Glory In The Name

shouting, the gunfire, the bitter smell of smoke, rolling over the low walls surrounding the yard, the towering columns of flames-it was all so thrilling that she could barely tear herself away with the coming of dawn and the bone-weariness that dragged her back to her little carriage house.

Living in Portsmouth, she was learning a great deal about the reality of the maritime world, discovering that real sailors were not necessarily the gentleman heroes of her dreams, the lovable rogues.

But Wendy Atkins was a romantic, and like any good romantic, she would not let the empirical truth trounce the fine fantasy world she had created. She longed, above all, to get underway on a ship, a man-of-war. She still felt there was romance and excitement to be found there. She longed to see it from beyond the passenger’s perspective. But that did not seem possible.

Or had not seemed possible. She was growing more hopeful of her chances. There were a lot of navy men around. And while none of them was the Hawkins or John Paul Jones of her dreams, there were some possibilities there.

She seemed to draw them like a lodestone, standing on the bank, brazen with her hoopless skirt and paint- spattered clothes, painting. They were an odd lot; boys who would look over her shoulder and try and fail to think of some insightful comment; they usually ended up with something along the lines of “Boy, ain’t that pretty!”

Those she dismissed out of hand.

There were others who were more intriguing, officers, mostly, some of whom knew a thing or two about art. And officers, she understood, were the ones to know if one wished to see a man-of-war in some significant way.

And there was Samuel Bowater. Most intriguing of all, because he was a painter, and not an altogether bad one. He did not make an attempt on her affections, hardly spoke to her when he did see her, and she did not know if that was his means of piquing her interest or if he genuinely did not care.

Wendy laid her thin brush aside, picked up the thicker one, touched it to the white paint, and began to build high cumulus clouds. There were some men who were more subtle. By way of example, the man sitting on the bench twenty yards away, ostentatiously tuning his violin. He wore a blue frock coat with some kind of shoulder boards, but what rank or position he might hold she could not imagine.

He dragged the bow across the strings, made a horrible noise that set her teeth on edge as he fiddled with the pegs.

If he can’t play that thing, I am going to have to move, she thought. Her concentration could not suffer through amateur fiddling twenty yards away.

Finally the man stopped tuning, rested the bow on the strings, looked out over the water. Wendy stole glances at him. Unkempt, to some degree, he could use a shave, but his features were strong and he was not unattractive.

He closed his eyes, moved the bow across the strings. Wendy paused, brush hovering over her painting, listened. The tune was familiar, some folk song, though this fellow played it slow and solemn, not the way she had heard it before.

She listened. He was no amateur, he made the instrument speak, threw in delicate fingerwork, flourishes of music where the original, simple melody had none.

“Rosin the Beau,” Wendy realized. That was the tune, “Rosin the Beau.” Her father used to sing it to her when she was a girl. But there was magic in the way this fellow played it, the simple folk tune as foundation, the clever but subtle improvisation on the old song.

Wendy went back to her work as the music floated over her, as if it was the leitmotif of her art, orchestral accompaniment; it dovetailed with her mood, or pulled her mood along with it, she did not know which. The effect was the same.

She built oil-paint clouds and the violinist ended his song, moved on to “The Dark-Eyed Gypsy” and from there to the tunes she knew as “forebitters,” the songs of the sailor men, not the chanties, the work songs, but the plaintive songs they sang on the forecastle head at night. The music entranced her.

She painted on, wrapped in the sound, and then somehow the folk songs and the forebitters were over and she was getting snatches of Mozart and Bach and Beethoven. She smiled as she dabbed paint. And then the music stopped and soon she heard footsteps. Here we go… she thought.

“Forgive me, ma’am,” the man said, and she turned and he tipped his hat, a wool cap with a leather visor, the kind the naval officers wore. “I have been terribly rude. I do hope I haven’t disturbed you.” His accent was not Virginia, but Deep South.

“Your question is disingenuous, I think,” she said, turning back to her canvas.

“Pardon?”

“You are being disingenuous. It means…”

“I know what it means.”

“Then you know you are being that.” She turned to him and smiled. “You play wonderfully, and a very catholic repertoire, but I do not think you were worried about disturbing me.”

The man lifted his cap, scratched his head, gave her an odd sort of smile. “Maybe not.”

“Are you just a musician, sir, or do you fancy painting as well?”

“Oh, I don’t know much about painting…I know what I like.” He looked at Wendy’s painting, all but finished. “I could say somethin’ like ‘My, ain’t that pretty,’ but I don’t reckon that would be what you call an insightful comment.”

“I reckon not.”

She turned back to her painting, let the man hang in the uncomfortable silence, and just as she heard him begin to shuffle in preparation of walking away, she said, “Are you a naval officer, sir? I do not recognize your insignia.”

“Well, they still gettin all that insignia nonsense straightened away. I am a naval officer. Chief engineer on a gunboat.”

“Chief engineer…” Wendy had never cared for engines and such. She thought them dirty and vulgar. They were the barbarians at the gate, ready to drive off the tall, elegant sailing ships of which she had dreamed for so long.

“That’s right,” the man said, as if reading her mind. “I am one of those loathsome and dirty mechanics who labor in those Stygian depths.”

Wendy turned and met his eyes. He was smiling at her, playful and ironic. She tried to see into him, tried to look through his brown eyes. He is a tricky one, she thought. If Samuel Bowater was a hard man to plumb, this one seemed more complicated still. Stygian?

“My name is Hieronymus Taylor,” the man said, held out his hand.

Wendy took it and shook. Most men did not offer to shake hands with her. “Wendy Atkins, a pleasure. ‘Hieronymus’?”

“Now, you ain’t gonna ask if I’m named after some ol painter, are you?”

“Well, yes…I was. Were you?”

“Damned if I know…beg pardon. My daddy never did tell me, an he’s dead now, so I reckon it’s too late to ask. Though where the old man would have heard of a fella like that, on the docks of N’Orleans, I can’t figure.”

Ahh… Wendy thought. New Orleans, waterfront, dock rat… She filed him away in the right pigeonhole. “Wherever did you learn to play the violin like that?”

“Old black fella taught me. Rollin Jones was his name, somethin of a legend down in the delta. He seen I had a natural ability, taught me up.”

“Surely he did not teach you Mozart.”

“No. Was I playin Mozart?”

“Yes you were. How could you not know that?”

“Well, I hear bits of music, they stick in my head. Can’t forget ’ em if I try. Guess I heard that somewhere. Which one was Mozart?”

Wendy hummed a few bars and Taylor took up with her and they hummed together. “Right, right…I sure do love that bit of music.”

“It is lovely,” Wendy said, and she was quiet again, but it was not uncomfortable now. “You know,” she continued, and the words came out way ahead of any thought, “I have always wanted to sail aboard a man-of-war. Just once.”