"What were you laughing at?"
"Why, you're wrong, little man, on just one or two points," I answered
evasively.
"Which?"
"Well, about the sunshine in England. The sun is not always shining
there, by any means."
"I'm afraid you know very little about it," said the boy, shaking his
head.
"Johnny! Johnny!" a voice called down the companion-ladder at this
moment. It was followed by a thin, weary-looking man, dressed in
carpet slippers and a suit of seedy black. I guessed his age at fifty,
but suspect now that the lines about his somewhat prim mouth were
traced there by sorrows rather than by years. He bowed to me shyly,
and addressed the boy.
"Johnny, what are you doing here? in bare feet!"
"Father, here is a man who says the sun doesn't always shine in
England."
The man gave me a fleeting embarrassed glance, and echoed, as if to
shirk answering--
"In bare feet!"
"But it does, doesn't it? Tell him that it does," the child insisted.
Driven thus into a corner, the father turned his profile, avoiding my
eyes, and said dully--
"The sun is always shining in England."
"Go on, father; tell him the rest."
"--and the use of candles, except as a luxury, is consequently unknown
to the denizens of that favoured clime," he wound up, in the tone of a
man who repeats an old, old lecture.
Johnny was turning to me triumphantly, when his father caught him by
the hand and led him back to his dressing. The movement was hasty,
almost rough. I stood at the cabin-door and looked after them.
We were fellow-passengers aboard the _Midas_, a merchant barque of
near on a thousand tons, homeward bound from Cape Town; and we had
lost sight of the Table Mountain but a couple of days before. It was
the first week of the new year, and all day long a fiery sun made life
below deck insupportable. Nevertheless, though we three were the only
passengers on board, and lived constantly in sight of each other, it
was many days before I made any further acquaintance with Johnny and
his father. The sad-faced man clearly desired to avoid me, answering
my nod with a cold embarrassment, and clutching Johnny's hand whenever
the child called "Good-morning!" to me cordially. I fancied him
ashamed of his foolish falsehood; and I, on my side, was angry because
of it. The pair were for ever strolling backwards and forwards on
deck, or resting beneath the awning on the poop, and talking--always
talking. I fancied the boy was delicate; he certainly had a bad cough
during the first few days. But this went away as our voyage proceeded,
and his colour was rich and rosy.
One afternoon I caught a fragment of their talk as they passed, Johnny
brightly dressed and smiling, his father looking even more shabby and
weary than usual. The man was speaking.
"And Queen Victoria rides once a year through the streets of London on
her milk-white courser, to hear the nightingales sing in the Tower.
For when she came to the throne the Tower was full of prisoners, but
with a stroke of her sceptre she changed them all into song-birds.
Every year she releases fifty; and that is why they sing so
rapturously, because each one hopes his turn has come at last."
I turned away. It was unconscionable to cram the child's mind
with these preposterous fables. I pictured the poor little chap's
disappointment when the bleak reality came to stare him in the face.
To my mind, his father was worse than an idiot, and I could hardly
bring myself to greet him next morning, when we met.
My disgust did not seem to trouble him. In a timid way, even, his eyes
expressed satisfaction. For a week or two I let him alone, and then
was forced to speak.
It happened in this way. We had spun merrily along the tail of the
S.E. trades and glided slowly to a standstill on a glassy ocean, and
beneath a sun that at noon left us shadowless. A fluke or two of wind
had helped us across the line; but now, in 2° 27' north latitude, the
_Midas_ slept like a turtle on the greasy sea. The heat of the near
African coast seemed to beat like steam against our faces. The pitch
bubbled like caviare in the seams of the white deck, and the shrouds
and ratlines ran with tears of tar. To touch the brass rail of the
poop was to blister the hand, to catch a whiff from the cook's galley
was to feel sick for ten minutes. The hens in their coops lay with
eyes glazed and gasped for air. If you hung forward over the bulwarks
you stared down into your own face. The sailors grumbled and cursed
and panted as they huddled forward under a second awning that was
rigged up to give them shade rather than coolness; for coolness was
not to be had.
On the second afternoon of the calm I happened to pass this awning,
and glanced in. Pretty well all the men were there, lounging, with
shirts open and chests streaming with sweat; and in their midst on a
barrel, sat Johnny, with a flushed face.
The boatswain--Gibbings by name--was speaking. I heard him say--"An'
the Lord Mayor 'll be down to meet us, sonny, at the docks, wi' his
five-an'-fifty black boys all ablowin' blowin' Hallelujarum on their
silver key-bugles. An' we'll be took in tow to the Mansh'n 'Ouse an'
fed--" here he broke off and passed the back of his hand across his
mouth, with a glance at the ship's cook, who had been driven from his
galley by the heat. But the cook had no suggestions to make. His soul
was still sick with the reek of the boiled pork and pease pudding he
had cooked two hours before under a torrid and vertical sun.
"We'll put it at hokey-pokey, nothin' a lump, if you _don't_ mind,
sonny," the boatswain went on; "in a nice airy parlour painted white,
with a gilt chandelier an' gilt combings to the wainscot." His picture
of the Mansion House as he proceeded was drawn from his reading in
the Book of Revelations and his own recollections of Thames-side
gin-palaces and the saloons of passenger steamers, and gave the
impression of a virtuous gambling-hell. The whole crew listened
admiringly, and it seemed they were all in the stupid conspiracy. I
resolved, for Johnny's sake, to protest, and that very evening drew
Gibbings aside and expostulated with him.
"Why," I asked, "lay up this cruel, this certain disappointment for
the little chap? Why yarn to him as if he were bound for the New
Jerusalem?"
The boatswain stared at me point-blank, at first incredulously, then
with something like pity.
"Why, sir, don't you know? Can't you see for yoursel'? It's because
he _is_ bound for the New Jeroosalem; because--bless his tender
soul!--that's all the land he'll ever touch."
"Good Lord!" I cried. "Nonsense! His cough's better; and look at his
cheeks."
"Ay--we knows that colour on this line. His cough's better, you say;
and I say this weather's killing him. You just wait for the nor'-east
trades."
I left Gibbings, and after pacing up and down the deck a few times,
stepped to the bulwarks, where a dark figure was leaning and gazing
out over the black waters. Johnny was in bed; and a great shame swept
over me as I noted the appealing wretchedness of this lonely form.