My eighteenth birthday. A bright December day. My spirits soaring like a bird as, looking out across the dazzling sea from Radford, I watched His Majesty’s Fleet sail into Plymouth Sound.
It concerned me not that the expedition now returning had been a failure, and that far away in France La Rochelle remained unconquered; these were matters for older people to discuss.
Here in Devon there was laughing and rejoicing and the young folk held high holiday. What a sight they were—some eighty ships or more, crowding together between Drake’s Island and the Mount, the white sails bellying in the west wind, the colored pennants streaming from the golden spars. As each vessel drew opposite the fort at Mount Batten, she would be greeted with a salvo from the great guns, and, dipping her colors in a return salute, let fly her anchor, and bring up opposite the entrance to the Cattwater. The people gathered on the cliffs waved and shouted, and from the vessels themselves came a mighty cheer, while the drums beat and the bugles sounded, and the sides of the ships were seen to be thronged with soldiers, pressing against the high bulwarks, clinging to the stout rigging. The sun shone upon their breastplates and their swords, which they waved to the crowds in greeting, and gathered on the poop would be the officers—flashes of crimson, blue, and Lincoln green, as they moved among the men.
Each ship carried on her mainmast the standard of the officer in command, and as the crowd recognized the colors and the arms of a Devon leader, or a Cornishman, another great shout would fill the air, and be echoed back to us from the cheering fellows in the vessel. There was the two-headed eagle of the Godolphins, the running stag of the Trevanions from Caerhayes, the six swallows of the numerous Arundell clan, and—perhaps loveliest of all—the crest of the Devon Champernownes, a sitting swan holding in her beak a horseshoe of gold.
The little ships, too, threaded their way among their larger sisters, a vivid flash of color with their narrow decks black with troopers, and I recognized vessels I had last seen lying in Looe Harbour or in Fowey, now weather stained and battered, but bearing triumphantly aloft the standards of the men who had built them and manned them and commissioned them for war—among them the wolf’s head of our neighbor Trelawney, and the Cornish chough of the Menabilly Rashleighs.
The leading ship, a great three-masted vessel, carried the commander of the expedition, the Duke of Buckingham, and when she was saluted from Mount Batten she replied with an answering salvo from her own six guns, and we could see the Duke’s pennant fluttering from the masthead. She dropped anchor, swinging to the wind, and the fleet followed her, and the rattle of nearly a hundred cables through a hundred hawsers must have filled the air from where we stood on the cliffs below Radford, away beyond the Sound to Saltash, at the entrance of the Tamar River. Slowly their bows swung round, pointing to Cawsand and the Cornish coast, and their sterns came into line, the sun flashing in their windows and gleaming upon the ornamental carving, the writhing serpents, and the lions’ paws.
And still the bugles echoed across the water and the drums thundered. Suddenly there was silence, the clamor and the cheering died away, and on the flagship commanded by the Duke of Buckingham someone snapped forth an order in a high, clear voice. The soldiers who had crowded the bulwarks were there no longer, they moved as one man, forming into line amidships, there was no jostling, no thrusting into position. There came another order, and the single tattoo of a drum, and in one movement it seemed the boats were manned and lowered into the water, the colored blades poised as though to strike, and the men who waited on the thwarts sat rigid as automatons.
The maneuver had taken perhaps three minutes from the first order; and the timing of it, the precision, the perfect discipline of the whole proceeding drew from the crowd about us the biggest cheer yet from the day, while for no reason I felt the idiotic tears course down my cheeks.
“I thought as much,” said a fellow below me. “There’s only one man in the west who could turn an unruly rabble into soldiers fit for His Majesty’s Bodyguard. There go the Grenvile coat of arms—do you see them, hoisted beneath the Duke of Buckingham’s standard?” Even as he spoke I saw the scarlet pennant run up to the masthead, and as it streamed into the wind and flattened, the sun shone upon the three gold rests.
The boats drew away from the ship’s side, the officers seated in the stern sheets, and suddenly it was high holiday again, with crowded Plymouth boats putting out from the Cattwater to greet the fleet—the whole Sound dotted at once with little craft—and the people watching upon the cliffs began to run towards Mount Batten, calling and shouting, pushing against one another to be the first to greet the landing boats. The spell was broken, and we returned to Radford.
“A fine finish to your birthday,” said my brother with a smile. “We are all bidden to a banquet at the castle, at the command of the Duke of Buckingham.” He stood on the steps of the house to greet us, having ridden back from the fortress at Mount Batten. Jo had succeeded to the estates at Radford, my uncle Christopher having died a few years back, and much of our time now was spent between Plymouth and Lanrest. Jo had become, indeed, a person of some importance, in Devon especially, and besides being Under Sheriff for the county he had married an heiress into the bargain, Elizabeth Champernowne, whose pleasant manner and equable disposition made up for her lack of looks. My sister Bridget, too, had followed Cecilia’s example and married into a Devon family, and Mary and I were the only daughters left unwed.
“There will be ten thousand fellows roaming the streets of Plymouth tonight,” jested Robin. “I warrant if we turned the girls loose among them they’d soon find husbands.”
“Best clip Honor’s tongue then,” replied Jo, “for they’ll soon forget her blue eyes and her curls once she begins to flay them.”
“Let me alone—I can look after myself,” I told them.
For I was still the spoiled darling, the enfant terrible, possessing boundless health and vigor, and a tongue that ran away with me. I was, moreover (and how long ago it seems), the beauty of the family, though my features, such as they were, were more impudent than classical, and I still had to stand on tiptoe to reach Robin’s shoulder. I remember, that night, how we embarked below the fortress and took a boat across the Cattwater to the castle. All Plymouth seemed to be upon the water, or on the battlements, while away to westward gleamed the soft lights of the fleet at anchor, the stern windows shining, and the glow from the poop lanterns casting a dull beam upon the water. When we landed, we found the townsfolk pressing about the castle entrance, and everywhere were the soldiers, laughing and talking, encircled with girls, who had decked them with flowers and ribbons for festivity. There were casks of ale standing on the cobbles beside the braziers, and barrow-loads of pies, and cakes, and cheeses, and I remember thinking that the maids who roistered there with their soldier lovers would maybe have more value from their evening than we who must behave with dignity within the precincts of the castle.
In a moment we were out of hearing of the joyful noises of the town, and the air was close and heavy with rich scent, and velvet, and silk, and spicy food, and we were in the great banqueting hall with voices sounding hollow and strange beneath the vaulted roof. Now and again would ring out the clear voice of a gentleman-at-arms. “Way for the Duke of Buckingham,” and a passage would be cleared for the commander as he passed to and fro among the guests, holding court even as His Majesty himself might do.
The scene was colorful and exciting, and I—more accustomed to the lazy quietude of Lanrest—felt my heart beat and my cheek flush, and to my youthful fancy it seemed to me that all this glittering display was somehow a tribute to my eighteenth birthday. “How lovely it is! Are you not glad we came?” I said to Mary, and she, always reserved among strangers, touched my arm and murmured, “Speak more softly, Honor. You draw attention to us,” and was for drawing back against the wall. I pressed forward, greedy for color, devouring everything with my eyes, smiling even at strangers and caring not at all that I seemed bold, when suddenly the crowd parted, a way was cleared, and here was the Duke’s retinue upon us, with the Duke himself not half a yard away. Mary was gone, and I was left alone to bar his path. I remember standing an instant in dismay, and then, losing my composure, I curtsied low, as though to King Charles himself, while a little ripple of laughter floated above my head. Raising my eyes, I saw my brother Jo, his face a strange mixture of amusement and dismay, come forward from among those who thronged the Duke, and bending over me he helped me to my feet, for I had curtsied so low that I was hard upon my heels and could not rise. “May I present my sister Honor, your Grace?” I heard him say. “This is, in point of fact, her eighteenth birthday, and her first venture into society.”
The Duke of Buckingham bowed gravely, and, lifting my hand to his lips, wished me good fortune. “It may be your sister’s first venture, my dear Harris,” he said graciously, “but with beauty such as she possesses you must see to it that it is not the last.” He passed on in a wave of perfume and velvet, with my brother hemmed in beside him, frowning at me over his shoulder, and as I swore under my breath (or possibly not under my breath, but indiscreetly, and a stable oath learned from Robin at that) I heard someone say behind me, “If you care to come out onto the battlements, I will show you how to do that as it should be done.” I whipped round, scarlet and indignant, and, looking down upon me from six foot or more, with a sardonic smile upon his face, was an officer still clad in his breastplate of silver, worn over a blue tunic, with a blue and silver sash about his waist. His eyes were golden brown, his hair dark auburn, and I saw that his ears were pierced with small gold rings, for all the world like a Turkish bandit.
“Do you mean you would show me how to curtsy or how to swear?” I said to him in fury.
“Why both, if you wish it,” he answered. “Your performance at the first was lamentable, and at the second merely amateur.”
His rudeness rendered me speechless, and I could hardly believe my ears. I glanced about me for Mary, or for Elizabeth, Jo’s serene and comfortable wife, but they had withdrawn in the crush, and I was hemmed about with strangers. The most fitting thing, then, was to withdraw with dignity. I turned on my heel, and pushed my way through the crowd, making for the entrance, and then I heard the mocking voice behind me once again. “Way for Mistress Honor Harris of Lanrest,” proclaimed in high clear tones, while people looked at me astonished, falling back in spite of themselves, and so a passageway was cleared. I walked on with flaming cheeks, scarce knowing what I was doing, and found myself, not in the great entrance as I had hoped, but in the cold air upon the battlements, looking out onto Plymouth Sound, while away below me, in the cobbled square, the townsfolk danced and sang. My odious companion was with me still, and he stood now, with his hand upon his sword, looking down upon me with that same mocking smile on his face.
“So you are the little maid my sister so much detested,” he said.
“What the devil do you mean?” I asked.
“I would have spanked you for it had I been her,” he said.
Something in the clip of his voice and the droop of his eye struck a chord in my memory. “Who are you?” I said to him.
“Sir Richard Grenvile,” he replied, “a Colonel in His Majesty’s Army, and knighted some little while ago for extreme gallantry in the field.” He hummed a little, playing with his sash.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that your manners do not match your courage.”
“And that your deportment,” he said, “does not equal your looks.”
This reference to my height—always a sore point, for I had not grown an inch since I was thirteen—stung me to fresh fury. I let fly a string of oaths that Jo and Robin, under the greatest provocation, might have loosed upon the stableman, though certainly not in my presence, and which I had only learned through my inveterate habit of eavesdropping; but if I hoped to make Richard Grenvile blanch I was wasting my breath. He waited until I had finished, his head cocked as though he were a tutor hearing me repeat a lesson, and then he shook his head.
“There is a certain coarseness about the English tongue that does not do for the occasion,” he said. “Spanish is more graceful, and far more satisfying to the temper. Listen to this.” And he began to swear in Spanish, loosing upon me a stream of lovely-sounding oaths that would certainly have won my admiration had they come from Jo or Robin. As I listened I looked again for that resemblance to Gartred, but it was gone. He was like his brother Bevil, but with more dash, and certainly more swagger, and I felt he cared not a tinker’s curse for anyone’s opinion but his own.
“You must admit,” he said, breaking off suddenly, “that I have you beaten.” His smile, no longer sardonic but disarming, had me beaten too, and I felt my anger die within me. “Come and look at the fleet,” he said, “a ship at anchor is a lovely thing.”
We went to the battlements and stared out across the Sound. It was still and cloudless and the moon had risen. The ships were motionless upon the water, and they stood out in the moonlight carved and clear. The men were singing, and the sound of their voices was borne to us across the water, distinct from the rough jollity of the crowds in the streets below.
“Were your losses very great at La Rochelle?” I asked him.
“No more than I expected, in an expedition that was bound to be abortive,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “Those ships yonder are filled with wounded men who won’t recover. It would be more humane to throw them overboard.” I looked at him in doubt, wondering if this was a further installment of his peculiar sense of humor. “The only fellows who distinguished themselves were those in the regiment I have the honor to command,” he continued, “but as no other officer but myself insists on discipline, it was small wonder that the attack proved a failure.”
His self-assurance was as astounding to me as his former rudeness.
“Do you talk thus to your superiors?” I asked him.
“If you mean superior to me in matters military, such a man does not exist,” he answered, “but superiors in rank, why yes, invariably. That is why, although I am not yet twenty-nine, I am already the most detested officer in His Majesty’s Army.” He looked down at me, smiling, and once again I was at a loss for words.
I thought of my sister Bridget, and how he had trodden upon her dress at Kit’s wedding, and I wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. “And the Duke of Buckingham?” I said, “Do you speak to him in this way too?”
“Oh, George and I are old friends,” he answered. “He does what he is told. He gives me no trouble. Look at those drunken fellows in the courtyard there. My heaven, if they were under my command I’d hang the bastards.” He pointed down to the square below, where a group of brawling soldiers were squabbling around a cask of ale, accompanied by a pack of squealing women.
“You might excuse them,” I said, “pent up at sea so long.”
“They may drain the cask dry, and rape every woman in Plymouth, for all I care,” he answered, “but let them do it like men and not like beasts, and clean their filthy jerkins first.”
He turned away from the battlement in disgust.
“Come now,” he said. “Let us see if you can curtsy better to me than you did to the Duke. Take your gown in your hands, thus. Bend your right knee, thus. And allow your somewhat insignificant posterior to sink upon your left leg, thus.”
I obeyed him, shaking with laughter, for it seemed to me supremely ridiculous that a colonel in His Majesty’s Army should be teaching me deportment upon the battlements of Plymouth Castle.
“I assure you it is no laughing matter,” he said gravely. “A clumsy woman looks so damnably ill bred. There now, that is excellent. Once again. Perfection. You can do it if you try. The truth is you are an idle little baggage, and have never been beaten by your brothers.” With appalling coolness, he straightened my gown and rearranged the lace around my shoulders.
“I object to dining with untidy women,” he murmured.
“I have no intention of sitting down with you to dine,” I replied with spirit. “No one else will ask you, I can vouch for that,” he answered. “Come, take my arm. I am hungry if you are not.”
He marched me back into the castle, and to my consternation I found that the guests were already seated at the long tables in the banqueting hall, and the servants were bearing in the dishes. We were conspicuous as we entered, and my usual composure fled from me. It was, it may be remembered, my first venture in the social world. “Let us go back,” I pleaded, tugging at his arm. “See, there is no place for us; the seats are all filled.”
“Go back? Not on your life. I want my dinner,” he replied.
He pushed his way past the servants, nearly lifting me from my feet. I could see hundreds of faces staring up at us, and heard a hum of conversation, and for one brief moment I caught a glimpse of my sister Mary, seated next to Robin, away down in the center of the hall. I saw the look of horror and astonishment in her eyes, and her mouth frame the word “Honor” as she whispered to my brother. I could do nothing but hurry forward, tripping over my gown, borne on the relentless arm of Richard Grenvile to the high table at the far end of the hall where the Duke of Buckingham sat beside the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, and the nobility of Cornwall and Devon, such as they were, feasted with decorum above the common herd. “You are taking me to the high table,” I protested, dragging at his arm with all my force.
“What of it?” he asked, looking down at me in astonishment. “I’m damned if I’m going to dine anywhere else. Way there please, for Sir Richard Grenvile.” At his voice the servants flattened themselves against the wall, and heads were turned and I saw the Duke of Buckingham break off from his conversation with the Countess. Chairs were pulled forward, people were squeezed aside, and somehow we were seated at the table a hand’s stretch from the Duke himself, while the Lady Mount Edgcumbe peered round at me with stony eyes. Richard Grenvile leaned forward with a smile. “You are perhaps acquainted with Honor Harris, Countess,” he said, “my sister-in-law. This is her eighteenth birthday.” The Countess bowed, and appeared unmoved. “You can disregard her,” said Richard Grenvile to me. “She’s as deaf as a post. But for God’s sake smile, and take that glassy stare from your eye.” I prayed for death, but it did not come to me. Instead I took the roast swan that was heaped upon my platter.
The Duke of Buckingham turned to me, his glass in his hand. “I wish you very many happy returns of the day,” he said.
I murmured my thanks, and shook my curls to hide my flaming cheeks.
“Merely a formality,” said Richard Grenvile in my ear. “Don’t let it go to your head. George has a dozen mistresses already, and is in love with the Queen of France.”
He ate with evident enjoyment, vilifying his neighbors with every mouthful, and because he did not trouble to lower his voice I could swear that his words were heard. I tasted nothing of what I ate or drank, but sat like a bewildered fish throughout the long repast. At length the ordeal was over, and I felt myself pulled to my feet by my companion. The wine, which I had swallowed as though it were water, had made jelly of my legs, and I was obliged to lean upon him for support. I have scant memory indeed of what followed next. There was music, and singing, and some Sicilian dancers, strung about with ribbons, performed a tarantella, but their final dizzy whirling was my undoing, and I have shaming recollection of being assisted to some inner apartment of the castle, suitably darkened and discreet, where Nature took her toll of me, and the roast swan knew me no more. I opened my eyes and found myself upon a couch, with Richard Grenvile holding my hand, and dabbing my forehead with his kerchief.
“You must learn to carry your wine,” he said severely.
I felt very ill, and very ashamed, and tears were near the surface.
“Ah, no,” he said, and his voice, hitherto so clipped and harsh, was oddly tender. “You must not cry. Not on your birthday.”
He continued dabbing at my forehead with the kerchief.
“I have n-never eaten roast swan b-before,” I stammered, closing my eyes in agony at the memory.
“It was not so much the swan as the burgundy,” he murmured. “Lie still now, you will be easier by and by.”
In truth, my head was still reeling, and I was as grateful for his strong hand as I would have been for my mother’s. It seemed to me in no wise strange that I should be lying sick in a darkened unknown room with Richard Grenvile tending me, proving himself so comforting a nurse.
“I hated you at first. I like you better now,” I told him.
“It’s hard that I had to make you vomit before I won your approval,” he answered. I laughed, and then fell to groaning again, for the swan was not entirely dissipated. “Lean against my shoulder, so,” he said to me. “Poor little one, what an ending to an eighteenth birthday.” I could feel him shake with silent laughter, and yet his voice and hands were strangely tender, and I was happy with him.
“You are like your brother Bevil after all,” I said.
“Not I,” he answered. “Bevil is a gentleman, and I a scoundrel. I have always been the black sheep of the family.”
“What of Gartred?” I asked.
“Gartred is a law unto herself,” he replied. “You must have learned that when you were a little child, and she was wedded to your brother.”
“I hated her with all my heart,” I told him.
“Small blame to you for that,” he answered me.
“And is she content, now that she is wed again?” I asked him.
“Gartred will never be content,” he said. “She was born greedy, not only for money, but for men too. She had an eye to Antony Denys, her husband now, long before your brother died.”
“And not only Antony Denys,” I said.
“You had long ears for a little maid,” he answered.
I sat up, rearranging my curls, while he helped me with my gown.
“You have been kind to me,” I said, grown suddenly prim, and conscious of my eighteen years. “I shall not forget this evening.”
“Nor I either,” he replied.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you had better take me to my brothers.”
“Perhaps I had,” he said.
I stumbled out of the little dark chamber to the lighted corridor. “Where were we all this while?” I asked in doubt, glancing over my shoulder. He laughed, and shook his head.
“The good God only knows,” he answered; “but I wager it is the closet where Mount Edgcumbe combs his hair.” He looked down at me smiling, and, for one instant, touched my curls with his hands. “I will tell you one thing,” he said, “I have never sat with a woman before while she vomited.”
“Nor I so disgraced myself before a man,” I said with dignity.
Then he bent suddenly, and lifted me in his arms like a child. “Nor have I ever lay hidden in a darkened room with anyone so fair as you, Honor, and not made love to her,” he told me, and, holding me for a moment against his heart, he set me on my feet again.
“And now, if you permit it, I will take you home,” he said.
That is, I think, a very clear and truthful account of my first meeting with Richard Grenvile.