The seaside institution to which Bobbie, with an attention that could not have been exceeded if he had been paying money recklessly to everybody around him, found himself conveyed, exactly fitted his desires. The cool, calm order of the place, the quiet service of serene women attendants in their dark gowns and white aprons, the well-chosen table, the pure white linen in spotless bedrooms—all these things, that might have irritated the boy had he been perfectly well, were, in his convalescent state, precisely what he required. The days had become warmer, and it was possible to spend a good deal of time on the wooden balconies of the Swiss-like building. From these balconies he could look away across the green waters, with their patches of dark purple; could watch the Channel steamer puffing its way across, presently to enter the harbour below. The harbour itself never ceased to delight him. There it was that steamers rested in a dignified manner when off duty, submitting themselves to an energetic washing of decks and rubbing of brasswork; near them, brown-sailed fishing vessels for ever going out to sea or coming back from sea, manned by limited crews, who shouted in the dialect of the Kentish coast, and whose aim in life it appeared to be not so much to do work themselves as to tell others to do it. The scent of the sea came up to the balconies, and most of the boys in varying stages of repair who inhaled it, declared their intention, once they had regained possession of that health which for the moment eluded them, of becoming admirals in her Majesty’s navy. Bobbie Lancaster on this subject said nothing, which was his way when engaged in making up his mind.
Stages marked the progress of improvement. One of the earliest came on permission being granted to walk about the green-grassed lawn around the Home, with its summer-houses, where, over the fence in the evenings, you could observe sons of mariners wooing, with economic speech, daughters of other mariners, and kissing them, under the impression that no one but a Martello tower looked on.
Here Bobbie himself fell in love.
A breezy curate attached to the church close by, for ever flying in and out of the Home with no hat, and an appearance of having another engagement of a highly urgent character for which he was a little late, hurried in one day to look round the sitting-room where the guests played dominoes, and found Bobbie well enough to go out; so well, indeed, that he had arranged to go down the long road towards the white cliffs in company with an adult patient, who, being in ordinary times a stoker on p. 83a London Bridge and Greenwich steamboat, posed as authority on all matters concerning the navy, and arbitrator in disputes concerning that branch of the service. Breezy Curate, in less than no time at all, found other work for the naval authority, gained the necessary permission from the Lady Superintendent, and was away with Bobbie, walking so fast that he had to run back now and then in the manner of a frisky terrier, in order that Bobbie should keep up with him. Ere the boy had time or breath to ask questions they arrived at the door of a round squat Martello tower (called by elderly acquaintances Billy Pitt’s Mansion), where he was lugged in and introduced to the coastguardsman who lived there; introduced also to coastguardsman’s immense niece, who appeared to Bobbie, panting on a chair, like a very large angel, only better dressed and much better looking, and who, it appeared, came in daily to make tidy her uncle’s tower. Breezy Curate, before hastening off for a fly along the cliffs, made the boy a friend of Coastguard and Coastguard’s niece, and promised to call back for him in an hour.
“Reckon you’ve been ’avin’ games, young man, ain’t you?” said Coastguard sternly. “What made you fall down and step on yerself in that manner for, eh?”
Bobbie explained. When he described the fire in Margaret Ward, the large angel, making tea and toasting bread that filled the small room with most appetizing odours, looked up.
“Bravo,” said the young woman. “Come here and I’ll give ye a kiss for that.”
Bobbie hesitated.
“Go on, lad,” counselled her uncle; “there’s them that wouldn’t want to be asked twice to do that, jigger me if they would.”
“Uncle!” said the large angel reprovingly. “Do give over.”
Bobbie considered it proof of the young woman’s angelic nature that, seeing he did not stir, she came to him, toasting-fork in hand, gave him a hug and then went back to her work at the fire. Coastguard, enormously amused at this, slapped his knee, saying that seeing kisses were cheap, jigger him if he wouldn’t have one, and a kiss he therefore took, and the three sat down to tea in great good-humour. By an effort, Bobbie determined to retain the correct behaviour that he had learnt in the Cottage Homes and at Margaret Ward; Coastguard, delighted with the boy’s respectful manner, declared that an earl could not comport himself better. From this, Coastguard passed, by easy transition, to a review of the Royal Family of his country, a review that became a glowing eulogy. The angel, too, preparing to cut cake, expressed so much affection for the younger members of the family, portraits of whom were on the walls of the little room of the Martello tower, that the boy found himself impressed, and convinced by views in regard to Royalty that were novel to him.
“Old Lady,” declared Coastguard, blowing at his tea, “will have the best. She don’t mind what she pays for her Navy, but she will ’ave it good.”
“I see what you mean,” said Bobbie.
“Do you like the outside or the inside?” asked the angel at the cake.
“Both, Miss,” said Bobbie.
“None of your ne’er-do-wells for her,” went on Coastguard. “None of your thieving—”
p. 84“You’ve dropped your knife on the floor, little boy,” said the angel. “That’s a sign you’re not careful.”
“‘None of your bad characters, none of your criminals for my Navy,’ she ses, ‘if you please.’ And jigger me,” said Coastguard explosively, “jigger me if the old Lady ain’t right.”
“You ought to call her ‘Her Majesty,’ uncle. You’d look silly if she happened to be listening.”
“Go’ bless my soul,” said Coastguard with enthusiasm, “she wouldn’t mind it from me. She knows my way of talking.”
“And,” stammered Bobbie, “is it—is it true then that you can’t get into the Navy if you’ve done anything wrong?”
“Devil a bit,” answered Coastguard. “Old Lady’d think it was a piece of impudence to try it on. Looey, my gell, whilst I’m havin’ my pipe jest give us a toon on the old harmonium.”
The large niece, seated at the harmonium, seemed, to the thoughtful Bobbie, more like an angel than ever; the music she produced helped to distract his troubled thoughts. Presently, however, the angel found a Moody and Sankey book and, having propped it on the ledge before her, picked out on the keys as with her foot she moved the pedals, a hymn that gave the boy memories. The Coastguard rolled his head to the rhythm; now and again taking his pipe from his mouth to growl a note or two and thus give his niece encouragement.
“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to—”
Bobbie sat forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the broad bending back of the young lady at the harmonium, and thought of Ely Place. What a long way off Ely Place seemed now; Bat Miller, and Mrs. Bat Miller, and the Fright; all these were misty figures that for years had visited his memory infrequently. Bat Miller’s time would be up in a year or two. Bobbie shivered to think what he should do were Bat Miller’s face to appear suddenly at the window. For a few moments he dared not glance at the window, fearful that this impossible event might happen; when at the end of the hymn he nerved himself to look in that direction he felt almost surprised to find no face peering in.
“Gi’ us,” said the Coastguard cheerfully, “Gi’ us ‘Old the Fort.’ That’s the one I’m gone on. There’s a swing about ‘Old the Fort.’”
It seemed to the boy that already he had lived two lives; that the first had been broken off short on the day he turned out of Worship Street Police Court. He could not help feeling a vague admiration for that first boy because the first boy had been a fine young dare-devil, never trammelled by rules of behaviour; at the same time it was as well, perhaps, that the first boy had ceased to live, for he was not the kind of lad Bobbie could have introduced to the angel.
“And now,” said the Coastguard, “jigger my eyes if I mustn’t on with my jacket and find my spy-glass and see what’s going on outside. Where’s that young curate got to, I wonder?”
The Coastguard went presently, after telling Bobbie that he might call again at the Martello tower, and that if he behaved he should one day go p. 85out to the Coastguard Station and see, by aid of the telescope, the coast of France. Bobbie, alone with the angel, and allowed to seat himself at the end of the harmonium, behaved with a preciseness and a decorum that in any other lad would have been held by Bobbie as good justification for punching that boy’s head. The angel’s right hand remaining on the higher keys for a space in order to give full effect to a final chord, he bent and kissed it. The scent of brown Windsor soap ever afterwards reminded him of this first essay in affection.
“What ye up to?” demanded the angel.
“Only kissin’ your ’and,” said Bobbie confusedly.
“We don’t kiss hands down in these parts,” said the large young lady. “That ain’t Kentish fashion.”
“I like you,” remarked the boy shyly.
“My goodness!” said the angel with affectation of much concern, “this won’t do. I mustn’t be catched alone with a young man what says things like that. I’d better be seeing about taking you back to the home, I reckon.”
The curate not returning (having, as it proved, flown away to a neighbouring parish and forgotten all about the boy), this course had to be adopted, and the two walked back along the road on the edge of the white cliffs—Bobbie in a state of proud ecstasy, which reached its highest point, when a boy, in passing them, called out to him, “Why doan’ you marry the girl?” The angel herself spoke of the amount that the starting of a household cost; of the relative advantages of a house with folding doors but no bay windows, compared with a house having bay windows, but no folding doors; all in a manner that seemed to the boy, strutting by her side, highly encouraging, and, under the circumstances, as much as on such brief acquaintance a man could reasonably expect. At the home, any trouble that might have arisen by reason of the boy’s extended absence was removed by the fact that the angel had once been a highly-esteemed servant at the Institution; the Lady Superintendent met them without a frown. The large young lady found herself lugged into the kitchen by two of the white-aproned maids for a chat, and when presently she looked in to say good night, at the reading-room where Bobbie was finishing a sea story, she kissed him, to the great envy of the other convalescent young students.
“Serve us all alike, Miss,” begged a lad with crutches.
“You be quiet,” ordered Bobbie, “unless you want your head punched.”
“Give me ’alf a one,” urged the lad with crutches.
“No fear,&rdquo............