To the Ends of the Earth (68 page)

“I believe we should turn here.”

How the wretched horse pricked up his ears and trotted! He knew where he was going and went there for all I could do. He sketched out, as it were, the
mores
of his owner or the person accustomed to “drive” him. Who needs to stop by a particularly fine tree and then successively at two houses, a well and a boatyard? In the end, when my wrists were sore from unavailing persuasion, we came out to a slightly raised promontory with the harbour in full view. A wooden seat had been set there for weary travellers and I welcomed it, though an aboriginal stood by it, gazing out over the harbour as if he owned the place! The horse stopped by the seat. The native wandered off without a backward glance.

“My apologies for the wretched animal. Miss Oates, I will hitch him here and leave him in your charge.”

Her answer was the expected squeak. I handed Miss Chumley down and led her along the verge, over the water. Presently I stopped and faced her.

“Miss Chumley—I have said that you and I have been the sport of Neptune as much as ever Ulysses was. The ordinary rules of behaviour cannot apply to us. The many letters I have written to you—”

“I treasure what I have received!”

All this conversation was breathless but in a strange way distracted. Something spoke which was not either of us.

“Miss Chumley—You must understand how instantly I knew my fate—how deeply I am attached to you? Tell me—what I cannot believe—that your affections are engaged elsewhere and I will retire to nurse a broken heart. But, oh, ma’am, if you should be free and disposed to receive my addresses not unkindly—in short, if you was to regard me in the light of more than a friend—”

Miss Chumley faced me with smiling lips and sparkling eyes.

“A young person, Mr Talbot, could not receive addresses more calculated to please her!”

“Oh, I could proclaim it to the whole world!”

“I promise you, Mr Talbot, the whole ship shall receive incontrovertible proof of our understanding before it leaves the harbour—Why, what is the matter?”

The tide was low. There, a mile or two away but clear as an etching in that diamond air, the black ribs of our poor old ship stood out of the water. I remember the
impossibility
of speaking about it to Miss Chumley. We stood there silent while the whole history of that voyage flooded me and started out under my eyelids so that I had to
disguise
the effort to wipe the water away as an attempt to rid myself of the eternal and infernal flies! For she knew
nothing
, none of the people, nothing of the terror, horror,
savagery
, devotion, boredom and mortality which yet seemed to cling round those distant baulks of timber.

“Miss Chumley—what happened to Lieutenant Deverel?”

“He left the ship and took service with a maharajah. He was made a colonel, though they did not call it that. He wears a turban and rides an elephant.”

And then—

“Mr Talbot! That flag!”

I turned and looked to the right. Less than a mile away
Alcyone
lay alongside the quay.

“I very much fear, ma’am, it is the recall. The Blue Peter.”

We turned and looked at each other.

I pass over the mutual declarations, the farewells and promises. They are able to be found in a thousand romances and why should I add to their number? In the end, of course, I had to take her—them—back to the ship. I hit the wretched beast harder, I imagine, than he had ever been hit before and was able with difficulty to prevent him running over the little cliff. At least he got us to the quay more quickly than we had left it. Miss Oates scurried to the gangway as if someone were chasing her. I handed Miss Chumley down. The ship’s company was preparing for departure, there was no doubt about it. They showed considerable interest in us, there was no doubt about that either. I even heard the shouted order—“Eyes in the ship, curse you!” and the crack of a starter. But what was that to do with us? She turned to me with a smile.

“You have my word, sir, I will wait—if necessary for ever!”

“And I am yours for ever—there’s my hand on it!”

Impulsively I thrust out my hand. Laughing now, she laid her hand in mine.

“Dear Mr Talbot! Once more you have quite swept me off my feet!”

Her glowing face came near. I snatched off my hat, and careless of propriety, and indifferent to the furtive glances of the seamen, seized her in a firm embrace. We kissed. I believe I have never, except when occasionally disguised by drink, made such a public exhibition of
myself
. It occurred to me even in that moment of delirium that the whole ship now knew exactly where we stood. Miss Chumley had done precisely what she knew had to be done.

Then the ship sailed, taking my heart with it.

My dear readers—for I am determined we shall have more than one descendant—may now imagine that they have the “fairy tale” to the end. They may suppose a steady rise in the ranks of the colonial administration—but no! The fairy tale was about to begin!

It was only the next day that Daniels remarked that the bag brought by
Alcyone
was a heavy one. He invited me to fetch my letters which were cluttering up his desk. I was too absorbed in my loss and my happiness to pay much attention. Letters from England at that time interested me but faintly. Indeed, it is a melancholy truth that letters commonly brought more bad news than good. It was therefore two days after
Alcyone
had left that I bothered to collect them. I read first a letter from my Lady Mother, who seemed, I thought, quite extraordinarily joyful for no detectable reason. Why was she “so comfortable”? Why did she refer to my dead godfather as a “dear, good man”? He had seldom merited such a description in public or
private
life! I turned to the letter from my father. My
godfather’s
will had been read. He had left me nothing but had bought up the mortgages and left them to my Lady Mother! Though we could not be called wealthy or even rich, we were now in comfortable and what my father described as “suittable” circumstances!

More than this—dear readers, I beg you to suspend your disbelief as willingly as you can contrive—but concentrate rather on the well-known example of Mr Harrison, who was elected to Parliament without his knowledge and only discovered the pleasing intelligence when he chanced on an English news-sheet which was loaned him by a traveller in a Parisian brothel! By agreement one of the incumbents of my godfather’s rotten borough had asked for the Chiltern Hundreds and I, Edmund FitzHenry Talbot, had
been elected! Beat that, Goldsmith! Emulate me, Miss Austen, if you are able! The most striking expressions of astonishment are inadequate in the face of such a nearly unique experience! I read the joyful news over and over again—looked then at my mother’s letter, which now made complete and indeed what I could only think of as “
suittable
” sense! My first impulse was to communicate the interesting facts to the Fair Object of my Passion! My second was to request an immediate interview with Mr Macquarie.

He was very understanding. I had scarcely told him the news and shown him the relevant portion of my father’s letter when he besought me to regard him less as a governor than a friend.

What is there to add? Mr Macquarie pointed out the difficulties in the way of providing me with immediate transport. As soon as a ship should be available, of course—meanwhile, he thought that in view of this signal display of Divine Providence we should give thanks together. I humoured him. Indeed, good fortune and happiness seem to me much more compelling towards the Great Truths of the Christian Religion than their dreary opposites! Mr Macquarie, when we had risen from our knees, asked me humbly enough whether I would chuse to regard myself as entirely outside the ranks of government (“We are a happy family, Mr Talbot”) or whether in the interim I would, as it were, loan the Colony my talents? I put myself at his
disposal
at once. He had, he said, many reasons for wishing a closer
liaison
with the government at home. He thought I would be interested to view what he had accomplished in the short time which had been available to him. Such knowledge would be of inestimable value to one of our legislators!

My letter to Miss Chumley grew to immense length. The sloop
Henrietta
put in but needed much attention to
her rigging. There now occurred exasperating delays which were no one’s fault in particular but endemic to the naval service in time of war. I transferred my gear to another ship, which incontinently left without me but with my gear and letter.
Henrietta
—but why should I elaborate? I followed hard on my letter but was delayed at Madras, which proved to be a fortunate circumstance since it gives me an opportunity of allowing the reader a glimpse of Miss Chumley’s epistolary genius. I had, of course, in my own letter proposed matrimony formally. The words in which the Dear Object of my Passion
consented
to make me the happiest of men must be forever sacred to me. However, she consents to my copying some of the rest of that letter here.

My readers may imagine with what joy I read and reread this tender missive! I turned at last to the letter from Miss Chumley’s cousin. It was no lessened joy to find that he was a churchman indeed, for he was a bishop and signed himself “Calcutta +”.

What more is there to say? So must end this account of Edmund Talbot’s journey to the ends of the earth and his attempt to learn Tarpaulin! Yet I divine in my unborn readers an unease. Something is missing, is there not? The bishop could not consent to our journeying from India to England while still unmarried. It would be an extremely bad example set in a part of the world only too open to licence of every kind! He himself very cordially offered to perform the ceremony! So, my dear readers
may rest contentedly assured: there did come a day when I leapt ashore in India from a pinnace. A “young person” under a rosy parasol stood, as it might be, twenty yards away. Valuable Janet was behind her and a group of dark servants. Above the rosy parasol a greater was held and spread. But she took no heed of the sun when she saw me. I swept off my hat—she broke into a run—and your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother fairly sprang into my arms!

After I read Oldmeadow’s letter I went for a walk,
remembering
all those old acquaintances—enemies who in
retrospect
now seem to be friends. They came up one by one, some I had forgotten entirely—Jacobs, Manley, yes, Howell. I seemed to touch them all with my mind, one by one, Bowles, Celia Brocklebank, Zenobia, little Pike, Wheeler, Bates, Colley—and so on, from Captain Anderson down. It was a curious exercise. I found that I could remember them without much emotion—even Lieutenant Summers. Even Mr and Mrs Prettiman. That night I had a kind of dream. I hope it was a dream, for dreams in any event are mysterious enough. I do not mean their content but the very fact of them. I do not wish it to have been more than a dream: because if it was, then I have to start all over again in a universe quite unlike the one which is my sanity and security. This dream was me seeing them as it were from ground level, and I was seeing them from ground level because I was quite comfortably buried in the earth of Australia, all except my head. They rode past me a few yards away. They were laughing and chattering in a high excitement, the men and women following them with faces glowing as in a successful hunt for treasure. They were high on horses—she leading, astride with a wide hat, and he following, side-saddle, since his right leg was useless. You would have thought from the excitement and the honey light, from the crowd that followed them, from the laughter and, yes, the singing, you would have thought they were going to some great festival of joy, though where in the desert around them it might be found there was no telling. They were so happy! They were so excited!

I woke from my dream and wiped my face and stopped trembling and presently worked out that we could not all do that sort of thing. The world must be served, must it not? Only it did cross my mind before I had properly dealt with myself that she had said, or he had said, that I could come too, although I never countenanced the idea. Still, there it is.