To the Ends of the Earth (12 page)

Wrong again, Talbot! Learn another lesson, my boy! You fell at that fence! Never again must you lose yourself in the complacent contemplation of a first success! Captain Anderson did not come down. He sent a messenger. I was just writing the sentence about the splinter when there came a knock at the door and who should appear but Mr Summers! I bade him enter, sanded my page—
imperfectly
as you can see—closed and locked my journal, stood up and indicated my chair. He declined it, perched
himself
on the edge of my bunk, laid his cocked hat on it and looked thoughtfully at my journal.

“Locked, too!”

I said nothing but looked him in the eye, smiling slightly. He nodded as if he understood—which indeed I think he did.

“Mr Talbot, it cannot be allowed to continue.”

“My journal, you mean?”

He brushed the jest aside.

“I have looked in on the man by the captain’s orders.”

“Colley? I looked in on him myself. I agreed to, you remember.”

“The man’s reason is at stake.”

“All for a little drink. Is there still no change?”

“Phillips swears he has not moved for three days.”

I made a perhaps unnecessarily blasphemous rejoinder. Summers took no notice of it.

“I repeat, the man is losing his wits.”

“It does indeed seem so.”

“I am to do what I can, by the captain’s orders, and you are to assist me.”

“I?”

“Well. You are not ordered to assist me but I am ordered to invite your assistance and profit by your
advice
.”

“Upon my soul, the man is flattering me! Do you know, Summers, I was advised myself to practise the art! I little thought to find myself the object of such an exercise!”

“Captain Anderson feels that you have a social
experience
and awareness that may make your advice of value.”

I laughed heartily and Summers joined in.

“Come Summers! Captain Anderson never said that!”

“No, sir. Not precisely.”

“Not precisely indeed! I tell you what, Summers—”

I stopped myself in time. There were many things I felt like saying. I could have told him that Captain
Anderson’s
sudden concern for Mr Colley began not at any moment of appeal by me but at the moment when he heard that I kept a journal intended for influential eyes. I could have given my opinion that the captain cared
nothing
for Colley’s wits but sought cunningly enough to involve me in the events and so obscure the issue or at the very least soften what might well be your lordship’s
acerbity
and contempt. But I am learning, am I not? Before the words reached my tongue I understood how
dangerous
they might be to Summers—and even to me.

“Well, Mr Summers, I will do what I can.”

“I was sure you would agree. You are co-opted among us ignorant tars as the civil power. What is to be done?”

“Here we have a parson who—but come, should we not have co-opted Miss Granham? She is the daughter of a canon and might be presumed to know best how to handle the clergy!”

“Be serious, sir and leave her to Mr Prettiman.”

“No! It cannot be! Minerva herself?”

“Mr Colley must claim all our attention.”

“Well then. Here we have a clergyman who—made too much of a beast of himself and refines desperately upon it.”

Summers regarded me closely, and I may say
curiously
.

“You know what a beast he made of himself?”

“Man! I saw him! We all saw him, including the ladies! Indeed, I tell you Summers, I saw something more than the rest!”

“You interest me deeply.”

“It is of little enough moment. But some few hours after his exhibition I saw him wander through the lobby towards the
bog
, a sheet of paper in his hand and for what it is worth a most extraordinary smile on that ugly mug of his.”

“What did the smile suggest to you?”

“He was silly drunk.”

Summers nodded towards the forward part of the vessel.

“And there? In the fo’castle?”

“How can we tell?”

“We might ask.”

“Is that wise, Summers? Was not the play-acting of the common people—forgive me!—directed not to
themselves
but to those in authority over them? Should you not avoid reminding them of it?”

“It is the man’s wits, sir. Something must be risked. Who set him on? Beside the common people there are the emigrants, decent as far as I have met them.
They
have no wish to mock at authority. Yet they must know as much as anyone.”

Suddenly I remembered the poor girl and her
emaciated
face where a shadow lived and was, as it were,
feeding
where it inhabited. She must have had Colley’s beastliness exhibited before her at a time when she
had a right to expect a far different appearance from a clergyman!

“But this is terrible, Summers! The man should be—”

“What is past cannot be helped, sir. But I say again it is the man’s wits that stand in danger. For God’s sake, make one more effort to rouse him from his, his—lethargy!”

“Very well. For the second time, then. Come.”

I went briskly and, followed by Summers across the lobby, opened the door of the hutch and stood inside. It was true enough. The man lay as he had lain before; and indeed seemed if anything even stiller. The hand that had clutched the eyebolt had relaxed and lay with the fingers hooked through it but without any evidence of muscular tension.

Behind me, Summers spoke gently.

“Here is Mr Talbot, Mr Colley, come to see you.”

I must own to a mixture of confusion and strong
distaste
for the whole business which rendered me even more than usually incapable of finding the right kind of encouragement for the wretched man. His situation and the odour, the stench, emanating I suppose from his unwashed person was nauseous. It must have been, you will agree, pretty
strong
to contend with and overcome the general stench of the ship to which I was still not entirely habituated! However, Summers evidently credited me with an ability which I did not possess for he stood away from me, nodding at the same time as if to indicate that the affair was now in my hands.

I cleared my throat.

“Well Mr Colley, this is an unfortunate business but believe me, sir, you are refining too much on it.
Uncontrolled
drunkenness and its consequences is an experience every man ought to have at least once in his life or how is he to understand the experience of others? As for your relieving nature on the deck—do but consider what those
decks have seen! And in the peaceful counties of our own far-off land—Mr Colley I have been brought to see, by the good offices of Mr Summers, that I am in however distant a way partly responsible for your predicament. Had I not enraged our captain—but there! I shall confess, sir, that a number of young fellows, ranged at
upper-storey
windows, did once, at a given signal, make water on an unpopular and bosky tutor who was passing below! Now what was the upshot of that shocking affair? Why nothing, sir! The man held out his hand, stared frowning into the evening sky, then opened his umbrella! I swear to you, sir, that some of those same young fellows will one day be bishops! In a day or two we shall all laugh at your comical interlude together! You are bound for Sydney Cove I believe and thence to Van Diemen’s Land. Good Lord, Mr Colley, from what I have heard they are more likely to greet you drunk than sober. What you need now is a dram, then as much ale as your stomach can hold. Depend upon it, you will soon see things differently.”

There was no response. I glanced enquiringly at Summers but he was looking down at the blanket, his lips pressed together. I spread my hands in a gesture of defeat and left the cabin. Summers followed me.

“Well, Summers?”

“Mr Colley is willing himself to death.”

“Come!”

“I have known it happen among savage peoples. They are able to lie down and die.”

I gestured him into my hutch and we sat side by side on the bunk. A thought occurred to me.

“Was he perhaps an enthusiast? It may be that he is taking his religion too much to heart—come now, Mr Summers! There is nothing to laugh at in the matter! Or are you so disobliging as to find my remark itself a subject for your hilarity?”

Summers dropped his hands from his face, smiling.

“God forbid, sir! It is pain enough to have been shot at by an enemy without the additional hazard of presenting oneself as a mark to—dare I say—one’s friends. Believe me properly sensible of my privilege in being admitted to a degree of intimacy with your noble godfather’s genteel godson. But you are right in one thing. As far as poor Colley is concerned there is nothing to laugh at. Either his wits are gone or he knows nothing of his own religion.”

“He is a parson!”

“The uniform does not make the man, sir. He is in despair I believe. Sir, I take it upon myself as a Christian—as a humble follower at however great a distance—to aver that a Christian
cannot
despair!”

“My words were trivial then.”

“They were what you could say. But of course they
never
reached him.”

“You felt that?”

“Did you not?”

I toyed with the thought that perhaps someone of Colley’s own class, a man from among the ship’s people but unspoilt by education or such modest preferment as had come his way, might well find a means to approach him. But after the words that Summers and I had exchanged on a previous occasion I felt a new delicacy in broaching such a subject with him. He broke the silence.

“We have neither priest nor doctor.”

“Brocklebank owned to having been a medical student for the best part of a year.”

“Did he so? Should we call him in?”

“God forbid—he does so prose! He described his
turning
from doctoring to painting as ‘deserting Aesculapius for the Muse’.”

“I shall enquire among our people forrard.”

“For a doctor?”

“For some information as to what happened.”

“Man, we
saw
what happened!”

“I mean in the fo’castle or below it, rather than on deck.”

“He was made beastly drunk.”

I found that Summers was peering at me closely.

“And that was all?”

“All?”

“I see. Well, sir, I shall report back to the captain.”

“Tell him I shall continue to consider how we may devise some method of bringing the wretched fellow to his senses.”

“I will do so; and must thank you for your assistance.”

Summers left and I was alone with my thoughts and this journal. It was so strange to think that a young fellow not much above my years or Deverel’s and certainly not as old as Cumbershum should have so strong an instinct for self-destruction! Why, Aristotle or no, half an hour of La Brocklebank—even Prettiman and Miss Granham—and
there
, thought I, is a situation I must get acquainted with for a number of reasons, the least of them
entertainment
: and then—

What do you suppose was the thought that came into my mind? It was of the pile of manuscript that had lain on the flap of Colley’s table! I had not noticed the flap or the papers when Summers and I entered the cabin; but now, by the incomprehensible faculties of the human mind I, as it were, entered the cabin
again
and surveying the scene I had just left, I saw in my mind that the writing-flap was empty! There is a subject for a savant’s investigation! How can a man’s mind go back and see what he saw not? But so it was.

Well. Captain Anderson had co-opted me. He should find out, I thought, what sort of overseer he had brought into the business!

I went quickly to Colley’s cabin. He lay as before. Only when I was inside the hutch did I return to a
kind
at least of apprehension. I intended the man nothing but good and I was acting on the captain’s behalf; yet there was in my mind an unease. I felt it as the effect of the captain’s rule. A tyrant turns the slightest departure from his will into a crime; and I was at the least contemplating
bringing
him to book for his mistreatment of Mr Colley. I looked quickly round the cabin. The ink and pens and sander were still there, as were the shelves with their books of devotion at the foot of the bed. It seemed there was a limit to their efficacy! I leaned over the man
himself
.

It was then that I perceived without seeing—I knew, but had no real means of knowing—

There had been a time when he had awakened in
physical
anguish which had quickly passed into a mental one. He lay like that in deepening pain, deepening
consciousness
, widening memory, his whole being turning more and more from the world till he could desire nothing but death. Phillips could not rouse him nor even Summers. Only I—my words after all had touched something. When I left him after that first visit, glad enough to be gone, he had leapt from his bunk in some
new
agony! Then, in a passion of self-disgust he had swept his papers from the table. Like a child he had seized the whole and had jammed them into a convenient crack as if it would stay unsearched till doom’s day! Of course. There was, between the bunk and the side of the vessel a space, just as in my own hutch, into which a man might thrust his hand as I then did in Colley’s. They encountered paper and I drew out a crumpled mass of sheets all written, some cross-written, and all, I was certain, material evidence against our tyrant in the case of Colley versus Anderson! I put the papers quickly into the bosom of my coat, came
out—unseen I pray God!—and hurried to my cabin. There I thrust the mass of papers into my own
writing-case
and locked it as if I were concealing the spoils of a burglary! After that I sat and began to write all this in my journal as if seeking, in a familiar action, some legal security! Is that not comic?