King of the Sea

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Highbury was far enough from the West End for its decadence and "Fashion" to hold no influence; and it was near enough to the City for a gentleman to walk it in half an hour, as many of the younger ones did, gaining in both health and purse thereby. Hilda's father, of course, kept to the old tradition, riding his mare the half mile to Canonbury Station, followed at a respectful distance by his groom, who would then lead the horse home again. People could still set their watches by "old Victor Watson" each morning. But it was still sufficiently apart from the great wen of London, City or Westminster, to support a life of its own. Anyone who was anyone belonged to one or other of the two big societies - the Philharmonic and the Dramatic; Neil had sung in the former before going away to sea, and Lawrence was one of the great back-stage stalwarts of the latter. The Highbury Ath enæum was jam-packed when either group put on a performance, and people came from as far afield as Hampstead and Walthamstow. Charles Brightman was chairman of the "Phil" and his brother Fred took the lead in the Dramatic; Brightman Bros was one of the leading shipping lines was no better place than Highbury in all the world for - so it just showed there a family whose interests lay in mercantile affairs.

Hilda, at her boudoir window, looked up and down Highbury New Park with quiet satisfaction. For all that it was a small, self-contained community -perhaps even a little tight and inward-looking (she would allow Daphne that much of a sneer) - it was also undeniably cosmopolitan, even more so than the West End, which liked to boast of being the ultimate in that line. Why, at that very minute, Mr Camille Abbati and Mr Franz Hinzer drove by in an open gig brave men, considering the rawness of the day. They were the two leading chartering agents in the Azoff, Black Sea, and Danube trades. She gave them a dignified nod but, though they seemed to be looking at the house, they were talking and gesticulating in that endearingly quaint, foreign way of theirs and did not notice her.

She glanced at her clock; gone eleven. Rather late for them, surely? And Abbati's house was up in Aberdeen Park, so why was he driving down this way? She must mention it to Daphne at choir practice tonight, Daphne loved to spin grand and impossible conspiracies out of such chance sightings.

Thoughts of the choir, and its offshoot the Phil, brought her to the last item in her tour d'horizon of achieved ambitions: good friends. Most people were lucky if they could number them on the fingers of one hand really good friends. But Hilda would need all - her fingers and all her toes for the task, and still want more for the tally. First there was the choir and the Phil, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, respectively, where her clear and reliable soprano earned her the occa sional solo part; there she had at least half a dozen close friends. Then, on Wednesdays, came the Dra matic, where her green eyes, fair hair, and aestheti cally dreamy expression brought her parts a good ten years younger than her true age; and there, too, she had several close friends of both sexes. Other days brought her into yet other circles. On Mondays it was the Highbury Missionary Society, which supported two missions, one in Darkest Africa and the other in even darker Whitechapel, just down the road. On Friday afternoons it was Clothing for the Poor, after the whist which she always needed a good bath, and then the one sheer indulgence of the week drive in the Meeting House at the bottom end of Highbury Crescent. It was mostly ladies who played there, with a sprinkling of a few retired gentlemen; the husbands were either away at sea, like Francis, or "on the Baltic," and Friday evenings were busy ones for anybody in the City, being the traditional even ings for banquets and testimonials.

It was amazing, really, how few of the friends in one circle overlapped with those in another. Only Daphne. She was in everything except Clothing for the Poor; her pet charity was Distressed Gentle women, where she claimed to be picking up tips for her own old age. Otherwise there were fewer than half a dozen duplications among all Hilda's various circles of friends and yet all lived within less than one square mile of each other! She often wondered what would happen if she gave a grand garden party one summer and invited all of them to mingle. Of course it was impossible; there were ladies, or fe males, in all her circles with whom she got on splen didly but with whom it would be unthinkable to mix socially. Hilda prided herself on her ability to get on with people, especially those with whom it was inconceivable she should mix; she wished there were some way of drawing more attention to the fact, so that the members of all her various circles would understand how extremely progressive and tolerant she was. Most of them, she felt sure, assumed it was some especial quality in themselves, rather than in her, that forced her to accept them.

She rose from her chair in the bay window and was just about to cross the room to the door when a movement along the street caught her eye. a young <- a girl walking along hand in hand with an older woman. A second or two later they resolved into Catherine and Miss Kernow, her teacher at the High bury Grove Academy for Young Ladies. With a quick, guilty glance up and down the street, she raised her binoculars to her eyes; normally she did not use them until the evening twilight rendered her invisible to other binocular users among her neighbours, of whom there were many.

At least Catherine did not seem ill, though her face had an unusual pallor and she walked with a strange, almost mincing step quite unlike her usual, confident stride. They halted. Miss Kernow said something to her. Catherine shook her head and gave a brave little smile. The teacher linked arms with her and they resumed their walk at an even gentler pace. But now they were no longer teacher and pupil; they were woman and woman.

A dread premonition seized Hilda in that instant; the unalloyed gold, she felt, was about to show the first sign of tarnish.

M ORGAN STIRRED IN his bunk, harried by a dream in which he was left single-handed in charge of a vessel very like phoenix except that it kept growing new masts behind his back. At length he awoke, filled with a sense of unease. The masts. There was something about the masts. When he first went to sea there had been little difference between the construction of a merchantman and a man of war, at least as far as their solidity was con cerned. The masts on both would stand firm even in a collision. But now, with each new merchantman they built they shaved her masts, split her sails, and cut her crew all to make her lighter, leaner, and better able to compete with steam. The five slender, graceful

masts of phoenix worried Troy out of his dreams. He lay in his bunk and listened as they creaked in their stepping, not the deep bass creak of the mighty oak trunks of yore but the shrill contralto of ...

The word contralto made him think suddenly of Daphne Dowty, a name that added naught to his comfort. Just because she was Hilda's childhood friend and lived so near to them in Highbury, it did not make a suitable companion of her. Fortunately, dear Hilda had a mind of her own but even so, a dripping tap could wear down stone in time. Daphne was to blame for the unruliness of both Neil and Lawrence; he couldn't prove it in a court of law, but her disparaging little remarks about Duty and Au thority all through their childhood cannot have failed to leave its mark on their impressionable young minds. Thank heavens for Catherine. She had more sense than ...

How had he wandered from masts to Catherine? He shook his head as a man may jiggle a faltering timepiece. Masts. Stick to the masts.