Captain Brassbound's Conversion Part 19

DRINKWATER. Brarsbahnd ynt the ownly kepn in the world. Wot mikes a kepn is brines an knollidge o lawf. It ynt thet ther's naow sitch pusson: it's thet you dunno where to look fr im. (The implication that he is such a person is so intolerable that they receive it with a prolonged burst of booing.)

BRa.s.sBOUND (returning in his own clothes, getting into his jacket as he comes). Stand by, all. (They start asunder guiltily, and wait for orders.) Redbrook: you pack that clobber in the lady's portmanteau, and put it aboard the yacht for her. Johnson: you take all hands aboard the Thanksgiving; look through the stores: weigh anchor; and make all ready for sea. Then send Jack to wait for me at the slip with a boat; and give me a gunfire for a signal. Lose no time.

JOHNSON. Ay, ay, air. All aboard, mates.

ALL. Ay, ay. (They rush out tumultuously.)

When they are gone, Bra.s.sbound sits down at the end of the table, with his elbows on it and his head on his fists, gloomily thinking. Then he takes from the breast pocket of his jacket a leather case, from which he extracts a sc.r.a.ppy packet of dirty letters and newspaper cuttings. These he throws on the table. Next comes a photograph in a cheap frame. He throws it down untenderly beside the papers; then folds his arms, and is looking at it with grim distaste when Lady Cicely enters. His back is towards her; and he does not hear her. Perceiving this, she shuts the door loudly enough to attract his attention. He starts up.

LADY CICELY (coming to the opposite end of the table). So you've taken off all my beautiful clothes!

BRa.s.sBOUND. Your brother's, you mean. A man should wear his own clothes; and a man should tell his own lies. I'm sorry you had to tell mine for me to-day.

LADY CICELY. Oh, women spend half their lives telling little lies for men, and sometimes big ones. We're used to it. But mind! I don't admit that I told any to-day.

BRa.s.sBOUND. How did you square my uncle?

LADY CICELY. I don't understand the expression.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I mean--

LADY CICELY. I'm afraid we haven't time to go into what you mean before lunch. I want to speak to you about your future. May I?

BRa.s.sBOUND (darkening a little, but politely). Sit down. (She sits down.

So does he.)

LADY CICELY. What are your plans?

BRa.s.sBOUND. I have no plans. You will hear a gun fired in the harbor presently. That will mean that the Thanksgiving's anchor's weighed and that she is waiting for her captain to put out to sea. And her captain doesn't know now whether to turn her head north or south.

LADY CICELY. Why not north for England?

BRa.s.sBOUND. Why not south for the Pole?

LADY CICELY. But you must do something with yourself.

BRa.s.sBOUND (settling himself with his fists and elbows weightily on the table and looking straight and powerfully at her). Look you: when you and I first met, I was a man with a purpose. I stood alone: I saddled no friend, woman or man, with that purpose, because it was against law, against religion, against my own credit and safety. But I believed in it; and I stood alone for it, as a man should stand for his belief, against law and religion as much as against wickedness and selfishness.

Whatever I may be, I am none of your fairweather sailors that'll do nothing for their creed but go to Heaven for it. I was ready to go to h.e.l.l for mine. Perhaps you don't understand that.

LADY CICELY. Oh bless you, yes. It's so very like a certain sort of man.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I daresay but I've not met many of that sort. Anyhow, that was what I was like. I don't say I was happy in it; but I wasn't unhappy, because I wasn't drifting. I was steering a course and had work in hand. Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

LADY CICELY. Sometimes he won't even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.

BRa.s.sBOUND. I don't deny that: nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

But I was not self-seeking: it seemed to me that I had put justice above self. I tell you life meant something to me then. Do you see that dirty little bundle of sc.r.a.ps of paper?

LADY CICELY. What are they?

BRa.s.sBOUND. Accounts cut out of newspapers. Speeches made by my uncle at charitable dinners, or sentencing men to death--pious, highminded speeches by a man who was to me a thief and a murderer! To my mind they were more weighty, more momentous, better revelations of the wickedness of law and respectability than the book of the prophet Amos. What are they now? (He quietly tears the newspaper cuttings into little fragments and throws them away, looking fixedly at her meanwhile.)

LADY CICELY. Well, that's a comfort, at all events.

BRa.s.sBOUND. Yes; but it's a part of my life gone: YOUR doing, remember.

What have I left? See here! (He take up the letters) the letters my uncle wrote to my mother, with her comments on their cold drawn insolence, their treachery and cruelty. And the piteous letters she wrote to him later on, returned unopened. Must they go too?

LADY CICELY (uneasily). I can't ask you to destroy your mother's letters.

BRa.s.sBOUND. Why not, now that you have taken the meaning out of them?

(He tears them.) Is that a comfort too?

LADY CICELY. It's a little sad; but perhaps it is best so.

BRa.s.sBOUND. That leaves one relic: her portrait. (He plucks the photograph out of its cheap case.)

LADY CICELY (with vivid curiosity). Oh, let me see. (He hands it to her. Before she can control herself, her expression changes to one of unmistakable disappointment and repulsion.)

BRa.s.sBOUND (with a single sardonic cachinnation). Ha! You expected something better than that. Well, you're right. Her face does not look well opposite yours.

LADY CICELY (distressed). I said nothing.

BRa.s.sBOUND. What could you say? (He takes back the portrait: she relinquishes it without a word. He looks at it; shakes his head; and takes it quietly between his finger and thumb to tear it.)

LADY CICELY (staying his hand). Oh, not your mother's picture!

BRa.s.sBOUND. If that were your picture, would you like your son to keep it for younger and better women to see?

LADY CICELY (releasing his hand). Oh, you are dreadful! Tear it, tear it. (She covers her eyes for a moment to shut out the sight.)

BRa.s.sBOUND (tearing it quietly). You killed her for me that day in the castle; and I am better without her. (He throws away the fragments.) Now everything is gone. You have taken the old meaning out of my life; but you have put no new meaning into it. I can see that you have some clue to the world that makes all its difficulties easy for you; but I'm not clever enough to seize it. You've lamed me by showing me that I take life the wrong way when I'm left to myself.

LADY CICELY. Oh no. Why do you say that?

BRa.s.sBOUND. What else can I say? See what I've done! My uncle is no worse a man than myself--better, most likely; for he has a better head and a higher place. Well, I took him for a villain out of a storybook.

My mother would have opened anybody else's eyes: she shut mine. I'm a stupider man than Brandyfaced Jack even; for he got his romantic nonsense out of his penny numbers and such like trash; but I got just the same nonsense out of life and experience. (Shaking his head) It was vulgar--VULGAR. I see that now; for you've opened my eyes to the past; but what good is that for the future? What am I to do? Where am I to go?

LADY CICELY. It's quite simple. Do whatever you like. That's what I always do.

BRa.s.sBOUND. That answer is no good to me. What I like is to have something to do; and I have nothing. You might as well talk like the missionary and tell me to do my duty.

LADY CICELY (quickly). Oh no thank you. I've had quite enough of your duty, and Howard's duty. Where would you both be now if I'd let you do it?

BRa.s.sBOUND. We'd have been somewhere, at all events. It seems to me that now I am nowhere.

LADY CICELY. But aren't you coming back to England with us?

BRa.s.sBOUND. What for?