Rites of Passage Page 5

  Now there was the devil of it. The smile vanished. That word “instruction” had a denotation for me and a connotation for the lady!

  “Yes, Mr Talbot,” said she, and I saw a pink spot appear in either cheek. “As you have discovered, I am a governess.”

  Was this my fault? Had I been remiss? Her expectations in life must have been more exalted than their realization and this has rendered her tongue hair-triggered as a duelling pistol. I declare to your lordship that with such people there is nothing to be done and the only attitude to adopt with them is one of silent attention. That is how they are and one cannot detect their quality in advance any more than the poacher can see the gin. You take a step, and bang! goes the blunderbuss, or the teeth of the gin snap round your ankle. It is easy for those whose rank and position in society put them beyond the vexation of such trivial social distinctions. But we poor fellows who must work or, should I say operate, among these infinitesimal gradations find their detection in advance as difficult as what the papists call “the discernment of spirits”.

  But to return. No sooner had I heard the words “I am a governess”, or perhaps even while I was hearing them, I saw that quite unintentionally I had ruffled the lady.

  “Why, ma’am,” said I soothingly as Wheeler’s paregoric, “yours is indeed the most necessary and genteel profession open to a lady. I cannot tell you what a dear friend Miss Dobson, Old Dobbie as we call her, has been to me and my young brothers. I will swear you are as secure as she in the affectionate friendship of your young ladies and gentlemen!”

  Was this not handsome? I lifted the glass that had been put in my hand as if to salute the whole useful race, though really I drank to my own dexterity in avoiding the lanyard of the blunderbuss or the footplate of the gin.

  But it would not do.

  “If”, said Miss Granham severely, “I am secure in the affectionate friendship of my young ladies and gentlemen it is the only thing I am secure in. A lady who is daughter of a late canon of Exeter Cathedral and who is obliged by her circumstances to take up the offer of employment among a family in the Antipodes may well set the affectionate friendship of young ladies and gentlemen at a lower value than you do.”

  There was I, trapped and blunderbussed—unjustly, I think, when I remember what an effort I had made to smooth the lady’s feathers. I bowed and was her servant, the army officer, Oldmeadow, drew his chin even further into his neck; and here was Bates with sherry. I gulped what I held and seized another glass in a way that it must have indicated my discomfiture, for Summers rescued me, saying he wished other people to have the pleasure of making my acquaintance. I declared I had not known there were so many of us. A large, florid and corpulent gentleman with a port-wine voice declared he would wish to turn a group portrait since with the exception of his good lady and his gal we were all present. A sallow young man, a Mr Weekes, who goes I believe to set up school, declared that the emigrants would form an admirable background to the composition.

  “No, no,” said the large gentleman, “I must not be patronized other than by the nobility and gentry.”

  “The emigrants,” said I, happy to have the subject changed. “Why, I would as soon be pictured for posterity arm in arm with a common sailor!”

  “You must not have me in your picture, then,” said Summers, laughing loudly. “I was once a ‘common sailor’ as you put it.”

  “You, sir? I cannot believe it!”

  “Indeed I was.”

  “But how—”

  Summers looked round with an air of great cheerfulness.

  “I have performed the naval operation known as ‘coming aft through the hawsehole’. I was promoted from the lower deck, or, as you would say, from among the common sailors.”

  Your lordship can have little idea of my astonishment at his words and my irritation at finding the whole of our small society waiting in silence for my reply. I fancy it was as dextrous as the occasion demanded, though perhaps spoken with a too magisterial aplomb.

  “Well, Summers,” I said, “Allow me to congratulate you on imitating to perfection the manners and speech of a somewhat higher station in life than the one you was born to.”

  Summers thanked me with a possibly excessive gratitude. Then he addressed the assembly.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, pray let us be seated. There must be no ceremony. Let us sit where we choose. There will, I hope, be many such occasions in the long passage before us. Bates, bid them strike up out there.”

  At this there came the somewhat embarrassing squeak of a fiddle and other instruments from the lobby. I did what I could to ease what might well be called constraint.

  “Come Summers,” I said, “if we are not to be portrayed together, let us take the opportunity and pleasure of seating Miss Granham between us. Pray, ma’am, allow me.”

  Was that not to risk another set-down? But I handed Miss Granham to her seat under the great window with more ceremony than I would have shown a peeress of the realm, and there we were. When I exclaimed at the excellent quality of the meat Lieutenant Deverel, who had seated himself on my left hand, explained that one of our cows had broken a leg in the late blow so we were taking what we could while it was still there though we should soon be short of milk. Miss Granham was now in animated conversation with Mr Summers on her right so Mr Deverel and I conversed for some time on the topic of seamen and their sentimentality over a cow with a broken leg, their ingenuity in all manner of crafts both good and bad, their addiction to liquor, their immorality, their furious courage and their devotion, only half-joking, to the ship’s figurehead. We agreed there were few problems in society that would not yield to firm but perceptive government. It was so, he said, in a ship. I replied that I had seen the firmness but was yet to be convinced of the perception. By now the, shall I say, animation of the whole party had risen to such a height that nothing could be heard of the music in the lobby. One topic leading to another, Deverel and I rapidly gained a degree of mutual understanding. He opened himself to me. He had wished for a proper ship of the line, not a superannuated third-rate with a crew small in number and swept up together in a day or two. What I had taken to be an established body of officers and men had known each other for at most a week or two since she came out of ordinary. It was a great shame and his father might have done better for him. This commission would do his own prospects no good at all let alone that the war was running down and would soon stop like an unwound clock. Deverel’s speech and manner, indeed everything about him, is elegant. He is an ornament to the service.

  The saloon was now as noisy as a public place can well be. Something was overset amidst shouts of laughter and some oaths. Already a mousey little pair, Mr and Mrs Pike with the small twin daughters, had scurried away and now at a particularly loud outburst, Miss Granham started to her feet, though pressed to stay both by me and Summers. He declared she must not mind the language of naval officers which became habitual and unconscious among the greater part of them. For my part I thought the ill-​behaviour came more from the passengers than the ship’s officers—Good God, said I to myself, if she is like this at the after end, what is she like at the other? Miss Granham had not yet moved from her seat when the door was opened for a lady of a quite different appearance. She appeared young yet richly and frivolously dressed. She came in with such a sweep and flutter that the bonnet fell to the back of her neck, revealing a quantity of golden curls. We rose—or most of us, at least—but with an admirable presence she seated us again at a gesture, went straight to the florid gentleman, leaned over his shoulder and murmured the following sentence in accents of exquisite, far, far too exquisite, beauty.

  “Oh Mr Brocklebank, at last she has contrived to retain a mouthful of consom!”

  Mr Brocklebank boomed us an explanation.

  “My child, my little Zenobia!”

  Miss Zenobia was at once offered a choice of places at the table. Miss Granham declared she was leaving so that her place at it was free if another cushion m
ight be brought. But the young lady, as I must call her, replied with whimsical archness that she had relied on Miss Granham to protect her virtue among so many dangerous gentlemen.

  “Stuff and nonsense, ma’am,” said Miss Granham, even more severely than she had addressed your humble servant, “stuff and nonsense! Your virtue is as safe here as anywhere in the vessel!”

  “Dear Miss Granham,” cried the lady with a languishing air, “I am sure your virtue is safe anywhere!”

  This was gross, was it not? Yet I am sorry to say that from at least one part of the saloon there came a shout of laughter, for we had reached that part of dinner where ladies are better out of the way and only such as the latest arrival was proving to be can keep in countenance. Deverel, I and Summers were on our feet in a trice but it was the army officer, Oldmeadow, who escorted Miss Granham from our midst. The voice of the port-wine gentleman boomed again. “Sit by me, Zenobia, child.”

  Miss Zenobia fluttered in the full afternoon sunlight that slanted across the great stern window. She held her pretty hands up to shield her face.

  “It is too bright, Mr Brocklebank, pa!”

  “Lord ma’am,” said Deverel, “can you deprive us poor fellows in the shadows of the pleasure of looking at you?”

  “I must,” she said, “I positively must and will, take the seat vacated by Miss Granham.”

  She fluttered round the table like a butterfly, a painted lady perhaps. I fancy that Deverel would have been happy to have her by him but she sank into the seat between Summers and me. Her bonnet was still held loosely by a ribbon at the back of her neck so that a charming profusion of curls was visible by her cheek and ear. Yet it seemed to me even at the first sight that the very brightness of her eyes—or the one occasionally turned on me—owed a debt to the mysteries of her toilette and her lips were perhaps a trifle artificially coral. As for her perfume—

  Does this appear tedious to your lordship? The many charmers whom I have seen to languish, perhaps in vain, near your lordship—devil take it, how am I to employ any flattery on my godfather when the simple truth—

  To return. This bids fair to be a lengthy expatiation on the subject of a young woman’s appearance. The danger here is to invent. I am, after all, no more than a young fellow! I might please myself with a rhapsody for she is the only tolerable female object in our company! There! Yet—and here I think the politician, the scurvy politician, as my favourite author would have it, is uppermost in my mind. I cannot get me glass eyes. I cannot rhapsodize. For Miss Zenobia is surely approaching her middle years and is defending indifferent charms before they disappear for ever by a continual animation which must surely exhaust her as much as they tire the beholder. A face that is never still cannot be subjected to detailed examination. May it not be that her parents are taking her to the Antipodes as a last resort? After all, among the convicts and Aborigines, among the emigrants and pensioned soldiers, the warders, the humbler clergy—but no. I do the lady an injustice for she is well enough. I do not doubt that the less continent of our people will find her an object of more than curiosity!

  Let us have done with her for a moment. I will turn to her father and the gentleman opposite him, who became visible to me by leaping to his feet. Even in the resumed babble his voice was clearly to be heard.

  “Mr Brocklebank, I would have you know that I am the inveterate foe of every superstition!”

  This of course was Mr Prettiman. I have made a sad job of his introduction, have I not? You must blame Miss Zenobia. He is a short, thick, angry gentleman. You know of him. I know—it matters not how—that he takes a printing press with him to the Antipodes; and though it is a machine capable of little more than turning out handbills, yet the Lutheran Bible was produced from something not much bigger.

  But Mr Brocklebank was booming back. He had not thought. It was a trifle. He would be the last person to offend the susceptibilities. Custom. Habit.

  Mr Prettiman, still standing, vibrated with passion.

  “I saw it distinctly, sir! You threw salt over your shoulder!”

  “So I did, sir, I confess it. I will try not to spill the salt again.”

  This remark with its clear indication that Mr Brocklebank had no idea at all of what Mr Prettiman meant confounded the social philosopher. His mouth still open he sank slowly into his seat, thus almost passing from my sight. Miss Zenobia turned to me with a pretty seriousness round her wide eyes. She looked, as it were, under her eyebrows and up through lashes—but no. I will not believe that unassisted Nature—

  “How angry Mr Prettiman is, Mr Talbot! I declare that when roused he is quite, quite terrifying!”

  Anything less terrifying than the absurd philosopher would be difficult to imagine. However, I saw that we were about to embark on a familiar set of steps in an ancient dance. She was to become more and more the unprotected female in the presence of gigantic male creatures such as Mr Prettiman and your godson. We, for our part, were to advance with a threatening good humour so that in terror she would have to throw herself on our mercy, appeal to our generosity, appeal to our chivalry perhaps: and all the time the animal spirits, the, as Dr Johnson called them, “amorous propensities” of both sexes would be excited to that state, that ambiance, in which such creatures as she is or has been, have their being.

  This was a distancing thought and brought me to see something else. The size, the scale, was wrong. It was too large. The lady has been at least an habituée of the theatre if not a performer there! This was not a normal encounter—for now she was describing her terror in the late blow—but one, as it were, thrown outwards to where Summers at her side, Oldmeadow and a Mr Bowles across the table and indeed anyone in earshot could hear her. We were to perform. But before act one could be said to be well under weigh—and I must confess that I dallied with the thought that she might to some extent relieve the tedium of the voyage—when louder exclamations from Mr Prettiman and louder rumbles and even thunders from Mr Brocklebank turned her to seriousness again. She was accustomed to touch wood. I admitted to feeling more cheerful if a black cat should cross the road before me. Her lucky number was twenty-five. I said at once that her twenty-fifth birthday would prove to be most fortunate for her—a piece of nonsense which went unnoticed, for Mr Bowles (who is connected with the law in some very junior capacity and a thorough bore) explained that the custom of touching wood came from a papistical habit of adoring the crucifix and kissing it. I responded with my nurse’s fear of crossed knives as indication of a quarrel and horror at a loaf turned upside-down as presage of a disaster at sea—whereat she shrieked and turned to Summers for protection. He assured her she need fear nothing from the French, who were quite beat down at this juncture; but the mere mention of the French was enough to set her off and we had another description of her trembling away the hours of darkness in her cabin. We were a single ship. We were, as she said in thrilling accents,

  “—alone, alone,

  All, all alone,

  Alone on a wide, wide sea!”

  Anything more crowded than the teeming confines of this ship is not to be found, I believe, outside a debtor’s gaol or a prison hulk. But yes she had met Mr Coleridge. Mr Brocklebank—pa—had painted his portrait and there had been talk of an illustrated volume but it came to nothing.

  At about this point, Mr Brocklebank, having presumably caught his daughter’s recitation, could be heard booming on metrically. It was more of the poem. I suppose he knew it well if he had intended to illustrate it. Then he and the philosopher set to again. Suddenly the whole saloon was silent and listening to them.

  “No, sir, I would not,” boomed the painter. “Not in any circumstances!”

  “Then refrain from eating chicken, sir, or any other fowl!”

  “No sir!”

  “Refrain from eating that portion of cow before you! There are ten millions of Brahmans in the East who would cut your throat for eating it!”

  “There are no Brahmans in this ship.”


  “Integrity—”

  “Once and for all, sir, I would not shoot an albatross. I am a peaceable person, Mr Prettiman, and I would shoot you with as much pleasure!”

  “Have you a gun, sir? For I will shoot an albatross, sir, and the sailors shall see what befalls—”

  “I have a gun, sir, though I have never fired it. Are you a marksman, sir?”

  “I have never fired a shot in my life!”

  “Permit me then, sir. I have the weapon. You may use it.”

  “You, sir?”

  “I, sir!”

  Mr Prettiman bounced up into full view again. His eyes had a kind of icy brilliance about them.

  “Thank you, sir, I will, sir, and you shall see, sir! And the common sailors shall see, sir—”

  He got himself over the bench on which he had been sitting, then fairly rushed out of the saloon. There was some laughter and conversation resumed but at a lower level. Miss Zenobia turned to me.

  “Pa is determined we shall be protected in the Antipodes!”

  “He does not propose going among the natives, surely!”

  “He has some thought of introducing the art of portraiture among them. He thinks it will lead to complacency among them which he says is next door to civilization. He owns, though, that a black face will present a special kind of difficulty.”

  “It would be dangerous, I think. Nor would the governor allow it.”

  “But Mr Brocklebank—pa—believes he may persuade the governor to employ him.”

  “Good God! I am not the governor, but—dear lady, think of the danger!”

  “If clergymen may go—”