The Unknown Shore Page 2

  It was difficult to account for their friendship. Apart from their age they had nothing at all in common, or at least nothing that appeared at first sight. Nothing could have been more different than their appearance, education and family; nothing could have been more unlike than their pursuits; but they were happy when they were together and they missed one another very much when they were apart. Jack’s education had been completely normal – he had done tolerably well at school and had come away with a certain amount of Latin, a reasonable acquaintance with mathematics, and nothing more. The education of Tobias, on the other hand, might have been calculated to produce a monster, and the fact that it had not done so was rather a proof of the resilience of the human spirit than any evidence of judgment on the part of Mr Elwes.

  Yet one can avoid being a monster without necessarily being ordinary: Tobias was far from ordinary. He had never been to school, and he had never known anyone of his own age except Jack Byron and Georgiana Chaworth; he had spent all his days in that strange, dark, unsocial house, with odd, unsatisfactory servants perpetually coming and going; he had been kept to his book with inhuman persistence; and he was a strange young creature, very strange indeed.

  ‘But he is so very strange, my dear,’ said Mrs Chaworth. ‘So very strange. He assured me that toads were capable of gratitude.’

  ‘Are they not, ma’am?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Perhaps they are, my dear,’ said Mrs Chaworth, closing her eyes, ‘but with these words he passed a very large toad to Mrs Jerningham – Mrs Charles Jerningham – and desired her to caress it. Mrs Jerningham was obliged to be led away and recovered with sal volatile in the small drawing-room. My dear, unequal friendships never answer, as your grandfather often used to say.’

  Mrs Chaworth did not forbid the association, but she dropped a gentle drizzle of disapproval upon it, and she would have been happy to see it die away, particularly on Georgiana’s account. This young creature, the prettiest of her daughters, was passionately attached to her cousin Jack and even more so to Tobias: she played cricket with them, tirelessly fielding while Tobias bowled and Jack batted, and a primitive kind of baseball; she climbed trees, whistled and shouted in a manner that distressed her elegant mother, and cherished hedgepigs (presents from Tobias) in her bedroom.

  When Mrs Chaworth objected to his strangeness she referred not only to qualities that were produced by his nurture but also to some that were born in him; for example, he had a strange power with animals, however wild, and sometimes (though not always) he could call them to him over great distances; he had always handled bees without any protection, and since his earliest days he had been reputed a horse-witch. Clearly a budding horse-witch, however fluent in Greek, was not an ideal playmate for Georgiana: the family intended to marry Georgiana to Lord Carlisle, and Mrs Chaworth did not wish to hear any adverse criticism from the young man’s mother about Georgiana’s bringing-up: she often said to her daughter, ‘Lard, Georgiana, what an ill-looking fellow poor Toby has become; and will grow even worse, alas.’

  And however Georgiana might snort and cry ‘I do not mind it,’ not even she could claim that Tobias Barrow was in any way a beauty. He was meagre, narrow-chested and stooping; his dull black hair made his white face even paler, while at the same time it made a startling contrast with his almost colourless light green eyes. To an unaccustomed eye it was a face so strange as to be almost sinister – Mrs Ellis, upon contemplating it for the first time, had been struck dumb; which is saying a great deal. It was in no way a boy’s face, and no one, looking at it, would ever have expected to see it moved by a boyish spirit. And then he had so early grown accustomed to loneliness and learning that he had slipped into odd, graceless habits; he would make sudden untoward gestures, forgetting his company – he would distort his face in thought, grind his teeth, and sometimes utter a low hooting noise. He washed only when he felt need of it, shifted his linen rarely, and always wore black clothes.

  Jack could see him now, a slight dark figure running towards him through the trees. Jack smiled to see him coming, put up his hand after the fashion of sailors, and hailed him very loud and clear, ‘Ahoy.’

  The bats instantly fell into a petrified silence. ‘There you are, Toby,’ said Jack; and to this valuable observation he added, ‘Why are you running?’ For it was a rare thing to see Tobias running.

  ‘Jack,’ said Tobias, ‘I am very happy to see you. I am very glad you have come.’

  ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ asked Jack, staring. It was clear to him that his friend was strongly moved: he was flushed, and he was breathing hard.

  ‘I tell you what it is, Jack,’ said Tobias, gripping his arm and looking up into his face with great anxiety. ‘You must give me your advice. I am going to run away to sea.’

  Chapter Two

  WHEN THE LONDON ROAD leaves Mangonell Bagpize it plunges down a hill so steep that horses must be led. The bottom of the hill was a favourite place with highwaymen, because coaches coming or going were obliged to be almost at a standstill there – highwaymen with strong nerves, that is, for the more timid or fanciful were put off and discouraged by the sight of the gallows at the top of the hill, where their unsuccessful brother Medical Dick (a former apothecary’s boy) swung as a silent warning in chains, carefully tarred against the weather.

  Tobias had eyed Medical Dick with a professional interest that could not possibly be shared by his companion, but he had not stopped talking; and still, as they walked down the hill with their horses stepping carefully behind them, they talked on with the same eagerness.

  ‘… but the final thing, the thing I could not stand, was her sending her servant to destroy my animals. That woman, that termagant, if termagant be not too warm an expression – do you consider termagant too warm an expression, Jack?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I should have called her a termagant myself, if I had thought of it.’

  ‘– always disliked me, and I know she told Mr Elwes that my presence was an obstacle to their union. It gave me a great deal of uneasiness, I assure you; yet I felt that I was bound to stay, because of my indenture – when Mr Buchanan wrote, offering to take me to Jamaica as his assistant – to study the West Indian birds, you know – I felt obliged to refuse, on those grounds.’

  ‘And yet my cousin said he was trying to have it put aside. My cousin was there when Mr Elwes came in front of the magistrates to have your articles undone, but they would not. Could not, I think he said.’

  ‘I know. I heard him discussing it with the new lawyer, that very morning.’

  ‘Well, at least it means that he won’t be sending people in chase of you.’

  ‘No,’ said Toby: and after a pause he added, ‘It was the knowledge that he was willing to be rid of me that did away with my last scruples.’

  ‘He is an infernal scrub,’ said Jack; and when Tobias made no answer he went on, ‘And for that matter, I am not very well pleased with Cousin Edward, either. I thought he would have come out of it with more credit. “Hark ‘ee, Jack,” says he. “I can’t have anything to do with it: I know Elwes is an infernal scrub,” he says, looking rather like a pickpocket, as well he might, with me looking damnably scornful and Georgiana roaring and bawling, “but I can’t be seen in the affair. I’m a magistrate, an’t I? I can’t give any countenance to such goings-on, damn it. You ought never to have told me before the event, Jack. I mean, if it was all over now – if he had run off a week ago, and if he was in London now, why then, that would be a fait accompli, as they say. It would be quite different; and then a man might do something friendly. But I can’t have it said that I induced Elwes’ young fellow to run away. Here’s a present for thee, Jack,” says he, looking at me very hard and giving me fifteen guineas in my hand – he would only have given me five ordinarily, at the best of times. It was pretty handsome, and I knew well enough what he meant; but I think he might not have shuffled so.’

  Jack,’ cried Tobias, suddenly stopping, ‘did you remember the lesser pet
tichaps?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I did. I opened the door of her cage before I went up with Georgiana’s bat. She gave me a note for you. But don’t you think we look a pretty couple of fools, with our horses in our hands?’

  They had, in fact, walked right down Gallows Hill and half a mile beyond; they were now in perfectly level open country, still leading their horses with anxious care. ‘Thankee,’ said Tobias, taking the note and mounting. Dear Toby, read the note, I shall take extreame great Care of the dear Batt. Yr affct. G. Chaworth. ‘That is an excellent girl,’ he said, folding the paper carefully into his pocket. ‘It does me good to think of her.’

  Here the road ran wide over a common, and the horses began to dance a little with the grass under their feet. ‘Come on,’ cried Jack. ‘If we are to get there tomorrow, we must canter whenever we can.’

  There is nothing like a long sweet gallop on a well-paced horse for changing a melancholy state of mind: Jack’s horse was a high-blooded dashing chestnut, the property of his elder brother, and Toby’s was a grey cob that belonged to Cousin Charles. The Chaworths and the Byrons formed a large, closely interrelated tribe, and there was always some of them coming or going between Medenham and Newstead and London, sometimes with a servant, sometimes without; the result of this restlessness was that the horses tended to accumulate at one end or the other, in droves – the grey, for example, had been left by Cousin Charles when he had gone back to London from Newstead in Uncle Norwood’s chariot – and long ago a tradition had arisen in the family, a tradition of employing any means whatsoever to maintain a reasonable balance of horses in each place. It is almost certain that if a neighbour had been going up to London to receive a sentence of death, he would have been asked to ride thither on one of the Medenham horses, and to be so obliging as to leave it at Marlborough Street before he was hanged.

  Mr Chaworth would not – in all decency could not – acknowledge Tobias’ flight; but the opportunity was too good to be missed, and the grey made a silent appearance beside Jack’s horse in the morning, tacitly understood by one and all. The two of them, then, being mounted far above their stations, had the good sense to make the most of it while it lasted, and they flew along over the smooth green miles with their spirits rising like larks in the sky. When the going grew hard again, and they reined in, Jack observed that his friend was more than usually elated; this being so he permitted himself to say, ‘Toby,’ said he, ‘you will not be offended, will you?’

  ‘No,’ said Toby.

  ‘I mean, you are an amazing good horseman, of course.’

  Just so,’ said Toby.

  ‘I don’t mean to imply that you ride badly. But people tend to stare so – very foolish in them – and it would oblige me uncommonly if you would sit like a Christian.’

  Tobias had an entirely personal way of riding upon a horse: he would sit upon various pieces of his mount, facing whichever view pleased him most, and from time to time he would stretch himself at length, to the amazement of all beholders. At this moment he was kneeling upright on the cob’s broad bottom, staring fixedly backwards into a waving meadow.

  ‘I believe it was a spotted crake,’ he said. ‘What did you say, Jack?’

  Jack patiently repeated his request, and Tobias received it so well, promising amendment and desiring to be reminded if he should forget, that Jack added, ‘And would you mind changing your slippers, before we come into Melton Mowbray?’

  ‘Slippers?’ cried Tobias, gazing first at one foot and then at the other.

  ‘You cannot conceive how barbarous they look,’ said Jack. ‘List slippers.’

  ‘I am heartily sorry for it, if they offend you,’ said Tobias, ‘but I have nothing else to put on.’

  ‘Why then,’ cried Jack, ‘it don’t signify.’ But from time to time he looked wistfully at his friend’s stirrups.

  ‘Do you see that farmhouse?’ cried Toby, after they had trotted another mile. ‘Over there beyond the turnips. I went there once: Mr Elwes took me to see a remarkable case of hydrophobia. But I have never been farther. You could make a pretty verse upon that, Jack, could you not?’

  ‘Hydrophobia?’

  ‘No. I mean the passing of childish limits – launching into the great world unknown. Is that not poetic?’

  ‘Oh yes, devilish poetic. Wait a minute …

  What lies beyond, Muse tell us truly,

  Beyond Tobias’ Ultima Thule?

  (That’s rather neat)

  The wealth of Spain? The gallows, or the grave?

  The frequent guerdon of the sea-borne brave.’

  ‘What is a guerdon?’

  ‘It is a sort of thing – a reward. It means that you may be drowned; but I only put it in for the metre.’

  Here a coach-and-four went by, jingling and rumbling and covering them with dust, and when they had spurred out of the cloud Jack said, ‘Toby, if we meet any of my naval friends, I beg you will not mention my verse-making.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Tobias, in a wondering voice.

  ‘They might not understand, you see: and I do not think it would answer at all, to have it generally known in the service.’

  They rode into the wide main street of Melton Mowbray while Tobias was digesting this, and Jack led the way to a splendid inn.

  ‘Good morning, Admiral,’ said the ostler, beaming.

  ‘Good morning, Joe,’ said Jack.

  ‘Is that Mr Edward’s …’ The ostler was going to say ‘horse’ when his eye, which had been travelling down Tobias’ person, reached his slippers, and the word died in his throat.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Jack, and guiding Tobias by the elbow he walked into the inn. Men will go through fire and water for their friends; they will lend them money, if there is no help for it; but to lead an exceedingly shabby friend, who is known to have rather peculiar table manners, into a grand place of public entertainment, is little short of heroic, above all when the friend is shod with list slippers: not many would do it – you may search all Plutarch without finding a single case. List slippers are now so little worn (we have seen but one pair in our earthly pilgrimage) that it may be necessary to state that list is the edge of cloth in the piece, the selvedge, and it is woven in a particular manner to prevent its fraying; frugal minds, unable to throw the list away when the cloth was used, would form it into hard-wearing slippers, often very horrible, because of the strongly contrasting colours of the strips.

  Tobias was totally unaware of what he owed his friend on this occasion, for he was as unconscious of his appearance as he could possibly be: a more unaffected creature never breathed.

  ‘Eat hearty,’ said Jack, pushing the enormous pie across the table. ‘You won’t get any more until we pull up this evening. And even then it won’t be much – just an alehouse.’

  ‘May I put a piece in my bosom?’ asked Tobias.

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘You may not.’

  From Melton to Burton Lazars and on to Oakham and Uppingham and Rockingham, where they baited their horses, and Barton Seagrave and Burton Latimer they rode steadily, while the sun rose higher and higher on their left hand, crossed over the road before them and crept down the sky on their right. They talked all the way, and this most unaccustomed flood of words caused Tobias to grow hoarse and, by the border of Rutlandshire, inaudible; he was usually as silent as a carp, but before he lost his voice altogether he told Jack how very much he looked forward to seeing London, how infinitely agreeable a maritime life must be, with its unrivalled opportunities for seeing seabirds and foreign countries, with wholly different flora and fauna, to say nothing of the creatures of the sea itself, and how nearly it had broken his heart to refuse his former tutor’s offer. ‘Though indeed,’ he added, ‘the assistant he did take died within a fortnight of getting there, of the yellow fever.’

  Jack was by nature far from taciturn, and he had never been deprived of practice: his voice held out perfectly well all the way, and he told Tobias a great many things about his l
ife in the Navy, his views on the conduct of the present war with Spain, and his hopes of seeing active service within a very short time. He was telling Tobias of a somewhat mysterious plan for ensuring this when he pulled up very suddenly by a lop-sided grey haystack. ‘I nearly missed it,’ he said, pointing with his whip. In the silence they heard a partridge assembling her chicks, and from behind the sagging rick a little darting of rabbits ran back into the hedge: the evening was coming on. Tobias looked closely at the rick, but said nothing. ‘It is the lane I mean,’ said Jack, ‘not the haystack. If we go down there, we can take the cross road to Milton Earnest, and leave Higham Ferrers on our left. It saves two miles, and you come out on the main road again by the Fox. Cousin Charles found it, when he was looking for a way round the Irthlingborough toll-gate: and it cuts out the Westwood turnpike, too. He won’t pay turnpike tolls, you know, on principle. There’s something in the Bible, he says: but I think it is meanness.’

  He pushed his horse down the muddy lane, and very soon they were in deep country. The trees met over their heads, the road varied from a broad green ride to a mere track between high banks, and sometimes, when it went over open fields, it vanished altogether; but most of the way it was narrow, dirty and comfortless – only the fanatical zeal of Cousin Charles (who was quite rich, and perfectly generous in all other respects; but like nearly all the Byrons he had his private mania – his mother, for example, collected little bits of string) would ever have found it out. They were obliged to ride one behind the other, which impeded conversation; moreover, Jack had reached a particularly private piece of his plan – one which had to do with confidential information, and even in the remote fields and ditches of Irthlingborough parish he could not very well bellow out the secrets of the Lords of the Admiralty.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get to the Fox,’ he said over his shoulder, and they rode in silence through the sweet evening, sometimes along the narrow paths through the wheat, sometimes wide over the new stubble of the earliest oats, sometimes through coppice in the twilight of the leaves, and once for half a mile over a stretch of bracken where nightjars turned and wheeled half-seen. The sky changed to a deeper, unlit blue; the colours left the fields and the trees, and were replaced by a violet haze, much darker than the sky: there was no sound but the creak of harness, the horses’ breath and the soft churring of the nightjars. And now, plunging into a wood, they found themselves in the full darkness of the night, with a slippery, wet and stony path under them. ‘I think we are right,’ said Jack, ‘because I believe this was the place where I fell with Miss Bailey’s mare.’