Lieutenant Lapenotiere

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Title:     Lieutenant Lapenotiere
Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch [More Titles by Quiller-Couch]

The night-porter at the Admiralty had been sleeping in his chair. He was red-eyed and wore his livery coat buttoned at random. He grumbled to himself as he opened the great door.

He carried a glass-screened candle, and held it somewhat above the level of his forehead--which was protuberant and heavily pock-marked. Under the light he peered out at the visitor, who stood tall and stiff, with uniform overcoat buttoned to the chin, between the Ionic pillars of the portico.

"Who's there?"

"Lieutenant Lapenotiere, of the _Pickle_ schooner--with dispatches."

"Dispatches?" echoed the night-porter. Out beyond the screen of masonry that shut off the Board of Admiralty's forecourt from Whitehall, one of the tired post-horses started blowing through its nostrils on this foggy night.

"From Admiral Collingwood--Mediterranean Fleet off Cadiz--sixteen days," answered the visitor curtly. "Is everyone abed?"

"Admiral Collingwood? Why Admiral Collingwood?" The night-porter fell back a pace, opening the door a trifle wider. "Good God, sir! You don't say as how--"

"You can fetch down a Secretary or someone, I hope?" said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, quickly stepping past him into the long dim hall. "My dispatches are of the first importance. I have posted up from Falmouth without halt but for relays."

As the man closed the door, he heard his post-boy of the last relay slap one of the horses encouragingly before heading home to stable. The chaise wheels began to move on the cobbles.

"His Lordship himself will see you, sir. Of that I make no doubt," twittered the night-porter, fumbling with the bolt. "There was a terrible disturbance, back in July, when Captain Bettesworth arrived--not so late as this, to be sure, but towards midnight--and they waited till morning, to carry up the dispatches with his Lordship's chocolate. Thankful was I next day not to have been on duty at the time. . . . If you will follow me, sir--"

Lieutenant Lapenotiere had turned instinctively towards a door on the right. It admitted to the Waiting Room, and there were few officers in the service who did not know--and only too well--that Chamber of Hope Deferred.

"No, sir, . . . this way, if you please," the night-porter corrected him, and opened a door on the left. "The Captains' Room," he announced, passing in and steering for the chimney-shelf, on which stood a pair of silver sconces each carrying three wax candles. These he took down, lit and replaced. "Ah, sir! Many's the time I've showed Lord Nelson himself into this room, in the days before Sir Horatio, and even after. And you were sayin'--"

"I said nothing."

The man moved to the door; but halted there and came back, as though in his own despite.

"I can't help it, sir. . . . Half a guinea he used to give me, regular. But the last time--and hard to believe 'twas little more than a month ago--he halts on his way out, and says he, searchin' awkward-like in his breeches' pocket with his left hand, 'Ned,' says he, 'my old friend'--aye, sir, his old friend he called me--'Ned,' says he, pullin' out a fistful o' gold, 'my old friend,' says he, 'I'll compound with you for two guineas, this bein' the last time you may hold the door open for me, in or out. But you must pick 'em out,' says he, spreadin' his blessed fingers with the gold in 'em: 'for a man can't count money who's lost his right flapper.' Those were his words, sir. 'Old friend,' he called me, in that way of his."

Lieutenant Lapenotiere pointed to his left arm. Around the sleeve a black scarf was knotted.

"_Dead_, sir," the night-porter hushed his voice.

"Dead," echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, staring at the Turkey carpet, of which the six candles, gaining strength, barely illumined the pattern. "Dead, at the top of victory; a great victory. Go: fetch somebody down."

The night-porter shuffled off. Lieutenant Lapenotiere, erect and sombre, cast a look around the apartment, into which he had never before been admitted. The candles lit up a large painting--a queer bird's-eye view of Venice. Other pictures, dark and bituminous, decorated the panelled walls--portraits of dead admirals, a sea-piece or two, some charts. . . . This was all he discerned out in the dim light; and in fact he scanned the walls, the furniture of the room, inattentively. His stomach was fasting, his head light with rapid travel; above all, he had a sense of wonder that all this should be happening to _him_. For, albeit a distinguished officer, he was a modest man, and by habit considered himself of no great importance; albeit a brave man, too, he shrank at the thought of the message he carried--a message to explode and shake millions of men in a confusion of wild joy or grief.

For about the tenth time in those sixteen days it seemed to burst and escape in an actual detonation, splitting his head--there, as he waited in the strange room where never a curtain stirred. . . . It was a trick his brain played him, repeating, echoing the awful explosion of the French seventy-four _Achille_, which had blown up towards the close of the battle. When the ship was ablaze and sinking, his own crew had put off in boats to rescue the Frenchmen, at close risk of their own lives, for her loaded guns, as they grew red-hot, went off at random among rescuers and rescued. . . .

As had happened before when he felt this queer shock, his mind travelled back and he seemed to hear the series of discharges running up at short intervals to the great catastrophe. . . . To divert his thoughts, he turned to study the view of Venice above the chimney-piece . . . and on a sudden faced about again.

He had a sensation that someone was in the room--someone standing close behind him.

But no. . . . For the briefest instant his eyes rested on an indistinct shadow--his own perhaps, cast by the candle-light? Yet why should it lie lengthwise there, shaped like a coffin, on the dark polished table that occupied the middle of the room?

The answer was that it did not. Before he could rub his eyes it had gone. Moreover, he had turned to recognise a living being . . . and no living person was in the room, unless by chance (absurd supposition) one were hidden behind the dark red window curtains.

"Recognise" may seem a strange word to use; but here had lain the strangeness of the sensation--that the someone standing there was a friend, waiting to be greeted. It was with eagerness and a curious warmth of the heart that Lieutenant Lapenotiere had faced about--upon nothing.

He continued to stare in a puzzled way at the window curtains, when a voice by the door said:

"Good evening!--or perhaps, to be correct, good morning! You are Mr.--"

"Lapenotiere," answered the Lieutenant, who had turned sharply. The voice--a gentleman's and pleasantly modulated--was not one he knew; nor did he recognise the speaker--a youngish, shrewd-looking man, dressed in civilian black, with knee-breeches. "Lapenotiere--of the _Pickle_ schooner."

"Yes, yes--the porter bungled your name badly, but I guessed. Lord Barham will see you personally. He is, in fact, dressing with all haste at this moment. . . . I am his private secretary," explained the shrewd-looking gentleman in his quiet, business-like voice. "Will you come with me upstairs?"

Lieutenant Lapenotiere followed him. At the foot of the great staircase the Secretary turned.

"I may take it, sir, that we are not lightly disturbing his Lordship--who is an old man."

"The news is of great moment, sir. Greater could scarcely be."

The Secretary bent his head. As they went up the staircase Lieutenant Lapenotiere looked back and caught sight of the night-porter in the middle of the hall, planted there and gazing up, following their ascent.

On the first-floor landing they were met by a truly ridiculous spectacle. There emerged from a doorway on the left of the wide corridor an old gentleman clad in night-cap, night-shirt and bedroom slippers, buttoning his breeches and cursing vigorously; while close upon him followed a valet with dressing-gown on one arm, waistcoat and wig on the other, vainly striving to keep pace with his master's impatience.

"The braces, my lord--your Lordship has them forepart behind, if I may suggest--"

"Damn the braces!" swore the old gentleman. "Where is he? Hi, Tylney!" as he caught sight of the Secretary. "Where are we to go? My room, I suppose?"

"The fire is out there, my lord. . . . 'Tis past three in the morning. But after sending word to awake you, I hunted round and by good luck found a plenty of promising embers in the Board Room grate. On top of these I've piled what remained of my own fire, and Dobson has set a lamp there--"

"You've been devilish quick, Tylney. Dressed like a buck you are, too!"

"Your Lordship's wig," suggested the valet.

"Damn the wig!" Lord Barham snatched it and attempted to stick it on top of his night-cap, damned the night-cap, and, plucking it off, flung it to the man.

"I happened to be sitting up late, my lord, over the _Aeolus_ papers," said Mr. Secretary Tylney.

"Ha?" Then, to the valet, "The dressing-gown there! Don't fumble! . . . So this is Captain--"

"Lieutenant, sir: Lapenotiere, commanding the _Pickle_ schooner."

The Lieutenant saluted.

"From the Fleet, my lord--off Cadiz; or rather, off Cape Trafalgaro."

He drew the sealed dispatch from an inner breast-pocket and handed it to the First Lord.

"Here, step into the Board Room. . . . Where the devil are my spectacles?" he demanded of the valet, who had sprung forward to hold open the door.

Evidently the Board Room had been but a few hours ago the scene of a large dinner-party. Glasses, dessert-plates, dishes of fruit, decanters empty and half empty, cumbered the great mahogany table as dead and wounded, guns and tumbrils, might a battlefield. Chairs stood askew; crumpled napkins lay as they had been dropped or tossed, some on the floor, others across the table between the dishes.

"Looks cosy, eh?" commented the First Lord. "Maggs, set a screen around the fire, and look about for a decanter and some clean glasses."

He drew a chair close to the reviving fire, and glanced at the cover of the dispatch before breaking its seal.

"Nelson's handwriting?" he asked. It was plain that his old eyes, unaided by spectacles, saw the superscription only as a blur.

"No, my lord: Admiral Collingwood's," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, inclining his head.

Old Lord Barham looked up sharply. His wig set awry, he made a ridiculous figure in his hastily donned garments. Yet he did not lack dignity.

"Why Collingwood?" he asked, his fingers breaking the seal. "God! you don't tell me--"

"Lord Nelson is dead, sir."

"Dead--dead? . . . Here, Tylney--you read what it says. Dead? . . . No, damme, let the captain tell his tale. Briefly, sir."

"Briefly, sir--Lord Nelson had word of Admiral Villeneuve coming out of the Straits, and engaged the combined fleets off Cape Trafalgaro. They were in single line, roughly; and he bore down in two columns, and cut off their van under Dumanoir. This was at dawn or thereabouts, and by five o'clock the enemy was destroyed."

"How many prizes?"

"I cannot say precisely, my lord. The word went, when I was signalled aboard the Vice-Admiral's flagship, that either fifteen or sixteen had struck. My own men were engaged, at the time, in rescuing the crew of a French seventy-four that had blown up; and I was too busy to count, had counting been possible. One or two of my officers maintain to me that our gains were higher. But the dispatch will tell, doubtless."

"Aye, to be sure. . . . Read, Tylney. Don't sit there clearing your throat, but read, man alive!" And yet it appeared that while the Secretary was willing enough to read, the First Lord had no capacity, as yet, to listen. Into the very first sentence he broke with--

"No, wait a minute. 'Dead,' d'ye say? . . . My God! . . . Lieutenant, pour yourself a glass of wine and tell us first how it happened."

Lieutenant Lapenotiere could not tell very clearly. He had twice been summoned to board the _Royal Sovereign_--he first time to receive the command to hold himself ready. It was then that, coming alongside the great ship, he had read in all the officers' faces an anxiety hard to reconcile with the evident tokens of victory around them. At once it had occurred to him that the Admiral had fallen, and he put the question to one of the lieutenants--to be told that Lord Nelson had indeed been mortally wounded and could not live long; but that he must be alive yet, and conscious, since the _Victory_ was still signalling orders to the Fleet.

"I think, my lord," said he, "that Admiral Collingwood must have been doubtful, just then, what responsibility had fallen upon him, or how soon it might fall. He had sent for me to 'stand by' so to speak. He was good enough to tell me the news as it had reached him--"

Here Lieutenant Lapenotiere, obeying the order to fill his glass, let spill some of the wine on the table. The sight of the dark trickle on the mahogany touched some nerve of the brain: he saw it widen into a pool of blood, from which, as they picked up a shattered seaman and bore him below, a lazy stream crept across the deck of the flag-ship towards the scuppers. He moved his feet, as he had moved them then, to be out of the way of it: but recovered himself in another moment and went on--

"He told me, my lord, that the _Victory_ after passing under the _Bucentaure's_ stern, and so raking her that she was put out of action, or almost, fell alongside the _Redoutable_. There was a long swell running, with next to no wind, and the two ships could hardly have cleared had they tried. At any rate, they hooked, and it was then a question which could hammer the harder. The Frenchman had filled his tops with sharp-shooters, and from one of these-- the mizen-top, I believe--a musket-ball struck down the Admiral. He was walking at the time to and fro on a sort of gangway he had caused to be planked over his cabin sky-light, between the wheel and the ladder-way. . . . Admiral Collingwood believed it had happened about half-past one . . ."

"Sit down, man, and drink your wine," commanded the First Lord as the dispatch-bearer swayed with a sudden faintness.

"It is nothing, my lord--"

But it must have been a real swoon, or something very like it: for he recovered to find himself lying in an arm-chair. He heard the Secretary's voice reading steadily on and on. . . . Also they must have given him wine, for he awoke to feel the warmth of it in his veins and coursing about his heart. But he was weak yet, and for the moment well content to lie still and listen.

Resting there and listening, he was aware of two sensations that alternated within him, chasing each other in and out of his consciousness. He felt all the while that he, John Richards Lapenotiere, a junior officer in His Majesty's service, was assisting in one of the most momentous events in his country's history; and alone in the room with these two men, he felt it as he had never begun to feel it amid the smoke and roar of the actual battle. He had seen the dead hero but half a dozen times in his life: he had never been honoured by a word from him: but like every other naval officer, he had come to look up to Nelson as to the splendid particular star among commanders. _There_ was greatness: _there_ was that which lifted men to such deeds as write man's name across the firmament! And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of the ineffable aura of greatness.

But in the Lieutenant's brain, across this serious, even awful sense of the moment and of its meaning, there played a curious secondary sense that the moment was not--that what was happening before his eyes had either happened before or was happening in some vacuum in which past, present, future and the ordinary divisions of time had lost their bearings. The great twenty-four-hour clock at the end of the Board Room, ticking on and on while the Secretary read, wore an unfamiliar face. . . . Yes, time had gone wrong, somehow: and the events of the passage home to Falmouth, of the journey up to the doors of the Admiralty, though they ran on a chain, had no intervals to be measured by a clock, but followed one another like pictures on a wall. He saw the long, indigo-coloured swell thrusting the broken ships shoreward. He felt the wind freshening as it southered and he left the Fleet behind: he watched their many lanterns as they sank out of sight, then the glow of flares by the light of which dead-tired men were repairing damages, cutting away wreckage. His ship was wallowing heavily now, with the gale after her,--and now dawn was breaking clean and glorious on the swell off Lizard Point. A Mount's Bay lugger had spied them, and lying in wait, had sheered up close alongside, her crew bawling for news. He had not forbidden his men to call it back, and he could see the fellows' faces now, as it reached them from the speaking-trumpet: "Great victory--twenty taken or sunk--Admiral Nelson killed!" They had guessed something, noting the _Pickle's_ ensign at half-mast: yet as they took in the purport of the last three words, these honest fishermen had turned and stared at one another; and without one answering word, the lugger had been headed straight back to the mainland.

So it had been at Falmouth. A ship entering port has a thousand eyes upon her, and the _Pickle's_ errand could not be hidden. The news seemed in some mysterious way to have spread even before he stepped ashore there on the Market Strand. A small crowd had collected, and, as he passed through it, many doffed their hats. There was no cheering at all--no, not for this the most glorious victory of the war--outshining even the Nile or Howe's First of June.

He had set his face as he walked to the inn. But the news had flown before him, and fresh crowds gathered to watch him off. The post-boys knew . . . and _they_ told the post-boys at the next stage, and the next--Bodmin and Plymouth--not to mention the boatmen at Torpoint Ferry. But the countryside did not know: nor the labourers gathering in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had carried it to their stables, and from stable to tavern. To-morrow--to-day, rather--in an hour or two--all the bells of London would be ringing--or tolling! . . .

"He's as tired as a dog," said the voice of the Secretary. "Seems almost a shame to waken him."

The Lieutenant opened his eyes and jumped to his feet with an apology. Lord Barham had gone, and the Secretary hard by was speaking to the night-porter, who bent over the fire, raking it with a poker. The hands of the Queen Anne clock indicated a quarter to six.

"The First Lord would like to talk with you . . . later in the day," said Mr. Tylney gravely, smiling a little these last words. He himself was white and haggard. "He suggested the early afternoon, say half-past two. That will give you time for a round sleep. . . . You might leave me the name of your hotel, in case he should wish to send for you before that hour."

"'The Swan with Two Necks,' Lad Lane, Cheapside," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere.

He knew little of London, and gave the name of the hostelry at which, many years ago, he had alighted from a West Country coach with his box and midshipman's kit . . . . A moment later he found himself wondering if it still existed as a house of entertainment. Well, he must go and seek it.

The Secretary shook hands with him, smiling wanly.

"Few men, sir, have been privileged to carry such news as you have brought us to-night."

"And I went to sleep after delivering it," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, smiling back.

The night-porter escorted him to the hall, and opened the great door for him. In the portico he bade the honest man good night, and stood for a moment, mapping out in his mind his way to "The Swan with Two Necks." He shivered slightly, after his nap, in the chill of the approaching dawn.

As the door closed behind him he was aware of a light shining, out beyond the screen of the fore-court, and again a horse blew through its nostrils on the raw air.

"Lord!" thought the Lieutenant. "That fool of a post-boy cannot have mistaken me and waited all this time!"

He hurried out into Whitehall. Sure enough a chaise was drawn up there, and a post-boy stood by the near lamp, conning a scrap of paper by the light of it. No, it was a different chaise, and a different post-boy. He wore the buff and black, whereas the other had worn the blue and white. Yet he stepped forward confidently, and with something of a smile.

"Lieutenant Lapenotiere?" he asked, reaching back and holding up his paper to the lamp to make sure of the syllables.

"That is my name," said the amazed Lieutenant.

"I was ordered here--five-forty-five--to drive you down to Merton."

"To Merton?" echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, his hand going to his pocket. The post-boy's smile, or so much as could be seen of it by the edge of the lamp, grew more knowing.

"I ask no questions, sir."

"But--but who ordered you?"

The post-boy did not observe, or disregarded, his bewilderment.

"A Briton's a Briton, sir, I hope? I ask no questions, knowing my place. . . . But if so be as you were to tell me there's been a great victory--" He paused on this.

"Well, my man, you're right so far, and no harm in telling you."

"Aye," chirruped the post-boy. "When the maid called me up with the order, and said as how _he_ and no other had called with it--"

"He?"

The fellow nodded.

"She knew him at once, from his portraits. Who wouldn't? With his right sleeve pinned across so. . . . And, said I, 'Then there's been a real victory. Never would you see him back, unless. And I was right, sir!' he concluded triumphantly.

"Let me see that piece of paper."

"You'll let me have it back, sir?--for a memento," the post-boy pleaded. Lieutenant Lapenotiere took it from him--a plain half-sheet of note-paper roughly folded. On it was scribbled in pencil, back-hand wise, "Lt. Lapenotiere. Admiralty, Whitehall. At 6.30 a.m., not later. For Merton, Surrey."

He folded the paper very slowly, and handed it back to the post-boy.

"Very well, then. For Merton."

The house lay but a very little distance beyond Wimbledon. Its blinds were drawn as Lieutenant Lapenotiere alighted from the chaise and went up to the modest porch.

His hand was on the bell-pull. But some pressure checked him as he was on the point of ringing. He determined to wait for a while and turned away towards the garden.

The dawn had just broken; two or three birds were singing. It did not surprise--at any rate, it did not frighten--Lieutenant Lapenotiere at all, when, turning into a short pleached alley, he looked along it and saw _him_ advancing.

--Yes,_ him_, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face. They met as friends. . . . In later years the lieutenant could never remember a word that passed, if any passed at all. He was inclined to think that they met and walked together in complete silence, for many minutes. Yet he ever maintained that they walked as two friends whose thoughts hold converse without need of words. He was not terrified at all. He ever insisted, on the contrary, that there, in the cold of the breaking day, his heart was light and warm as though flooded with first love--not troubled by it, as youth in first love is wont to be--but bathed in it; he, the ardent young officer, bathed in a glow of affection, ennobling, exalting him, making him free of a brotherhood he had never guessed.

He used also, in telling the story, to scandalise the clergyman of his parish by quoting the evangelists, and especially St. John's narrative of Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre.

For the door of the house opened at length; and a beautiful woman, scarred by knowledge of the world, came down the alley, slowly, unaware of him. Then (said he), as she approached, his hand went up to his pocket for the private letter he carried, and the shade at his side left him to face her in the daylight.

[The end]
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch's short story: Lieutenant Lapenotiere

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