Well. As Summers said, I am partly to blame. So are we all in one degree or another; but none of us, I think, in the same measure as our tyrant! Let me take you with me, my lord, step by step. I promise you—no, not entertainment but at the very least a kind of generous indignation and the exercise not of my, but your judgement.
I changed and dismissed Wheeler only to find his place taken by Summers, who looked positively elegant.
"Good God, Summers, you are also bidden to the feast?"
"I am to share that pleasure."
"It is an innovation, for sure."
"Oldmeadow makes a fourth."
I took out my repeater.
"It still wants more than ten minutes. What is etiquette for such a visit on shipboard?"
"Where the captain is concerned, on the last stroke of the bell."
"In that case I shall disappoint his expectations and arrive early. He anticipates, I believe, knowing me, that I shall arrive late."
My entry into Captain Anderson's stateroom was as ceremonious as an admiral could wish. The cabin, or room, rather, though not as large as the passengers' saloon or even the saloon where the lieutenants messed, was yet of palatial dimensions when compared with our meagre individual quarters. Some of the ship's full width was pared off on either side for the captain's own sleeping quarters, his closet, his personal galley, and another small cabin where I suppose an admiral would have conducted the business of a fleet. As in the lieutenants' wardroom and the passenger saloon, the rear wall, or in Tarpaulin language the after bulkhead, was one vast, leaded window by means of which something like a third of the horizon might be seen. Yet part of this window was obscured in a way that at first I could scarcely credit. Part of the obscuration was the captain, who called out as soon as I appeared in what I can only call a holiday voice.
"Come in, Mr Talbot, come in! I must apologize for not greeting you at the threshold! You have caught me in my garden."
It was so indeed. The obscuration to the great window was a row of climbing plants, each twisting itself round a bamboo that rose from the darkness near the deck where I divined the flower pots were. Standing a little to one side I could see that Captain Anderson was serving each plant into its flower pot with water from a small watering can with a long spout. The can was the sort of flimsy trifle you might find a lady using in the orangery—not indeed, to serve the trees in their enormous vats, but some quaintness of Dame Nature's own ingenuity. The morose captain might be thought to befit such a picture ill; but as he turned I saw to my astonishment that he was looking positively amiable, as if I were a lady come to visit him.
"I did not know that you had a private paradise, captain."
The captain smiled! Yes, positively, he smiled!
"Do but think, Mr Talbot, this flowering plant that I am tending, still innocent and unfallen, may have been one with which Eve garlanded herself on the first day of her creation."
"Would that not presuppose a loss of innocence, captain, precursor to the fig leaves?"
"It might be so. How acute you are, Mr Talbot."
"We were being fanciful, were we not?"
"I was speaking my mind. The plant is called the Garland Plant. The ancients, I am told, crowned themselves with it. The flower, when it appears, is agreeably perfumed and waxen white."
"We might be Grecians then and crown ourselves for the feast."
"I do not think the custom suited to the English. But do you see I have three of the plants? Two of them I actually raised from seed!"
"Is that a task as difficult as your triumphant tone would imply?"
Captain Anderson laughed happily. His chin was up, his cheeks creased, twin sparks in his little eyes.
"Sir Joseph Banks said it was impossible! 'Anderson,' he said, 'take cuttings man! You might as well throw the seeds overboard!' But I have persevered and in the end I had a box of them—seedlings, I mean—enough to supply a Lord Mayor's banquet, if—to follow your fancy—they should ever require their aldermen to be garlanded. But there! It is not to be imagined. Garlands would be as out of place as in the painted hall at Greenwich. Serve Mr Talbot. What will you drink, sir? There is much to hand, though I take no more than an occasional glass myself."
"Wine for me, sir."
"Hawkins, the claret if you please! This geranium you see, Mr Talbot, has some disease of the leaf. I have dusted it with flowers of sulphur but to no effect. I shall lose it no doubt. But then, sir, he who gardens at sea must accustom himself to loss. On my first voyage in command I lost my whole collection."
"Through the violence of the enemy?"
"No sir, through the uncommon nature of the weather which held us for whole weeks without either wind or rain. I could not have served water to my plants. There would have been mutiny. I see the loss of this one plant as no great matter."
"Besides, you may exchange it for another at Sydney Cove."
"Why must you—"
He turned away and stowed the waterpot in a box down by the plants. When he turned back I saw the creases in his cheeks again and the sparks in his eyes.
"We are a long way and a long time from our destination, Mr Talbot."
"You speak as though you do not anticipate our arrival there with pleasure."
The sparks and creases vanished.
"You are young, sir. You cannot understand the pleasures of, no, the necessity of solitude to some natures. I would not care if the voyage lasted for ever!"
"But surely a man is connected to the land, to society, to a family—"
"Family? Family?" said the captain with a kind of violence. "Why should a man not do without a family? What is there about a family, pray?"
"A man is not a, a garland plant, captain, to fertilize his own seed!"
There was a long pause in which Hawkins, the captain's servant, brought us the claret. Captain Anderson made a token gesture towards his face with half a glass of wine.
"At least I may remind myself how remarkable the flora will be at the Antipodes!"
"So you may replenish your stock."
His face was gay again.
"Many of Nature's inventions in that region have never been brought back to Europe."
I saw now there was a way, if not to Captain Anderson's heart, at least to his approval. I had a sudden thought, one worthy of a romancier, that perhaps the stormy or sullen face with which he was wont to leave his paradise was that of the expelled Adam. While I was considering this and my glass of claret, Summers and Oldmeadow entered the stateroom together.
"Come in, gentlemen," cried the captain. "What will you take, Mr Oldmeadow? As you see, Mr Talbot is content with wine—the same for you, sir?"
Oldmeadow cawed into his collar and declared he would be agreeable to a little dry sherry. Hawkins brought a broad-bottomed decanter and poured first for Summers, as knowing already what he would drink, then for Oldmeadow.
"Summers," said the captain, "I had meant to ask you. How does your patient?"
"Still the same, sir. Mr Talbot was good enough to comply with your request. But his words had no more effect than mine."
"It is a sad business," said the captain. He stared directly at me. "I shall enter in the ship's log that the patient—for such I believe we must consider him—has been visited by you, Mr Summers, and by you, Mr Talbot."
It was now that I began to understand Captain Anderson's purpose in getting us into his cabin and his clumsy way about the business of Colley. Instead of waiting till the wine and talk had worked on us he had introduced the subject at once and far too abruptly. It was time I thought of myself!
"You must remember, sir," said I, "that if the wretched man is to be considered a patient, my opinion is valueless. I have no medical knowledge whatsoever. Why, you would do better to consult Mr Brocklebank!"
"Brocklebank? Who is Brocklebank?"
"The artistic gentleman with the port-wine face and female entourage. But I jested. He told me he had begun to study medicine but had given it up."
"He has some medical experience, then?"
"No, no! I jested. The man is—what is the man, Summers? I doubt he could take a pulse!"
"Nevertheless—Brocklebank you said? Hawkins, find Mr Brocklebank and ask him to be good enough to come and see me at once."
I saw it all, saw in the entry in the log—visited by a gentleman of some medical experience! He was crude but cunning, was the captain! He was, as Deverel would say, "keeping his yardarm free". Observe how he is forcing me to report to your lordship in my journal that he has taken every care of the man, had him visited by his officers, by me, and by a gentleman of some medical experience!
No one said anything for a while. We three guests stared into our glasses as if rendered solemn by a reminder of the sick. But it could not have been more than two minutes before Hawkins returned to say that Mr Brocklebank would be happy to wait on the captain.
"We will sit down, then," said the captain. "Mr Talbot on my right—Mr Oldmeadow here, sir! Summers, will you take the bottom of the table? Why, this is delightfully domestic! Have you room enough, gentlemen? Summers has plenty of course. But we must allow him free passage to the door in case one of ten thousand affairs takes him from us about the ship's business."
Oldmeadow remarked that the soup was excellent. Summers, who was eating his with the dexterity acquired in a dozen fo'castles, remarked that much nonsense was talked about Navy food.
"You may depend upon it," he said, "where food has to be ordered, gathered, stored and served out by the thousands of ton there will be cause of complaint here and there. But in the main, British seamen eat better at sea than they do ashore."
"Bravo!" I cried. "Summers, you should be on the government benches!"
"A glass of wine with you, Mr Summers," said the captain. "What is the phrase? 'No heel taps'? A glass with all you gentlemen! But to return—Summers, what do you say to the story of the cheese clapped on the main as a mastcapping? What of the snuff-boxes carved out of beef?"
I saw out of the corner of my eye how the captain did no more than sniff the bouquet of his wine, then set the glass down. I determined to humour him if only to see round his schemes.
"Summers, I must hear you answer the captain. What of the snuff-boxes and mastcheeses—"
"Mastcappings—"
"What of the bones we hear are served to our gallant tars with no more than a dried shred of meat adhering?"
Summers smiled.
"I fancy you will sample the cheese, sir; and I believe the captain is about to surprise you with bones."
"Indeed I am," said the captain. "Hawkins, have them brought in."
"Good God," I cried, "marrow bones!"
"Bessie, I suppose," said Oldmeadow. "A very profitable beast."
I bowed to the captain.
"We are overwhelmed, sir. Lucullus could do no better."
"I am endeavouring to supply you with material for your journal, Mr Talbot."
"I give you my word, sir, the menu shall be preserved for the remotest posterity together with a memorial of the captain's hospitality!"
Hawkins bent to the captain.
"The gentleman is at the door, sir."
"Brocklebank? I will take him for a moment into the office if you will excuse me, gentlemen."
Now there occurred a scene of farce. Brocklebank had not remained at the door but was inside it and advancing. Either he had mistaken the captain's message for such an invitation as had been issued to me, or he was tipsy, or both. Summers had pushed back his chair and stood up. As if the first lieutenant had been a footman, Brocklebank sank into it.
"Thankee, thankee. Marrow bones! How the devil did you know, sir? I don't doubt one of my gals told you. Confusion to the French!"
He drained Summers's glass at a draught. He had a voice like some fruit which combines the qualities—if there be such a fruit—of peach and plum. He stuck his little finger in his ear, bored for a moment, inspected the result on the end of it while no one said anything. The servant was at a loss. Brocklebank caught a clearer sight of Summers and beamed at him.
"You too, Summers? Sit down, man!"
Captain Anderson, with what for him was rare tact, broke in.
"Yes, Summers, pull up that chair over there and dine with us."
Summers sat at a corner of the table. He was breathing quickly as if he had run a race. I wondered whether he was thinking what Deverel thought and had confided to me in his, or perhaps I ought to say our, cups—No, Talbot, this is not a happy ship.
Oldmeadow turned to me.
"There was mention of a journal, Talbot. There is a devil of a lot of writing among you government people."
"You have advanced me, sir. But it is true. The offices are paved with paper."
The captain pretended to drink, then set the glass down.
"You might well think a ship is ballasted with paper. We record almost everything somewhere or another, from the midshipmen's logs right up to the ship's log kept by myself."
"In my case, I find there is hardly time to record the events of a day before the next two or three are upon me."
"How do you select?"
"Salient facts, of course—such trifles as may amuse the leisure of my godfather."
"I hope," said the captain heavily, "that you will record our sense of obligation to his lordship for affording us your company."
"I shall do so."
Hawkins filled Brocklebank's glass. It was for the third time.
"Mr, er, Brocklebank," said the captain, "may we profit from your medical experience?"
"My what, sir?"
"Talbot—Mr Talbot here," said the captain in a vexed voice, "Mr Talbot—"
"What the devil is wrong with him? Good God! I assure you that Zenobia, dear, warm-hearted gal—"
"I myself," said I swiftly, "have nothing to do with the present matter. Our captain refers to Colley."
"The parson is it? Good God! I assure you it doesn't matter to me at my time of life. Let them enjoy themselves I said—on board I said it—or did I?"
Mr Brocklebank hiccupped. A thin streak of wine ran down his chin. His eyes wandered.
"We need your medical experience," said the captain, his growls only just below the surface, but in what for him was a conciliatory tone. "We have none ourselves and look to you—"
"I have none either," said Mr Brocklebank. "Garçon, another glass!"
"Mr Talbot said—"
"I looked round you see but I said, Wilmot, I said, this anatomy is not for you. No indeed, you have not the stomach for it. In fact as I said at the time, I abandoned Aesculapius for the Muse. Have I not said so to you, Mr Talbot?"
"You have so, sir. On at least two occasions. I have no doubt the captain will accept your excuses."
"No, no," said the captain irritably. "However little the gentleman's experience, we must profit by it."
"Profit," said Brocklebank. "There is more profit in the Muse than in the other thing. I should be a rich man now had not the warmth of my constitution, an attachment more than usually firm to the Sex and the opportunities for excess forced on my nature by the shocking corruption of English Society—"
"I could not abide doctoring," said Oldmeadow. "All those corpses, good God!"
"Just so, sir. I prefer to keep reminders of mortality at arm's length. Did you know I was first in the field after the death of Lord Nelson with a lithograph portraying the happy occasion?"
"You were not present!"
"Arm's length, sir. Neither was any other artist. I must admit to you freely that I believed at the time that Lord Nelson had expired on deck."
"Brocklebank," cried I, "I have seen it! There is a copy on the wall in the tap of the Dog and Gun! How the devil did that whole crowd of young officers contrive to be kneeling round Lord Nelson in attitudes of sorrow and devotion at the hottest moment of the action?"
Another thin trickle of wine ran down the man's chin.
"You are confusing art with actuality, sir."
"It looked plain silly to me, sir."
"It has sold very well indeed, Mr Talbot. I cannot conceal from you that without the continued popularity of that work I should be in Queer Street. It has at the very least allowed me to take a passage to, to wherever we are going, the name escapes me. And imagine, sir, Lord Nelson died down below in some stinking part of the bilges, I believe, with nothing to see him by but a ship's lantern. Who in the devil is going to make a picture of that?"
"Rembrandt perhaps."
"Ah. Rembrandt. Yes, well. At least Mr Talbot you must admire the dexterity of my management of smoke."
"Take me with you, sir."
"Smoke is the very devil. Did you not see it when Summers fired my gun? With broadsides a naval battle is nothing but a London Particular. So your true craftsman must tuck it away to where it does not obtrude—obtrude—"
"Like a clown."
"Obtrude—"
"And interrupt some necessary business of the action."
"Obtrude—captain, you don't drink."
The captain made another gesture with his glass, then looked round at the other three of his guests in angry frustration. But Brocklebank, his elbows now on either side of the marrow bone intended for Summers, droned on.
"I have always maintained that smoke properly handled can be of ma-material assistance. You are approached by some captain who has had the good fortune to fall in with the enemy and get off again. He comes to me as they did, after my lithograph. He has, for example, in company with another frigate and a small sloop—encountered the French and a battle has ensued—I beg your pardon! As the epitaph says, 'Wherever you be let your wind go free for holding mine was the death of me.' Now I ask you to imagine what would happen—and indeed my good friend, Fuseli, you know, the Shield of Achilles, and—well. Imagine!"
I drank impatiently and turned to the captain.
"I think, sir, that Mr Brocklebank—"
It was of no avail and the man drooled again without noticing.
"Imagine—who pays me? If they all pay there can be no smoke at all! Yet they must all be seen to be hotly engaged, the devil take it! They come to blows, you know!"
"Mr Brocklebank," said the captain fretfully, "Mr Brocklebank—"
"Give me one single captain who has been successful and got his K! Then there will be no argument!"
"No," said Oldmeadow, cawing into his collar, "no indeed!"
Mr Brocklebank eyed him truculently.
"You doubt my word, sir? Do you, because if you do, sir—"
"I, sir? Good God no, sir!"
"He will say, 'Brocklebank,' he will say. 'I don't give a tuppenny damn for me own part, but me mother, me wife and me fifteen gals require a picture of me ship at the height of the action!' You follow? Now after I have been furnished with a copy of the gazette and had the battle described to me in minutest detail he goes off in the happy delusion that he knows what a naval battle looks like!"
The captain raised his glass. This time he emptied it at a gulp. He addressed Brocklebank in a voice which would have scared Mr Taylor from one end of the ship to the other if not farther.
"I for my part, sir, should be of his opinion!"
Mr Brocklebank, to indicate the degree of his own cleverness, tried to lay a finger cunningly on the side of his nose but missed it.
"You are wrong, sir. Were I to rely on verisimilitude—but no. Do you suppose that my client, who has paid a deposit—for you see he may be off and lose his head in a moment—"
Summers stood up.
"I am called for, sir."
The captain, with perhaps the only glimmer of wit I have found in him, laughed aloud.
"You are fortunate, Mr Summers!"
Brocklebank noticed nothing. Indeed, I believe if we had all left him he would have continued his monologue.
"Now do you suppose the accompanying frigate is to be portrayed with an equal degree of animation? She has paid nothing! That is where smoke comes in. By the time I have done my layout she will have just fired and the smoke will have risen up round her; and as for the sloop, which will have been in the hands of some obscure lieutenant, it will be lucky to appear at all. My client's ship on the other hand will be belching more fire than smoke and will be being attacked by all the enemy at once."
"I could almost wish," said I, "that the French would afford us an opportunity for invoking the good offices of your brush."
"There's no hope of that," said the captain glumly, "no hope at all."
Perhaps his tone affected Mr Brocklebank, who went through one of those extraordinarily swift transitions which are common enough among the inebriated from cheerfulness to melancholy.
"But that is never the end of it. Your client will return and the first thing he will say is that Corinna or Erato never carried her foremast stepped as far forrard as that and what is that block doing on the main brace? Why, my most successful client—apart from the late Lord Nelson if I may so describe him—as a client I mean—was even foolish enough to object to some trifling injuries I had inflicted on the accompanying frigate. He swore she had never lost her topmast, her fore topmast I think he said, for she was scarcely in cannon shot. Then he said I had shown no damage in the region of the quarterdeck of his ship, which was not accurate. He forced me to beat two gunports into one there and carry away a great deal of the rail. Then he said, 'Could you not dash me in there, Brocklebank? I distinctly remember standin' just by the broken rail, encouragin' the crew and indicatin' the enemy by wavin' me sword towards them.' What could I do? The client is always right, it is the artist's first axiom. 'The figure will be very small, Sir Sammel,' said I. 'That is of no consequence,' said he. 'You may exaggerate me a little.' I bowed to him. 'If I do that, Sir Sammel,' said I, 'it will reduce your frigate to a sloop by contrast.' He took a turn or two up and down my studio for all the world like our captain here on the quarterdeck. 'Well,' said he at last, 'you must dash me in small, then. They will know me by me cocked hat and me epaulettes. It's of no consequence to me, Mr Brocklebank, but me good lady and me gals insist on it.'"
"Sir Sammel," said the captain. "You did say 'Sir Sammel'?"
"I did. Do we move on to brandy?"
"Sir Sammel. I know him. Knew him."
"Tell us all, Captain," said I, hoping to stem the flow. "A shipmate?"
"I was the lieutenant commanding the sloop," said the captain moodily, "but I have not seen the picture."
"Captain! I positively must have a description of this," said I. "We landsmen are avid, you know, for that sort of thing!"
"Good God, the shloop! I have met the sh—the other sh—the lieutenant. Captain, you must be portrayed. We will waft away the sh—the smoke and show you in the thick of it!"
"Why so he was," said I. "Can we believe him anywhere else? You were in the thick of it, were you not?"
Captain Anderson positively snarled.
"The thick of the battle? In a sloop? Against frigates? But Captain—Sir Sammel I suppose I must say—must have thought me in the thick of it for he bawled through his speaking trumpet, 'Get to hell out of this, you young fool, or I'll have you broke!'"
I raised my glass to the captain.
"I drink to you, sir. But no blind eye? No deaf ear?"
"Garçon, where is the brandy? I must limn you, Captain, at a much reduced fee. Your future career—"
Captain Anderson was crouched at the table's head as if to spring. Both fists were clenched on it and his glass had fallen and smashed. If he had snarled before, this time he positively roared.
"Career? Don't you understand, you damned fool? The war is nigh over and done with and we are for the beach, every man jack of us!"
There was a prolonged silence in which even Brocklebank seemed to find that something unusual had happened to him. His head sank, then jerked up and he looked round vacantly. Then his eyes focused. One by one, we turned.
Summers stood in the doorway.
"Sir. I have been with Mr Colley, sir. It is my belief the man is dead."
Slowly, each of us rose, coming, I suppose, from a moment of furious inhospitality to another realization. I looked at the captain's face. The red suffusion of his anger had sunk away. He was inscrutable. I saw in his face neither concern, relief, sorrow nor triumph. He might have been made of the same material as the figurehead.
He was the first to speak.
"Gentlemen. This sorry affair must end our, our meeting."
"Of course, sir."
"Hawkins. Have this gentleman escorted to his cabin. Mr Talbot. Mr Oldmeadow. Be good enough to view the body with Mr Summers to confirm his opinion. I myself will do so. I fear the man's intemperance has destroyed him."
"Intemperance, sir? A single, unlucky indulgence?"
"What do you mean, Mr Talbot?"
"You will enter it so in the log?"
Visibly, the captain controlled himself.
"That is something for me to consider in my own time, Mr Talbot."
I bowed and said nothing. Oldmeadow and I withdrew and Brocklebank was half-carried and half-dragged behind us. The captain followed the little group that surrounded the monstrous soak. It seemed that every passenger in the ship, or at least the after part of it, was congregated in the lobby and staring silently at the door of Colley's cabin. Many of the crew who were not on duty, and most of the emigrants, were gathered at the white line drawn across the deck and were staring at us in equal silence. I suppose there must have been some noise from the wind and the passage of the ship through the water but I, at least, was not conscious of it. The other passengers made way for us. Wheeler was standing on guard at the door of the cabin, his white puffs of hair, his bald pate and lighted face—I can find no other description for his expression of understanding all the ways and woes of the world—gave him an air of positive saintliness. When he saw the captain he bowed with the unction of an undertaker or indeed as if the mantle of poor, obsequious Colley had fallen on him. Though the work should have gone to Phillips, it was Wheeler who opened the door, then stood to one side. The captain went in. He stayed for no more than a moment, came out, motioned me to enter, then strode to the ladder and up to his own quarters. I went into the cabin with no great willingness, I can assure you! The poor man still clutched the eyebolt—still lay with his face pressed against the bolster, but the blanket had been turned back and revealed his cheek and neck. I put three hesitant fingers on his cheek and whipped them back as if they had been burned. I did not choose, indeed I did not need, to lean down and listen for the man's breathing. I came out to Colley's silent congregation and nodded to Mr Oldmeadow who went in, licking pale lips. He too came out quickly.
Summers turned to me.
"Well, Mr Talbot?"
"No living thing could be as cold."
Mr Oldmeadow turned up his eyes and slid gently down the bulkhead until he was sitting on the deck. Wheeler, with an expression of holy understanding, thrust the gallant officer's head between his knees. But now, of all inappropriate beings, who should appear but Silenus? Brocklebank, perhaps a little recovered or perhaps in some extraordinary trance of drunkenness, reeled out of his cabin and shook off the two women who were trying to restrain him. The other ladies shrieked and then were silent, caught between the two sorts of occasion. The man wore nothing but a shirt. He thrust, weaving and staggering, into Colley's cabin and shoved Summers aside with a force that made the first lieutenant reel.
"I know you all," he shouted, "all, all! I am an artist! The man is not dead but shleepeth! He is in a low fever and may be recovered by drink—"
I grabbed the man and pulled him away. Summers was there, too. We were mixed with Wheeler and stumbling round Oldmeadow—but really, death is death and if that is not to be treated with some seriousness—somehow we got him out into the lobby, where the ladies and gentlemen were silent again. There are some situations for which no reaction is suitable—perhaps the only one would have been for them all to retire. Somehow we got him back to the door of his hutch, he meanwhile mouthing about spirits and low fever. His women waited, silent, appalled. I was muttering in my turn.
"Come now, my good fellow, back to your bunk!"
"A low fever—"
"What the devil is a low fever? Now go in—go in, I say! Mrs Brocklebank—Miss Brocklebank, I appeal to you—for heaven's sake—"
They did help and got the door shut on him. I turned away, just as Captain Anderson came down the ladder and into the lobby again.
"Well gentlemen?"
I answered both for Oldmeadow and myself.
"To the best of my belief, Captain Anderson, Mr Colley is dead."
He fixed me with his little eyes.
"I heard mention of 'a low fever', did I not?"
Summers came out, closing the door of Colley's cabin behind him. It was an act of curious decency. He stood, looking from the captain to me and back again. I spoke unwillingly—but what else could I say?
"It was a remark made by Mr Brocklebank who is, I fear, not wholly himself."
I swear the captain's cheeks creased and the twin sparks came back. He looked round the crowd of witnesses.
"Nevertheless, Mr Brocklebank has had some medical experience!"
Before I could expostulate he had spoken again and with the tyrannical accents of his service.
"Mr Summers. See that the customary arrangements are made."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The captain turned and retired briskly. Summers continued in much the same accents as his captain.
"Mr Willis!"
"Sir!"
"Bring aft the sailmaker and his mate and three or four able-bodied men. You may take what men of the off-duty watch are under punishment."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Here was none of the pretended melancholy our professional undertakers have as their stock-in-trade! Mr Willis departed forrard at a run. The first lieutenant then addressed the assembled passengers in his customary mild accents.
"Ladies and gentlemen, you will not wish to witness what follows. May I request that the lobby be cleared? The air of the quarterdeck is to be recommended."
Slowly the lobby cleared until Summers and I were left together with the servants. The door of Brocklebank's hutch opened and the man stood there grotesquely naked. He spoke with ludicrous solemnity.
"Gentlemen. A low fever is the opposite of a high fever. I bid you good day."
He was tugged backwards and reeled. The door was shut upon him. Summers then turned to me.
"You, Mr Talbot?"
"I have the captain's request still to comply with, have I not?"
"I fancy it has ended with the poor man's death."
"We talked of noblesse oblige and fair play. I found myself translating the words by a single one."
"Which is?"
"Justice."
Summers appeared to consider. "You have decided who is to appear at the bar?"
"Have not you?"
"I? The powers of a captain—besides, sir, I have no patron."
"Do not be so certain, Mr Summers."
He looked at me for a moment in bewilderment. Then he caught his breath. "I—?"
But men of the crew were trotting aft towards us. Summers glanced at them, then back at me.
"May I recommend the quarterdeck?"
"A glass of brandy is more appropriate."
I went into the passenger saloon and found Oldmeadow slumped there in a seat under the great stern window, an empty glass in his hand. He was breathing deeply and perspiring profusely. But the colour was back in his cheeks. He muttered to me.
"Damned silly thing to do. Don't know what came over me."
"Is this how you behave on a stricken field, Oldmeadow? No, forgive me! I am not myself either. The dead, you see, lying in that attitude as I had so recently seen him—why even then he might have been—but now, stiff and hard as—where the devil is that steward? Steward! Brandy here and some more for Mr Oldmeadow!"
"I know what you mean, Talbot. The truth is I have never seen a stricken field nor heard a shot fired in anger except once when my adversary missed me by a yard. How silent the ship has become!"
I glanced through the saloon door. The party of men was crowding into Colley's cabin. I shut the door and turned back to Oldmeadow.
"All will be done soon. Oldmeadow—are our feelings unnatural?"
"I wear the King's uniform yet I have never before seen a dead body except the occasional tarred object in chains. This has quite overcome me—touching it I mean. I am Cornish, you see."
"With such a name?"
"We are not all Tre, Pol and Pen. Lord, how her timbers grind. Is there a change in her motion?"
"It cannot be."
"Talbot, do you suppose—"
"What, sir?"
"Nothing."
We sat for a while and I attended more to the spreading warmth of the brandy through my veins than anything else. Presently Summers came in. Behind him I glimpsed a party of men bearing a covered object away along the deck. Summers himself had not yet recovered from a slight degree of pallor.
"Brandy for you, Summers?"
He shook his head. Oldmeadow got to his feet.
"The afterdeck and a breath of air for me, I think. Damned silly of me it was. Just damned silly."
Presently Summers and I were alone.
"Mr Talbot," he said, in a low tone, "you mentioned justice."
"Well, sir?"
"You have a journal."
"And—?"
"Just that."
He nodded meaningly at me, got up, and left. I stayed where I was, thinking to myself how little he understood me after all. He did not know that I had already used that same journal—nor that I planned this plain account to lie before one in whose judgement and integrity—
My lord, you was pleased to advise me to practise the art of flattery. But how can I continue to try it on a personage who will infallibly detect the endeavour? Let me be disobedient to you if only in this, and flatter you no more!
Well then, I have accused the captain of an abuse of power; and I have let stand on the page Summers's own suggestion that I myself was to some extent responsible for it. I do not know what more the name of justice can demand of me. The night is far advanced—and it is only now as I write these words that I remember the Colley Manuscript in which there may be even plainer evidence of your godson's culpability and our captain's cruelty! I will glance through what the poor devil wrote and then get me to bed.
* * *
I have done so oh God, and could almost wish I had not. Poor, poor Colley, poor Robert James Colley! Billy Rogers, Summers firing the gun, Deverel and Cumbershum, Anderson, minatory, cruel Anderson! If there is justice in the world—but you may see by the state of my writing how the thing has worked on me—and I—I!
There is light filtering through my louvre. It is far advanced towards morning then. What am I to do? I cannot give Colley's letter, this unbegun, unfinished letter, cannot give this letter to the captain, though that for sure, legalistical as it might sound, is what I ought to do. But what then? It would go overboard, be suppressed, Colley would have died of a low fever and that would be all. My part would disappear with it. Do I refine too much? For Anderson is captain and will have chapter and verse, justifications for everything he has done. Nor can I take Summers into my confidence. His precious career is at stake. He would be bound to say that though I was perhaps right to appropriate the letter I have no business to suppress it.
Well. I do not suppress it. I take the only way towards justice—natural justice I mean, rather than that of the captain or the law courts—and lay the evidence in your lordship's hands. He says he is "For the beach". If you believe as I do that he went beyond discipline into tyranny then a word from you in the right quarter will keep him there.
And I? I am writ down plainer in this record than I intended, to be sure! What I thought was behaviour consonant with my position—
Very well, then. I, too.
Why Edmund, Edmund! This is methodistical folly! Did you not believe you were a man of less sensibility than intelligence? Did you not feel, no, believe, that your blithely accepted system of morality for men in general owed less to feeling than to the operations of the intellect? Here is more of what you will wish to tear and not exhibit! But I have read and written all night and may be forgiven for a little lightheadedness. Nothing is real and I am already in a half-dream. I will get glue and fix the letter in here. It shall become another part of the Talbot Manuscript.
His sister must never know. It is another reason for not showing the letter. He died of a low fever—why, that poor girl there forrard will die of one like enough before we are done. Did I say glue? There must be some about. A hoof of Bessie. Wheeler will know, omniscient, ubiquitous Wheeler. And I must keep all locked away. This journal has become deadly as a loaded gun.
The first page, or it may be two pages, are gone. I saw them, or it, in his hand when he walked, in a trance of drunkenness, walked, head up and with a smile as if already in heaven—
Then at some time after he had fallen into a drunken slumber, he woke—slowly perhaps. There was, it may be, a blank time when he knew not who or what he was—then the time of remembering the Reverend Robert James Colley.
No. I do not care to imagine it. I visited him that first time—Did my words bring to his mind all that he had lost? Self-esteem? His fellows' respect? My friendship? My patronage? Then, then in that agony he grabbed the letter, crumpled it, thrust it away as he would have thrust his memory away had it been possible—away, deep down beneath the bunk, unable to bear the thought of it—
My imagination is false. For sure he willed himself to death, but not for that, not for any of that, not for a casual, a single—
Had he committed murder—or being what he was—!
It is madness, absurdity. What women are there at that end of the ship for him?
And I? I might have saved him had I thought less of my own consequence and less of the danger of being bored!
Oh those judicious opinions, those interesting observations, those sparks of wit with which I once proposed to entertain your lordship! Here instead is a plain description of Anderson's commissions and my own—omissions.
Your lordship may now read:
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