The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “And yet,” said Mr. Kenny, “if I understand you, sir, you believe in God. Shall God rule by chance? I am not well grounded in philosophy.”

  “Oh, the Prime Mover set the wheel a-spinning, and needeth not to observe it, I dare say—heresy of course, for the which I could spend a week or two in the stocks.”

  “And I with you,” John Kenny chuckled, “for at least two thirds of what I say every day within mine own house. God then is synonymous with first cause?”

  Ben was gazing into the purple country of a wineglass, and Reuben saw that he had not drunk much, which was proper—or was that his second glass? This was the first time the boys had been invited to linger thus after dinner. Perhaps Uncle John wished to give them an initiatory taste of manhood, or else supposed them too full of roast goose to move.

  “Not synonymous, sir, for that would imply that God is only first cause, no more. We must assume he hath many more attributes.”

  “We may assume it. We can hardly know it,” Mr. Kenny suggested, and reached across the table to refresh the tutor’s Madeira and splash a bit more in Reuben’s glass. “But what is knowledge?”

  A sidelong glance told Reuben that black caterpillars had gone crawling up toward Mr. Hibbs’ wig; the big red mouth was pursed; the eyes squinted at the borders of philosophy. “We must recognize divers degrees of knowledge. There is mere factual knowledge: I know I hold this glass in my hand; if I drop it the wine will stain the cloth. Knowledge of the attributes, eternal presence of God is a higher knowledge.”

  “In what manner higher, Mr. Hibbs? More difficult? More important? More full of earthly significance?—if so, to whom?”

  “I mean such knowledge cometh to the mind and soul direct, not by way of mere tangible evidence.”

  “And yet, Mr. Hibbs—this is simply mine own ignorance finding a voice—I don’t understand why knowledge becomes higher because tangible evidence is lacking, nor indeed why tangible evidence should be despised. But may we return to the matter of definition?” John Kenny glanced at Reuben while the tutor’s head was bowed for the inspection of another walnut; Reuben decided it was not merely possible, it was a fact: Uncle John’s eyelid had flickered down and up. “What is knowledge?”

  “Knowledge is the perception of truth.”

  Reuben drank a little, remembering the afternoon. He had spent at least two hours by the pond with Mr. Welland—listening mostly, for once launched the doctor spoke well, like one whose talk had been dammed up a long time: Harvey, Sydenham, a surgeon named Paré, Signor Malpighi again and his little frog, something of a book named Micrographia by a Robert Hooke of England. The time had gone quickly; Mr. Welland was still talking as they crossed the south pasture and climbed the slope, and from the top of it Reuben could see the tiny figures of Ben and Uncle John returning, but the doctor at first was not able to make them out. “My eyes are not what they were,” he said, “though maybe I can peer a little way through a stone wall.” With that remark Mr. Welland had become somewhat remote, like a man interrupted in conversation by a distant call, though all he did was stand there, his ugly, kindly face turned away from the path of the late lowering sun.

  John Kenny asked: “And what is truth?”

  “We must recognize divers degrees of truth,” said Gideon Hibbs. “There is the empirical, observational truth I mentioned. There is logical truth, demonstrated by proceeding correctly from the premise. There is ethical truth, not demonstrable by observation or logic, deriving from an ideal harmony between the human will and the will of God.”

  “There I begin to lose you,” said John Kenny.

  “Ideal, sir, attainable in perfection only by the mind, not in common life because man is the plaything of chance, a conclusion to which I am forced, in defiance of prevailing theology, by contemplation of human frailty and the vicissitudes of life.” Mr. Hibbs drank and looked a trifle happier. “Above all there is metaphysical truth, even further beyond the reach of observation and logic. Here indeed the philosopher may find consolation—by submission, if you like, to the incomprehensible.”

  “But in what manner is mind not a part of common life?”

  “Oh? Sir, do you doubt the separateness of soul and body?”

  “I confess that sometimes I do.” Uncle John looked tired, Reuben saw, as though he might have lost interest in Socratic method, might even prefer to be playing chess. He enjoyed it most with Ben, Reuben knew; when Reuben himself entered the dry brilliant world of the chessboard he found it nearly impossible to temper his own sharp skill, and victory came with too much ease. He wondered if the doctor could be a chess-player. Strange, the remoteness like a sadness that had come over Mr. Welland there at the top of the rise. “If you run, Reuben, you can meet them in front of the house.” That had been like a mind reading. “I don’t run nowadays, Reuben.” He recalled the doctor’s brief mirthless smile as they shook hands. “I think I’d admire to see you run. I’ll take the path through this other field—it’ll bring me out back of my own house.… Run, boy, run!”

  He had missed a part of something Uncle John was saying concerning the influence on the human spirit of every change suffered by the flesh. The old man was speaking of youth and age. It was all reasonable and wise, Reuben thought. Uncle John was seldom anything but reasonable and wise. “I think truth may be both a humbler and a sterner thing. I think, Mr. Hibbs, there can never be any truth but a partial truth, subject to change by every new observation.”

  “But that is.…”

  “Terrifying? For my part I don’t find it so. This may be a matter of one’s disposition, I suppose.”

  And so I ran from Mr. Welland, and because I knew my own speed and was loving the wind around me, I did not look back.…

  “Beyond such partial truth,” said John Kenny, “you enter the region of faith; and by faith, Mr. Hibbs, I think men have moved no mountains. I think in mine old age that men have moved mountains by art and by the sweat of discontent, while faith never stirred one grain of sand.”

  And Ben had spurred the mare, running up the road to meet him, leaving Uncle John far behind, sweeping off his hat to let the wind at his hair. Reuben recalled his gray eyes wide and curious and sweet, his flushed face somehow surprised, as though Ben had never dreamed the world could be as good to him as it was.…

  John Kenny was saying something more, about the arrogance of certainty; it was not completed, for someone was knocking.

  The man in the green coat stood ghostlike in the dining-room doorway behind the bulk of a bothered Kate Dobson. He should have waited for Kate to announce him. To Reuben he was a shadow of something not quite acceptable, even dimly alarming, tall with his ancient hat held to his breast, sweeping them all in a blue stare. But Uncle John was pleased. “Only a poor matter of business, Mr. Kenny, and had I known you was entertaining guests—”

  “But happy to have another, and if business, let it be pleasure too! Off with your coat, man, and take a chair, and drink up!” As Daniel Shawn was protesting but sitting down anyway, Mr. Kenny sent Kate flying for a fresh decanter. “If a man hath an eye for my Artemis, shall I let him go without drinking her health? Mr. Gideon Hibbs, Mr. Daniel Shawn. Ben you’ve met, sir. And this is Mr. Reuben Cory, my other grand-nephew—nay, my other son.”

  Standing to reach across the table for a handshake, Reuben thought: God damn it, I don’t like him. “I am honored, sir.”

  If Mr. Shawn was astonished that a pup of fifteen should have the impudence to speak first and with high formality, he hid it well; his hand was firm and kind, his murmured response neutral without amusement. Very likely, Reuben thought, he supposes I know no better; and so I have made a fool of myself once again. But he continued to feel that the coming of Daniel Shawn on this evening of winy philosophy was the approach of a wolf to a pack of harmless dogs.

  Ben was pleased too, though Reuben
had noticed shyness settling over him like a mist. Kate Dobson was not pleased. As she brought in the wine, her prominent mild eyes openly assessed Mr. Shawn’s clothes, and her soft-footed rush from the room was virtually a flounce. Uncle John was asking: “Did you come afoot, sir, all the way to Roxbury, and at night?”

  “Oh, I did that, Mr. Kenny, an easy walk.”

  “I’m pleased you had moonlight.” In the windows, reflections of candelabra were steady golden fires. “The dem’d road’s a caution, noticed it a thousand times and said so in high places too, but it does no good. I trust you met no inconvenience?”

  “None, sir.” Good white teeth flashed in a light dangerous smile. “No man troubles me,” said Mr. Shawn, and patted his left hip, where he carried a short knife something like Ben’s. “And I easy found your house, sir, the way everyone knows of Mr. John Kenny.” The flattery was gross. Shawn clearly meant it to be recognized as such, using it to intimate a deeper flattery, a suggestion that he and John Kenny knew how to value the coinage of light conversation and enjoy it as a comic work of art.

  “To Artemis!” said Mr. Kenny. “May she venture far!”

  “Amen!” Shawn jumped up to drink that toast standing, in one draft, and Ben, Reuben saw, could do no less. He took one swallow himself for courtesy, and sat down, shifting his chair until the delicate flame of a silver wall lamp was behind Ben’s head and created around him a golden nimbus that no one but Reuben would see, or seeing, remember.

  “I’m happy we spoke at once of the bright lady, Mr. Kenny, for that allows me to state my business and so have done, and not be outstaying a welcome that’s more than kind.” But once settled in the chair at Ben’s right, Mr. Shawn appeared to be in no haste at all. Reuben observed an old scar running in a gray-white thread from the black hair behind Mr. Shawn’s left ear, winding through the smallpox scars and losing itself under his collar. Mr. Shawn wore no stock, no wig; simple, clean and neat in a brown jacket and gray shirt and patched breeches, he made Reuben feel foppishly overdressed in his fine silk stock, dabs of lace and other impedimenta of a gentleman that Uncle John liked to see him wear. Mr. Shawn’s green coat, tossed on a chair, nakedly displayed its own patches. His large-knuckled hands were clean, his face slick-shaven and scrubbed, a moderate tan combining with natural pallor to give him a look of pitted old ivory, the only grooves two deep ones framing his proud nose and three faint permanent frown-tracks between his heavy black brows. Uncle John was replenishing his glass. “I thank you, sir, but I pray you don’t press me to drink overmuch, it’s I have a poor head for it, now that’s no lie.”

  “In vino veritas,” said Gideon Hibbs, and giggled. Reuben squirmed inwardly as usual at that degeneration of Mr. Hibbs’ conversation into Latin snippets, the eroded currency of scholarship. With the sometimes dispassionate malevolence of youth, Reuben had spoken of it to Ben as the harrumphitas hemanhorum Hibbsiana.

  Daniel Shawn threw a light, tight smile to the room at large. “Legend says truth is a naked lady dwelling in the bottom of a well, and so up we must drag her and cast a rag upon her lest her beauty be a-dazzling us, or will it be that she’s a Gorgon and no beauty?—I can’t say. Turn our heads, and faith, don’t she go down again to the bottom of the well, the way we’ve had our labor for nothing? I’ve heard of no man ever lay with her and lived to tell of it, let alone having any get of her at all.”

  To the stained crystal of his suddenly empty glass, Reuben said: “Unless it was Socrates, and ’tis very true he died.”

  Small silence ruled. Reuben heard Mr. Hibbs draw a deep stormy breath, but before anyone could set about demolishing green youth for its impudence (if anyone was a-mind to) Daniel Shawn was tranquilly continuing: “To my business, Mr. Kenny, and I’ll have done. I’m here, sir, to inquire if there be an opportunity for me to ship aboard your Artemis on her next outward passage.” Caution settled on Mr. Kenny’s face like cold. “I must tell you, sir, the way I’ve fallen enamored of the little sea-witch, I’d count it better than a berth on any full-rigged ship I know. Call it a seaman’s fancy. I have mate’s papers—captain’s for that matter, but no man could replace Mr. Jenks, there’d be never no such thought in me mind. Indeed, Mr. Kenny, were I offered a command at present I think I’d refuse, now that’s no lie. I think I’m not of a mind for it, though I have captained a vessel twice in the past and done well enough as the world judges. But if any lesser berth be available with Artemis, I’m ready, sir—ready to offer twenty years’ experience of the sea and the best devotion a man can give at all.”

  John Kenny said with care: “But if you have captain’s papers, I can’t suppose you’d wish to sign on for small pay and scant authority.”

  Shawn sighed, smiling again with tight upper lip and steady eyes. “I think, sir, if the vessel were the Artemis, the position of mate would find me content as any man on salt water, now that’s no lie. Truth is I love ships, Mr. Kenny; I know a fair one when I see her. Mother of God, in the old days, the ships I’d see standing out from Sligo Bay, and I too young to follow! I’m a Sligo man, Mr. Kenny, born in Dromore forty-one years ago and can’t bear the life on the bloody beach. Steady as she goes!—it’s I need a deck under me feet or I’m not living.”

  Mr. Kenny shook his head unhappily. “Jan Dyckman hath sailed as mate with Mr. Jenks a long time now. I can’t imagine Mr. Jenks considering any other in the room of him.”

  “Still,” said Shawn, his head on one side, his smile perhaps no more than a flicker of the candles—“still, sir, you are the owner.”

  “I am the owner,” said Mr. Kenny stiffly, “and merely that. With such a captain as Mr. Jenks, I say nothing about the manning of my craft.”

  “And very just, sir. I was but thinking this Mr. Dyckman might be ready for a command himself, in one of your other vessels—thus an advancement for him, an opportunity for me.”

  “I see.… At present I own but two others, Mr. Shawn, one a mere sloop. The other is a ship that should now be at Virginia, a fair sturdy vessel, but she won’t be homeward-bound for some months—Captain Foster is intending a triangle course, Barbados and then home. Further, I fear Jan Dyckman himself hath no wish for a captain’s place. Splendid fellow, but by his own estimation a natural second in command, who tells me his ambition flies no higher. ’Tis true”—John Kenny’s head slanted back and he was looking down his nose—”’tis true Artemis will carry a second mate with her usual complement.”

  “What is that complement, sir, may I ask?”

  “She put out last August with fourteen hands. Came home with ten—smallpox and tropic fever. Three of the ten were new men Mr. Jenks signed on at Kingston. Worked her on the homeward passage with three men and a boy to a watch. I dare say the cook was obliged to turn a hand in dirty weather—he’s a renegade Frenchman, by the way, and utterly mad.”

  “Sir, if a cook aboard ship be not mad he must become so, a law of nature. Why, I recall one we had when I captained the sloop Viceroy, King William’s time—she was for Naples out of Bristol and a pleasant passage, the most of it. Rot my liver if this cook didn’t go overboard off Malta—in a moderate gale, mind you—crying that a pack of Sirens was corrupting the ship’s boys and he’d have ’em flayed for it, and all the time wasn’t it only the wind in the stays? A Yorkshireman, and broad in the beam with a list to la’board from a broken leg that’d healed somewhat crook. No Sirens that day, and didn’t I put about to fish him out of the drink?—the more fool me, for he was na’ but a bundle of disaster ever after. His fancy, d’you see, took another turn—O the child he was, the great smiling angry child!—and he’d have it he must train the weevils in our biscuit to be the like of some educated fleas he’d seen, I think it was at the Cambridge Fair, and he all in a frenzy when they wouldn’t answer to the names he gave ’em but continued weevils, nothing more. Mother of God, had he wished he could’ve had fleas a-plenty, Bristol fleas, the best in the worl
d. Well, there was Jemima, Hannibal, Simon, Jasper—many more I forget. His time passed in shaking more of ’em out of the biscuit and bidding ’em increase and multiply in the bottom of a stewpot, the way he saw his fortune made the day we’d raise Land’s End once more, but it did so happen, Mr. Kenny, on a brisk golden afternoon, that a cross-wind caught us for a moment, and no blame to vessel or man, over went the stewpot, and someone stepped on Jemima, and here was fourteen stone of redheaded Yorkshireman coming at me with a knife, for he declared the fault was mine. We were obliged to tie him below. For the rest of the voyage the cooking was done by a highland Scot from Inverness, ’tis a mystery of God we didn’t all die—no Scottishmen present, I hope?… Well, I think I would not despise the place of second mate if the vessel was your Artemis, now that’s no lie. Nowadays a berth is hard to find.”

  Uncle John had laughed too much, and was wiping his eyes. Ben had hooted unrestrained. Behind his own laughter, Reuben was reflecting that what Mr. Shawn said of maritime employment was quite simply not true. As the war dragged on, one heard that Her Majesty’s Navy was only too hungry for any man who could remain upright and heave on a rope. “Sir, sir,” said Mr. Kenny, “was there no reviving Jemima?”