Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  Jamie opened her eyes and smiled back. It was good to see the old sparkle in his eyes again. For a moment she felt as she had that day so many years ago, tramping along the snow-covered road with Robbie, on their way to Aberdeen and new adventures.

  Yet they were both such different persons now. Lady Graystone possessed a much keener insight and sensitivity than had the naive shepherd lass known as Jamie MacLeod. And since the instant she had laid eyes on Robbie this present morning, she had sensed a change even in the carefree Robbie Taggart. His laughter did not seem to flow from that natural fountain of bravado he had always displayed—it was forced, having a desperate quality, as if he must maintain it at all costs. Of course, only Jamie would have noted such a change.

  “Well now,” Jamie replied, attempting to equal his enthusiasm, “what is this wonderful idea of yours? I hope you don’t plan to carry us off to Tasmania or the South Seas?”

  “Not when you and Lord Graystone are on your first trip to London together,” Robbie laughed. “I shall wait for another time for that.”

  “Oh, now, Lt. Taggart . . . now!” begged Andrew, hardly understanding anything of the adult conversation, but sensing innately that this blue-clad sailor could offer nothing but grand adventures for a boy of six.

  “My idea is almost as good,” said Robbie. “Maybe even better. How would you like to come with me and see a real sailing ship?”

  “Hooray!” cried the boy, clapping.

  “That is a wonderful idea,” agreed Jamie. “To tell you the truth, there hasn’t been a great deal here to amuse Andrew. But Edward is waiting for us.”

  “I’m afraid I may not have another free day,” said Robbie. “But why don’t I take the boy with me now, and you can go ahead and meet Lord Graystone?”

  “Wouldn’t that be asking too much of you?”

  “Not at all!” Robbie replied. “You know how I love to brag about the sea, and here is a fresh new audience for all my tales!”

  “Please, Mother!”

  “How can I possibly refuse you both?”

  “I shall see to it that he has lunch,” said Robbie, adding with a mock sheepish grin, “in a reputable establishment, I assure you!”

  Jamie laughed. “I trust him with you, Robbie, as much as I trusted myself with you back in Aberdeen. Just have a grand time.”

  She opened the door and set little Andrew outside the coach, gave him a parting hug, and after some arrangements about where to meet, she watched the two stroll jauntily down the walk. Robbie doffed his fine uniform cap and set it on top of Andrew’s blond curls. The boy turned, beaming, and gave a final goodbye wave to his stepmother.

  What a pair they are, thought Jamie! Hand clasped in hand, one would hardly have guessed they had only just met.

  6

  Dreams and Delusions

  The London docks at that late morning hour were a swarming hive of activity. Robbie and Andrew had hired a coach to the Naval yards, but had abandoned it some distance away in order to see everything up close.

  Once on the ground, however, much of Andrew’s view was blocked by stacks of crates and bales of cargo and barrels of everything ranging from oil to whiskey to fresh water for lengthy sea voyages. When he was nearly knocked off his feet by a busy dockworker oblivious to all but his labors, Robbie bent down and hoisted the boy onto his shoulders.

  That made a view too grand for words! Andrew could hardly contain his agitated boyish enthusiasm at all the wonders his eyes beheld. Rows upon rows of ships of every kind, every size, and every nationality lay before him. To his left, a man, small and wiry like a spider, was climbing aloft on the rigging and Andrew beheld him, wide-eyed at the sight, fearful lest the daring sailor lose his balance, yet at the same time enchanted at the very idea that a man could be up so high. On another ship, huge bales of cotton were being hoisted overhead, having just arrived the day before from Manchester, the cotton capital of the North, where they were then dropped unceremoniously on the dock with a soft resounding thud. Everyone with them was busy about some task or another, all scurrying about in different directions. Andrew had never seen the likes of it—what a lot of men there were! The clothing was bright, sometimes outlandish, colorful, varied, dirty; yelling voices, strange, wonderful noises and unusual smells. Some of the men sported long moustaches, a couple wore golden rings in their ears! And there were foreign tongues shouting with all the rest amid the throng—black-skinned Africans, dark brown Indians, fair-skinned Chinese. Many possessed not the most welcoming of countenances, but the boy took no notice of that, though when one gave him a toothless and crooked, yet friendly grin, it nearly startled him out of his wits. In the fascination of it all, the energetic atmosphere of the place struck deeply into the boy’s heart. Whatever fears the unknown may have held were swallowed up in a fascination that penetrated far deeper than words or conscious thoughts.

  As they walked, Robbie pointed out various ships they passed, explaining their tonnage, rigging, and whatever interesting anecdotes he happened to know of their histories. Andrew, of course, understood little, but what he remembered in later years was the sound of Robbie’s voice, acting as backdrop for the new and unusual sights that his mind’s eye would always remember.

  “There’s the steamer Rangoon. Look at the fine lines of her hull, and she’s a full 3,000 tons!”

  As he pointed toward the ship, even the most casual observer would have noted that the tour guide was every bit as wide-eyed as the lad propped upon his broad shoulders. “And there’s the Sardinia. They cut her down to a barque rig, but she was a beauty in her day. Tis said she made the passage from London to Shanghai by way of the southern tip of Tasmania in only 101 days. Over 20,000 miles! But who’s to say if it’s only a legend?”

  “Hey, Andrew, over there’s a new one!” exclaimed Robbie all at once in a new tone. “I wonder if she’s got one of those triple expansion engines I’ve heard so much about. I read that the passage to Melbourne via the Cape could be as little as forty-five days in one of them.”

  On it went, with Andrew interrupting frequently with questions or to point out some new wonder. Such was their absorption in the salty scene that they scarcely noticed the old man leaning lazily against one of the crusty wooden pilings that bordered the dock they were walking along, until they had nearly stumbled over him.

  “Pardon me!” apologized Robbie, as he set Andrew on his feet in order to steady the old gentleman. “We weren’t paying attention to where we were going.”

  “Ha, ha!” croaked the man in an ancient voice. “It’d take a stronger wind than the two o’ ye landlubbers t’ blow me o’er!” In truth, the man appeared so seamed and weathered that if he were one of the ships he had been gazing so steadily at, he would never have been counted as seaworthy for as much as a sail to the other side of the Thames.

  “Is that your ship?” asked Andrew, oblivious to the limitations of age, who beheld only the man’s captain’s hat and woolen pea coat, complete with brass buttons. He was too young to note the significance of the missing and tarnished buttons, and the patches on the coat that did little to allay its generally frayed appearance. He only knew that here was another sailor—a man who had set foot on distant lands and laid eyes on wonders untold.

  “Aye, laddie,” said he, a Scotsman by tongue, as he focused his rheumy eyes on the fine brig and ran his gnarled old fingers through his thick white beard. “They’re all mine, they are . . . they’re yers too, lad, if ye dream hard enough!”

  Andrew wrinkled his smooth brow, puzzled by the man’s cryptic words.

  “He’s a bit young to understand your meaning, old-timer,” said Robbie.

  The man looked up from Andrew to Robbie, and for a brief instant his eyes seemed to come into clear focus. “But ye unnerstan’ me, dinna ye though, yoong man?”

  Robbie hesitated. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do,” he answered slowly, but looking away as he spoke, unable to return the man’s intense stare.

  “Oh, ye ken my meanin�
�, an’ that’s a fact,” said the old sailor. “I can tell. An’ ’tis not by yer outfit that yer mind’s open t’ me—’tis in spite o’ it. ’Tis in the way ye’re gazin’ at them ships. I can see the look in yer eye. ’Tis a look I ken weel mysel’. An’ ye’ll teach the laddie here, ye will.”

  “He’s but a friend’s child, and not my own boy,” replied Robbie lamely, as if this bit of fact would break the spell of the old man’s words.

  “They that go down t’ the sea in ships,” quoted the sailor, the focus now gone from his eyes and a distant tone in his voice, “that do business in great waters; these see the works o’ the Lord, an’ His wonders in the deep.”

  “We’d best be on our way,” said Robbie uncomfortably.

  “I’m but an auld man,” continued their new acquaintance as if no one else had spoken. “I’ll see no more of the deep—dreams is a’ Cap’t Smollet’s left anymore.” The old man, apparently named Smollet, laid a heavy hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “Maybe ye’ll ken all aboot that one day, too. But the laddie here”—he gestured with a hand toward the ships and perhaps beyond—“they’re all yers fer the askin’.”

  Robbie bid the old captain goodbye, and, hand in hand, he and Andrew walked on, though Robbie found himself not quite so talkative as before.

  “What did he mean?” asked Andrew.

  “’Tis hard to tell,” Robbie replied pensively. “Perhaps that you can have whatever you want in life—it’s just up to you, that’s all. That you can sail to whatever distant shore you choose, that any ship bound for anywhere can be yours, if you decide to make it so.”

  He paused, not even sure he knew what he meant himself. He found himself wondering what Jamie would say in response to the old man’s words.

  “Mother always tells me that it’s the Lord who directs our ways,” said Andrew innocently.

  “Well . . .” Robbie cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly, “your mother is right, of course. Always do as she says. Maybe the Lord is captain of all the ships, and we simply have to decide which one to sail on. Perhaps that is what the old man meant.”

  Robbie didn’t know why he said it; somehow it seemed appropriate, even if he didn’t understand it himself. But it seemed to satisfy the boy.

  “Do you think it’s true, Lt. Taggart, that those that go to the sea in ships will see the works of the Lord, like the man said?” asked Andrew after a pause.

  “You have a very good memory for a boy of six!” said Robbie. “But I don’t know, Andrew. He was a very old man, and I’m not sure but that a few of his sails were reefed. And besides,” he added on a lighter note, “he was a sailor—and you know what they say, you can’t always trust a sailor!”

  “Mother said she could trust you.”

  “Oh well, that’s different, son. I’m Robbie Taggart!” Here Robbie laughed, and the boy laughed with him, never questioning his reply. For not only was he at an age where trust was instinctive; he sensed too by the security he felt with Robbie that the words came from a character that was true.

  Before long they had arrived at the Naval yards, and there came to the H.M.S. Landmark. It was not Robbie’s ship, of course, but he had been on fairly good terms with one of the officers, a certain fellow lieutenant by the name of Robertson. He hoped his friendship would insure them a welcome, even though it was all too clear that he didn’t belong here. If Barclay had known of his whereabouts, he would probably have had a better chance of being invited aboard one of Cap’t Smollet’s elusive vessels.

  As they approached the ship, suddenly Robbie realized that to go aboard the Landmark was almost as bad as a visit to the Sea Tiger, a temptation he had studiously avoided. Perhaps it was worse, for the Landmark represented what might have been for him—and all that was being so unjustly withheld, though it had once seemed so close within his grasp.

  The old sea captain had said, “They’re all yers too if ye dream hard enough!” But what were Smollet’s words but visions of hope spoken to entice a young child to see beyond the horizon? What meaning could they possess for him? For Robbie knew all too well the pain of dreams unfulfilled.

  “Ahoy, Lt. Taggart!” came a shout from the Landmark’s deck. It was Robertson.

  “Ahoy, Robertson!” returned Robbie. “Might my young friend and I have permission to come aboard?”

  “On official business?” asked Robertson with the hint of a grin.

  “No. I’d just like to give the lad a bit of a tour.”

  “I see no difficulty with that. I’m sure the captain won’t mind—permission granted.”

  For Andrew the next hour proved as awe-inspiring as had the walk along the docks. They left not an inch of the royal frigate unexplored, inspecting everything from the boiler room to the galley. And in the galley the cook gave the boy a taste of “bully beef,” the tinned meat introduced at the beginning of the century from France. It perhaps was not on a par with anything he might have been served at the Regency, where he and his parents were staying, but to Andrew it was indeed a gourmet delight.

  For Robbie’s part, nothing on this particular day could have pleased him more than to show off his world to the enthusiastic child. And it was no small pleasure besides to be held in such reverence by Andrew, nonetheless because he was now Jamie’s son. But an unconscious bitterness insisted on nagging at him, as he found himself confronted over and over, at each turn of a new narrow corridor onboard the ship, that the Landmark, nor any like it, would ever be his. But by the time they climbed above deck again into the clean, fresh air, he managed to successfully—if only temporarily—shake the bonds of that depression.

  He was standing on the deck, watching Andrew run down its length, while enjoying a pleasant conversation with Robertson when all at once he glanced up to see, less than ten yards away, Commander Barclay walking up the gangway to board the Landmark. His instinctive reaction was that the meeting must be somehow less than coincidental, but the look of surprise on Barclay’s countenance to match his own assured him that their paths had indeed crossed by chance.

  Barclay had been speaking to the captain as they boarded, but his words faltered perceptibly when he raised his eyes in Robbie’s direction. He spoke a few more words to the Landmark’s captain; then the two strode across the deck to where Robbie stood with Robertson.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said Barclay crisply, leveling his gaze directly at Robbie as the two lieutenants snapped to attention and saluted.

  Even Robertson was noticeably cowed by the commander, though he was not directly answerable to “wee Bonaparte.” But Robbie did not flinch, and returned the commander’s cold stare, finding himself unaccountably steady. Perhaps the growing sense of futility, which had led to the morning’s feeling of abandonment as he left the compound without checking in, had boosted his confidence to stand firm.

  “Mr. Taggart,” Barclay went on after returning the salute, continuing his custom of refusing to recognize Robbie’s commission and addressing him as he would a civilian, “I do not recall assigning you any duty relating to the Landmark.”

  “No, sir, you didn’t. I was merely visiting—on my free time.”

  “I see . . .” Barclay drew the words out meaningfully, though Robbie could only guess at what sinister meaning they might hold; “ . . . then that must explain the presence of a child aboard a royal warship.”

  Barclay and the captain exchanged glances. The captain was about to say something, when Robertson spoke up: “I gave my permission, sir. I saw no harm—”

  “It is obvious to me,” stated Barclay, “that Taggart here must certainly have given the impression he had the assent of his superiors in this request.”

  Robbie’s mouth shot open in preparation to make a heated denial. But he stopped himself abruptly. To say anything further now would only draw Robertson into unnecessary trouble, and no doubt place him in an awkward position having either to defend his fellow or protect his own standing. He would have to take care of himself without anyone’s support,
even against an unjust accusation that only Robertson could confirm.

  “I’m sorry,” he said instead of what he had initially intended. “I wasn’t thinking.” The words barely made it past his tight throat.

  Even as he spoke, something deep within told him this was probably the end. Barclay now had the excuse he needed, no doubt to demote Robbie if he chose to press it. But even if he let it pass, he knew within himself he could take no more of Barclay’s persecution, nor that of the Royal Navy. Something had to give.

  “I will see you in two hours in my office, Taggart!” said Barclay.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Robbie about-faced, and with his fingers resisting a clenching motion, he strode away. He called Andrew, who had been happily oblivious of the interchange, and together they disembarked the H.M.S. Landmark.

  7

  Decisions Weighed

  In the drawing room of the Graystones’ suite at the Regency, Robbie paced the floor feverishly, not even aware he was doing so. Jamie and her new husband had taken the exhausted little Andrew to bed in the next room.

  He was still striding with a vengeance across the thick carpet when Jamie stepped back into the room. He stopped short when she appeared, and tried gallantly, though futilely, to recapture some of his old carefree form.

  “You best watch that son of yours, Jamie!” he said jokingly. “I think the lad’s got the sea in his blood!”

  “A day with Robbie Taggart can be dangerous!” Jamie returned, laughing. “And I should know! Why, I might have gone to sea myself had I been a man!”

  “And a bonny sailor you would have made too!”

  “Not so fine as you, Robbie,” Jamie replied earnestly. “I am, and I have always been so proud of you. And proud to know you.”

  Robbie looked away and unconsciously began pacing again. Jamie took several steps toward him, then laid her hand on his arm.

  “Dear Robbie . . . what is troubling you so?”

  He paused and turned to face her. Searching her eyes, he saw more vividly all at once something that had only begun to dawn on him last year when had asked for her hand in marriage. Back then he had chiefly been struck by her loveliness, by the dazzling contrast she represented to the child he had left at Sadie’s. But now a greater depth to her loveliness was becoming more and more apparent—a sensitivity and wisdom and peace of a woman far beyond her youthful years. Oh yes, the lively twinkle still shone from her emerald eyes, and the determined set to her chin was still visible, which gave her delicate features an unusual strength. But all these surface observations only heightened the conviction of something most lasting that dwelt within. She spoke often about her faith in God. Was that the cause of the change Robbie sensed?