"Miss Betty, no one loves me, and I'm going into the garden"—he dropped his voice to a confidential undertone—"to eat worms."
The girl giggled weakly. "Please don't make me laugh any more! Won't you stay here and have an ice instead? I'm sure it would be much better for you."
"Would it, d'you think? I've been watching the sailors drinking beer. Have you ever seen a sailor drink beer, Miss Betty? It's a grim sight."
She shook her head, and there was both laughter and reproach in the young eyes considering him over the bouquet. "You forsook me—and a nice Midshipman had pity on my loneliness and brought me an ice."
The Indiarubber Man eyed her sorrowfully. "I turn my back for a moment to watch sailors drink beer—I am a man of few recreations—and return to find you sighing over the memory of another and making shocking bad puns. Really, Miss Betty—Ah!NowI can understand...."
A small and pink-faced Midshipman approached with two brimming glasses of champagne. The Indiarubber Man faded discreetly away, leaving his charge and her new-found knight pledging each other with sparkling eyes.
The Bride touched her husband's sleeve in a lull in the handshaking and congratulations. "Isn't it rather nice to see people enjoying themselves! Don't you feel as if you wanted everybody to be as happy as we?—Lookat Betty and that boy.... Champagne, if you please! How ill the child will be; and she's got to go back to school to-morrow...."
Her husband laughed softly. "Pretty little witch.... Torps has taken it away from her and given her some lemonade instead. Where's Mother?—Oh, I see: hobnobbing with the Colonel over a cup of tea. What a crush! Dear, can't we escape soon....?"
"Very soon now—poor boy, are you very hot in those things?"
"Not very. The worst part's coming—the rice and slippers and good-byes. Are you very tired, darling...?"
* * * * *
"Good-bye—Good-bye! Good-bye, Daddie.... Yes, yes.... I will.... Good-bye, Betty darling.... Good-bye——"
* * * * *
"Good-bye, Mother mine.... Torps, you've been a brick..... So-long! Good-bye! ... Not down my neck, Betty! ... Yes, I've got the tickets—— Good-bye, Good-bye!——"
* * * * *
The lights of Dover were twinkling far astern. Two people, a man and a woman, walked to the stern of the steamer and stood close together, leaning over the rail.
"What a lot of Good-byes we've said to-day," murmured the woman, watching the pin-points of light that vanished and reappeared. She fell silent, as if following a train of thought, "And after all, we're only going to Paris!"
"We're going further than that——" The man took possession of her slim, ungloved hands, and the star-powdered heavens alone were witness to the act. "All the way to El Dorado, darling!"
She gave him back the pressure of his fingers, and presently sighed a little, happily, as a child sighs in its sleep. "And we haven't any return tickets...."
V.
The members of the wedding party returned to the ship and straggled into the Mess. Each one as he entered unbuckled his sword-belt, loosened his collar, and called for strong waters. A gloom lay upon the gathering: possibly the shadow of an angel's wing.
"I feel as if I'd been to a funeral," growled the Paymaster. "Awful shows these weddings are!"
"Poor old Guns!" said the A.P. lugubriously.
"She's a jolly nice girl, any way," maintained the Young Doctor.
"Yes," sighed the Junior Watch-keeper, "but still.... Hewasa good chap...."
The Indiarubber Man was the last to enter. He added his sword to the heap already on the table, glanced at the solemn countenances of his messmates, and lit a cigarette.
"Sunt rerum lachrimæ. I am reminded of a harrowing story," he began, leaning against the tiled stove, "recounted to me by a—a lady.
"We met in London, at a place of popular entertainment, and our acquaintance was, judged by the standards of conventionality, perhaps slender." The Indiarubber Man paused and looked gravely from face to face. "However," he continued, "encouraged by my frank open countenance and sympathetic manner, she was constrained to tell the story of how she once loved and lost...."
The narrator broke off and appeared to have forgotten how the story went on, in dreamy contemplation of his cigarette. The mess waited in silence: at length the Junior Watch-keeper could bear it no longer.
"Whatdidshe tell you?"
The Indiarubber Man thoughtfully exhaled a cloud of smoke. "She said: 'Pa shot 'im.... Sniff!—'OwI loved 'im.... Sniff!—Lor', 'ow 'e did bleed.' ..."
XXV.
WHY THE GUNNER WENT ASHORE.
The evening mail had come, and Selby sat alone in his cabin mechanically reading and re-reading a letter. Finally he tore it up into very small pieces and held them clenched in his hand, staring very hard at nothing in particular.
He was engaged to be married: or to be more precise, he had been engaged. The letter that had come by the evening mail said that this was not so any longer.
The girl who wrote it was a very straight-forward person who hated concealment of facts because they were unpleasant. It had become necessary to tell Selby that she couldn't love him any longer, and, faith, she had told him. Further, by her creed, it was only right that she should tell him about Someone Else as well.
It was all very painful, and the necessity for thus putting things to Selby in their proper light, had cost her sleepless nights, red eyes, and much expensive notepaper, before the letter was finally posted. But she did hope he would realise it was For the Best, ... and some day he would be so thankful.... It had all been a Big Mistake, because she wasn't a bit what he thought, ... and so forth. A very distressing letter to have to write, and, from Selby's point of view, even more distressing to have to read.
Few men enjoy being brought up against their limitations thus abruptly, especially where Women and Love are concerned. In Selby's case was added the knowledge that another had been given what he couldn't hold. He had made a woman love him, but he couldn't make her go on loving him.... He was insufficient unto the day.
Critics with less biassed judgment might have taken a different point of view: might have said she was a jilt, or held she acted a little cruelly: gone further, even, and opined he was well out of it. But Selby was one of those who walk the earth under a ban of idealism and had never been seriously in love before. She was the Queen who could do no wrong. It was he who had been weighed and found wanting. If only he had acted differently on such and such an occasion. If, in short, instead of being himself he had been somebody quite different all along....
Succeeding days and nights provided enough matches and sulphur of this sort to enable him to fashion a sufficiently effective purgatory, in which his mind revolved round its hurt like a cockchafer on a pin.
When a man depends for the efficient performance of his duties upon getting his just amount of sleep (Selby was a watch-keeping Lieutenant in a battleship of the line), affairs of this sort are apt to end in disaster. But his ship went into Dockyard hands to refit, and Selby, who was really a sensible enough sort of fellow, though an idealist, realised that for his own welfare and that of the Service it were "better to forget and smile than remember and be sad." Accordingly he applied for and obtained a week's leave, bought a map of the surrounding district, packed a few necessaries into a light knapsack, and set off to walk away his troubles.
For a day he followed the coast—it was high summer—along a path that skirted the cliffs. The breeze blew softly off the levellapis-lazuliof the Channel, sea-gulls wheeled overhead for company, and following the curve of each ragged headland in succession, the creamy edge of the breakers lured him on towards the West. He walked thirty miles that day and slept dreamlessly in a fishing village hung about with nets and populated by philosophers with patched breeches.
He struck inland the second day, to plunge into a confusion of lanes that led him blindfold for a while between ten-foot hedges. These opened later into red coombes, steeped to their sunny depths with the scent of fern and may, and all along the road bees held high carnival above the hedgerows. Then green tunnels of foliage, murmurous with wood-pigeon, dappled him at each step with alternate sunlight and shadow, and passed him on to villages whose inns had cool, flagged parlours, and cider in blue-and-white mugs. An ambient trout-stream held him company most of the long afternoon, with at times a kingfisher darting along its tortuous course like a streak from the rainbow that each tiny waterfall had caught and held.
He supped early in a farm kitchen off new-made pasties, apple tart and yellow-crusted cream, and walked on till the bats began wheeling overhead in the violet dusk. His ship was sixty miles away when he crept into the shelter of a hayrick and laid his tired head on his knapsack.
The third day found him up on the ragged moors, steering north. The exercise and strong salt wind had driven the sad humours from him, and the affairs of life were beginning to resume their right perspective; so much so that when, about noon, a sore heel began abruptly to make itself felt (in the irrational way sore heels have), Selby sat down and pulled out his map. The day before yesterday he would have pushed on doggedly, almost welcoming the counter-irritant of physical discomfort. To-day, however, he accepted the inevitable and searched the map for some neighbouring village where he could rest a day or so until the chafed foot was healed.
After a while he turned east, and, leaving the high moorland, discerned the smoke of chimneys among some trees in the valley. He descended a steep road that seemed to lead in the right direction, and presently caught a glimpse of a square church tower among some elms; later on the breeze bore the faint cawing of rooks up the hillside. A stream divided the valley: the few cottages clustered on the opposite side huddled close together as if reluctant to venture far beyond the shadow of the grey church. The green of the hillside behind them was gashed in one place by an old quarry; but the work had long been abandoned, and Nature had already begun to repair the red scar with impatient furz and whinberry.
So much Selby took in as he descended past the grey church and cawing rooks; once at the bottom and across the quaint, square-arched bridge, he found there was a small inn amongst the huddled cottages, where they would receive him for a night or two.
He lunched, did what he could to the blistered heel with a darning needle and worsted (after the fashion of blistered sailormen), and took a light siesta in the lavender-smelling bedroom under the roof until it was time for tea. Tea over, he lit a pipe, borrowed his host's little 9 ft. trout rod that hung in the passage, and limped down to the meadows skirting the stream beyond the village.
The light occupation gave him something to think about; and, held by the peace of running water, he lingered by the stream till evening. Then something of his old sadness came back with the dimpsey light,—a gentle melancholy that only resembled sorrow "as the mist resembles the rain." He wanted his supper, too, and so walked slowly back to the village with the rod on his shoulder. The inn-keeper met him at the door: "Well done, sir! Well done! Yu'm a fisherman, for sure! Missus, she fry 'un for supper for 'ee now.... Yes, 'tis nice li'l rod—cut un meself: li'l hickory rod, 'tis.... Where did 'ee have that half-pounder, sir? There's many a good fish tu that li'l pool...."
Selby had finished supper and repaired to a bench outside in the gloaming with his pipe and a mug of beer. The old stained chancel windows of the church beyond the river were lit up and choir practice appeared to be in progress. The drone of the organ and voices uplifted in familiar harmonies drifted across to him out of the dusk. The pool below the bridge still mirrored the last gleams of day in the sky: a few old men were leaning over the low parapet smoking, and down the street one or two villagers stood gossiping at their doorsteps. A dog came out of the shadows and sniffed Selby's hands: then he flopped down in the warm dust and sighed to himself. The strains of the organ on the other side of the valley swelled louder:—
"... Holy Ghost the Infinite,Comforter Divine..."
"... Holy Ghost the Infinite,Comforter Divine..."
"... Holy Ghost the Infinite,
Comforter Divine..."
Comforter Divine..."
sang the unseen choir. How warm and peaceful the evening was, reflected Selby, puffing at his pipe, one hand caressing the dog's ear. Extraordinarily peaceful, in fact.... He wondered what sort of a man the vicar was, in this tiny backwater of life, and whether he found it dull....
While he wondered, the vicar came down the road and stopped abreast of him.
"Good evening," he said, half hesitating, and came nearer. "Please don't get up.... I don't want to disturb you, but I—they told me this afternoon that a stranger was staying here. I thought I would make myself known to you: I am the rector of this little parish." He smiled and named himself.
Selby responded to the introduction. "Won't you sit down for a few minutes? I was listening to your choir——"
"They are practising—yes: I have just come down from the church and," he hesitated. "I hoped I should find you in—to have the opportunity of making your acquaintance."
"It was most kind of you." Selby wondered if all parsons in this fair country were as attentive to the stranger within their gates. "Most kind," he repeated. "I—I was on a walking tour, and"—he indicated a slipper of his host's that adorned his left foot—"one of my heels began to chafe—only a blister, you know; but I thought I'd take things easy for a day or two....
"Quite so, quite so. An enforced rest is sometimes very pleasant. I remember once, my throat.... However, that was not what I came to see you about. I believe, Mr Selby, er—am I right in supposing that you are in the Navy?"
"Yes." A note of chilliness had crept into Selby's voice. After all, his clerical acquaintance was only an inquisitive old busybody, agog to pry into other people's affairs. "Yes," he repeated, "I'm a Lieutenant," and he named his ship.
The rector made a little deprecatory gesture. "Please don't think I am trying to acquire the materials for gossip; and I am not asking out of inquisitiveness. The good people here told me this afternoon—this is an out-of-the-way place, and strangers, distinguished ones, if I may say so," he made a little inclination of the head, "do not come here very frequently: they mentioned it to me as I was passing on my way to hold a confirmation class...."
Selby hastened to put him at his ease. After all, why shouldn't he ask? And then he remembered offering the inn-keeper a fill of hard, Navy plug tobacco. He carried a bit in his knapsack with a view to just such small courtesies. "That's the stuff, sir," the man had said, loading his pipe. "We wondered, me an' the missus, was you a Naval gentleman...?"
But while his mind busied itself over these recollections his companion was talking on in his, gentle way.
"... He is not a very old man: but the Doctor tells me he has lived a life of many hardships, and not, I fear, always a temperate one. However, 'Never a sinner, never a saint,' ... and now he is fast—to use one of his own seafaring expressions—'slipping his cable.' He retired from the Navy as a Gunner, I think. That would be a Warrant Officer's rank, would it not?"
Selby nodded. "Yes. Has he been retired long, this person you speak of?"
"Yes, he retired a good many years ago, and has a small pension quite sufficient for his needs. He settled here because he liked the quiet——" The speaker made a little gesture, embracing the hollow in the hills, sombre now in the gathering darkness. "He lives a very lonely life in a cottage some little distance along the road. An eccentric old man, with curious ideas of beautifying a home.... However, I am digressing. As far as I know he has no relatives alive, and no friends ever visit him. He has been bed-ridden for some time, and the wife of one of my parishioners, a most kindly woman, looks in several times a day, and sees he has all he wants.
"Now I come to the part of my story that affects you. Lately, in fact since he took to his bed and the Doctor was compelled to warn him of his approaching end, he has been very anxious to meet some one in the Navy. He so often begs me, if I hear of any one connected with the Service being in the vicinity, to bring him to the cottage. And this afternoon, hearing quite by accident that a Naval Officer was in our midst,"—again the rector made his courteous little inclination of the head—"it seemed an opportunity of gratifying the old fellow's wish—if you could spare a few moments some time to-morrow...?"
"I should be only too glad to be of any service," said Selby. "Perhaps you would call for me some time to-morrow morning, and we could go round together——?"
The rector rose. "You are most kind. I was sure when I saw you—I knew I should not appeal in vain...." He extended his hand. "And now I will say good-night. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time with an old man's concerns. One can do so little in this life to bring happiness to others that when the opportunity arises..."
"Yes,rather——!" said Selby a little awkwardly, and shook hands, conscious of more than a slight compunction for his hastiness in judgment of this mild divine. "Good-night, sir," and stood looking after him till he disappeared along the road into the luminous summer night.
Selby had finished breakfast, and was leaning over the pig-sty wall watching his host ministering to the fat sow and her squealing litter, when his acquaintance of the previous night appeared. Seen in the broad daylight he was an elderly man, short and spare, with placid blue eyes, and a singularly winning smile. A bachelor, so the inn-keeper had instructed Selby; a man of learning and of no small wealth, who, moreover, dressed and threw as pretty a fly as any in the county.
He saluted Selby with a little gesture of his ash-plant, inquired after the blistered heel, and then after an ailing member of the fat sow's litter. "And now, if you are ready and still of the same mind, shall we be strolling along?" he inquired.
Selby fetched his stick, and together they set out along a road made aromatic in the morning sunlight by the scents of dust and flowering hedgerow. Half a mile beyond the village the rector stopped before a gate-way. A dogcart and cob stood at the roadside, and a small boy in charge touched his cap.
"The Doctor is here, I see," said the clergyman, and opened the gate in the hedge. Selby caught a glimpse of a flagged path leading through an orchard to a whitewashed cottage. But his attention from the outset had been arrested by a most extraordinary assortment of crockery, glass and earthenware vases, busts, statuettes, and odds and ends of ironwork that occupied every available inch of space round the gateway, bordering the path, and were even cemented on to the front of the house itself. Above the gateway a defaced lion faced an equally mutilated unicorn across the Royal Arms of England. Arranged beneath, cemented into the pillars of the arch, were busts of Napoleon, Irving, Stanley, and George Washington; an earthenware jar bearing the inscription, "HOT POT"; a little group representing Leda and the Swan in white marble; and a grinning soapstone joss, such as is sold to tourists and sailors at ports on the China coast. Interspersed with these were cups without handles, segments of soup-plates, china dolls'-heads, lead soldiers, and a miscellaneous collection of tea-pot spouts, ... all firmly plastered into the ironwork of the pillars.
On each side of the path, banked up to the height of about three feet, was a further indescribable conglomeration of bric-à-brac, cemented together into a sort of hedge. The general effect was as if the knock-about comedians of a music-hall stage (who break plates and domestic crockery out of sheer joy of living) had combined with demented graveyard masons, bulls in china shops, and all the craftsmen of Murano, to produce a nightmare. A light summer breeze strayed down the valley, and scores of slips of coloured glass, hanging in groups from the apple-trees, responded with a musical tinkling. The sound brought recollections of a Japanese temple garden, and Selby paused to look about him.
"What an extraordinary place!"
The vicar, leading the way up the tiled walk, seemed suddenly to become aware of the strangeness of their surroundings. Long familiarity with the house had perhaps robbed the fantastic decorations of their incongruity. He stopped and smiled. "To be sure.... Yes, I had forgotten; to a stranger all this must seem very peculiar. I think I hinted that the old man had very curious ideas of beautifying the home. This was about his only hobby—and yet, oddly enough, he rarely spoke of it to me."
At that moment the cottage door opened and a tall florid man came out. The vicar turned. "Ah, Doctor Williams—that was his trap at the gate—let me introduce you...." The introduction accomplished, he inquired after the patient. The medical man shook his head.
"Won't last much longer, I'm afraid: a day or so at the most. No organic disease, y'know, but just"—he made a little gesture—"like a clock that's run down. Not an old man either, as men go. But these Navy men age so quickly.... Well, I must get along. I shall look in again this evening, but there is nothing one can do, really. He's quite comfortable.... Good-morning," and the Doctor passed down the path to his trap.
The vicar opened the cottage door, and stood aside to allow Selby to enter. The room was partly a kitchen, partly a bedroom; occupying the bed, with a patchwork quilt drawn up under his chin, was a shrunken little old man, with a square beard nearly white, and projecting craggy eyebrows. He turned his head to the door as they entered; in spite of the commanding brows they were dull, tired old eyes, without interest or hope, or curiosity in them.
"I've brought you a visitor, Mr Tyelake," said the vicar. "Some one you'll be glad to see: an Officer in the Navy."
The old man considered Selby with the same vacant, passionless gaze.
"Have you ever ate Navy beef?" he asked abruptly. It was a thin colourless voice, almost the falsetto of the very old. Selby smiled. "Oh yes, sometimes."
"Navy beef—that's what brought me here—an' the rheumatics. I'm dyin'." He made the statement with the simple pride of one who has at last achieved a modest distinction.
The vicar asked a few questions touching the old man's comfort, and opened the little oriel window to admit the morning air. "Lieutenant Selby was most interested in your unique collection of curios outside, Mr Tyelake. Perhaps you would like to tell him something about them." He looked at his watch, addressing Selby. "I have a meeting, I'm afraid.... I don't know if you'd care to stay a few minutes longer and chat?"
"Certainly," said Selby, and drew a chair near the bed. "If Mr Tyelake doesn't mind, I'd like to stay a little while...." He sat down, and the vicar took his departure, closing the door behind him. In a corner by the dresser a tall grandfather clock ticked out the deliberate seconds; a bluebottle sailed in through the open window and skirmished round the low ceiling.
The old man lay staring at his hands as they lay on the patchwork quilt; twisted, nubbly hands they were, with something pathetic about their toilworn helplessness. Every now and again the wind brought into the little room the tinkle of the glass ornaments pendent in the apple-trees outside: the faint sound seemed to rouse the occupant of the bed.
"I've seen a mort of religions," he said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself. "Heaps of 'em. An' some said one thing an' some said the other." His old blank eyes followed the gyrations of the fly upon the ceiling. "An' I dunno.... Buddhas an' Me-'ommets, Salvation Armies, an' Bush Baptists, ... an' some says one thing an' some says the other. I dunno..." He shook his head wearily. "But many's the pot of galvanised paint I used up outside there ... an' goldleaf, in the dog-watches a-Saturdays."
This, then, was the explanation of the fantastic decorations outside. Altars to the unknown God! The old man turned his head towards his visitor. "But don't you tell the parson. He wouldn't hold with it.... I tell you because you're in the Navy, an' p'r'aps you'd understand. I was in the Navy—Mr Tyelake's my name. Thirty year a Gunner; an' Navy beef——" For a while the old man rambled on, seemingly unconscious of his visitor's presence, of ships long passed through the breakers' yards, of forgotten commissions all up and down the world, of beef and rheumatism and Buddha, while Selby sat listening, half moved by pity, half amused at himself for staying on.
About noon a woman came in and fed the old man with a spoon out of a cup. Selby rose to go. "I'll come again," he said, touching the passive hands covered with faint blue tattooing. "I'll come and see you again this evening." The old man roused himself from his reveries. "Come again," he repeated, "that's right, come again—soon. When she's gone—she an' her fussin' about," and for the first time an expression came into his eyes, as he watched the woman with the cup, an expression of malevolence. "I don't hold with women ... fussin' round. An' I've got something to tell you: something pressin'. You must come soon; I'm slippin' my cable.... Navy beefan'the rheumatics—an' it's to your advantage...."
The shadows of the alders by the river were lengthening when Selby again walked up the bricked path leading to the cottage. The old man was still lying in contemplation of his hands: the grandfather clock had stopped, and there was a great stillness in the little room.
His gaze was so vacant and the silence remained unbroken so long that Selby doubted if the old man recognised him.
"I've come back, you see. I've come to see you again." Still the figure in the bed said nothing, staring dully at his visitor. "I've come to see you again," Selby repeated.
"It's to your advantage," said the old man. His voice was weaker, and it was evident that he was, as he said, slipping his cable fast.
"Give me that there ditty-box," continued the thin, toneless voice. Selby looked round the room, and espied on a corner of the chest of drawers the scrubbed wooden "ditty-box" in which sailors keep their more intimate and personal possessions: he fetched it and placed it on the patchwork quilt; the old man fumbled ineffectually with the lid.
"Tip 'em out," he said at length, and Selby inverted the box to allow a heap of papers and odds and ends to slide on to the old man's hands. It was a pathetic collection, the flotsam and jetsam of a sailor's life: faded photographs, certificates from Captains scarcely memories with the present generation, a frayed parchment, letters tied up with an old knife-lanyard, a lock of hair from which the curl had not quite departed ... ghost of a day when perhaps the old man did "hold with" women. At length he found what he wanted, a soiled sheet of paper that had been folded and refolded many times.
"Here!" he said, and extended it to Selby. It was a printed form, discoloured with age, printed in old-fashioned type, and appeared to relate to details of prison routine and the number of prisoners victualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that was now faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of the compass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard and enclosed by a line. One of the figures was marked with a cross.
"That's a cemetery," said the old man; "cemetery at a place called Port des Reines." He lay silent for a while, as if trying to arrange his scattered ideas; presently the weak voice started again.
"There's a prison at Trinidad, and my father was a warder there ... long time ago: time the oldCalypsowas out on the station...." He talked slowly, with long pauses. "They was sent to catch a murderer who was hidin' among the islands—a half-breed: pirate he must ha' been ... murderer an' I don't know what not.... They caught him an' they brought him to Trinidad where my father was warder in the prison ... when I was little...." The old man broke off into disconnected, rambling whispers, and the shadows began gathering in the corners of the room. A thrush in the orchard outside sang a few long, sweet notes of its Angelus and was silent. Selby waited with his chin resting in his hand. The old man suddenly turned his head: "She ain't comin'——? She an' her fussin'...? I've got something important——"
"No, no," said Selby soothingly, "there's no one here but me. And you wanted to tell me about your father——"
"Warder in the prison at Trinidad," said the old man, "my father was, an' a kind-hearted man. There was a prisoner there, a pirate an' murderer he was, what theCalypsocaught ... an' father was kind to him before he was hanged ... I can't say what he did, but bein' kind-hearted naturally, it might have been anything ... not takin' into account of him being a pirate an' murderer. Jewels he had, an' rings an' such things hidden away somewhere; an' before he was hanged he told my father where they was buried, 'cos father was kind to him before he was hanged.... Port des Reines cemetery ... in the grave what's marked on that chart, he'd buried the whole lot. Seventy thousand pounds, he said...."
There was a long silence. "Father caught the prison fever an' died just afterwards. My mother, she gave me the paper ... joined the Navy: an' I never went to des Reines but the once ... then I went to the wrong cemetery to dig: ship was under sailin' orders—I hadn't time. Afterwards I heard there was two cemeteries: priest at Martinique told me. I was never there but the once.... Seventy thousand pounds: an' me slippin' me cable...."
Selby sat by the bed in the darkening room holding the soiled sheet of paper in his hand, piecing together bit by bit the fragments of this remarkable narrative, until he had a fairly connected story in his head.
Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had been captured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, and there sentenced to death. "Time the oldCalypsowas out on the Station." ... That would be in the 'forties or thereabouts. The old man's father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and had performed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange for which the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of his plunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reines cemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuable piece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to a cemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did not find out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder was valued at £70,000.
Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me to do with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? It seems to me——"
The old man shook his head faintly. "I've got no relatives alive—nor friends. They're all dead ... an' I'm dyin'. That's for you, that there bit of paper. Keep it, it's to your advantage.... Some day, maybe, you'll go to Port des Reines, an' it's the old cemetery furthest from the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there."
"But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I—I'm a total stranger to you.... If all this was true——"
"You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcely raised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that came along. You came, an' you were kind to me. It's yours—an' to your advantage...."
There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in the dusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was all the hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him the paper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its being a prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the story was very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slipped off into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures still lying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, and put the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had been a prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the woman who had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.
Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, and passed down the path. "I'll come again to-morrow," he added at the gate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, having ascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help, Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the road that led up on to the moor.