Captain Brassbound's Conversion Part 18

LADY CICELY. What nonsense! As if anybody ever knew the whole truth about anything! (Sitting down, much hurt and discouraged.) I'm sorry you wish Captain Kearney to understand that I am an untruthful witness.

SIR HOWARD. No: but--

LADY CICELY. Very well, then: please don't say things that convey that impression.

KEARNEY. But Sir Howard told me yesterday that Captain Bra.s.sbound threatened to sell him into slavery.

LADY CICELY (springing up again). Did Sir Howard tell you the things he said about Captain Bra.s.sbound's mother? (Renewed sensation.) I told you they quarrelled, Captain Kearney. I said so, didn't I?

REDBROOK (crisply). Distinctly. (Drinkwater opens his mouth to corroborate.) Shut up, you fool.

LADY CICELY. Of course I did. Now, Captain Kearney, do YOU want me--does Sir Howard want me--does ANYBODY want me to go into the details of that shocking family quarrel? Am I to stand here in the absence of any individual of my own s.e.x and repeat the language of two angry men?

KEARNEY (rising impressively). The United States navy will have no hahnd in offering any violence to the pure instincts of womanhood. Lady Waynflete: I thahnk you for the delicacy with which you have given your evidence. (Lady Cicely beams on him gratefully and sits down triumphant.) Captain Bra.s.sbound: I shall not hold you resp.a.w.nsible for what you may have said when the English bench addressed you in the language of the English forecastle-- (Sir Howard is about to protest.) No, Sir Howard Hallam: excuse ME. In moments of pahssion I have called a man that myself. We are glahd to find real flesh and blood beneath the ermine of the judge. We will all now drop a subject that should never have been broached in a lady's presence. (He resumes his seat, and adds, in a businesslike tone) Is there anything further before we release these men?

BLUEJACKET. There are some dawc.u.ments handed over by the Cadi, sir. He reckoned they were sort of magic spells. The chahplain ordered them to be reported to you and burnt, with your leave, sir.

KEARNEY. What are they?

BLUEJACKET (reading from a list). Four books, torn and dirty, made up of separate numbers, value each wawn penny, and ent.i.tled Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of London; The Skeleton Horseman--

DRINKWATER (rushing forward in painful alarm, and anxiety). It's maw lawbrary, gavner. Down't burn em.

KEARNEY. You'll be better without that sort of reading, my man.

DRINKWATER (in intense distress, appealing to Lady Cicely) Down't let em burn em, Lidy. They dasn't if you horder them not to. (With desperate eloquence) Yer dunno wot them books is to me. They took me aht of the sawdid reeyellities of the Worterleoo Rowd. They formed maw mawnd: they shaowed me sathink awgher than the squalor of a corster's lawf--

REDBROOK (collaring him). Oh shut up, you fool. Get out. Hold your ton--

DRINKWATER (frantically breaking from him). Lidy, lidy: sy a word for me. Ev a feelin awt. (His tears choke him: he clasps his hands in dumb entreaty.)

LADY CICELY (touched). Don't burn his books. Captain. Let me give them back to him.

KEARNEY. The books will be handed over to the lady.

DRINKWATER (in a small voice). Thenkyer, Lidy. (He retires among his comrades, snivelling subduedly.)

REDBROOK (aside to him as he pa.s.ses). You silly a.s.s, you. (Drinkwater sniffs and does not reply.)

KEARNEY. I suppose you and your men accept this lady's account of what pa.s.sed, Captain Bra.s.sbound.

BRa.s.sBOUND (gloomily). Yes. It is true--as far as it goes.

KEARNEY (impatiently). Do you wawnt it to go any further?

MARZO. She leave out something. Arab shoot me. She nurse me. She cure me.

KEARNEY. And who are you, pray?

MARZO (seized with a sanctimonious desire to demonstrate his higher nature). Only dam thief. Dam liar. Dam rascal. She no lady.

JOHNSON (revolted by the seeming insult to the English peerage from a low Italian). What? What's that you say?

MARZO. No lady nurse dam rascal. Only saint. She saint. She get me to heaven--get us all to heaven. We do what we like now.

LADY CICELY. Indeed you will do nothing of the sort Marzo, unless you like to behave yourself very nicely indeed. What hour did you say we were to lunch at, Captain Kearney?

KEARNEY. You recall me to my dooty, Lady Waynflete. My barge will be ready to take off you and Sir Howard to the Santiago at one o'clawk. (He rises.) Captain Bra.s.sbound: this innquery has elicited no reason why I should detain you or your men. I advise you to ahct as escort in future to heathens exclusively. Mr. Rahnkin: I thahnk you in the name of the United States for the hospitahlity you have extended to us today; and I invite you to accompany me bahck to my ship with a view to lunch at half-past one. Gentlemen: we will wait on the governor of the gaol on our way to the harbor (He goes out, following his officers, and followed by the bluejackets and the petty officer.)

SIR HOWARD (to Lady Cicely). Cicely: in the course of my professional career I have met with unscrupulous witnesses, and, I am sorry to say, unscrupulous counsel also. But the combination of unscrupulous witness and unscrupulous counsel I have met to-day has taken away my breath You have made me your accomplice in defeating justice.

LADY CICELY. Yes: aren't you glad it's been defeated for once? (She takes his arm to go out with him.) Captain Bra.s.sbound: I will come back to say goodbye before I go. (He nods gloomily. She goes out with Sir Howard, following the Captain and his staff.)

RANKIN (running to Bra.s.sbound and taking both his hands). I'm right glad ye're cleared. I'll come back and have a crack with ye when yon lunch is over. G.o.d bless ye. (Hs goes out quickly.)

Bra.s.sbound and his men, left by themselves in the room, free and un.o.bserved, go straight out of their senses. They laugh; they dance; they embrace one another; they set to partners and waltz clumsily; they shake hands repeatedly and maudlinly. Three only retain some sort of self-possession. Marzo, proud of having successfully thrust himself into a leading part in the recent proceedings and made a dramatic speech, inflates his chest, curls his scanty moustache, and throws himself into a swaggering pose, chin up and right foot forward, despising the emotional English barbarians around him. Bra.s.sbound's eyes and the working of his mouth show that he is infected with the general excitement; but he bridles himself savagely. Redbrook, trained to affect indifference, grins cynically; winks at Bra.s.sbound; and finally relieves himself by a.s.suming the character of a circus ringmaster, flourishing an imaginary whip and egging on the rest to wilder exertions. A climax is reached when Drinkwater, let loose without a stain on his character for the second time, is rapt by belief in his star into an ecstasy in which, scorning all partnership, he becomes as it were a whirling dervish, and executes so miraculous a clog dance that the others gradually cease their slower antics to stare at him.

BRa.s.sBOUND (tearing off his hat and striding forward as Drinkwater collapses, exhausted, and is picked up by Redbrook). Now to get rid of this respectable clobber and feel like a man again. Stand by, all hands, to jump on the captain's tall hat. (He puts the hat down and prepares to jump on it. The effect is startling, and takes him completely aback.

His followers, far from appreciating his iconoclasm, are shocked into scandalized sobriety, except Redbrook, who is immensely tickled by their prudery.)

DRINKWATER. Naow, look eah, kepn: that ynt rawt. Dror a lawn somewhere.

JOHNSON. I say nothin agen a bit of fun, Capn, but let's be gentlemen.

REDBROOK. I suggest to you, Bra.s.sbound, that the clobber belongs to Lady Sis. Ain't you going to give it back to her?

BRa.s.sBOUND (picking up the hat and brushing the dust off it anxiously).

That's true. I'm a fool. All the same, she shall not see me again like this. (He pulls off the coat and waistcoat together.) Does any man here know how to fold up this sort of thing properly?

REDBROOK. Allow me, governor. (He takes the coat and waistcoat to the table, and folds them up.)

BRa.s.sBOUND (loosening his collar and the front of his shirt).

Brandyfaced Jack: you're looking at these studs. I know what's in your mind.

DRINKWATER (indignantly). Naow yer down't: nort a bit on it. Wot's in maw mawnd is secrifawce, seolf-secrifawce.

BRa.s.sBOUND. If one bra.s.s pin of that lady's property is missing, I'll hang you with my own hands at the gaff of the Thanksgiving--and would, if she were lying under the guns of all the fleets in Europe. (He pulls off the shirt and stands in his blue jersey, with his hair ruffled. He pa.s.ses his hand through it and exclaims) Now I am half a man, at any rate.

REDBROOK. A horrible combination, governor: churchwarden from the waist down, and the rest pirate. Lady Sis won't speak to you in it.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I'll change altogether. (He leaves the room to get his own trousers.)

REDBROOK (softly). Look here, Johnson, and gents generally. (They gather about him.) Spose she takes him back to England!

MARZO (trying to repeat his success). Im! Im only dam pirate. She saint, I tell you--no take any man nowhere.

JOHNSON (severely). Don't you be a ignorant and immoral foreigner. (The rebuke is well received; and Marzo is hustled into the background and extinguished.) She won't take him for harm; but she might take him for good. And then where should we be?