Читать книгу Quarterdeck and Fok'sle: Stories of the Sea - Molly Elliot Seawell - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Just six years after the May day that Young Brydell had nearly shot Grubb’s ear off, on a day as bright, he sat with a number of other young fellows about his own age around a long table, answering the questions of three professors who were examining them. Each had a great stake in this examination, as it was for an appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis.

Young Brydell had ceased to be Young Brydell then, being quite fifteen years old. He has experienced a good many changes in those six years. Much of the time his father, now a lieutenant, had been at sea, but unluckily, whether his father were at sea or on shore, Brydell was still allowed to have his own way, and a good deal more of the lieutenant’s pay than was good for a boy.

The old tenderness and sympathy still encompassed him—he had no mother. Therefore whenever Brydell found himself dissatisfied at school a complaining letter to his father would result in his going somewhere else. When his teachers represented that Brydell, although an extremely bright fellow and fond of reading, yet neglected his recitations for athletics, Brydell would write a most convincing letter to his father explaining how impossible it was for him to do more at his books when his duties as captain of the football eleven were taken into consideration, and his letters were so bright and well written that his father, as foolishly fond in his way as poor Grubb, would persuade himself that the boy would come out all right.

He had even been sent to Switzerland to school, but like the other schools this one did not suit Brydell, and six months after he was home again. Fortunately Brydell possessed certain strong traits of character that are difficult to spoil. He was perfectly truthful, brave, and had naturally a good address.

Nothing could have been prettier than the devotion between him and the lieutenant. As Brydell said: “Dear dad, fatherly respect is out of the question. When you got married at twenty, you took the chances of having a boy in the field before you were ready to quit it yourself. I’ll agree to treat you as an elder brother, but we’ve been chums too long for you to come the stern father over me.” And this would be said with such an affectionate hug that the lieutenant could only make believe to growl.

And so Brydell grew up without any of the wholesome restraints and self-denial of more fortunate boys. He was not a conceited boy, but he realized that whenever he had failed it was because he had not really exerted himself, and he had a naturally optimistic way of looking at life, which so far had not been rudely contradicted.

The determination to go into the navy had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, and no other plan of life had ever occurred to him. He knew the difficulties of getting an appointment, but like most happy young fellows of his age and inexperience, he thought all difficulties existed for other people; his own way would be easy enough.

His father had carefully retained a legal residence in his native town, expressly for Brydell’s sake, so he could be eligible for appointment from that district. But Brydell, having concluded to try private tutors for a while,—which were changed as often as the schools were,—had lived for nearly a year and a half with his Aunt Emeline in a town outside of his own congressional district.

One morning, picking up a paper, he had read that a competitive examination would be held for an appointment to Annapolis, open to all boys who had lived twelve months in the district.

“That suits me to a dot,” cried Brydell, and from then until the day of the examination he really worked hard, never doubting for a moment his ultimate success.

Aunt Emeline, it is true, croaked like a raven, but Aunt Emeline always croaked. Brydell had already in his own mind composed the letter announcing his success to his father and another one to the admiral, who had continued to be his fast friend, and another one to Grubb, his old chum, the marine. On the morning of the examination he therefore presented himself and was duly accepted in the competition.

Next him at the table sat a handsome young fellow about his own age. Something in the boy’s fresh, regular features and lithe young figure reminded Brydell of Grubb. Of all his early friends Brydell loved the kindly marine, with his manliness and truth and bad grammar, better than any of them. Although Grubb had done his share of sea duty, he and Brydell had met many times in all those years, and always Brydell felt as if he were a little lad again.

Once, Brydell remembered, Grubb, being about going to sea again, had paid the expenses of a long journey out of his small pay to see him, and Brydell suspected that Grubb’s ticket had taken about all his spare cash, and that he had lived on hard tack and a can of smoked beef most of the way, which was hard on a big fellow like the marine.

It suddenly flashed upon Brydell that this handsome fellow might be Grubb’s son; he was about the right age. Brydell at this pricked up his ears, but in a few minutes one of the professors, happening to address the young man, called him “Mr. Esdaile.” Then he was not Grubb’s boy, and Brydell lost all interest in him, except that he wished he could write the answers off as quickly as Esdaile could. For Esdaile never paused a moment, but with the ease and rapidity of one perfectly accustomed to his subject he answered every question put him.

Not so Brydell. He was well up in history and geography, for he was a great reader. But in mathematics he stumbled woefully and made something very like a fiasco.

When at last it was over and the young fellows each took his way home, Brydell felt a sickening sense of failure. He had really worked hard in preparing for the examination, but he forgot that he had never worked in his life before. His three weeks’ spurt had seemed to him a tremendous effort that must win success, but it had not. And then came a terrible apprehension; if he had failed at this examination, and he felt perfectly sure he had, he might fail at another. He might even fail in getting the appointment from his own district, for the congressman might well hesitate to give it to a boy who could not hold his own in a preliminary examination.

This thought staggered him and almost broke his heart, for he had dwelt so long on the navy that he could not think what to do with his life if his ambition in that way should be balked. He was only kept in suspense a week or two and then the blow fell. Esdaile had got the appointment, and Brydell was at the foot of the list.

Only a proud, sensitive, and inexperienced soul could imagine the pain that Brydell suffered. It was not alone the mortification of failure; he had allowed his passion for the navy to take such possession of him, body and mind, that any serious setback to this cherished hope seemed to him an appalling misfortune.

In his tempest of disappointment he turned for the first time in his life, even in his own mind, against his father.

“It is not my fault,” he thought in sullen fury. “I am bright enough, only I never was made to work. And yet everybody talks about my advantages. Was it any advantage that I should never stay at any school more than a year, and hardly ever more than six months? Was it any advantage to me to be sent to Europe where I picked up a smattering of French and came home to find myself behind every fellow of my age I knew, except in that one thing? Was it any advantage to me to have more money than almost any boy I knew, to squander on athletics and all sorts of rubbish?”

This last reflection brought Brydell suddenly to himself. He remembered poor Grubb’s giving his boy half his pay. “And my poor old dad—poor young dad, rather—gave me, I believe, a good deal more than half his pay.”

Brydell had learned something about how money went, and he stopped, startled at the idea of how much skimping and saving his father must have done to give him the money. He fell into a passion of remorse.

“Poor dad—poor dad!” was all he could think, and “dad” was so young—barely thirty-six, and did not look a day over thirty. “I dare say,” thought poor Brydell, with the ghost of a smile, “that’s why it was he never married again. I was squandering his pay.”

Brydell was too generous a fellow to reproach his father, except to himself in his first angry mood, and knowing the lieutenant would hear about the examination anyway, he sat down and wrote his father frankly and fully, admitting his failure, and his determination, if he could get another chance, to do better. But the lieutenant was far away in the Pacific and it would be months before he could get the letter, and perhaps other long months before Brydell could get an answer.

Then he wrote the admiral in the same strain. The admiral, who happened to have shore duty then, got the letter. He was sitting on the piazza, facing the salt sea, and when he had finished reading it he brought his fist down with a thump on the arm of his chair and shouted:—

“By!”

The admiral always held that expletives were vulgar; but when much wrought up he took refuge in “By,” which might mean any and every thing.

“Just like the dog when he was about as big as a cockchafer, and took the whole blame of cutting up my turf, when there were six older boys aiding and abetting him. Bowline! here, sir!” and in a few minutes Billy Bowline came trotting along the hall.

“Bring me my portfolio and the ink,” said the admiral. “That little scamp of a Brydell has failed in a competitive examination for an appointment to the naval academy, and how his father could expect anything else, I can’t see, taking him to Europe, putting him at school one day and taking him away the next, and giving the boy no chance at all, simply because he was too soft-hearted to say no! And now the young fellow behaves like a man and shoulders it all. I say, Bowline, we can’t afford not to have that young fellow in the service.”

“No, sir, we can’t!” said Billy very seriously. “We’re ’bleeged to have him, sir, in the sarvice.”

“And how is it to be done, you old lunkhead?” bawled the admiral.

“Beg your parding, sir, it’s easy enough,” answered Billy stoutly. “There ain’t nothin’ in the reg’lations as prevents a admiral from axin’ the member o’ Congress from Mr. Brydell’s districk, if he’s got a ’pintment to give away; and if he rightly understands his duty to a rear-admiral on the active list, he dasn’t say no, sir.”

“William Bowline,” said the admiral solemnly, “if you weren’t the biggest ass I ever saw, I’d say you were a genius. Bring me the navy register quick.”

The admiral glanced at the register and saw there would be a vacancy in that year in Brydell’s district. He then wrote fourteen pages to the member of Congress, and sealed it with his big red seal.

“That’ll fetch it,” thought Billy proudly. “It looks like it comes from the sekertary of the navy.”

As Billy was starting off to the postoffice with the important letter, the admiral picked up Brydell’s letter and read it over, half-aloud. “Esdaile, Esdaile; that has a familiar sound,” he said.

“In course, sir,” answered Billy with a sniff. “That’s the son o’ Grubb, the jirene. You know, sir, Grubb married a woman whose folks was ashamed o’ him; and Grubb, like a great big ass, give the boy to his wife’s people arter she died, and they stuffed that young ’un up with false pride until he got ashamed to speak to Grubb; and Grubb, he was a-sendin’ the boy half his pay straight along. So then the boy’s grandfather died and left him a small fortin’ on condition that he changes his name to his mother’s, Esdaile; and the brat were willin’ enough, for he thought hisself too good to be named Grubb, and now he’s goin’ to be a officer.”

Here Billy rumpled his hair up violently to show his contempt for Grubb’s boy, and the admiral again cried:—

“By!”

There was a great running to and fro between the admiral’s house and the postoffice in those days, and the admiral and Billy both began to feel anxious about Brydell’s appointment. The day was fast approaching when the candidates must present themselves for examination at Annapolis, and at last, three days before the time, just long enough for the admiral to write to Brydell and for Brydell to get to Annapolis, the appointment came from the member of Congress.

Admiral Beaumont was so happy when he got the letter that he gave a kind of snort of pleasure, and Billy, who was standing by, eagerly watching the opening of the letters, had to go out in the backyard to chuckle. The admiral sent a dispatch and a letter to Brydell, and Billy stumped off gleefully with them, and three days afterward Brydell had presented himself at Annapolis.