Программа лагеря с 3.06.13-14.06.13
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As your lordship knows, Colley wrote no more. After death-nothing. There must be nothing! The only consolation I have myself over the whole business is that I can ensure that his poor sister will never know the truth of it. Drunken Brocklebank may roar in his cabin, "Who killed cock Colley?" but she shall never know what weakness killed him, nor whose hands-mine among them-struck him down. When I was roused by Wheeler from a too brief and uneasy sleep, I found that the first part of the morning was to be passed in an enquiry. I was to sit, with Summers and the captain. Upon my objecting that the body should-in these hot latitudes-be buried first of all, Wheeler said nothing. It is plain that the captain means to cloak his and our persecutions of the man under a garment of proper, official proceedings! We sat, then, behind the table in the captain's cabin and the witnesses were paraded. The servant who had attended Colley told no more than we knew. Young Mr Taylor, hardly subdued by the man's death but in a proper awe of the captain, repeated that he had seen Mr Colley agree to taste of the rum in a spirit of something or other, he could not recollect quite whatOn my suggesting that the word might be "reconciliation" he accepted it. What was Mr Taylor doing there, forrard? (This from Mr Summers.) Mr Tommy Taylor was inspecting the stowage of the cables with a view to having the cable to the bower anchor rousted out and walked end-for-end. This splendid jargon satisfied the naval gentlemen, who nodded together as if they had been spoken to in plain English. But what was Mr Taylor doing, in that case, out of the cable locker? Mr Taylor had finished his inspection and was coming up to report and had stayed for a while, never having seen a parson in that state before. And then? (This from the captain.) Mr Taylor had "proceeded aft, sir, to inform Mr Summers" but had been "given a bottle by Mr Cumbershum before I could do so." The captain nodded and Mr Taylor retired with what looked like relief. I turned to Summers. "A bottle, Summers? What the devil did they want with a bottle?" The captain growled. "A bottle is a rebuke, sir. Let us get on." The next witness was one East, a respectable emigrant, husband to the poor girl whose emaciated face had so struck me. He could read and write. Yes, he had seen Mr Colley and knew the reverend gentleman by sight. He had not seen him during the "badger bag," as the sailors called it, but he had heard tell. Perhaps we had been told how poorly his wife was and he was in near enough constant attendance on her, himself and Mrs Roustabout taking turns, though near her own time. He had only glimpsed Mr Colley among the seamen, did not think he had said much before taking a cup with them. The applause and laughter we had heard? That was after the few words the gentleman had spoken when he was being social with the sailors; The growls and anger? He knew nothing about that. He only knew the sailors took the gentleman away with them, down where the young gentleman had been among the ropes. He had had to look after his wife, knew nothing more. He hoped we gentlemen would think it no disrespect but that was all anyone knew except the sailors who had the reverend gentleman in charge. He was allowed to withdraw. I gave it as my opinion that the only man who might enlighten us would be the fellow who had brought or carried him back to us in his drunken stupor. I said that he might know how much Colley drank and who had given it to him or forced it on him. Captain Anderson agreed and said that he had ordered the man to attend. He then addressed us in not much above a whisper: "My informant advises me this is the witness we should press." It was my turn. "I believe," I said, and braced myself-"we are doing what you gentlemen would call 'making heavy weather of it'! The man was made drunk. There are some men, as we now know to our cost, whose timidity is such that they are wounded almost to death by another's anger and whose conscience is so tender they will die of what, let us say, Mr Brocklebank would accept as a peccadillo, if that! Come, gentlemen! Could we not confess that his intemperance killed him but that our general indifference to his welfare was likely enough the cause of it!" This was bold, was it not? I was telling our tyrant that he and I together-But he was regarding me with astonishment. "Indifference, sir?" "Intemperance, sir," said Summers, quickly, "let us leave it at that." "One moment, Summers. Mr Talbot. I pass over your odd phrase, 'our general indifference'. But do you not understand? Do you think that a single bout of drinking-" "But you yourself said, sir-let us include all under a low fever!” "That was yesterday! Sir, I tell you. It is likely enough that the man, helplessly drunk, suffered a criminal assault by one, or God knows how many men, and the absolute humiliation of it killed him!" "Good God!" This was a kind of convulsion of the understanding. I do not know that I thought anything at all for minutes together. I, as it were, came to, to hear the captain talking. "No, Mr Summers. I will have no concealment. Nor will I tolerate frivolous accusations which touch me myself in my conduct of the ship and in my attitude to the passengers in her." Summers was red in the face. "I have made a submission, sir. I beg your pardon if you find it beyond the line of my duty. ' "Very well, Mr Summers. Let us get on." "But captain," said I, "no man will admit to that!" "You are young, Mr Talbot. You cannot guess what channels of information there are in a ship such as this, even though her present commission has been of such a short duration." "Channels? Your informant?" "I would prefer us to get on," said the captain heavily. "Let the man come in." Summers himself went out and fetched Rogers. It was the man who had brought Colley back to us. I have seldom seen a more splendid young fellow. He was naked to the waist and of a build that one day might be over-corpulent. But now he could stand as a model to Michelangelo! His huge chest and columnar neck were of a deep brown hue, as was his broadly handsome face save where it was scarred by some parallel scratches of a lighter tone. Captain Anderson turned to me. "Summers tells me you have claimed some skill in cross-examination." "Did he? Did I?" Your lordship will observe that I was by no means at my best in all this sory episode. Captain Anderson positively beamed at me. "Your witness, sir." This I had not bargained for. However, there was no help for it. "Now, my good man. Your name, if you please!" "Billy Rogers, my lord. Foretop man." I accepted the honorific. May it be an omen! "We want information from you, Rogers. We want to know in precise detail what happened when the gentleman came among you the other day." "What gentleman, my lord?" "The parson. The reverend Mr Colley, who is now dead." Rogers stood in the full1i2ht of the great window. I thought to myself that I had never seen a face of such wide-eyed candour. "He took a drop too much, my lord, was overcome, like." It was time to go about, as we nautical fellows say. "How came you by those scars on your face!' "A wench, my lord." "She must have been a wild cat, then." "Nigh on, my lord." "You will have your way, whether or no!' "My lord?" "You would overcome her disinclination for her own good?" “I don't know about all that, my lord. All I know is she had what was left of my pay in her other hand and would have been through the door like a pistol shot if I had not took a firm hold of her." Captain Anderson beamed sideways at me. "With your permission, my lord-' Devil take it, the man was laughing at me! "Now, Rogers. Never mind the women. What about the men?" "Sir!' Mr Co1ley suffered an outrage there in the fo'castle. Who did it?" The man's face was without any expression at all. The captain pressed him. "Come, Rogers. Would it surprise you to know that you yourself are suspected of this particular kind of beastliness?" The man's whole stance had altered. He was a little crouched now, one foot drawn a few inches behind the other. He had clenched his fists. He looked from one to the other of us quickly, as if trying to see in each face what degree of peril confronted him. I saw that he took us for enemies. " "I know nothing, Captain sir, nothing at all!" "It may not have anything to do with you, my man. But you will know who it was." "Who was who, sir?" "Why the one or many among you who inflicted a criminal assault on the gentleman so that he died of it!" "I know nothing-nothing at all" I had got my wits back. "Come, Rogers. You were the one man we saw with him. In default of any other evidence your name must head the list of suspects. What did you sailors do?" I have never seen a face of more well-simulated astonishment., "What did we do, my lord?" "Doubtless you have witnesses to testify to your innocence. If you are innocent then help us to bring the criminals to book." He said nothing, but still stood at bay. I took up the questioning again. "I mean, my good man, you can either tell us who did it, or at the very least you can furnish us with a list of the people you suspect or know to be suspected of this particular form of, of interest, of assault." Captain Anderson jerked up his chin. "Buggery, Rogers, that's what he means. Buggery." He looked down, shuffled some papers before him and dipped his pen in the ink. The silence prolonged itself into our expectancy. The captain himself broke it at last with a sound of angry impatience. "Come along, man! We cannot sit here all day!" There was another pause. Rogers turned his body rather than his head to us, one after the other. Then he looked straight at the captain. "Aye aye, sir.".. It was only then that there was a change in the man's face. He thrust his upper lip down, then as if in an experimental manner tried the texture of his lower lip judiciously with his white teeth. "Shall I begin with the officers, sir?" It was of the utmost importance that I should not move. The slightest flicker of my eye towards either Summers or the captain, the slightest contraction of a muscle would have seemed a fatal accusation. I had absolute faith in them both as far as this accusation of beastliness was concerned. As for the two officers themselves, doubtless they also had a mutual faith, yet they too did not dare risk any movement. We were waxworks. Rogers was waxworks too. It had to be the captain who made the first move and he knew it. He laid his pen' down beside the papers and spoke gravely. "Very well, Rogers. That will be all. You may return to your duties." The colour came and went in the man's face. He let out his breath in a prolonged gasp. He knuckled his forehead, began to smile, turned and went away out of the cabin. I cannot say how long the three of us sat without word or movement. For my part, it was something as simple and ordinary as the rear of doing or saying the wrong thing; yet the "wrong thing" would be, so to speak, raised to a higher power, to such a power as to be fearful and desperate. I felt in the long moments of our silence as if I could· not allow myself to think at all, otherwise my face might redden and the perspiration begin to creep down my cheek. I made by a most conscious effort my mind as nearly blank as might be and waited on the event. For surely of the three of us it was least my part to speak. Rogers had caught us in a mantrap. Can your lordship understand how already touches of suspicion came to life in my mind whether I would or no and flitted from the name of this gentleman to that? Captain Anderson rescued us from our catalepsy. He did not move but spoke as if to himself. "Witnesses, enquiries, accusations, lies, more lies, courts-martial-the man has it in his power to ruin us all if he be brazen enough, as I doubt not he is, for it would be a hanging matter. Such accusations cannot be disproved. Whatever the upshot, something would stick." He turned to Summers. "And there, Mr Summers, ends our investigation. Have we other informants?" "I believe no, sir. Touch pitch-" "Just so. Mr Talbot?" "I am all at sea, sir! But it is true enough. The man was at bay and brought out his last weapon; false witness, amounting to blackmail." "In fact," said Summers, smiling at last, "Mr Talbot is the only one of us to have profited. He had at least a temporary elevation to the peerage!" “I have returned to earth, sir-though since I was addressed as 'my lord' by Captain Anderson, who can conduct marriages and funerals-" "Ah yes. Funerals. You will drink, gentlemen? Call Hawkins in, Summers, will you? I must thank you, Mr Talbot, for your assistance.' "Of little use I fear, sir." The captain was himself again. He beamed. "A low fever then. Sherry?' "Thank you, sir. But is everything concluded? We still do not know what happened. You mentioned informants-" "This is a good sherry," said the captain brusquely. "I believe, Mr Summers, you are averse to drinking at this time of the day and you will wish to oversee the various arrangements for the unfortunate man's c0mmittal to the deep. Your health, Mr Talbot. You will be willing to sign, or rather counter-sign, a report?" 1 thought for a while. "I have no official standing in this ship." "Oh, come, Mr Talbot!" 1 thought again. "I will make a statement and sign that." Captain Anderson looked sideways up at me from under his thick brows and nodded without saying anything. I drained my glass. "You mentioned informants, Captain Anderson-" But he was frowning at me. "Did I, sir? I think not!" "You asked Mr Summers-" "Who replied there were none," said Captain Anderson loudly. "None at all Mr Talbot, not a man jack among them! Do you understand, sir? No one has come sneaking to me-no one! You can go, Hawkins!" I set down my glass and Hawkins took it away. The captain watched him leave the stateroom, then turned to me again. "Servants have ears, Mr Talbot!" "Why certainly, sir! I am very sure my fellow Wheeler has." The captain smiled grimly. "Wheeler! Oh yes indeed! That man must have ears and eyes all over him-" "Well then, until the sad ceremony of this afternoon I shall return to my journal." "Ah, the journal. Do not forget to include in it, Mr Talbot, that whatever may be said of the passengers, as far as the people and my officers are concerned this is a happy ship!" At three o'clock we were all assembled in the waist. There was a guard, composed of Oldmeadow's soldiers, with flintlocks, or whatever their ungainly weapons are called. Oldmeadow himself was in full dress and unblooded sword, as were the ship's officers. Even our young gentlemen wore their dirks and expressions of piety. We passengers were dressed as sombrely as possible. The seamen were drawn up by watches, and were as presentable as their varied garments permit. Portly Mr Brocklebank was erect but yellow and drawn from potations that would have reduced Mr Colley to a ghost. As I inspected the man I thought that Brocklebank would have gone through the whole of Colley's ordeal and fall with no more than a bellyache and a sore head. Such are the varied fabrics of the human tapestry that surrounds me! Our ladies, who must surely have had such an occasion in their minds when they fitted themselves for the voyage, were in mourning-even Brocklebank's two doxies, who supported him on either side. Mr Prettiman was present at this superstitious ritual by the side of Miss Granham, who had led him there. What is all his militant Atheism and Republicanism when pitted against this daughter of a canon of Exeter Cathedral? I made a note as I saw him fretting and barely contained at her side, that she was the one of the two with whom I must speak and to whom I must convey the kind of delicate admonition I had intended for our notorious Freethinker! You will observe that I have recovered somewhat from the effect of reading Colley's letter. A man cannot be forever brooding on what is past nor on the tenuous connection between his own unwitting conduct and someone else's deliberately criminal behaviour! Indeed, I have to own that this ceremonious naval occasion was one of great interest to met One seldom attends a funeral in such, dare I call them, exotic surroundings! Not only was the ceremony strange, but all the time--or some of it at least-our actors conducted their dialogue in Tarpaulin language. You know how I delight in that! You will already have noted some particularly impenetrable specimens as, for instance, mention of a badger bag -does not Servius (I believe it was he) declare there are half a dozen cruxes in the Aeneid which will never be solved, either by emendation or inspiration or any method attempted by scholarship? Well then, I shall entertain you with a few more naval cruxes..
The ship's bell was struck, muffled. A party of sailors appeared, bearing the body on a plank and under the union flag. It was placed with its feet towards the starboard, or honourable side, by which admirals and bodies and suchlike rarities make their exits. It was a longer body than I had expected but have since been told that two of our few remaining cannon balls were attached to the feet. Captain Anderson, glittering with bullion, stood by it. I have also been told since, that he and all the other officers were much exercised as to the precise nature of the ceremonies to be observed when, as young Mr Taylor expressed it, "piping a sky pilot over the side". Almost all our sails were clewed up and we were what the Marine Dictionary calls, technically speaking -and when does it not?- hove to, which ought to mean we were stationary in the water. Yet the spirit of force (speaking perfectly exquisite Tarpaulin) attended Colley to his end. No sooner was the plank laid on the deck than I heard Mr Summers mutter to Mr Deverel: "Depend upon it, Deverel, without you aft the driver a handspan she will make a sternboard." Hardly had he said this when there came a heavy and rhythmical thudding from the ship's hull under water as if Davey Jones was serving notice or perhaps getting hungry. Deverel shouted orders of the warrarroohoowassst! variety, the seamen leapt, while Captain Anderson, a prayerbook clutched like a grenade, turned on Lieutenant Summers. "Mr Summers! Will you have the sternpost out of her?" Summers said nothing but the thudding ceased. Captain Anderson's tone sank to a grumble. "The pintles are loose as a pensioner's teeth." Summers nodded in reply. "I know it, sir. But until she's rehung-" "The sooner we're off the wind the better. God curse that drunken superintendent!" He stared moodily down at the union flag, then up at the sails which, as if willing to debate with him, boomed back. They could have done no better than the preceding dialogue. Was it not superb? At last the captain glanced round him and positively started, as if seeing us for the first time. I 'wish I could say that he started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons but he did not. He started like a man in the smallest degree remiss who has absentmindedly forgotten that he has a body to get rid of. He opened the book and grunted a sour invitation to us to pray-and so on. Certainly he was anxious enough to get the thing over, for I have never heard a service read so fast. The ladies scarce had time to get out their handkerchiefs (tribute of a tear) and we gentlemen stared for a moment as usual into our beavers, but then, reminded that this unusual ceremony was too good to miss, all looked up again. I hoped that Oldmeadow's men would fire a volley but he has since told me that owing to some difference of opinion between the Admiralty and the War Office, they have neither flints nor powder. However, they presented arms in approximate unison and the officers flourished their swords. I wonder-was all this proper for a parson? I do not know, neither do they. A fife shrilled out and someone rattled on a muffled drum, a kind of overture, or postlude should I call it, or would envoi be a better word? You will observe, my lord, that Richard is himself again-or shall we say that I have recovered from a period of fruitless and perhaps unwarranted regret? And yet-at the last (when Captain Anderson's grumbling voice invited us to contemplate that time when there shall be no more sea) six men shrilled out a call on the bosun's pipe. Now, your lordship may never have heard these pipes so I must inform you that they have just as much music in them as the yowling of cats on heat! And yet and yet and yet! Their very harsh and shrill unmusicality, their burst of high sound leading to a long descent that died away through an uneasy and prolonged fluttering into silence, seemed to voice something beyond words, religion, philosophy. It was the simple voice of Life mourning Death. I had scarcely time to feel a touch of complacency at the directness of my own emotions when the plank was lifted and tilted. The mortal remains of the Reverend Robert James Colley shot from under the union flag and entered the water with a single loud phut! as if he had been the most experienced of divers and had made a habit of rehearsing his own funeral, so expertly was it done. Of course the cannon balls assisted. This subsidiary use of their mass was after all in keeping with their general nature. So the remains of Colley dropping deeper than did ever plummet sound were to be thought of as now finding the solid base of all. (At these necessarily ritualistic moments of life, if you cannot use the prayer book, have recourse to Shakespeare! Nothing else will do.) Now you might think that there was then a moment or two of silent tribute before the mourners left the churchyard. Not a bit of it! Captain Anderson shut his book, the pipes shrilled again, this time with a kind of temporal urgency. Captain Anderson nodded to Lieutenant Cumbershum, who touched his hat and roared: “Leeeoonnawwll!” Our obedient vessel started to turn as she moved forward and lumbered clumsily towards her original course. The ceremonially ordered ranks broke up, the people climbed everywhere into the rigging to spread our full suit of sails and add the stun's'ls to them again. Captain Anderson marched off, grenade, I mean prayerbook in hand, back to his cabin, I suppose to make an entry in his journal. A young gentleman scrawled on the traverse board and all things were as they had. been. I returned to my cabin to consider what statement I should write out and sign. It must be such as will cause his sister least pain. It shall be a low fever, as the captain wishes. I must conceal from him that I have already laid a trail of gunpowder to where your lordship may ignite it. God, what a world of conflict, of birth, death, procreation, betrothals, marriages for all I know, there is to be found in this extraordinary ship!
(&) There! I think the ampersand gives a touch of eccentricity', does it not? None of your dates, or letters of the alphabet, or presumed day of the voyage! I might have headed this section "addenda" but that would have been dull-far too, too dull! For we have come to an end, there is nothing more to be said. I mean-there is, of course, there is the daily record, but my journal, I found on looking back through it, had insensibly turned to the record of a drama-Colley's drama. Now the poor man's drama is done and he stands there, how many miles down, on his cannon balls, alone, as Mr Coleridge says, all, all alone. It seems a different sort of bathos (your lordship, as Colley might say, will note the amusing "paranomasia") to return to the small change of day to day with no drama in it, but there are yet some pages left between the rich bindings of your lordship's gift to me, and I have tried to stretch the burial out, in the hope that what might be called The Fall and Lamentable End of Robert James Colley together with a Brief Account of his Thalassian Obsequies would extend right to the last page. All was of no avail. His was a real life and a real death and no more to be fitted into a given book than a misshapen foot into a given boot. Of course my journal will continue beyond this volume-but in a book obtained for me by Phillips from the purser and not to be locked. Which reminds me how trivial the explanation of men's fear and silence concerning the purser proved to be. Phillips told me, for he is more open than Wheeler. All the officers, including the captain, owe the purser money! Phillips calls him the pusser." Which reminds me again-I employed Phillips because no matter how I shouted, I could not rouse Wheeler. He is being sought now. He was being sought Summers has just told me. The man has disappeared. He has fallen overboard. Wheeler! He has gone like a dream, with his puffs of white hair, and his shining baldness, his sanctified smile, his complete knowledge of evervthing that goes on in a ship, his paregoric, and his willingness to obtain for a gentleman anything in the wide, - wide world, provided the gentleman pays for it! Wheeler, as the captain put it, all over ears and eyes! I shall miss the man, for I cannot hope for as great a share in the services of Phillips. Already I have had to pull off my own boots, though Summers, who was present in my cabin at the time, was good enough to help. Two deaths in only a few days! "At least', said I to Summers with meaning, “no one can accuse me of having a hand in this death, can they?" He was too breathless to reply. He sat back on his heels, then stood up and watched me pull on my embroidered slippers” "Life is a formless business, Summers. Literature is much amiss in forcing a form on it!" "Not so, sir, for there are both death and birth aboard. Pat Roundabout-" "Roundabout? I thought it was 'Roustabout'!" "You may use either indifferently. But she is delivered of a daughter to be named after the ship:' "Poor, poor child! But that was the mooing I heard then, like Bessie when she broke her leg?" "It was, sir. I go now to see how they do." So he left me, these blank pages still unfilled. News, then, news! What news? There is more to be recorded but germane to the captain, not Colley. It should have been fitted in much earlier-at Act Four or even Three. Now it must come limping after the drama, like the satyr play after the tragic trilogy. It is not a denouement so much as a pale illumination. Captain Anderson's detestation of the clergy! You remember. Well now, perhaps, you and I do know all. Hist, as they say-let me bolt my hutch door! Well then-Deverel told me. He has begun to drink heavily-heavily that is in comparison with what he did before, since he has always been intemperate. It seems that Captain Anderson-fearful not only of my journal but also of the other passengers who now with the exception of steely Miss Granham believe "Poor Colley" was mistreated-Anderson, I say, rebuked the two men, Cumbershum and Deverel, savagely for their part in the affair. This meant little to Cumbershum, who is made of wood. But Deverel, by the laws of the service, is denied the satisfaction of -a gentleman. He broods and drinks. Then last night, deep in drink, he came to my hutch and in the dark hours and a muttered, slurred voice gave me what he called necessary observations on the captain's history for my journal. Yet he was not so drunk as to be unaware of danger. Picture us then, by the light of my candle, seated side by side on the bunk, Deverel whispering viciously into my ear as my head was inclined to his lips. There was, it appears, and there is, a noble family-not I believe more than distantly known to your lordship-and their land marches with the Deverels'. They, Summers would say, have used the privilege of their position and neglected its responsibilities. The father of the present young lord had in keeping a lady of great sweetness of disposition, much beauty, little understanding and, as it proved, some fertility. The use of privilege is sometimes expensive. Lord L--(this is perfect Richardson, is it not?) found himself in need of a fortune, and that instantly. The fortune was found but her family in a positively Wesleyan access of righteousness insisted on the dismissal of the sweet lady, against whom nothing could be urged save lack of a few words spoke over her by a parson. Catastrophe threatened. The dangers of her position struck some sparks from the sweet lady, the fortune hung in the balance! At this moment, as Deverel whispered in my ear, Providence intervened and the incumbent of one of the three livings that lay in the family's gift was killed in the hunting field! The heir's tutor, a dul1 sort of fel1ow, accepted of the living and the sweet lady and what Deverel called her curst cargo together. The lord got his fortune, the lady a husband and the Reverend Anderson a living, a wife and an heir gratis. In due course the boy was sent to sea, where the casual interest of his real father was sufficient to elevate him in the service. But now the old lord is dead and the young one has no cause to love his bastard half-brother! Al1 this by an unsteady candle light, querulous remarks in his sleep from Mr Prettiman, with snores and farts from Mr Brocklebank in the other direction. Oh that cry from the deck above us-"Eight bells and all's well!" Deverel, at this witching hour, put his arm about me with drunken familiarity and revealed why he had spoken so. This history was the jest he had meant to tell me. At Sydney Cove, or the Cape of Good Hope, should we put in there, Deverel intends-or the drink in him intends-to resign his commission, call the captain out and shoot him dead! "For", said he in a louder voice and with his shaking right hand lifted, "I can knock a crow off a steeple with one barker!" Hugging and patting me and calling me his good Edmund he informed me I was to act for him when the time came; and if, if by some luck of the devil, he himself was taken off, why the information was to be put fully in my famous journal-I had much ado to F him taken to his cabin without rousing the whole ship. But here is news indeed! So that is why a certain captain so detests a parson! It would surely be more reasonable in him to detest a lord! Yet there is no doubt about it. Anderson has been wronged by a lord-or by a parson-or by life-Good God! I do not care to find excuses for Anderson! Nor do I care as much for Deverel as I did. It was a misjudgement on my part to esteem him. He, perhaps, illustrates the last decline of a noble family as Mr Summers might illustrate the original of one! My wits are all to seek. I found myself thinking that had I been so much the victim of a lord's gallantry I would have become a Jacobin? Edmund Talbot? It was then that I remembered my half formed intention to bring Zenobia and Robert James Colley together to rid myse1f of a possible embarrassment. It was so like Deverel's jest I came near to detesting myself. When I realized how he and I had talked, and how he must have thought me likeminded with the "Noble family" my face grew hot with shame. Where will all this end? However, one birth does not equal two deaths. There is a general dullness among us, for say what you will, a burial at sea, however frivolously I treat' it, can not be called a laughing matter. Nor will Wheeler's disappearance lighten the air among the passengers.
Two days have passed since I diffidently forbore to ask Summers to help me on with my slippers! The officers have not been idle. Summers-as if this were a Company ship rather than a man of war-has determined we shall not have too much time left hanging on our hands. We have determined that the after end of the ship shall present the forrard end with a play! A committee has been formed with the captain’s sanction! This has thrown me will-he, nill-he, into the company of Miss Granham! It has been an edifying experience. I found that this woman, this' handsome, cultivated maiden lady, holds views which would freeze the blood of the average citizen in his veins! She does literally make no distinction between the uniform worn by our officers, the woad with which our unpolished ancestors were said to paint themselves and the tattooing rife in the South Seas and perhaps on the mainland of Australia! Worse-from the point of view of society-she, daughter of a canon, makes no distinction between the Indian's Medicine Man, the Siberian Shaman, and a Popish priest in his vestments! When I expostulated that she bid fair to include our own clergy she would only admit them to be less offensive because they made themselves less readily distinguishable from other gentlemen. I was so staggered by this conversation I could make no reply to her and only discovered the reason for the awful candour with which she spoke when (before dinner in the passenger saloon) it was announced that she and Mr Prettiman are officially engaged! In the unexpected security of her fiancailles the lady feels free to say anything! But with what an eye she has seen us! I blush to remember the many things I have said in her presence which must have seemed like the childishness of the schoolroom. However, the announcement has cheered everyone up. You may imagine the public felicitations and the private comments! I myself sincerely hope that Captain Anderson, gloomiest of Hymens, will marry them aboard so that we may have a complete collection of all the ceremonies that accompany the forked creature from the cradle to the grave. The pair seem attached they have fallen in love· after their fashion! Deverel introduced the only solemn note. He declared it was a great shame the man Calley had died, otherwise the knot might be tied there and then by a parson. At this, there was a general silence. Miss Granham, who had furnished your humble servant with her views on priests in general might, I felt, have said nothing. But instead, she came out with a quite astonishing statement. "He was a truly degraded man." "Come, ma'am,,, said I, "de mortuis and all that! A single unlucky indulgence-The man was harmless enough!" "Harmless," cried Prettiman with a kind of bounce, "a priest harmless?" "I was not referring to drink," said Miss Granham in her steeliest voice, "but to vice in another form." "Come, ma' am-I cannot believe-as a lady you cannot-" "You, sir," cried Mr Prettiman, "you to doubt a lady's word?" "No, no! Of course not! Nothing-" "Let it be, dear Mr Prettiman, I beg of you." "No, ma'am, I cannot let it go. Mr Talbot has seen fit to doubt your word and I will have an apology-" "Why," said I laughing, "you have it, ma'am, unreservedly! I never intended-' "We learnt of his vicious habits accidentally," said Mr Prettiman. "A priest! It was two sailors who were descending one of the rope ladders from the mast to the side of the vessel. Miss Granham and I-it was dark-we had retired to the shelter of that confusion of ropes at the foot of the ladder-" "Chain, ratlines-Summers, enlighten us!" "It is no matter, sir. You will remember, Miss Granham, we were discussing the inevitability of the process by which true liberty must lead to true equality and thence to-but that is no matter, neither. The sailors were unaware of our presence so that without meaning to, we heard all!" "Smoking is bad enough, Mr Talbot, but at least gentlemen go no further!" "My dear Miss Granham!" "It is as savage a custom, sir, as any known among coloured peoples!" Oldmeadow addressed her in tones of complete incredulity. "By Jove, ma'am-you cannot mean the fellow chewed tobacco!" There was a roar of laughter from passengers and officers alike. Summers, who is not given to idle laughter, joined in. "It is true," said he, when there was less noise. "On one of my earlier visits I saw a large bunch of leaf tobacco hung from the deckhead. It was spoilt by mildew and I threw it overboard." "But Summers," said I. "I saw no tobacco! And that kind of man-" "I assure you, sir. It was before you visited him." "Nevertheless, I find it almost impossible to believe." "You shall have the facts," said Prettiman with his usual choler. "Long study, a natural aptitude and a necessary habit of defence have made me expert in the recollection of casual speech, sir. You shall have the words the sailors spoke as they were spoken!" Summers lifted both hands in expostulation. "No, no-spare us, I beg you! It is of little moment after all!" "Little moment, sir, when a lady's word-it cannot be allowed to pass, sir. One of these sailors said to the other as they descended side by side-'Billy Rogers was laughing like a bilge pump when he come away from the captain's cabin. He went into the heads and I sat by him. Billy said he'd knowed most things in his time but he had never thought to get a chew off a parson!'" The triumphant but fierce look on Mr Prettiman's face, his flying hair and the instant decline of his educated voice into a precise imitation of a ruffian sort threw our audience into whoops. This disconcerted the philosopher even more and he stared round him wildly. Was anything ever more absurd? I believe it was this diverting circumstance which marked a change in our general feelings. Without the source of it being evident there strengthened among us the determination to get on with our play! Perhaps it was Mr Prettiman's genius for comedy-oh, unquestionably we must have him for our comic! But what might have been high words between the social philosopher and your humble servant passed off into the much pleasanter business of discussing what we should act and who should produce and who should do this and that! Afterwards I went out to take my usual constitutional in the waist; and lo’ there by the break of the fo'castle was "Miss Zenobia" in earnest conversation with Billy Rogers! Plainly, he is her Sailor Hero who can "Wate no longer". With what kindred spirit did he concoct his misspelt but elaborate billet-doux? Well, if he attempts to come aft and visit her in her hutch I will see him flogged for it. Mr Prettiman and Miss Granham walked in the waist too but on the opposite side of the deck, talking with animation. Miss Granham said (I heard her and believe she intended me to hear) that as he knew they should aim first at supporting those parts of the administration that might be supposed still uncorrupted. Mr Prettiman trotted beside her-she is taller than he -nodding with vehemence at the austere yet penetrating power of her intellect. They will influence each other-for I believe they are as sincerely attached as such extraordinary characters can be. But oh yes, Miss Granham, I shall not keep an eye on him-I shall keep an eye on you! I watched them pass on over the white line that separates the social orders and stand right up in the bows talking to East and that poor, pale girl, his wife. Then they returned and came straight to where I stood in the shade of an awning we have stretched from the starboard shrouds. To my astonishment. Miss Granham explained that they had been consulting with Mr East! He is, it seems, a craftsman and has to do with the setting of type! I do not doubt that they have in view his future employment. However I did not allow them to see what an interest I took in the matter and turned the conversation back to the question of what play we should show the people. Mr Prettiman proved to be as indifferent to that as to so much of the common life he is allegedly concerned with in his philosophy! He dismissed Shakespeare as a writer who made too little comment on the evils of society! I asked, reasonably enough, what society consisted in other than human beings only to find that the man did not understand me-or rather, that there was a screen between his unquestionably powerful intellect and the perceptions of common sense. He began to orate but was deflected skilfully by Miss Granham, who declared that the play Faust by the German author Goethe would have been suitable-"But," said she, "the genius of one language cannot be translated into another," "I beg your pardon, ma'am?" "I mean," said she, patiently, as to one of her young gentlemen, "you cannot translate a work of genius entirely from one language to another!" "Come now, ma'am," said I, laughing, "here at least I may claim to speak with authority! My godfather has translated Racine entire into English verse; and in the opinion of connoisseurs it equals and at some points surpasses the original!" The pair stopped, turned and stared at me as one. Mr Prettiman spoke with his usual febrile energy. "Then I would have you know, sir, that it must be unique!" I bowed to him. "Sir,' said I, "it is!" . With that and a bow to Miss Granham I took myself off, I scored, did I not? But really-they are a provokingly opinionated pair! Yet if they are provoking and comic to me I doubt not that they are intimidating to others! While I was writing this I heard them pass my hutch on the way to the passenger saloon and listened as Miss Granham cut up some unfortunate character. "Let us hope he learns in time, then!" "Despite the disadvantage of his birth and upbringing, ma’am, he is not without wit." "I grant you," said she, "he always tries to give a comic turn to the conversation and indeed one cannot help finding his laughter at his own jests infectious. But as for his opinions in general-Gothic is the only word to be applied to them!" With that they passed out of earshot. They cannot mean Deverel, surely-for though he has some pretension to wit, his birth and upbringing are of the highest order, however little he may have profited from them. Summers is the more likely candidate.
I do not know how to write this. The chain would seem too thin, the links individually too weak-yet something within me insists they are links and all joined, so that I now understand what happened to pitiable, clownish Colley! It was night, I was heated and restless, yet my mind as in a fever-a low fever indeed! went back over the whole affair and would not let me be. It seemed as if certain sentences, phrases, situations were brought successively before me-and these, as it were, glowed with a significance that was by turns farcical, gross and tragic. Summers must have guessed. There was no leaf tobacco! He was trying to protect the memory of the dead man! Rogers in the enquiry with a face of well-simulated astonishment-"What did we do, my lord?" Was that astonishment well-simulated? Suppose the splendid animal was telling the naked, the physical truth! Then Colley in his letter- what a man does defiles him, not what is done by others -Colley in his letter, infatuated with the "king of my island" and longing to kneel before him-Colley in the cable locker, drunk for the first time in his life and not understanding his condition and in a state of mad exuberance-Rogers owning in the heads that he had knowed most things in his life but had never thought to get a chew off a parson!., Oh, doubtless the man consented, jeeringly, and encouraged the ridiculous, schoolboy trick-even so, not Rogers but Colley committed the fellatio that the poor fool was to die of when he remembered it. Poor, poor Colley! Forced back towards his own kind, made an equatorial fool of -deserted, abandoned by me who could have saved him-overcome by kindness and a gill or two of the intoxicant-I cannot feel even a pharisaical complacency in being the only gentleman not to witness his ducking. Far better had I seen it so as to protest at that childish savagery! Then my offer of friendship might have been sincere rather than-I shall write a letter to Miss Colley. It will be lies from beginning to end. I shall describe my growing friendship with her brother. I shall describe my admiration for him. I shall recount all the days of his low fever and my grief at his death. A letter that contains everything but a shred of truth! How is that for a start to a career in the service of my King and Country? I believe I may contrive to increase the small store of money that will be returned to her. It is the last page of your journal, my lord, last page of the "ampersand"! I have just now turned over the pages, ruefully enough. Wit? Acute observations? Entertainment? Why-it has become, perhaps, some kind of sea-story but a sea-story with never a tempest, no shipwreck, no sinking, no rescue at sea, no sight nor sound of an enemy, no thundering broadsides, heroism, prizes, gallant defences and heroic attacks! Only one gun fired and that a blunderbuss! What a thing he stumbled over in himself! Racine declares-but let me quote your own words to you. Lo! where toils Virtue up th'Olympian fteep- With like fmall fteps doth Vice t'wads Hades creep! True indeed, and how should it be not? It is the smallness of those steps that enables the Brocklebanks of this world to survive, to attain a deboshed and saturated finality which disgusts everyone but themselves! Yet not so Colley. He was the exception. Just as his iron-shod heels shot him rattling down the steps of the ladders from the quarterdeck and afterdeck to the waist; even so a gill or two of the fiery ichor brought him from the heights of complacent austerity to what his sobering mind must have felt as the lowest hell of self-degradation. In the not too ample volume of man's knowledge of Man, let this sentence be inserted. Men can die of shame. The book is filled all but a finger's breadth. I shall lock it, wrap it and sew it unhandily in sailcloth and thrust it away in the locked drawer. With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow, a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.
Wow! В июне мы отправляемся в кругосветный тур по странам и городам «Up and Down Crazy Trip»! Мы познакомился с культурой других стран, научимся разговаривать на языке коренных жителей, научимся готовить национальные блюда, узнаем о местных традициях и примем участие в национальных обрядах! PS: паковать чемодан и готовить хорошее настроение можно уже к 3 июня и далее наше путешествие будет проведено: с 3 июня по 14 июня с 17 июня по 28 июня с 1 июля по 12 июля Программа лагеря с 3.06.13-14.06.13
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