Читать книгу The Pretender - Robert William Service - Страница 9
ОглавлениеA SEASICK SENTIMENTALIST
If ever I should come to write my autobiography (as I fondly hope in the fulness of time my recognition as the American Dumas will justify me in doing) it will fall easily into chapters. For, so far, my life has consisted of distinct periods, each inspired by a dramatic conception of myself. Let me then try to forecast its probable divisions.
Chapter I.—Boyhood. Violently imaginative period.—Devouring ambition to become pirate chief.—Organised the "Band of Blood."—Antipathy to study.—Favourite literature: Jack Harkaway.
Chapter II.—Youth. Violently athletic period.—Devouring ambition to become great first baseman.—Organised the Angoras. Continued antipathy to study.—Favourite literature: The sporting rags.
Chapter III.—Cubhood. Violently red blood period.—Devouring ambition to become champion broncho buster.—Went to Wyoming, and became the most cowboyish cowboy in seven counties.—Favourite literature: The yellow rags.
Chapter IV.—Undergraduate days. Violently intellectual period.—Devouring ambition to become literary mandarin.—Gave up games and became a bookworm.—Commenced to write, but disdained anything less than an epic.—Favourite literature: The French decadents.
Chapter V.—Adolescence. Violently histrionic period.—Devouring ambition to become a second Mansfield.—Joined the Cruel Chicago Company as general utility.—Chief literature: The theatrical rags.
Chapter VI.—Manhood. At age of twenty-one wrote The Haunted Taxicab, and scored immediate success.—Devouring ambition to write the Great American Novel.—Published nine more books in next five years, and managed to hold my own.
There you are—down to the time of which the present record tells. And now, in accordance with the plot, let me continue.
On a certain muggy morning of late November, a young man of conspicuously furtive bearing might have been seen climbing aboard the steamer bound for Naples. He wore the brim of his velour hat turned down, with the air of one who entirely wishes to avoid observation.
Over one arm hung a mackintosh, and at the end of the other dangled an alligator-skin suitcase. An inventory of its contents would have resulted as follows: A silk-lined, blue serge suit; three silk negligé shirts; three suits silk pyjamas; three suits silk underwear; three pairs silk socks; several silk ties, and sundry toilet articles.
If, in the above list, an insistence on the princely fabric is to be remarked, I must confess that I shrink from the contact of baser material. It was then with some dismay that I descended into the bowels of the ship, and was piloted to my berth by a squinting steward in shirt-sleeves. I gazed with distaste at the threadbare cotton blanket that was to replace the cambric sheets of the mighty. Then I looked at the oblique-eyed one, and observed that nonchalantly over his arm was hung another blanket of more sympathetic texture, and that his palm protruded in a mercenary curve. So into that venial hollow I dropped half a dollar, and took the extra blanket. Then throwing my suitcase on the berth, I went on deck.
Shades of Cæsar! Garibaldi! Caruso! What had I "gone up against"? One and all my fellow passengers seemed to be of the race of garlic eaters. Not a stodgy Saxon face among them. Verily I was marooned in a sea of dagos. Here we were, caged like cattle; above us, a tier of curious faces, the superior second class; still higher, looking down with disdain, the fastidious firsts. And here, herded with these degenerate Latins, under these derisive eyes, must I remain many days. What a wretched prospect! What rotten luck! And all the fault of these gad-about Chumley Graces, confound them!
But I did not lament for long. If ever there is an opening for the sentimentalist it is on leaving for the first time his native land. Could it be expected, then, that I, a professional purveyor of sentiment, would be silent? Nay! as I watched the Statue of Liberty diminish to an interrogation mark, I delivered myself somewhat as follows:
"Grey sea, grey sky, and grey, so grey;
The ragged roof-line of my home;
Yet greyer far my mood than they,
As here amid this spawn of Rome
With tenderness undreamt before
I sigh: 'Adieu, my native shore!'
"To thee my wistful eyes I strain;
To thee, brave burg, I wave my hand;
Good-bye, oh giddy Tungsten Lane!
Good-bye, oh great Skyscraper Land!
Good-bye, Fifth Avenue so splendid ....!!"
And here my doggerel I ended.... Horrors on horrors! Could I believe my eyes? There, looking down from the promenade deck, in long ulsters and jaunty velour hats, were the three Misses Chumley Grace. They were laughing happily, and looking right at me. Could anything, I wonder, have equalled the rapidity of my retreat? As rabbit dives into its burrow, as otter into its pool, so dived I, down, down to the dark hole they called my cabin, where I collapsed disgustedly on my bunk.
And there for five days I remained.
It may be assumed (so much are we the creatures of an artificial environment) that it is only in the more acute phases of life we realise our truer selves. As a woman in the dental chair, as a fat man coaxing a bed down a narrow stairway, as both sexes in the clutches of mal-de-mer, are for the moment stripped of all paltering pretence, so in the days that followed I had many illuminating glimpses of my inner nature. Never was a man more rent, racked, ravaged by the torments of sea-sickness. But let me read you an extract from my diary:
"Eight hundred Italians on board, and we are packed like sardines in a keg. Our wedge-shaped cabin is innocent of ventilation. The bunks are three tiers high and three abreast; so that, as I have an outer one, a hulky Dago ascends and descends me a hundred times a day. Also I am on the lower row, and as both the men above me are violently sick, my situation may be imagined. The sourly stinking floors are swilled out every morning. My only comfort is that I am too calloused with misery to care about anything.
"It's the awful, brutal sinking that fixes me; as if I were suddenly being let down the elevator shaft of the Singer Building at full speed, ten thousand times a day, then as suddenly yanked up again. By the dim light I can see hundreds of cockroaches crawling everywhere around me, elongated, coffee-coloured cockroaches, big ones, middle-sized ones, tiny baby ones. They wander to and fro, fearless and apparently aimless. But perhaps I am wrong about this. Perhaps they are moved by a purpose; perhaps they are even in the midst of a celebration—following the mazes of a cockroach cotillion. As I lie watching them I speculate on this. What they live on may be guessed at. And as if to mock me on my bed of woe all the rollicking, frolicking sea-songs I have ever heard keep up a devilish concert in my head, singing the praises of this fiendish and insatiable sea."
For nine-tenths of his time the artist lives the lives of other men more vividly than his own; for the other tenth, his own ten times more vividly than other men. Of such transcendent tenths creation comes. It was then from the very poignancy of my sufferings that I began to evolve a paper on the pangs of mal-de-mer. It was to be the final expression of the psychology of sea-sickness. Even as I lay squirming in that sour, viscid gloom I rejoiced in the rapture of creation. It seemed, I thought, the best thing I had ever done. Though I had not put pen to paper, there it was, clearly written in my brain, every word sure of its election, every sentence ringing true. I longed to see it staring at me from the printed page.
And on the morning of the sixth day I arose and regarded my shaving mirror. My face had peaked and paled, and was covered with fluffy hair, so that I looked like a pre-Raphaelite Christ. Indeed, so æsthetic was my appearance I had to restrain myself from speaking in blank verse.
How glorious was the clear, sweet air again! | With every breath of it I felt new life. | The sea was very amiable now, | and playing children paved the sunlit deck. | A score of babies punctuated the picturesque confusion. On the decks above the plebeian seconds and the patrician firsts presented two tiers of amused faces. They were like curious spectators looking down into a bear pit.
Then suddenly did I realise my severance from my class, and, strange to say, it aroused in me a kind of defiant rage. For the first time democracy inspired me. For five days I had starved and suffered—or was it five years? Anyway, the life of luxury and ease seemed far away. Goaded by the gay shouts of the shuffle-boarders on the upper deck, I felt to the full the resentment of the under-dog; yea, ready to raise the red flag of revolt behind blood-bolstered barricades of hate.
But all at once I became conscious of another sensation equally exorbitant. It was the first pang of a hunger such as never in my life had I endured. In imagination I saw myself at Sherry's, conning the bill of fare. With what an undreamt-of gusto I made a selection! How I revelled in a dazzling vision of delicate dishes served with sympathy! It was a gourmet's dream, the exquisite conception of a modern Lucullus. I almost drooled as I dictated it to a reverent head-waiter. Yea, I was half hunger-mad. When, oh when, would lunch-time come?
It came. It was the first meal I had seen served in the steerage, and it was served in buckets. You dipped into one, spiked a slab of beef floating in greasy swill, shovelled a wad of macaroni from a tin wash-basin to your tin plate, grabbed a chunk of stale bread from a clothes basket: there you were, set up for another five hours.
Too ravenous to demur, I seized my tin plate and rushed the ration-slingers. The messy meat I could not stomach, but I pried loose a little mountain of macaroni. I was busy wolfing it when on looking up I saw the youngest Miss Chumley Grace regarding me curiously. With many others she had come to see the animals fed.
"It's dollars to doughnuts," I thought, "she'll never know me in this beard. But all the same I'll keep my face concealed."
I had finished feeding, and was washing my plate at a running tap, when all at once I dropped it as if it had been red-hot. Brushing every one aside I made a leap for my cabin, and reached it, I will swear, in record time. Frantically I felt under the pillow of my bunk. Too late! Too late! The wallet in which I kept my money was gone.
"Alas!" I sighed. "My faith in Roman honesty has received a nasty knock."
I did not report my loss. I was afraid the inevitable fuss would betray me to the Chumley Graces. I seemed to spend my whole time dodging them now. Once or twice I found the spectacled gaze of poppa fixed upon me. Many times I sneaked away under the scrutiny of the girls. All this added to my other miseries, which in themselves might have served Dante for another canto of his Inferno.
But at last it was over. There was the blue bay of Naples. Now we were manœuvring into the seething harbour. Now we were keeping off with streams of water boatmen who retaliated by hurling billets of wood. Now we were throwing dimes to the diving boys. Now there ran through the ship the thrill of first contact with the dock. Hurrah! In a few more moments I should be free, free to follow the Trail of Beautiful Adventure. True, I was broke; but what a fine, clean feeling that was!
Clutching my alligator-skin suitcase I reconnoitered, with conspiratorial wariness. Cautiously I crept out. Softly I sneaked over to the nearest gangway. My foot was on it; in another moment I would have made my escape. I could have laughed with joy when—a little hand was laid on my arm, and turning quickly I found myself face to face with the youngest Miss Chumley Grace.
"Oh, Mr. Madden," she chirped, "we knew you all along, but it's been such fun watching you. Do tell me, now, aren't you just doing it for a bet?"
