Rites of Passage Page 6

“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 at
tributes 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!

  Most of the fellow’s address was over before I made the major discovery in my, as it were, diagnosis of the situation. I had thought when I first saw how the painted face of the actrice engaged the eye of the reverend gentleman, that he experienced disgust mingled perhaps with the involuntary excitement, the first movement of warmth—no, lust—that an evident wanton will call from the male body rather than mind, by her very pronouncement of availability. But I soon saw that this would not do. Mr Colley has never been to a theatre! Where, too, would he progress, in what must surely be one of our remoter dioceses, from a theatre to a maison d’occasion? His book told him of painted women and how their feet go down to hell but did not include advice on how to recognize one by candlelight! He took her to be what her performance suggested to him! A chain of tawdry linked them. There came a moment in his address when having used the word of all others “gentlemen”, he swung to her and with a swooning archness exclaimed, “Or ladies, madam, however beautiful”, before going on with his theme. I heard a positive hiss from within Miss Granham’s bonnet and Summers crossed then uncrossed his knees.

  It ended at last, and I returned to my hutch, to write this entry, in, I am sorry to say, increasing discomfort though the motion of the ship is easy enough. I do not know what is the matter with me. I have written sourly and feel sour, that is the fact of the matter.

  (17)

  I think it is seventeen. What does it matter. I have suffered again—the colic. Oh Nelson, Nelson, how did you manage to live so long and die at last not from this noisome series of convulsions but by the less painful violence of the enemy?

  (?)

  I am up and about, pale, frail, convalescent. It seems that after all I may live to reach our destination!

  I wrote that yesterday. My entries are becoming short as some of Mr Sterne’s chapters! But there is one amusing circumstance that I must acquaint your lordship with. At the height of my misery and just before I succumbed to a large dose of Wheeler’s paregoric there came a timid knock at my hutch door. I cried “Who is there?” To which a faint voice replied, “It is I, Mr Talbot, sir. Mr Colley, sir. You remember, the Reverend Mr Colley, at your service.” By some stroke of luck rather than wit I hit on the only reply that would protect me from his visitation.

  “Leave me I beg you, Mr Colley—” a dreadful convulsion of the guts interrupted me for a moment; then—“I am at prayer!”

  Either a decent respect for my privacy or Wheeler approaching with the good draught in his hand rid me of him. The paregoric—it was a stiff and justifiable dose that knocked me out. Yet I do have some indistinct memory of opening my eyes in stupor and seeing that curious assemblage of features, that oddity of nature, Colley, hanging over me. God knows when that happened—if it happened! But now I am up, if not about, the man surely will not have the impertinence to thrust himself on me.

>   The dreams of paregoric must owe something surely to its constituent opium. Many faces, after all, floated through them so it is possible his was no more than a figment of my drugged delirium. The poor, pale girl haunted me—I hope indeed she may make a good recovery. There was under her cheekbone a right-angled hollow and I do not recollect ever having seen anything so painful to behold. The hollow and the affecting darkness that lived there, and moved did she but turn her head, touched me in a way I cannot describe. Indeed I was filled with a weak kind of rage when I returned in thought to the occasion of the service and remembered how her husband had exposed her to such a miserable farce! However, today I am more myself. I have recovered from such morbid thoughts. Our progress has been as excellent as my recovery. Though the air has become humid and hot I am no longer fevered by the pacing of Mr Prettiman overhead. He walks the afterdeck with a weapon provided of all things by the sot Brocklebank and will discharge a positive shower from his antique blunderbuss to destroy an albatross in despite of Mr Brocklebank and Mr Coleridge and Superstition together! He demonstrates to the thoughtful eye how really irrational a rationalist philosopher can be!

  (23)

  I think it is the twenty-third day. Summers is to explain the main parts of the rigging to me. I intend to surprise him with a landsman’s knowledge—most collected out of books he has never heard of! I also intend to please your lordship with some choice bits of Tarpaulin language for I begin, haltingly it is true, to speak Tarpaulin! What a pity this noble vehicle of expression has so small a literature!

  (27)

  Can a man always be counting? In this heat and humidity—

  It was Zenobia. Has your lordship ever remarked—but of course you have! What am I thinking of? There is a known, true, tried and tested link between the perception of female charms and the employment of strong drink! After three glasses I have seen twenty years vanish from a face like snow in summer! A sea voyage added to that stimulant—and one which has set us to move gently through the tropics of all places—has an effect on the male constitution that may be noted in the more recondite volumes of the profession—I mean the medical profession—but had not come my way in the course of an ordinary education. Perhaps somewhere in Martial—but I have not got him with me—or that Theocritus—you remember, midday and summer’s heat τòν Πᾶνα δεδοíκαμες. Oh yes, we may well fear Pan here or his naval equivalent whoever it may be! But sea gods, sea nymphs were chill creatures. I have to admit that the woman is most damnably, most urgently attractive, paint and all! We have met and met again. How should we not? And again! It is all madness, tropical madness, a delirium, if not a transport! But now, standing by the bulwarks in the tropic night, stars caught among the sails and swaying very gently all together, I find that I deepen my voice so that her name vibrates and yet I know my own madness—she meanwhile, why she heaves her scarcely covered bosom with more motion than stirs the glossy deep. It is folly; but then, how to describe—