The next day an incident served to confirm Billy Budd in his incredulity
as to the Dansker’s strange summing-up of the case submitted.
The ship at noon going large before the wind was rolling on her course,
and he, below at dinner and engaged in some sportful talk with the
members of his mess, chanced in a sudden lurch to spill the entire
contents of his soup-pan upon the new-scrubbed deck. Claggart, the
master-at-arms, official ratan in hand, happened to be passing along the
battery in a bay of which the mess was lodged, and the greasy liquid
streamed just across his path. Stepping over it, he was proceeding on
his way without comment, since the matter was nothing to take notice of
under the circumstances, when he happened to observe who it was that had
done the spilling. His countenance changed. Pausing, he was about to
ejaculate something hasty at the sailor, but checked himself, and
pointing down to the streaming soup, playfully tapped him from behind
with his ratan, saying, in a low musical voice, peculiar to him at
times, ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it,
too!’ and with that passed on. Not noted by Billy as not coming within
his view was the involuntary smile, or rather grimace, that accompanied
Claggart’s equivocal words. Aridly it drew down the thin corners of his
shapely mouth. But everybody taking his remark as meant for humorous,
and at which therefore as coming from a superior they were bound to
laugh, ‘with counterfeited glee,’ acted accordingly; and Billy, tickled,
it may be, by the allusion to his being the Handsome Sailor, merrily
joined in; then addressing his messmates exclaimed, ‘There, now, who
says that Jemmy Legs is down on me!’
‘And who said he was, Beauty?’ demanded one Donald with some surprise.
Whereat the foretopman looked a little foolish, recalling that it was
only one person, Board-her-in-the-smoke, who had suggested what to him
was the smoky idea that this pleasant master-at-arms was in any peculiar
way hostile to him. Meantime that functionary resuming his path must
have momentarily worn some expression less guarded than that of the
bitter smile and, usurping the face from the heart, some distorting
expression perhaps, for a drummer-boy heedlessly frolicking along from
the opposite direction, and chancing to come into light collision with
his person, was strangely disconcerted by his aspect. Nor was the
impression lessened when the official, impulsively giving him a sharp
cut with the ratan, vehemently exclaimed, ‘Look where you go!’
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X
What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And be the matter what it
might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom prior
to the affair of the spilled soup he had never come into any special
contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do
with one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant ship’s
_peacemaker_, even him who in Claggart’s own phrase was ‘the sweet and
pleasant young fellow’? Yes, why should _Jemmy Legs_, to borrow the
Dansker’s expression, be _down_ on the Handsome Sailor?
But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may
indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he
assuredly was.
Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart,
something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be
wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart’s
knowledge of the young blue-jacket began at some period anterior to
catching sight of him on board the seventy-four--all this, not so
difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to
account for whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But, in
fact, there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause, necessarily to
be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much
charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, _the
mysterious_, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the _Mysteries
of Udolpho_ could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious
than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain
exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however
harmless he may be?--if not called forth by that very harmlessness
itself.
Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar
personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a great
warship fully manned and at sea. There, every day, among all ranks,
almost every man comes into more or less of contact with almost every
other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an aggravating object
one must needs give it Jonah’s toss, or jump overboard himself. Imagine
how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar human creature
the direct reverse of a saint?
But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these
hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must
cross ‘the deadly space between,’ and this is best done by indirection.
Long ago an honest scholar, my senior, said to me in reference to one
who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that
against him nothing was ever openly said, though among the few something
was whispered, ‘Yes, X---- is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a
lady’s fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organised
religion, much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all
that, I think that to try and get into X----, enter his labyrinth, and
get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what
is known as _knowledge of the world_, that were hardly possible, at
least for me.’
‘Why,’ said I, ‘X----, however singular a study to some, is yet human,
and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human
nature, and in most of its varieties.’
‘Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But
for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to
know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while
they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or
nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant
rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the
understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters,
whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a
girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage
of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew
the girl’s heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into
obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they?
Mostly recluses.’
At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift
of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon
which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less
difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one
must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured
with the Biblical element.
In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato,
a list attributed to him, occurs this: ‘Natural Depravity: a depravity
according to nature.’ A definition which though savouring of Calvinism,
by no means involves Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind. Evidently its
intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples
of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for
notable instances,--since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in
them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality,--one must go
elsewhere. Civilisation, especially if of the austerer sort, is
auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It
has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It is
not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There
is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything--never
mercenary or avaricious. In short, the depravity here meant partakes
nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity.
Though no flatterer of mankind, it never speaks ill of it.
But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a
nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would
seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the
less in his soul’s recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption
from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than
to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.
That is to say: toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness
of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool
judgment sagacious and sound.
These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their
lunacy is not continuous, but occasional; evoked by some special object;
it is secretive and self-contained, so that when most active it is to
the average mind not distinguished from sanity, and for the reason above
suggested that whatever its aim may be, and the aim is never disclosed,
the method and the outward proceeding is always perfectly rational.
Now something such was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil
nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or
licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short, ‘a depravity
according to nature.’
Can it be this phenomenon, disowned or not acknowledged, that in some
criminal cases puzzles the courts? For this cause have our juries at
times not only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers with their
fees, but also the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts
with theirs? But why leave it to them? Why not subpœna as well the
clerical proficients? Their vocation bringing them into peculiar contact
with so many human beings, and sometimes in their least guarded hour, in
interviews very much more confidential than those of physician and
patient; this would seem to qualify them to know something about those
intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility; whether in
a given case, say, the crime proceeded from mania in the brain or rabies
of the heart. As to any differences among themselves these clerical
proficients might develop on the stand, these could hardly be greater
than the direct contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical
experts.
Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? It is because they
somewhat savour of Holy Writ in its phrase ‘mysteries of iniquity.’
The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the
master-at-arms has necessitated this chapter. With an added hint or two
in connection with the accident of the mess, the resumed narrative must
be left to vindicate as it may its own credibility.
------------------------------------------------------------------------