An Ocean Tramp Part 6

'd.a.m.n the ship! _I'll_ look after the ship. Go an' see yer wife.' Mr.

McAlnwick, when I got outside I laughed. An' when I got to Lime Street, and told my girl about Fallon d.a.m.nin' the ship, she laughed too. It must have been eleven o'clock when I left the hotel an' went down to the docks. When I got there she was in dry-dock. The Super had issued orders that s.s. _Lorenzo_ was to be dry-docked _after dark_, an' I saw that our luck was in. The Second Engineer was standin' by the ladder as I climbed over the side, an' ses he, solemn-like, 'Mr.

Honna, I've been to see a doctor this night, an' I'm all right now.

I'll see her no more.' 'Of course ye're all right!' ses I, chucklin', 'an' so's the _Lorenzo_. Come down an' have somethin'.' 'What are they doin'?' ses he. 'I was below this five minutes, an' I thought the bottom was comin' in.' 'Repairs,' ses I, wavin' me hand. 'Repairs.

Come down.' An' we went. 'Twas half-past one when we got down on the dock side an' peeped under. An' when we'd done laughin' we turned in.

"Well, I went down into the dock nex' mornin', an' the Surveyor was there with Mr. Fallon. He was a youngish man, an' probably he's learnt a good deal since that day, but he was just the feller for us. The Super introduced us, an' ses he, 'Mr. Honna will corroborate what I say, Mr. Blythe.' The Surveyor turned to look at the ship's bottom, and it was lucky he did, for me jaw was hangin'. Mr. McAlnwick, they'd had the hydraulic jacks under her, an' they'd pushed her to kingdom come! She was bent to the very keelson. Not a straight plate from stem to stern. 'It's marvellous, Mr. Honna!' ses the Surveyor. 'It's marvellous! How in the worrld did ye come home?' 'How?' ses I, laughin'. 'On our hands and knees, to be sure, mister.' 'Dear me!' he ses. 'Dear me!' 'Aye,' ses I. 'An' she steered to a hair, too!' And I went for'ard to look at her bows. He was a young man, an' I felt sorry for him, but our luck was in. Mr. Fallon came down into my room that afternoon, as I was puttin' on me sh.o.r.e clothes, an' ses he, 'Honna, did ye see yer wife?' 'I did, sir,' ses I. 'Is she all right?' ses he.

'No,' ses I; 'she's frettin'.' 'What's the matter wi' her?' he snaps, sittin' down where you are now. 'What?' ses I, an' I stopped as I was fixin' me collar. 'She thinks I ought to have a new hat, Mister Fallon.' An' I looked him in the eye. 'Oh!' ses he in his sharp way.

'Get five new hats--get five new hats. Have the ship ready to be moved to-morrow night. She will be discharged, and redocked for--extended repairs. Good-day,' ses he, an' he went out. An' when I looked where he'd been sittin' there was a five-poun' note in an envelope, stickin'

in the cushion."

"Did you see your wife again, Mr. Honna?"

"I did, Mr. McAlnwick, an' she pinched me black an' blue! An' when we were walkin' through the city that evenin' I saw the Second Engineer followin' a sealskin jacket along Paradise Street, and I felt glad he was leavin' to go up for his ticket."

"Is that all, Mr. Honna?" The Chief Officer's face is screwed up, his gla.s.ses are on the end of his nose (how like my old Headmaster he looks now!), and he scrutinizes the Steward's newspaper once more.

"All, Mr. McAlnwick? Apparently not, by this. Mr. Fallon'll be down to see her, for he's goin' across to see the _Giacopo_, I know, an', by thunder, he'll fix her! Never seen him in a fix yet. Eh, Nicholas?"

"Ah, he's a sharpun, by G.o.d!" This from the fervent Nicholas.

"Ses he, first thing when he put his fut on the deck when we brought the _Ludovico_ into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, 'Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don't keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch--'tis insanitary.' Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we'd had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin'

foul o' the breakwater, to say nothin' of pickin' up the telegraph cable with our anchor outside Constant!"

"Mr. Honna, tell me----"

"To-morrow, mister, to-morrow. 'Tis late, and I would turn in."

And so we end our day.

XIV

To-day's shipping news has it thus:--

_Swansea._--_Entered inwards_, _s.s. Benvenuto_. From S.

Africa. P. W. D.

Which cryptic item covers much joy, much money, and an irrepressible consumption of strong drink. O ye rabid total-abstinence mongers! If I could only lure you away on a six-thousand-mile voyage, make you work twelve hours a day, turn you out on the middle watch, feed you on bully beef and tinned milk! Where would your blue ribbons be then? My faith, gentlemen, when once you had been paid off at the bottom of Wind Street, I warrant me we should not see your backs for dust as you sprinted into the nearest hostelry!

And the joy, moreover, of receiving three months' pay in one lump sum!

Ah! one is rich as he pushes past the green baize swing-door, and through the crowd of seamen and sharks who cl.u.s.ter like flies round that same green door. To the married sailor, however, that joy is chastened by the knowledge that his "judy" has been drawing half-pay all the time, and to say nothing of the advance note of two-pound-ten which he drew on joining, to buy clothes. But Jack Tar or Jack Trimmer knows well how to drown such worries. He possesses an infinite capacity for taking liquor, which inevitably goes, not to his head, but to his feet. Six of the _Benvenuto's_ sailor-men, two firemen, and the carpenter enter our private bar as we sit drinking. An indescribable uproar invades the room immediately. They are in their best clothes--decent boots, ready-made blue serge, red tie with green spots over a six-penny-halfpenny "d.i.c.key," and a cap that would make even Newmarket "stare and gasp." Nothing will pacify them short of drinks at their expense. A sailor with yellow hair and moustache curled and oiled insufferably, insists on providing me with a pint of rum. The carpenter, a radical and Fenian when sober, sports a bowler with a decided "list." He embraces my yellow-haired benefactor, and now, to the music of "Remember Me to Mother Dear," rendered by the electric piano behind the bar, they waltz slowly and solemnly around.

The landlady implores them to stop, and the carpenter bursts into tears. It really is very much like the "Hunting of the Snark." They are so unaffectedly wealthy, so ridiculously happy, so unspeakably vulgar! They batter their silver and gold upon the bar; they command inoffensive strangers to drink monstrous potations; they ply their feet in unconscious single-steps; they forget they have not touched the last gla.s.s, and order more; they put cataclysmal questions to the blushing la.s.sie who serves them; they embrace one another repeatedly with maudlin affection, and are finally ejected by main force from the premises. All the world--below Wind Street--knows that the _Benvenuto_ has been paid off.

And we? We drink soberly to England, home, and beauty, bank our surpluses, and scuttle back to the ship. Past interminable rows of huge hydraulic cranes, over lock-gates, under gigantic coal-shoots which hurl twenty tons of coal at once into the gaping holds of filthy colliers, we stumble and hurry along to where our own steamer is berthed. That is one of the hardships of our exalted position as officers. _We_ begin again as soon as we have been paid off; _they_ depart, inebriated and uxorious, to their homes. _They_ enjoy what the political economists call "the rewards of abstinence"; _we_ put on our boiler suits and crawl about in noisome bilges, soot-choked smoke-boxes, and salt-scarred evaporators.

Nevertheless, when five o'clock strikes and work is done for the day, we put on our "sh.o.r.e clothes" (the inevitable blue serge of the seamen), light our pipes, and go into the town again. Ah! How good it is to see people, people, people! To see cars, and shops, and girls again! How wondrously, how ineffably beautiful a barmaid appears to us, who have seen no white woman for nearly four months! And book-shops! Dear G.o.d! I was in the High Street for half an hour to-night, and I have already bagged a genuine "Galignani" Byron, calf binding, yellow paper, and suppressed poems, all complete, for three shillings. It will go well in our book-case beside our Guiccioli Recollections. For myself I have a dear little "Grammont" with notes, a fine edition of Bandello's "Novelle," and a weird paper-covered copy of "Joseph Andrews," designed, presumably, to corrupt the youthful errantry of Swansea, and secreted by the vendor of Welsh devotional literature at the very bottom of the tuppenny box. In spite of Borrow's enthusiasm for Ab Gwilym, I have no craving for Welsh Theology, mostly by Jones and Williams, which is to be had by the cubic ton. No one buys it, I fear. The little la.s.s who sold me the Fielding and the "Novelle" looked pale and hungry behind the stacks of books, and I am shamed, speaking merely as a thorough-paced buyer of second-hand books, that I paid more for the latter than she would have asked. But the blue-grey eyes, the nervous poise of the head, the pride in the sensitive nostrils, reminded me of someone.... A horrible life for a young girl, my friend, a horrible life.

I took my treasures along the brilliantly lighted streets. I walked on air, happy with a mysterious happiness. I looked at myself as I pa.s.sed a shop mirror, and saw a face with a cold, cynical expression, the soul intrenched behind inscrutable, searching eyes. "You do not look happy," I said to myself as I pa.s.sed on, and I smiled. I thought again of those gaudily dressed sailors; I thought of their inane felicity, and smiled again. "_De chacun selon que son habillete, a chacun selon que ses besoins_," I muttered as I turned into an iridescent music-hall.

And now I reached the summit of experience. All the morning I was toiling in the engine-room as we ploughed across the Channel, past Lundy, and up to the Mumbles Head. I had played my part in that strange comedy of "paying off." I had toiled again in the afternoon in a dry-docked steamer, making all safe after shutting down. I had scoured the shelves of a tiny shop for books. And now I sat in the fauteuils of a modern music-hall, beholding the amazing drama of "The Road to Ruin."

Verily, as Sainte-Beuve says, "_Au theatre on exagere toujours._" Not that I would accuse the constructors of the piece of any lack of skill. Indeed, Scribe himself never displayed more consummate stage-craft or a greater sense of "situation," than they. As one gazes upon the spectacle of the impossible undergraduate's downfall, he loses all confidence in the impossibility; he believes that here indeed lies the road to ruin; he feels inexpressibly relieved when the young man thanks Heaven for his terrible dream of the future, and sits down to Conic Sections, his head between his hands. You notice this latter touch. The playwright knows his audience. He knows they think that an influx of Conic Sections strains the cerebral centres, and that study is always carried on with the head compressed between the hands. Thus the sermon reaches the hearts of those who still have occasional nightmares of the time when they conned "Parallel lines are those which, if produced ever so far both ways, will not meet." Alas!

I fear our conceptions of art are in the same predicament.

Is it not strange, though, how customs vary? In the Middle Ages one went to church to see the mystery play; now one goes to the music-hall to hear a sermon. "p.r.o.nounced by clergymen and others to be the most powerful sermon ever preached from the stage," etc. I wonder, as I scan my programme, whether the monastic playwrights of old ever published encomiums on their weird productions by prominent highwaymen. I say highwaymen because I can think of none who had a better right to criticise dramatic performances from the practical and moral standpoints. But the noise of the undergraduate as he goes crashing through his ruinous nightmare recalls me. I proceed to examine my companions in distress. All are engaged in the Road to Ruin. I think they like stage ruin--it is so thrilling. Moreover, it leaves out all that is at all middle cla.s.s. Even our wicked undergraduate never falls as low as the middle cla.s.s. He starts as a university man, and ends in a slum, but he is saved from the second-cla.s.s season ticket. I am still puzzling with this question of the middle cla.s.s as I quit the theatre and make my way down to the docks. There is a mild, misty rain falling, and I turn into my favourite tavern in Wind Street for a gla.s.s of ale. The Middle Cla.s.s!

Why, I ask myself, are they so strange in their intellectual tastes?

The wealthy I understand; the workmen I understand; but O this terrible Middle Cla.s.s! I sit musing, and four men come in upon my solitude. Obviously they are actors, rushing in for a "smile" between the acts. Obviously, I say, for their easy manners, _savoir faire_, and good breeding stamp them men of the world, and their evening dress does the rest.

"Ah, you read the _Clarion_?" observes one. I start guiltily. Yes, I had bought a copy, and I have unconsciously spread it on the table by my side. "Will you drink with us, sir?" adds another. He is not of the Middle Cla.s.s.

"Thank you, I will," I answer, and my first interlocutor glances over the paper.

"Are you a Socialist?" he inquires. "Yes," I reply. "So am I." I rise, and we shake hands. This, my friend, was beyond all my imagining. It is, moreover, _not_ middle cla.s.s. I have ridden in a suburban train day after day for years, with people who lived in the same street, without exchanging a word. Here, in this tavern, convention dares not to show her head. And I am warmed as with the cheerful sun.

"Have you been in?" asks the man who hands me my beer, and he flings his head back to indicate the theatre.

"Not yet," I answer. "What have you on this week?"

"_A Sister's Sin_. You should see it. Come to-morrow."

"_A Sister's Sin_!"

I shall not go to see it. I dare not. I had intended to ask my Socialist whether he could solve the problem of the Middle Cla.s.s for me, but he has done it. "_Au theatre on exagere toujours._" I hardly know which are the more baffling--the Middle Ages or the Middle Cla.s.ses.

XV

I have just been looking through an old, old note-book of mine, the sort of book compiled, I suppose, by every man who really sets out on the long road. I remember buying the thing, a stout volume with commercially marbled covers, at a stationer's shop in the Goswell Road. I wonder if the salesman dreamed that it would be used by the grimy apprentice to transcribe extracts from such writers as Kant and Lotze, Swinburne and Taine, Emerson and Schopenhauer? How strong, how dear to me, was all that pertained to Metaphysic in that long ago!

Often, too, I see original speculations, nave dogmatism, sandwiched between the contextual excerpts.

Worthless, of course--it should be hardly necessary to say so. And yet, as I turn the leaves, I get occasional glimpses of real thought shining through the overstrained self-consciousness, illuminating my youthful priggishness of demeanour. For instance, how could I have been so prescient to have coupled Emerson and Schopenhauer together so persistently? Here, smudged and corrected to distraction, is a pa.s.sionate defence of the former, occasioned by some academical trifler dubbing him a mere echo of Carlyle and Coleridge. I almost lived on Emerson in those days, to such good purpose, indeed, that I know him by heart. And, if I mistake not, he will come to his own again in the near future, when there will be no talk of Carlylean echoes.

All alone, sharing its page with no other thought, is this, to me, characteristic phrase: "_Mental Parabolism_, _N. B._" It was like a shock to see it once more after all these years, and I have been trying to understand it. It was born, I think, of my frenzy for a.n.a.logizing. I wanted some a.n.a.logy, in physical phenomena, for everything in my mental experience. Professor Drummond was to be left infinitely in the rear. And by parabolism, it seems according to a later note, I meant that a man's intellectual career is a curve, and that curve is a parabola, being the resultant of his mental ma.s.s into his intellectual force. The importance of this notion impresses me more now than then. It will explain how men of indubitable genius stop at certain points along the road. They can get no further, because their mental parabola is complete. All that has happened since is to them unreal and unimportant. One man I know exemplifies this to a remarkable degree. His parabola starts at the seventeenth century, rises to its maximum somewhere about the Johnsonian period, continues with scarcely abated vigour as far as Thackeray and Carlyle, declines towards Trollope and--ends. To speak of Meredith and Tolstoi, Ibsen and Maeterlinck, is to beat the air. The energy is exhausted, the mind has completed its curve; the rest is a quiet reminiscence of what has been.

It pleases me to think that there may be some grain of truth in all this, though I am not unmindful of the inevitable conclusion, that my own parabola will some day take its downward course, and I shall sit, quiescent, while the younger men around will demand stormily why I cannot see the grandeur, the profundity, of their newer G.o.ds. There lies the tragedy. Those G.o.ds, quite possibly, _will_ be greater than mine--_must_ be, if my belief in man be worth anything. Yes, that is the tragedy. I shall be at rest, and the youths of the golden future will be seeing visions and dreaming dreams of which I have not even the faintest hint.

I feel this most keenly, when reading Nietzsche, that volcanic stammerer of the thing to come. I feel, "inside," as children say, that my parabola will be finished before I can win to the burning heart of the man. It frightens me (a sign of coming fatigue) to launch out on one of his torrents of thought--veritable rushing rivers of vitriol, burning up all that is decaying and fleshly, casting away the refined, exhausted, yet exultant spirit on some lonely point of the future, where he can see the illimitable ocean of race-possibilities.

"_Oh, noon of life! Delightful garden land! Fair summer Station!_"

So, writing (steadying myself against the Atlantic roll) one fresh thought in the blank left for it in the long ago, I close the book, and take up my present life once more.