To the Ends of the Earth Page 6

  This was a distancing thought and brought me to see something else. The size, the scale, was wrong. It was too large. The lady has been at least an habituée of the theatre if not a performer there! This was not a normal encounter—for now she was describing her terror in the late blow—but one, as it were, thrown outwards to where Summers at her side, Oldmeadow and a Mr Bowles across the table and indeed anyone in earshot could hear her. We were to perform. But before act one could be said to be well under weigh—and I must confess that I dallied with the thought that she might to some extent relieve the tedium of the voyage—when louder exclamations from Mr Prettiman and louder rumbles and even thunders from Mr Brocklebank turned her to seriousness again. She was accustomed to touch wood. I admitted to feeling more cheerful if a black cat should cross the road before me. Her lucky number was twenty-five. I said at once that her twenty-fifth birthday would prove to be most fortunate for her—a piece of nonsense which went unnoticed, for Mr Bowles (who is connected with the law in some very junior capacity and a thorough bore) explained that the custom of touching wood came from a papistical habit of adoring the crucifix and kissing it. I responded with my nurse’s fear of crossed knives as indication of a quarrel and horror at a loaf turned upside-down as presage of a disaster at sea—whereat she shrieked and turned to Summers for protection. He assured her she need fear nothing from the French, who were quite beat down at this juncture; but the mere mention of the French was enough to set her off and we had another description of her trembling away the hours of darkness in her cabin. We were a single ship. We were, as she said in thrilling accents,

  “—alone, alone,

  All, all alone,

  Alone on a wide, wide sea!”

  Anything more crowded than the teeming confines of this ship is not to be found, I believe, outside a debtor’s gaol or a prison hulk. But yes she had met Mr Coleridge. Mr Brocklebank—pa—had painted his portrait and there had been talk of an illustrated volume but it came to nothing.

  At about this point, Mr Brocklebank, having presumably caught his daughter’s recitation, could be heard booming on metrically. It was more of the poem. I suppose he knew it well if he had intended to illustrate it. Then he and the philosopher set to again. Suddenly the whole saloon was silent and listening to them.

  “No, sir, I would not,” boomed the painter. “Not in any circumstances!”

  “Then refrain from eating chicken, sir, or any other fowl!”

  “No sir!”

  “Refrain from eating that portion of cow before you! There are ten millions of Brahmans in the East who would cut your throat for eating it!”

  “There are no Brahmans in this ship.”

  “Integrity—”

  “Once and for all, sir, I would not shoot an albatross. I am a peaceable person, Mr Prettiman, and I would shoot you with as much pleasure!”

  “Have you a gun, sir? For I will shoot an albatross, sir, and the sailors shall see what befalls—”

  “I have a gun, sir, though I have never fired it. Are you a marksman, sir?”

  “I have never fired a shot in my life!”

  “Permit me then, sir. I have the weapon. You may use it.”

  “You, sir?”

  “I, sir!”

  Mr Prettiman bounced up into full view again. His eyes had a kind of icy brilliance about them.

  “Thank you, sir, I will, sir, and you shall see, sir! And the common sailors shall see, sir—”

  He got himself over the bench on which he had been sitting, then fairly rushed out of the saloon. There was some laughter and conversation resumed but at a lower level. Miss Zenobia turned to me.

  “Pa is determined we shall be protected in the Antipodes!”

  “He does not propose going among the natives, surely!”

  “He has some thought of introducing the art of portraiture among them. He thinks it will lead to complacency among them which he says is next door to civilization. He owns, though, that a black face will present a special kind of difficulty.”

  “It would be dangerous, I think. Nor would the governor allow it.”

  “But Mr Brocklebank—pa—believes he may persuade the governor to employ him.”

  “Good God! I am not the governor, but—dear lady, think of the danger!”

  “If clergymen may go—”

  “Oh yes, where is he?”

  Deverel touched my arm.

  “The parson keeps his cabin. We shall see little of him, I think, and thank God and the captain for that. I do not miss him, nor do you I imagine.”

  I had momentarily forgotten Deverel, let alone the parson. I now endeavoured to draw him into the conversation but he stood up and spoke with a certain meaning.

  “I go on watch. But you and Miss Brocklebank, I have no doubt, will be able to entertain each other.”

  He bowed to the lady and went off. I turned to her again and found her to be thoughtful. Not I mean that she was solemn—no, indeed! But beyond the artificial animation of her countenance there was some expression with which I confess I was not familiar. It was—do you not remember advising me to read faces?—it was a directed stillness of the orbs and eyelids as if while the outer woman was employing the common wiles and archnesses of her sex, beyond them was a different and watchful person! Was it Deverel’s remark about entertainment that had made the difference? What was—what is—she thinking? Does she meditate an affaire du coeur as I am sure she would call it, pour passer le temps?

  (12)

  As your lordship can see by the number at the head of this section I have not been as attentive to the journal as I could wish—nor is the reason such as I could wish! We have had bad weather again and the motion of the vessel augmented a colic which I trace to the late and unlamented Bessie. However, the sea is now smoother. The weather and I have improved together and by dint of resting the book and inkstand on a tray I am able to write, though slowly. The one thing that consoles me for my indisposition is that during my long sufferings the ship has got on. We have been blown below the latitudes of the Mediterranean and our speed has been limited, according to Wheeler (that living Falconer), more by the ship’s decrepitude than by the availability of wind. The people have been at the pumps. I had thought that pumps “clanked” and that I would hear the melancholy sound clearly but this was not so. In the worst of the weather I asked my visitor, Lieutenant Summers, fretfully enough why they did not pump, only to be assured the people were pumping all the time. He said it was a delusion caused by my sickness that made me feel the vessel to be low in the water. I believe I may be more than ordinarily susceptible to the movement of the vessel, that is the truth of it. Summers assures me that naval people accept the condition as nothing to be ashamed of and invariably adduce the example of Lord Nelson to bear them out. I cannot but think, though, that I have lost consequence. That Mr Brocklebank and La Belle Brocklebank were also reduced to the state in which the unfortunate Mrs Brocklebank has been ever since we left home is no kind of help. The condition of the two hutches in which that family lives must be one it is better not to contemplate.

  There is something more to add. Just before the nauseating complaint struck me—I am nigh enough recovered, though weak—a political event convulsed our society. The captain, having through Mr Summers disappointed the parson’s expectation that he would be allowed to conduct some services, has also forbidden him the quarterdeck for some infraction of the Standing Orders. What a little tyrant it is! Mr Prettiman, who parades the afterdeck (with a blunderbuss!), was our intelligencer. He, poor man, was caught between his detestation of any church at all and what he calls his love of liberty! The conflict between these attitudes and the emotions they roused in him was painful. He was soothed by, of all people, Miss Granham! When I heard this comical and extraordinary news I got out of my trough and shaved and dressed. I was aware that duty and inclination urged me forward together. The brooding captain should not dictate to me in this manner! What! Is he to tell me whether I should have a
service to attend or not? I saw at once that the passenger saloon was suitable and no man unless his habit of command had become a mania could take it from our control.

  The parson might easily hold a short evening service there for such of the passengers as chose to attend it. I walked as steadily as I could across the lobby and tapped on the door of the parson’s hutch.

  He opened the door to me and made his usual sinuous genuflection. My dislike of the man returned.

  “Mr—ah—Mr—”

  “James Colley, Mr Talbot, sir. The Reverend Robert James Colley at your service, sir.”

  “Service is the word, sir.”

  Now there was a mighty contortion! It was as if he accepted the word as a tribute to himself and the Almighty together.

  “Mr Colley, when is the Sabbath?”

  “Why today, sir, Mr Talbot, sir!”

  The eyes that looked up at me were so full of eagerness, of such obsequious and devoted humility you would have thought I had a brace of livings in my coat pocket! He irritated me and I came near to abandoning my purpose.

  “I have been indisposed, Mr Colley, otherwise I would have made the suggestion sooner. A few ladies and gentlemen would welcome it if you was to conduct a service, a short service in the passenger saloon at seven bells in the afternoon watch or, if you prefer to remain a landsman, at half-past three o’clock.”

  He grew in stature before my eyes! His own filled with tears.

  “Mr Talbot, sir, this is—is—it is like you!”

  My irritation increased. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him how the devil he knew what I was like. I nodded and walked away, to hear behind my back some mumbled remark about visiting the sick. Good God, thought I—if he tries that, he will go off with a flea in his ear! However, I managed to get to the passenger saloon, for irritation is in part a cure for weakness in the limbs, and found Summers there. I told him what I had arranged and he greeted the information with silence. Only when I suggested that he should invite the captain to attend did he smile wryly and reply that he should have to inform the captain anyway. He would make bold to suggest a later hour. I told him the hour was a matter of indifference to me and returned to my hutch and canvas chair in which I sat and felt myself exhausted but recovered. Later in the morning, Summers came to me and said that he had altered my message somewhat and hoped I did not mind. He had made it a general request from the passengers! He hastened to add that this was more comfortable to the customs of the sea service. Well. Someone who delights as I do in the strange but wholly expressive Tarpaulin language (I hope to produce some prize specimens for you) could not willingly allow the customs of the sea service to suffer. But when I heard that the little parson was to be allowed to address us I must own I began to regret my impulsive interference and understood how much I had enjoyed these few weeks of freedom from the whole paraphernalia of Established Religion!

  However, in decency I could not back down now and I attended the service our little cleric was allowed to perform. I was disgusted by it. Just previous to the service I saw Miss Brocklebank and her face was fairly plastered with red and white! The Magdalene must have looked just so, it may be leaning against the outer wall of the temple precincts. Nor, I thought, was Colley one to bring her to a more decorous appearance. Yet later I found I had underestimated both her judgement and her experience. For when it was time for the service the candles of the saloon irradiated her face, took from it the damaging years, while what had been paint now appeared a magical youth and beauty! She looked at me. Scarcely had I recovered from the shock of having this battery play on me when I discovered what further improvement Mr Summers had made on my original proposal. He had allowed in, to share our devotions with us, a number of the more respectable emigrants—Grant, the farrier, Filton and Whitlock, who are clerks, I think, and old Mr Grainger with his old wife. He is a scrivener. Of course any village church will exhibit just such a mixture of the orders; but here the society of the passenger saloon is so pinchbeck—such a shoddy example to them! I was recovering from this invasion when there entered to us—we standing in respect—five feet nothing of parson complete with surplice, cap of maintenance perched on a round wig, long gown, boots with iron-shod heels—together with a mingled air of diffidence, piety, triumph and complacency. Your lordship will protest at once that some of these attributes cannot be got together under the same cap. I would agree that in the normal face there is seldom room for them all and that one in particular generally has the mastery. It is so in most cases. When we smile, do we not do so with mouth and cheeks and eyes, indeed, with the whole face from chin to hairline! But this Colley has been dealt with by Nature with the utmost economy. Nature has pitched—no, the verb is too active. Well then, on some corner of Time’s beach, or on the muddy rim of one of her more insignificant rivulets, there have been washed together casually and indifferently a number of features that Nature had tossed away as of no use to any of her creations. Some vital spark that might have gone to the animation of a sheep assumed the collection. The result is this fledgling of the church.

  Your lordship may detect in the foregoing, a tendency to fine writing: a not unsuccessful attempt, I flatter myself. Yet as I surveyed the scene the one thought uppermost in my mind was that Colley was a living proof of old Aristotle’s dictum. There is after all an order to which the man belongs by nature though some mistaken quirk of patronage has elevated him beyond it. You will find that order displayed in crude medieval manuscripts where the colour has no shading and the drawing no perspective. Autumn will be illustrated by men, peasants, serfs, who are reaping in the fields and whose faces are limned with just such a skimped and jagged line under their hoods as Colley’s is! His eyes were turned down in diffidence and possibly recollection. The corners of his mouth were turned up—and there was the triumph and complacency! Much bone was strewn about the rest of his countenance. Indeed, his schooling should have been the open fields, with stone-collecting and bird-scaring, his university the plough. Then all those features so irregularly scarred by the tropic sun might have been bronzed into a unity and one, modest expression animated the whole!

  We are back with fine writing, are we not? But my restlessness and indignation are still hot within me. He knows of my consequence. At times it was difficult to determine whether he was addressing Edmund Talbot or the Almighty. He was theatrical as Miss Brocklebank. The habit of respect for the clerical office was all that prevented me from breaking into indignant laughter. Among the respectable emigrants that attended was the poor, pale girl, carried devotedly by strong arms and placed in a seat behind us. I have learned that she suffered a miscarriage in our first blow and her awful pallor was in contrast with the manufactured allure of La Brocklebank. The decent and respectful attention of her male companions was mocked by these creatures that were ostensibly her betters—the one in paint pretending devotion, the other with his book surely pretending sanctity! When the service began there also began the most ridiculous of all the circumstances of that ridiculous evening. I set aside the sound of pacing steps from above our heads where Mr Prettiman demonstrated his anticlericalism as noisily on the afterdeck as possible. I omit the trampings and shouts at the changing of the watch—all done surely at the captain’s behest or with his encouragement or tacit consent with as much rowdiness as can be procured among skylarking sailors. I think only of the gently swaying saloon, the pale girl and the farce that was played out before her! For no sooner did Mr Colley catch sight of Miss Brocklebank than he could not take his eyes off her. She for her part—and “part” I am very sure it was—gave us such a picture of devotion as you might find in the hedge theatres of the country circuits. Her eyes never left his face but when they were turned to heaven. Her lips were always parted in breathless ecstasy except when they opened and closed swiftly with a passionate “Amen!” Indeed there was one moment when a sanctimonious remark in the course of his address from Mr Colley, followed by an “Amen!” from Miss Brocklebank was underlined, as
it were (well, a snail has a gait!) by a resounding fart from that wind-machine Mr Brocklebank so as to set most of the congregation sniggering like schoolboys on their benches.

  However much I attempted to detach myself from the performance I was made deeply ashamed by it and vexed at myself for my own feelings. Yet since that time I have discovered a sufficient reason for my discomfort and think my feelings in this instance wiser than my reason. For I repeat, we had a handful of the common people with us. It is possible they had entered the after part of the ship in much the same spirit as those visitors who declare they wish to view your lordship’s Canalettos but who are really there to see if they can how the nobility live. But I think it more probable that they had come in a simple spirit of devotion. Certainly that poor, pale girl could have no other object than to find the comforts of religion. Who would deny them to such a helpless sufferer, however illusory they be? Indeed, the trashy show of the preacher and his painted Magdalene may not have come between her and the imagined object of her supplications, but what of the honest fellows who attended her? They may well have been stricken in the tenderest regions of loyalty and subordination.

  Truly Captain Anderson detests the church! His attitude has been at work on the people. He had given no orders, it is said, but would know how to esteem those officers who did not agree with him in his obsession. Only Mr Summers and the gangling army officer, Mr Oldmeadow, were present. You know why I was there! I do not choose to submit to tyranny!