Читать книгу Command - William McFee - Страница 6

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"You will be pleased to hear, sweetheart, that I have already got promotion, I am now chief officer, next to the captain. I dare say, in a short time your only will be coming home to take a command. I am persevering with the Course you gave me, and I find it a great assistance. Of course I have a great deal more to do now, especially as the last man was scarcely up to his work. … While as for the captain, I may as well tell you … "

And so on. Mr. Spokesly wrote this letter from Alexandria, where the Tanganyika was discharging rails and machinery. He wrote it to Ada, who was staying with her family, including her married sister, in Cornwall, because of the air raids. She read it by the low roar of the autumnal seas round the Cornish coast and she was thrilled. Having written it, Mr. Spokesly dressed himself in discreet mufti and went ashore with his bosom friend, Archy Bates. His commander, walking to and fro on the bridge with his after-dinner cigar, saw them disappear between the tracks and the piles of freight. He frowned. He was no snob, but he had most explicit views about a ship's officer's relations with the rest of mankind. It was, in his opinion, infra dig to associate with a steward. He had mentioned it pointedly yet good-humouredly one day, and at his amazement Mr. Spokesly had replied that he would please himself in a private matter. Captain Meredith had been so flabbergasted at this wholly unexpected turn of the conversation that he said no more. Later he put it down to swelled head. Yet what else could be done? Mr. Spokesly had a master's certificate and the third mate had none at all. Captain Meredith began to muse regretfully upon the loss of his chief officer. For although Mr. Spokesly had omitted to mention it, the immediate cause of his promotion was the sudden death at sea of his predecessor. That gnarled and taciturn being, whose round moon-face had relapsed with age to the consistency of puckered pink parchment, had been for many years "taking care of himself." In that remote epoch when he was young it may be doubted whether he had done this, for he bore the marks of a life lived to the very delirious verge. That was long before Mr. Spokesly had got into short pants, however. Mr. McGinnis took care of himself day and night. He had achieved a miraculous balance of forces within his frame, a balance which enabled him to stand his watch on the bridge and give orders to the bo'sun, but no more. He would pass with a stealthy quietness along the deck and into his room, and there sit, his claw-like hands on the arms of his chair, his emaciated form encased in a diamond-patterned kimono, his pink jaws working noiselessly on a piece of some patent chewing gum, of which he carried a stock. Sometimes he read a page or two of a quiet story, but usually he switched off the electric and sat chewing far into the night. At a quarter to four one morning, the Asiatic sailor who came to arouse him discovered him hanging by his arms to the edge of his bunk, as though crucified, his appallingly thin limbs sprawling and exposing tattooings of astonishing design and colouring, his jaw hanging, his sunken eyes staring with senseless curiosity at a spot on the carpet. The Japanese sailor went back to Mr. Spokesly, who was on watch on the bridge, and reported impassively, "Chief mate all same one stiff." Mr. Spokesly was incredulous, though he knew from experience the uncanny prescience of the Oriental in such matters. "What? Sick?" he inquired in a whisper. The Japanese, a diminutive white wraith in the profound gloom of the bridge, replied, "No sick. All same one stiff. No can do." This was his final word. Mr. Spokesly hurriedly aroused the captain, who came out on the bridge and told them to go down together. They went down and Mr. Spokesly had a violent shock. He told Archy Bates afterwards he had "had a turn." He did all that a competent officer could do. He spoke sharply the man's name. "Mr. McGinnis!" and Mr. McGinnis continued to regard the spot on the carpet with intense curiosity. He felt the breast, held a shaving glass to the lips of the silent McGinnis, and realized that the Oriental who stood by the door, his dark face impassive and his gaze declined upon the floor, was perfectly right. As Mr. Spokesly raised the stiffened arms the kimono fell open, and he had another violent shock, for Mr. McGinnis had evidently been a patron of the art of tattooing in all its branches. His arms and torso formed a ghastly triptych of green and blue figures with red eyes. Contrasted with the pallor of death the dreadful designs took on the similitude of living forms. With a movement of hasty horror Mr. Spokesly laid the body on the settee and went away to call Mr. Chippenham and the chief steward.

The conjectures which followed were most of them beside the mark. The fact was, intelligence has its limits. The miraculous balance of forces had been in some obscure way disturbed, and Mr. McGinnis, like the one-hoss shay, had simply crumbled to dust at the appointed time. Captain Meredith was sorry, for Mr. McGinnis had been what is known as "a good mate." And Captain Meredith, whether from mere prejudice or genuine conviction, was unable to discern the makings of a "good mate" in Mr. Spokesly. It was almost miraculous, he reflected, how the work of the ship had got balled up since the invaluable McGinnis, neatly sewed up in some of his own canvas, had made a hole in the Mediterranean. It should be understood that Captain Meredith was a humane man. He was also a seafaring man. The fact that McGinnis had been excommunicated from the church of his baptism did not deter Captain Meredith from reading the burial service over him. And his annoyance at seeing his new chief officer and the steward "as thick as thieves," as he put it, was really a humane feeling. He had served in ships where the commander had been utterly at the mercy of some contemptible dish-washer who had wormed himself into his superior's confidence, acting perhaps as a go-between in some shady deal. He had seen a veteran shipmaster, a man of fine presence and like no one so much as some retired colonel of guards, running ignominiously along the quay to fetch back a dirty little half-breed steward, who had seen fit to take offence and who knew too much. Captain Meredith had seen these things, and though he kept them locked up in his own breast he did not forget them. He was perfectly well aware of the precarious hold most of us have upon honour. He knew that a certain austerity of demeanour was the only practicable armour against many temptations.

But of course Captain Meredith couldn't be expected to understand Mr. Spokesly's state of mind. Mr. Spokesly didn't understand it himself. It was scarcely sufficient to say that his promotion had carried him away. Far from it. He regarded this step as merely a start. What had inspired him at the moment to "stand up to the Old Man" was nothing less than a wave of genuine emotion. You see, he really liked Archy Bates so far as he knew him then. They were real chums, telling each other their grievances and sharing a singularly identical opinion of the Old Man's fitness for his job. There are more unions of souls in this world than materialists would like us to believe. What Captain Meredith mistook for harsh and ill-timed impudence was really a thickness of utterance and a sudden vision of injustice. Once done, and the Old Man reduced to an amazed silence, the incident took in Mr. Spokesly's mind a significance so tremendous that he hardly knew what to think. He had "tackled the Old Man"! He had broken the spell of a lifetime of silent obsequiousness to a silly convention. After all … And, moreover, it took will power to do it. He was improving. The London School of Mnemonics had achieved another miracle. He went over it all again in Archy Bates's cabin, Archy's ear close to his mouth, door shut, curtains folded across the window. You never can tell who's listening on a ship. … "I turns an' says to him, 'Look here, Captain' … " Archy listening with intensity, his shoulders hunched, his opaque, agate-like eyes glittering on each side of his long sharp nose, while his thumb and forefinger slowly and repeatedly thrust back his pomatumed and waxed moustache from his lips, and breathing "Jus' fancy! … And you told him that? … Goo' Lord! … Well, I always knew 'e 'ad no use for me. … " Mr. Spokesly pulled Archy Bates close up to him so that his lips were actually funnelled in the other's ear and breathed back: "Take it from me, Archy, he ain't fit for his job!"

Archy Bates had risen, just then, to get the corkscrew. He was profoundly moved, and actually found himself trying to open a bottle of whiskey with a button-hook. He showed his idiocy to Mr. Spokesly. "Jus' fancy. I don't know what I'm doin', straight." And they both laughed. But he was profoundly moved. He was preoccupied with the possible developments of this tremendous affair. Mr. Spokesly, by virtue of that last insane whisper, had of course delivered himself over, body, soul, and spirit, to the steward, but Mr. Spokesly was a friend of his. He had quite other plans for Mr. Spokesly. He stared harder than the job warranted as he put the bottle between his knees and hauled on the corkscrew. Pop! They drank, and the act was as a seal on a secret compact.

And it was that—a compact so secret that even they, the parties to it, were scarcely conscious of the pledge. But as the days passed, days of hasty clandestine comparing of grievances in each other's rooms, days of whispering apart, days followed by nights of companionship ashore, each realized how necessary was the other to his full appreciation of life. Archy Bates found Mr. Spokesly a tower of strength and a house of defence. If any complaint sounded in his presence concerning stores, Mr. Spokesly was silent for a space and then walked away. Only that vulgar third engineer was insensible to the superb reproof. "There goes the flunkey's runner," he remarked, in execrable taste, and Mr. Spokesly was obliged to ignore him. On the other hand, Mr. Spokesly found in Archy Bates a sympathetic soul, a wit that jumped with his own and understood without tedious circumlocution "how he felt about it." More precious than rubies is a friend who understands how you feel about it. He found in Archy a gentleman who was master of what was to Mr. Spokesly an incredible quantity of ready cash. At first Mr. Spokesly had apologetically borrowed "half a quid till to-morrow, being short somehow," and Archy had scorned to split a sovereign. In some way only partially understood by Mr. Spokesly as yet, certain eddies of the vast stream of gold and paper which was turning the wheels of the war swirled into the pockets of Archy Bates. He had it to burn, as they say. It was bewildering in its variety. British, American, French, Italian, Greek, Egyptian, and Japanese notes were rolled into one inexhaustible wad. More bewildering even than this was Archy Bates's uncanny command of gold. It was extraordinary how this impressed Mr. Spokesly. At a time when sovereigns and eagles and napoleons had practically vanished from the pockets of the private citizen, Archy Bates had bags of them. And like his paper currency, it was of all nations. Ten-rouble Russian pieces, twenty-drachma Greek pieces, Australian sovereigns, and massive Indian medals worth twenty dollars each, chinked and jingled against the homelier coinage of France and England. "Business, my boy, business!" he would explain with a snigger when he met Mr. Spokesly's rapt gaze of amazement. Very good business, too, the latter thought, and sighed. But there was one point about Archy which distinguished him from many owners of gold. He spent it. There lay the magic of his power over Mr. Spokesly's mesmerized soul. He spent it. Mr. Spokesly saw him and helped him spend it. Those princely disbursements night after night in Alexandria postulated some source of supply. And night after night Mr. Spokesly, pleasantly jingled with highballs and feminine society, felt himself being drawn nearer and nearer the mysterious source from which gushed that cosmopolitan torrent of money. Mr. Spokesly was in the right mood for the revelation. He was serious. He was a practical man. He needed no London School of Mnemonics to teach him to cultivate a man with plenty of money. When he and Archy Bates had walked quickly away from the ship and passed the guard at Number Six Gate, they could scarcely be recognized by one who had seen them an hour before, Mr. Spokesly silently munching his dinner under the Old Man's frown, Archy in his pantry, encased in a huge white apron, bending his sharp nose over the steaming dishes, and communicating in violent pantomime with the saloon waiter.

Now they stood side by side, brothers, magnificently superior to all the world. A dingy carriage rattled up and Archy waved it away impatiently. Another, with two horses and rubber tires, was hailed and engaged. "Might as well do the thing well," said Archy, and Mr. Spokesly agreed in every fibre of his soul. And it was the same with everything else. "My motto is," said Archy, "everything of the best, eh? Can't go far wrong then. He-he!" The third engineer, vulgarian that he was, would have laughed a shrill, derisive cackle had he heard that speech. The third engineer was under the illusion that only the virtuous have ideals. He was wrong. Archy Bates's profession of faith was sincere and genuine. He had an instinct for what he called the best, which was the most expensive. What else could be the best? A love of elegance and refinement was very widespread in those days of high wages and excessive profits. Archy's wife (for he had a wife and three children in a suburb of Liverpool) was rapidly filling her instalment-purchased home with costly furniture. Only a month ago a grand piano had been put in, and she had had the dining-room suite reupholstered in real pigskin. Mr. Spokesly knew all this and it almost unmanned him to think that he was on the way to this eldorado. One night, soon after their arrival in Alexandria, Archy had hinted there was no reason why he, Mr. Spokesly, shouldn't be "in it," too. This was late in the evening, when they were seated on a balcony high above the glitter and noise of the Boulevard Ramleh, a balcony belonging to a house of fair but expensive reception, of which Archy was a munificent patron. Archy, after two bottles of whiskey, had become confidential. He had hinted that his friend Reggie should be "put next" the business which produced such amazing returns. Reggie had waited to hear more but, with amusing inconsequence, Archy had changed the subject, relapsed indeed into a tantalizing dalliance with a lady friend.

But to-night, in sober earnest, for Archy had had little besides a bottle of gin since rising in the morning, he proposed that they should join a business friend of his, and have a quiet little dinner somewhere. Mr. Spokesly was all eyes, all ears, all intelligent receptiveness. He enquired who the business friend might be, and Archy, who had his own enthusiasms, let himself go. His friend, Jack Miller, had been out there for years. With Swingles, the ship-chandlers. Occupied, Archy surmised, a very high position there. Had worked himself up. Plenty of skippers did business with Swingles simply because Jack was there. If he liked to leave, Archy hadn't any doubt he'd take a good half of Swingles' business with him. Knew all the languages, French, Greek, Arabic, and so on. Kept his own hours, went in and out as he liked. Archy only wished he had Jack Miller's job!

Mr. Spokesly listened greedily. As they debouched upon the great Place Mohammed Aly, with its myriads of lights and sounds, its illuminated Arabic night signs, its cracking of whips and tinkling of bells and glasses, its gorgeous, tessellated platoons of café tables, he took a deep breath. He felt he was upon the threshold of a larger life, inhaling a more invigorating air. It seemed to him he was about to quit the dreary humdrum world of watch-keeping and monthly wages for a region where dwelt those happy beings who had no fixed hours, who made money, who had it "to burn," as they say.

And Jack Miller, whom they met that night and many nights after, was a magnificent accessory of the illusion. He was a dapper little man in fashionable clothes, a runner for a local ship-chandler, who introduced them to half-a-dozen ship-captains of a certain type, and together they went round the vast tenderloin district of the city. Mr. Spokesly was conscious of a grand exaltation during the day when he recalled his nightly association with these gentlemen. There were others, dark-skinned Greeks and Levantines in long-tasselled fezes, who joined them in their pursuit of pleasure in the great blocks of buildings behind the Boulevard Ramleh and their jaunts, in taxicabs, to San Stefano. They were, as Archy put it, over whiskey and soda in his cabin, gentlemen worth knowing, men with property and businesses. And it was one of these, one evening on the balcony of the Casino at San Stefano, who mentioned casually that he often did business with Saloniki and that if Mr. Spokesly ever had any little things to dispose of on his return, he would be glad to make him an offer, privately, of course. He often did this with Mr. Bates, he added, to their mutual satisfaction. Mr. Spokesly was charmed.

And Captain Meredith, walking the upper bridge and seeing a good deal more than either Mr. Spokesly or Mr. Bates imagined, wondered how it would all end. Indeed, Captain Meredith did a good deal of wondering in those days. He saw the wages going steadily up and up, and discipline and efficiency going, quite as steadily, down and down. Here was this young sprig Chippenham, his acting second officer, a boy of nineteen with no license and no experience, pertly demanding more money. Captain Meredith recalled his own austere apprenticeship in sail, his still more austere gruelling as junior officer in tramps, the mean accommodation, the chill penury, the struggle to keep employed, and he smiled grimly. He had his own private views of the glory of war; but apart from this, he wondered greatly what the final upshot of it all would be for the Merchant Service in general and Mr. Spokesly in particular. For he could not help regarding his chief officer as a brother of the craft. He himself had received no illumination from the exponents of modern thought. He had never been impressed by the advertisements of the London School of Mnemonics, for example. He was so old-fashioned as to imagine that to get on, a man must work hard, study hard, live hard, and stand by for the chance to come. Mr. Spokesly, he knew quite well, had been through the same mill as himself, only some ten years or so later. He regarded him, therefore, as he could never regard Mr. Chippenham, for example, who had never been in sail and who didn't know an oxter-plate from an orlop-beam. As far as the natural shyness and taciturnity of Englishmen would allow him, he was anxious for Mr. Spokesly to do well. The man was singularly fortunate, in his opinion, to be chief mate so soon. In nine or ten years, perhaps, he would have the experience to warrant the owners' giving him a command. Provided, of course, that he stuck to his business and took an interest in the fortunes of the firm. It will be seen from this that Captain Meredith was a hopeless conservative and reactionary. One of his brother-captains whom he met at dinner ashore one evening actually told him so. "Why," said this gentleman as he held a match to Captain Meredith's cigar, "why, my chief officer told me to my face the other day that there was nothing in experience nowadays. One man was as good as another, he said, so long as he had his master's ticket. Yes! A fact!" Captain Meredith was aware, too, that his ideas concerning conscientious achievement and enthusiasm for one's employers were equally archaic. The young men of to-day seemed to regard their jobs with dislike and their employers with suspicion. Their sole obsession seemed to be money. He had had pointed out to him an intoxicated youth who was causing a disturbance in a hotel bar, a youth going out East to a ship as third officer at two hundred dollars a month, they said. And the tale was received by every junior officer in the harbour with hushed awe, although it was obvious that the object of their envy would probably be laid aside with delirium tremens before he could reach his billet. Captain Meredith noticed, too, that men who were engrossed in their work were rated "queer" and as back numbers. Even among captains he sensed a reluctance to discuss a professional problem. The third engineer, a skilled mechanic with a tongue like a rasp, and the second, a patient old dobbin who ought to have been promoted long ago, were examples of an older school, but the good captain was hardly in a position to appraise them professionally.

It was different with Mr. Spokesly. If anything happened to Captain Meredith himself, a sudden weight of responsibility would roll upon Mr. Spokesly that would, in the captain's opinion, crush him. For it must be confessed that licenses, diplomas, certificates, or whatever you call your engraved warrants to ply your trade, are no guarantee of character and nerve. Nor does efficiency in a subordinate capacity imply success in command. Just as some men are stormy and intractable nuisances until they reach the top, when they immediately assume a mysterious and impregnable composure, so others deliberately avoid rising above a comfortable mediocrity, conscious of their own limitations and well satisfied that some other human soul should endure the pangs of the supreme decision. Others there are, and Captain Meredith believed Mr. Spokesly was one of them, who lack knowledge of themselves, and who have not sufficient intelligence either to carry the burden or to refuse it.

This, of course, was not Mr. Spokesly's opinion as time went on. On the contrary, he had come to the conclusion that it was no use being a smart officer "if the captain wouldn't back a man up." He told Archy Bates that "the Old Man was doing all he knew to do him dirty." And Archy riposted at once with evidence that he himself was the victim of a foul conspiracy between the Captain and the crew over the grub. Mr. Spokesly would go out on deck from these pow-wows feeling very happy, for Archy never failed to open a bottle. Mr. Spokesly would sway a little as he walked forward to see how the work was going on in the fore-hold. The Tanganyika, having discharged most of her cargo, was now reloading a great deal of it in obedience to orders from certain invisible but omnipotent beings higher up. He would sway a little, and hold on to the hatch coaming, looking down upon the toilers below with an air of profound abstraction. Then he would move gently until he could raise his eyes and sweep a casual glance in the direction of the bridge. Sometimes he would see the Old Man's head as he strode to and fro. On one occasion he "caught 'im at it," as he told Archy. "Yes, he was spying on me. Watching me. See his game? I tell you, Archy, it makes a man sick. Fancy havin' to work under a man like that. Watchin' me. Now he'll write home to the owners in his confidential report. Well, let him. Thanks to you, I got more than one egg in the basket. Sometimes, I feel inclined to go and demand my discharge. I would, only it's war time. Got to carry on in war time."

Archy Bates nodded over his glass and dipped his long sharp nose into it before making an audible reply. "Me, too!" he said, setting the glass down empty. "Me, too! If it wasn't for the war and everybody having to do their bit, I'd swallow the anchor to-morrow."

And they sat for a moment in silence, each honestly believing the other, and thinking poignantly of home. Over the steward's bunk, stuffed into a corner of the frame that enclosed his wife's portrait, was a photograph of a girl, stark naked save for a wrist watch and a feather in her black hair, sitting on Archy's knee. From behind this Mrs. Bates's thin face and flat bosom peeped out, and her eyes seemed to be fixed thoughtfully upon the two exiled patriots who sat with up-lifted glasses before her.

And on one occasion, Mr. Spokesly, who was spending the evening on board because steam had been raised for sailing, and because the owners had a tyrannical rule to that effect—Mr. Spokesly had a dream. He confessed to Archy that in common honesty he didn't know whether he was awake or asleep. A sort of vision! He was lying on his bunk with one of the manuals of the London School of Mnemonics in his hand which he was, he imagined, reading. It was an essay on "Concentration," and perhaps his thoughts had wandered a bit. … Anyhow, as he lay there, in among his thoughts slipped a new and alien impression that there was somebody in the room. He didn't turn his head, but just lay on in contemplation of this possibility. Perhaps he had half-closed his eyes, for the instructions how to concentrate included a note that the brain worked better if you lay down and shut out the distracting phenomena of existence. Everything was soft and hazy at the time. The notion that someone was there and yet not there intrigued him. And even a physical change, a faint movement of the air caused by somebody altering his position in space, a faint access of minute sounds entering by a cleared doorway, did not rouse his suspicions. On the contrary, he must have dozed, he told Archy solemnly. For the next thing he remembered with any approach to coherence was a figure with its back to him, standing by the toilet shelf, holding up an empty glass and smelling it. … A figure he knew. Yes, he nodded to Archy, who clicked his teeth and threw up his head, it was the Old Man. And as swiftly as it had come, it was gone. Mr. Spokesly found himself up on one elbow, pressing thumb and forefinger into his eyes, and then peering from the brightness of the light above his head into the rose-shaded twilight of the cabin. There was no one there. Everything was just the same. The glass was still there on the mahogany shelf, exactly as he had left it after taking a tot of whiskey before lying down. Now wasn't that a curious experience, he demanded?

But Archy was no votary of psychic phenomena. He waved everything of that sort clean out of existence. What time was it? Quarter-past eight? Why, he saw the Old Man himself sneaking up the saloon stairs to the chart-room about that time. Of course it was the Old Man. Just the sort of game he would be up to. It was revolting. Only the other day he had given orders for his own supply of spirits to be put in his bedroom instead of leaving it in Archy's charge. Never said a word to him, mind you! Told the second steward to tell the chief steward. See the game? Couldn't speak out like a man and say he'd missed a bottle or so. Justice? There is no such thing as justice when you work for an underhand, sneaking, spying. …

Archy Bates had stopped short in his catalogue of the captain's deformities as though he had been suddenly throttled. A bell was buzzing in the pantry. They looked at each other. Archy put down his glass, listened for a moment, hissed venomously, "That's him!" and slipped out. Mr. Spokesly sat still while his friend was away answering the summons, and nursed the rage in his heart to a dull glow. At times it died out and he shivered as before a blackened fire, the dead ashes of a moody disgust of life. One of the tragedies of mediocrity is the confused nature of our emotions. We are like cracked bells, goodly enough in outward form and fashion, but we don't ring true. Our intelligence shows us many things about ourselves but fails to evoke a master passion. In Mr. Spokesly's case, his great desire to have riches did not obscure from his gaze the austere beauties of rectitude and the slow climb to an honourable command. Neither did it narrow down his interests to the sordid goal to which he aspired. The boding apprehension which was rising like a black cloud at the back of his mind, that he was neglecting his work, only reflected and magnified the blaze of his resentment. What encouragement had he, he would like to know. Here he was, slaving away, and no satisfaction. Nothing he did was right. Spied on! Ignored! Treated like a dog! Well, he would see. If this little business of Archy's came off, he would see if he was going to be trodden on by any shipmaster. Archy. …

For a moment the clear vision of Archy obsequiously waiting on the captain, getting him some hot water perhaps, or laying out a fresh suit of underwear, troubled the darkness of Mr. Spokesly's ruminations. A clear vision, such as even the mediocre have at times. And close to it, as though another miniature in another oval frame, a sharp, clear-cut memory of Ada Rivers looking up at him with gray adoring eyes, the proud tremble of her passionate mouth, the curve of her white throat. …

Mr. Spokesly rose to his feet and he caught sight of the naked girl sitting on Archy's knee, and of the bourgeois little face looking out from behind it. Archy's wife! A long dizzy wave of revulsion made Mr. Spokesly feel momentarily faint and he clutched the edge of the bunk board. For a moment he stood, slack-mouthed and moody-eyed, gazing at the photographs. Then he turned away and crept softly along the corridor.

Archy was surprised, on his return, to find him gone.