Rodney Stone, Arthur Conan Doyle [the best books of all time .TXT] 📗

week, for the memory of an old man is like one of those glasses which shows out what is at a distance and blurs all that is near.

My mother had been in a tremble ever since the first rumour of the preliminaries came to our ears, for she knew that he might come as soon as his message.  She said little, but she saddened my life by insisting that I should be for ever clean and tidy.  With every rumble of wheels, too, her eyes would glance towards the door, and her hands steal up to smooth her pretty black hair.  She had embroidered a white “Welcome” upon a blue ground, with an anchor in red upon each side, and a border of laurel leaves; and this was to hang upon the two lilac bushes which flanked the cottage door.  He could not have left the Mediterranean before we had this finished, and every morning she looked to see if it were in its place and ready to be hanged.

But it was a weary time before the peace was ratified, and it was April of next year before our great day came round to us.  It had been raining all morning, I remember—a soft spring rain, which sent up a rich smell from the brown earth and pattered pleasantly upon the budding chestnuts behind our cottage.  The sun had shone out in the evening, and I had come down with my fishing-rod (for I had promised Boy Jim to go with him to the mill-stream), when what should I see but a post-chaise with two smoking horses at the gate, and there in the open door of it were my mother’s black skirt and her little feet jutting out, with two blue arms for a waist-belt, and all the rest of her buried in the chaise.  Away I ran for the motto, and I pinned it up on the bushes as we had agreed, but when I had finished there were the skirts and the feet and the blue arms just the same as before.

“Here’s Rod,” said my mother at last, struggling down on to the ground again.  “Roddy, darling, here’s your father!”

I saw the red face and the kindly, light-blue eyes looking out at me.

“Why, Roddy, lad, you were but a child and we kissed good-bye when last we met; but I suppose we must put you on a different rating now.  I’m right glad from my heart to see you, dear lad; and as to you, sweetheart—”

The blue arms flew out, and there were the skirt and the two feet fixed in the door again.

“Here are the folk coming, Anson,” said my mother, blushing.  “Won’t you get out and come in with us?”

And then suddenly it came home to us both that for all his cheery face he had never moved more than his arms, and that his leg was resting on the opposite seat of the chaise.

“Oh, Anson, Anson!” she cried.

“Tut, ’tis but the bone of my leg,” said he, taking his knee between his hands and lifting it round.  “I got it broke in the Bay, but the surgeon has fished it and spliced it, though it’s a bit crank yet.  Why, bless her kindly heart, if I haven’t turned her from pink to white.  You can see for yourself that it’s nothing.”

He sprang out as he spoke, and with one leg and a staff he hopped swiftly up the path, and under the laurel-bordered motto, and so over his own threshold for the first time for five years.  When the post-boy and I had carried up the sea-chest and the two canvas bags, there he was sitting in his armchair by the window in his old weather-stained blue coat.  My mother was weeping over his poor leg, and he patting her hair with one brown hand.  His other he threw round my waist, and drew me to the side of his chair.

“Now that we have peace, I can lie up and refit until King George needs me again,” said he.  “’Twas a carronade that came adrift in the Bay when it was blowing a top-gallant breeze with a beam sea.  Ere we could make it fast it had me jammed against the mast.  Well, well,” he added, looking round at the walls of the room, “here are all my old curios, the same as ever: the narwhal’s horn from the Arctic, and the blowfish from the Moluccas, and the paddles from Fiji, and the picture of the Ca Ira with Lord Hotham in chase.  And here you are, Mary, and you also, Roddy, and good luck to the carronade which has sent me into so snug a harbour without fear of sailing orders.”

My mother had his long pipe and his tobacco all ready for him, so that he was able now to light it and to sit looking from one of us to the other and then back again, as if he could never see enough of us.  Young as I was, I could still understand that this was the moment which he had thought of during many a lonely watch, and that the expectation of it had cheered his heart in many a dark hour.  Sometimes he would touch one of us with his hand, and sometimes the other, and so he sat, with his soul too satiated for words, whilst the shadows gathered in the little room and the lights of the inn windows glimmered through the gloom.  And then, after my mother had lit our own lamp, she slipped suddenly down upon her knees, and he got one knee to the ground also, so that, hand-in-hand, they joined their thanks to Heaven for manifold mercies.  When I look back at my parents as they were in those days, it is at that very moment that I can picture them most clearly: her sweet face with the wet shining upon her cheeks, and his blue eyes upturned to the smoke-blackened ceiling.  I remember that he swayed his reeking pipe in the earnestness of his prayer, so that I was half tears and half smiles as I watched him.

“Roddy, lad,” said he, after supper was over, “you’re getting a man now, and I suppose you will go afloat like the rest of us.  You’re old enough to strap a dirk to your thigh.”

“And leave me without a child as well as without a husband!” cried my mother.

“Well, there’s time enough yet,” said he, “for they are more inclined to empty berths than to fill them, now that peace has come.  But I’ve never tried what all this schooling has done for you, Rodney.  You have had a great deal more than ever I had, but I dare say I can make shift to test it.  Have you learned history?”

“Yes, father,” said I, with some confidence.

“Then how many sail of the line were at the Battle of Camperdown?”

He shook his head gravely when he found that I could not answer him.

“Why, there are men in the fleet who never had any schooling at all who could tell you that we had seven 74’s, seven 64’s, and two 50-gun ships in the action.  There’s a picture on the wall of the chase of the Ca Ira.  Which were the ships that laid her aboard?”

Again I had to confess that he had beaten me.

“Well, your dad can teach you something in history yet,” he cried, looking in triumph at my mother.  “Have you learned geography?”

“Yes, father,” said I, though with less confidence than before.

“Well, how far is it from Port Mahon to Algeciras?”

I could only shake my head.

“If Ushant lay three leagues upon your starboard quarter, what would be your nearest English port?”

Again I had to give it up.

“Well, I don’t see that your geography is much better than your history,” said he.  “You’d never get your certificate at this rate.  Can you do addition?  Well, then, let us see if you can tot up my prize-money.”

He shot a mischievous glance at my mother as he spoke, and she laid down her knitting on her lap and looked very earnestly at him.

“You never asked me about that, Mary,” said he.

“The Mediterranean is not the station for it, Anson.  I have heard you say that it is the Atlantic for prize-money, and the Mediterranean for honour.”

“I had a share of both last cruise, which comes from changing a line-of-battleship for a frigate.  Now, Rodney, there are two pounds in every hundred due to me when the prize-courts have done with them.  When we were watching Massena, off Genoa, we got a matter of seventy schooners, brigs, and tartans, with wine, food, and powder.  Lord Keith will want his finger in the pie, but that’s for the Courts to settle.  Put them at four pounds apiece to me, and what will the seventy bring?”

“Two hundred and eighty pounds,” I answered.

“Why, Anson, it is a fortune!” cried my mother, clapping her hands.

“Try you again, Roddy!” said he, shaking his pipe at me.  “There was the Xebec frigate out of Barcelona with twenty thousand Spanish dollars aboard, which make four thousand of our pounds.  Her hull should be worth another thousand.  What’s my share of that?”

“A hundred pounds.”

“Why, the purser couldn’t work it out quicker,” he cried in his delight.  “Here’s for you again!  We passed the Straits and worked up to the Azores, where we fell in with the La Sabina from the Mauritius with sugar and spices.  Twelve hundred pounds she’s worth to me, Mary, my darling, and never again shall you soil your pretty fingers or pinch upon my beggarly pay.”

My dear mother had borne her long struggle without a sign all these years, but now that she was so suddenly eased of it she fell sobbing upon his neck.  It was a long time before my father had a thought to spare upon my examination in arithmetic.

“It’s all in your lap, Mary,” said he, dashing his own hand across his eyes.  “By George, lass, when this leg of mine is sound we’ll bear down for a spell to Brighton, and if there is a smarter frock than yours upon the Steyne, may I never tread a poop again.  But how is it that you are so quick at figures, Rodney, when you know nothing of history or geography?”

I tried to explain that addition was the same upon sea or land, but that history and geography were not.

“Well,” he concluded, “you need figures to take a reckoning, and you need nothing else save what your mother wit will teach you.  There never was one of our breed who did not take to salt water like a young gull.  Lord Nelson has promised me a vacancy for you, and he’ll be as good as his word.”

So it was that my father came home to us, and a better or kinder no lad could wish for.  Though my parents had been married so long, they had really seen very little of each other, and their affection was as warm and as fresh as if they were two newly-wedded lovers.  I have learned since that sailors can be coarse and foul, but never did I know it from my father; for, although he had seen as much rough work as the wildest could wish for, he was always the same patient, good-humoured man, with a smile and a jolly word for all the village.  He could suit himself to his company, too, for on the one hand he could take his wine with the vicar, or with Sir James Ovington, the squire of the parish; while on the other he would sit by the hour amongst my humble friends down in the smithy, with Champion Harrison, Boy Jim, and the rest of them, telling them such stories of Nelson and his men that I have seen the Champion knot his great hands together, while Jim’s eyes have smouldered like the forge embers as he listened.

My father had been placed on half-pay, like so many others of the old war officers, and so, for nearly two years, he was able to remain with us.  During all this time I can only once remember that there was the slightest disagreement between him and my mother.  It chanced that I was the cause of it, and as great events sprang out of it, I must tell you how it came about.  It was indeed the first of a series of events which affected not only my fortunes, but those of very much more important people.

The spring of 1803 was an early one, and the middle of April saw the leaves thick upon the chestnut trees.  One evening we were all seated together over a dish of tea when we heard the scrunch of steps outside our door, and there was the postman with a letter in his hand.

“I think it is for me,” said my mother, and sure enough it was addressed in the most beautiful writing to Mrs. Mary Stone, of Friar’s Oak, and there was a red seal the size of a half-crown