The Lone Corvette
by
“And God shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country.”–ISAIH.
“Poor Ted, poor Ted! I’d give my commission to see him once again.”
“I believe you would, Debney.”
“I knew him to the last button of his nature, and any one who knew him well could never think hardly of him. There were five of us brothers, and we all worshipped him. He could run rings round us in everything, at school, with sports, in the business of life, in love.”
Debney’s voice fell with the last few words, and there was a sorrowful sort of smile on his face. His look was fastened on the Farilone Islands, which lay like a black, half-closed eyelid across the disc of the huge yellow sun, as it sank in the sky straight out from the Golden Gate. The long wash of the Pacific was in their ears at their left, behind them was the Presidio, from which they had come after a visit to the officers, and before them was the warm, inviting distance of waters, which lead, as all men know, to the Lotos Isles.
Debney sighed and shook his head. “He was, by nature, the ablest man I ever knew. Everything in the world interested him.”
“There lay the trouble, perhaps.”
“Nowhere else. All his will was with the wholesome thing, but his brain, his imagination were always hunting. He was the true adventurer at the start. That was it, Mostyn.”
“He found the forbidden thing more interesting than–the other?”
“Quite so. Unless a thing was really interesting, stood out, as it were, he had no use for it–nor for man nor woman.”
“Lady Folingsby, for instance.”
“Do you know, Mostyn, that even to-day, whenever she meets me, I can see one question in her eyes: ‘Where is he?’ Always, always that. He found life and people so interesting that he couldn’t help but be interesting himself. Whatever he was, I never knew a woman speak ill of him…. Once a year there comes to me a letter from an artist girl in Paris, written in language that gets into my eyes. There is always the one refrain: ‘He will return some day. Say to him that I do not forget.'”
“Whatever his faults, he was too big to be anything but kind to a woman, was Ted.”
“I remember the day when his resignation was so promptly accepted by the Admiralty. He walked up to the Admiral–Farquhar it was, on the Bolingbroke–and said: ‘Admiral, if I’d been in your place I’d have done the same. I ought to resign, and I have. Yet if I had to do it over again, I’d be the same. I don’t repent. I’m out of the Navy now, and it doesn’t make any difference what I say, so I’ll have my preachment out. If I were Admiral Farquhar, and you were Edward Debney, ex-commander, I’d say: “Debney, you’re a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer.”‘
“The Admiral liked Edward, in spite of all, better than any man in the Squadron, for Ted’s brains were worth those of any half-dozen officers he had. He simply choked, and then, before the whole ship, dropped both hands on his shoulders, and said: ‘Debney, you’re a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer, and I wish to God you were a damned bad fellow and a damned good officer–for then there were no need to part.’ At that they parted. But as Edward was leaving, the Admiral came forward again, and said: ‘Where are you going, Debney?’ ‘I’m going nowhere, sir,’ Ted answered. ‘I’m being tossed into strange waters–a lone corvette of no squadron.’ He stopped, smiled, and then said–it was so like him, for, with all his wildness, he had the tastes of a student: ‘You remember that passage in Isaiah, sir, “And God shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country”?’