“And that is?”
“Their power of isolating a man from his fellows.”
“Of isolating a captain, sir. The rest of humanity at sea must live only too much herded. The effect on them is not of the best. Circe’s task must not have been hindered, to say the least, by the profession of her victims!”
Directly I had said this I realized how cutting it might sound. But I saw by the blankness of the captain’s face, then its frown, that he was trying to remember what had happened to any ship of that name.
“Herded?”
“Packed together, I ought to have said. But how balmy the air is! I declare it seems almost insupportable that I must descend again and busy myself with my journal.”
Captain Anderson checked at the word “journal” as if he had trodden on a stone. I affected not to notice but continued cheerfully.
“It is partly an amusement, captain, and partly a duty. It is, I suppose, what you would call a ‘log’.”
“You must find little to record in such a situation as this.”
“Indeed, sir, you are mistaken. I have not time nor paper sufficient to record all the interesting events and personages of the voyage together with my own observations on them. Look—there is Mr Prettiman! A personage for you! His opinions are notorious, are they not?”
But Captain Anderson was still staring at me.
“Personages?”
“You must know,” said I laughing, “that had I not his lordship’s direct instructions to me I should still have been scribbling. It is my ambition to out-Gibbon Mr Gibbon and this gift to a godfather falls conveniently.”
Our tyrant was pleased to smile, but quiveringly, like a man who knows that to have a tooth pulled is less painful than to have the exquisite torturer left in.
“We may all be famous, then,” said he. “I had not looked for it.”
“That is for the future. You must know, sir, that to the unhappiness of us all, his lordship has found himself temporarily vexed by the gout. It is my hope that in such a disagreeable situation, a frank, though private account of my travels and of the society in which I find myself may afford him some diversion.”
Captain Anderson took an abrupt turn up and down the deck, then stood directly before me.
“The officers of the ship in which you travel must bulk large in such an account.”
“They are objects of a landsman’s interest and curiosity.”
“The captain particularly so?”
“You sir? I had not considered that. But you are, after all, the king or emperor of our floating society with prerogatives of justice and mercy. Yes. I suppose you do bulk large in my journal and will continue to do so.”
Captain Anderson turned on his heel and marched away. He kept his back to me and stared up wind. I saw that his head was sunk again, his hands clasped behind his back. I supposed that his jaw must be projecting once more as a foundation on which to sink the sullenness of his face. There was no doubt at all of the effect of my words, either on him or on me! For I found myself quivering as the first lieutenant had quivered when he dared to beard Mr Edmund Talbot! I spoke, I know not what, to Cumbershum, who had the watch. He was discomforted, for it was clean against the tyrant’s Standing Orders and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, how the captain’s hands tightened on each other behind his back. It was not a situation that should be prolonged. I bade the lieutenant good day and descended from the quarterdeck. I was glad enough to get back into my hutch, where I found of all things that my hands still had a tendency to tremble! I sat, therefore, getting my breath back and allowing my pulse to slow.
At length I began to consider the captain once more and try to predict his possible course of action. Does not the operation of a statist lie wholly in his power to affect the future of other people; and is not that power founded directly on his ability to predict their behaviour? Here, thought I, was the chance to observe the success or failure of my prentice hand! How would the man respond to the hint I had given him! It was not a subtle one; but then, I thought, from the directness of his questions that he was a simple creature at bottom. It was possible that he had not noticed the suggestiveness of my mentioning Mr Prettiman and his extreme beliefs! Yet I felt certain that mention of my journal would force him to look back over the whole length of the voyage and consider what sort of figure he might cut in an account of it. Sooner or later he would stub his toe over the Colley affair and remember how he had treated the man. He must see that however I myself had provoked him, nevertheless, by indulging his animosity against Colley, he had been cruel and unjust.
How would he behave then? How had I behaved when Summers had revealed to me my portion of responsibility in the affair? I tried out a scene or two for our floating theatre. I pictured Anderson descending from the quarterdeck and walking in the lobby casually, so as not to seem interested in the man. He might well stand consulting his own fading Orders, written out in a fair and clerkly hand. Then at a convenient moment, no one being by—oh no! he would have to let it be seen so that I should record it in my journal!—he would march into the hutch where Colley lay, shut the door, sit by the bunk and chat till they were a couple of bosoms. Why, Anderson might well stand in for an archbishop or even His Majesty! How could Colley not be roused by such amiable condescension? The captain would confess that he himself had committed just such a folly a year or two before—
I could not imagine it, that is the plain truth. The conceit remained artificial. Such behaviour was beyond Anderson. He might, he might just come down and gentle Colley somewhat, admitting his own brusqueness but saying it was habitual in a captain of a ship. More likely he would come down but only to assure himself that Colley was lying in his bunk, prone and still and not to be roused by a jesting exordium. But then, he might not even come down. Who was I to dip into the nature of the man, cast the very waters of his soul and by that chirurgeonly experiment declare how his injustice would run its course? I sat before this journal, upbraiding myself for my folly in my attempt to play the politician and manipulator of his fellow men! I had to own that my knowledge of the springs of human action was still in the egg. Nor does a powerful intellect do more than assist in the matter. Something more there must be, some distillation of experience, before a man can judge the outcome in circumstances of such quantity, proliferation and confusion.
And then, then can your lordship guess? I have saved the sweet to the last! He did come down. Before my very eyes he came down as if my prediction had drawn him down like some fabulous spell! I am a wizard, am I not? Admit me to be a prentice-wizard at least! I had said he would come down and come down he did! Through my louvre I saw him come down, abrupt and grim, to take his stand in the centre of the lobby. He stared at one hutch after another, turning on his heel, and I was only just in time to pull my face away from the spyhole before his louring gaze swept over it with an effect I could almost swear like the heat from a burning coal! When I risked peeping again—for somehow it seemed positively dangerous that the man should know I had seen him—he had his back to me. He stepped to the door of Colley’s hutch and for a long minute stared through it. I saw how one fist beat into the palm of the other hand behind his back. Then he swung impatiently to his left with a movement that seemed to cry out—I’ll be damned if I will! He stumped to the ladder and disappeared. A few seconds later I heard his firm step pass along the deck above my head.
This was a modified triumph, was it not? I had said he would come down and he had come down. But where I had pictured him endeavouring to comfort poor Colley he had shown himself either too heartless or too little politic to bring himself to do so. The nearer he had come to dissimulating his bile the higher it had risen in his throat. Yet now I had some grounds for confidence. His knowledge of the existence of this very journal would not let him be. It will be like a splinter under the nail. He would come down again—
BETA
Wrong again, Talbot! Learn another lesson, my boy! You fell at that fence! Never
again must you lose yourself in the complacent contemplation of a first success! Captain Anderson did not come down. He sent a messenger. I was just writing the sentence about the splinter when there came a knock at the door and who should appear but Mr Summers! I bade him enter, sanded my page—imperfectly as you can see—closed and locked my journal, stood up and indicated my chair. He declined it, perched himself on the edge of my bunk, laid his cocked hat on it and looked thoughtfully at my journal.
“Locked, too!”
I said nothing but looked him in the eye, smiling slightly. He nodded as if he understood—which indeed I think he did.
“Mr Talbot, it cannot be allowed to continue.”
“My journal, you mean?”
He brushed the jest aside.
“I have looked in on the man by the captain’s orders.”
“Colley? I looked in on him myself. I agreed to, you remember.”
“The man’s reason is at stake.”
“All for a little drink. Is there still no change?”
“Phillips swears he has not moved for three days.”
I made a perhaps unnecessarily blasphemous rejoinder. Summers took no notice of it.
“I repeat, the man is losing his wits.”
“It does indeed seem so.”
“I am to do what I can, by the captain’s orders, and you are to assist me.”
“I?”
“Well. You are not ordered to assist me but I am ordered to invite your assistance and profit by your advice.”
“Upon my soul, the man is flattering me! Do you know, Summers, I was advised myself to practise the art! I little thought to find myself the object of such an exercise!”
“Captain Anderson feels that you have a social experience and awareness that may make your advice of value.”
I laughed heartily and Summers joined in.
“Come Summers! Captain Anderson never said that!”
“No, sir. Not precisely.”
“Not precisely indeed! I tell you what, Summers—”
I stopped myself in time. There were many things I felt like saying. I could have told him that Captain Anderson’s sudden concern for Mr Colley began not at any moment of appeal by me but at the moment when he heard that I kept a journal intended for influential eyes. I could have given my opinion that the captain cared nothing for Colley’s wits but sought cunningly enough to involve me in the events and so obscure the issue or at the very least soften what might well be your lordship’s acerbity and contempt. But I am learning, am I not? Before the words reached my tongue I understood how dangerous they might be to Summers—and even to me.
“Well, Mr Summers, I will do what I can.”
“I was sure you would agree. You are co-opted among us ignorant tars as the civil power. What is to be done?”
“Here we have a parson who—but come, should we not have co-opted Miss Granham? She is the daughter of a canon and might be presumed to know best how to handle the clergy!”
“Be serious, sir and leave her to Mr Prettiman.”
“No! It cannot be! Minerva herself?”
“Mr Colley must claim all our attention.”
“Well then. Here we have a clergyman who—made too much of a beast of himself and refines desperately upon it.”
Summers regarded me closely, and I may say curiously.
“You know what a beast he made of himself?”
“Man! I saw him! We all saw him, including the ladies! Indeed, I tell you Summers, I saw something more than the rest!”
“You interest me deeply.”
“It is of little enough moment. But some few hours after his exhibition I saw him wander through the lobby towards the bog, a sheet of paper in his hand and for what it is worth a most extraordinary smile on that ugly mug of his.”
“What did the smile suggest to you?”
“He was silly drunk.”
Summers nodded towards the forward part of the vessel.
“And there? In the fo’castle?”
“How can we tell?”
“We might ask.”
“Is that wise, Summers? Was not the play-acting of the common people—forgive me!—directed not to themselves but to those in authority over them? Should you not avoid reminding them of it?”
“It is the man’s wits, sir. Something must be risked. Who set him on? Beside the common people there are the emigrants, decent as far as I have met them. They have no wish to mock at authority. Yet they must know as much as anyone.”
Suddenly I remembered the poor girl and her emaciated face where a shadow lived and was, as it were, feeding where it inhabited. She must have had Colley’s beastliness exhibited before her at a time when she had a right to expect a far different appearance from a clergyman!
“But this is terrible, Summers! The man should be—”
“What is past cannot be helped, sir. But I say again it is the man’s wits that stand in danger. For God’s sake, make one more effort to rouse him from his, his—lethargy!”
“Very well. For the second time, then. Come.”
I went briskly and, followed by Summers across the lobby, opened the door of the hutch and stood inside. It was true enough. The man lay as he had lain before; and indeed seemed if anything even stiller. The hand that had clutched the eyebolt had relaxed and lay with the fingers hooked through it but without any evidence of muscular tension.
Behind me, Summers spoke gently.
“Here is Mr Talbot, Mr Colley, come to see you.”
I must own to a mixture of confusion and strong distaste for the whole business which rendered me even more than usually incapable of finding the right kind of encouragement for the wretched man. His situation and the odour, the stench, emanating I suppose from his unwashed person was nauseous. It must have been, you will agree, pretty strong to contend with and overcome the general stench of the ship to which I was still not entirely habituated! However, Summers evidently credited me with an ability which I did not possess for he stood away from me, nodding at the same time as if to indicate that the affair was now in my hands.
I cleared my throat.
“Well Mr Colley, this is an unfortunate business but believe me, sir, you are refining too much on it. Uncontrolled drunkenness and its consequences is an experience every man ought to have at least once in his life or how is he to understand the experience of others? As for your relieving nature on the deck—do but consider what those decks have seen! And in the peaceful counties of our own far-off land—Mr Colley I have been brought to see, by the good offices of Mr Summers, that I am in however distant a way partly responsible for your predicament. Had I not enraged our captain—but there! I shall confess, sir, that a number of young fellows, ranged at upper-storey windows, did once, at a given signal, make water on an unpopular and bosky tutor who was passing below! Now what was the upshot of that shocking affair? Why nothing, sir! The man held out his hand, stared frowning into the evening sky, then opened his umbrella! I swear to you, sir, that some of those same young fellows will one day be bishops! In a day or two we shall all laugh at your comical interlude together! You are bound for Sydney Cove I believe and thence to Van Diemen’s Land. Good Lord, Mr Colley, from what I have heard they are more likely to greet you drunk than sober. What you need now is a dram, then as much ale as your stomach can hold. Depend upon it, you will soon see things differently.”
There was no response. I glanced enquiringly at Summers but he was looking down at the blanket, his lips pressed together. I spread my hands in a gesture of defeat and left the cabin. Summers followed me.
“Well, Summers?”
“Mr Colley is willing himself to death.”
“Come!”
“I have known it happen among savage peoples. They are able to lie down and die.”
I gestured him into my hutch and we sat side by side on the bunk. A thought occurred to me.
“Was he perhaps an enthusiast? It may be that he is taking his religion too much to heart—com
e now, Mr Summers! There is nothing to laugh at in the matter! Or are you so disobliging as to find my remark itself a subject for your hilarity?”
Summers dropped his hands from his face, smiling.
“God forbid, sir! It is pain enough to have been shot at by an enemy without the additional hazard of presenting oneself as a mark to—dare I say—one’s friends. Believe me properly sensible of my privilege in being admitted to a degree of intimacy with your noble godfather’s genteel godson. But you are right in one thing. As far as poor Colley is concerned there is nothing to laugh at. Either his wits are gone or he knows nothing of his own religion.”
“He is a parson!”
“The uniform does not make the man, sir. He is in despair I believe. Sir, I take it upon myself as a Christian—as a humble follower at however great a distance—to aver that a Christian cannot despair!”
“My words were trivial then.”
“They were what you could say. But of course they never reached him.”
“You felt that?”
“Did you not?”
I toyed with the thought that perhaps someone of Colley’s own class, a man from among the ship’s people but unspoilt by education or such modest preferment as had come his way, might well find a means to approach him. But after the words that Summers and I had exchanged on a previous occasion I felt a new delicacy in broaching such a subject with him. He broke the silence.
“We have neither priest nor doctor.”
“Brocklebank owned to having been a medical student for the best part of a year.”
“Did he so? Should we call him in?”
“God forbid—he does so prose! He described his turning from doctoring to painting as ‘deserting Aesculapius for the Muse’.”
“I shall enquire among our people forrard.”
“For a doctor?”
“For some information as to what happened.”
“Man, we saw what happened!”
Rites of Passage Page 12
