It is Sunday, and I lie under the awning by the engine-room door,
lazily reading "Faust." There is a speck on the sky-line--the
mail boat, bringing a letter from my friend. I look round at the
translucent opal of the bay, the glittering white of the surf on the
reef, the downward swoop on an albatross, and I listen to the dull
roar of the breakers, to the solemn tang-tang of the bell-buoy on the
bar, and the complaisant "_ah-ha-a-a_" of some argumentative penguin.
Even the drab-coloured African hills in the distance, and the
corrugated Catholic church (shipped in sections) with the sun blazing
on its windows, are beautiful to me to-day, for I am not of those who
think religion is ugly because it is corrugated, or that hills are
repulsive because they are not in the guide-book. I am at peace, and
so are the rest. My friend the Mate is fishing, but that, of course,
is trite; the Mate is always fishing. I fancy the cod nudge each other
and wink when they see his old face looking down into those opalescent
depths, and watch him feeling at his lines for a bite. How they must
have joked together this morning when he gave a shout and called for
help, for he could not lift the line! We all responded to the call,
and the line came up slowly. "Must be a whopper," muttered the Mate,
and refused my callous suggestion that it was a coal-bag which had got
entangled in the hook. At last, after an eternity of hauling, came up
part of an iron bedstead, dropped from some steamer in the long ago.
But the true fisherman has reserves of philosophy to cope with such
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Meanwhile the speck has enlarged itself into a blot with a tag above
it and some cotton-woolly smoke. "'Tis the _Nautilas_," observes the
Mate, and he calls it "Naughty Lass" with hibernian unconsciousness of
his own humour. I wonder, now, why it is that we sailor-men invariably
display such frantic _feminine_ interest when another craft heaves in
sight. The most contemptible fishing boat in the Bay of Biscay, when
she appears on the horizon, receives the notice of all hands--the old
as well as the young. And when we pass a sister ship, the _Aretino_ or
the _Cosimo_ or the _Angelo_; in mid-ocean, we talk about her and
criticise her, and rake out her past history, for days. I sometimes
think, from hints the Mate drops, that our own _Benvenuto_ has a past,
a St. John's Wood past I mean, not a Haymarket past. But he will have
no talk by others against the ship. "What's the matter with the ship?"
he will shout. "Damn it all, I like the ship! She's a good old ship,
an' I glory in her!" So we talk scandal about the others instead.
Here, on the ragged edge of the Empire, things are managed
expeditiously by the authorities. Scarcely an hour after the
_Nautilas_ has dropped her pick the tugboat comes out again and flings
us our mail. Bosun and donkeyman trudge aft and take the letters for
the foc'sle, the mess-room steward deposits a letter in my lap, and I
think of my friend. At this moment he is engaged in repartee with the
housekeeper as she lays the table for tea. The heavy twilight is
settling down over the river outside; lovers are pacing the walk as
they return from their Sunday tramp. Possibly, too, that fantastic
scene which he has described to me is now enacting. He is at the
piano; the housekeeper, in tears, is on her knees beside him, and they
raise their melodious voices "_for those in peril on the sea_." How
affecting, for one to be so remembered! I thank them both with all my
heart.
And now he tells me that his play goes well, and I am glad. It will
indeed be a red-letter day when I pay my shilling and climb into the
gallery to see his work. No, I shall not criticise. Probably I shall
hardly listen. I shall be thinking many thoughts, dreaming dreams,
feeling simply very glad and very proud.
I sympathise always with his struggles with his _personnel_, but I
think, though, he hardly allows enough for the point of view. These
actors and actresses are not literary. (They _should_ be, I know.)
They look at an author's work as a man looks at the universe--a small
part at a time. That trite old paradox that, to the actor, the part is
greater than the whole, should never be forgotten. Remember, too, how
"touchy," as he calls it, they _must_ be, in the nature of things.
Their touchiness, their affectation, their lack of culture--all are
inherent in them. _Their_ success is always immediate, using the word
in its literal sense as a metaphysician would use it; the author's
success is mediate, through time and trial. So one should not be
discouraged because they fail to appreciate one's efforts to give
them the atmosphere of the period. They will get the atmosphere
intuitively, or not at all.
He complains of "loss of time," "thankless task," "inefficiency," and
the like. Now, I think that is grumbling without cause. Take my own
case, for example. I have no problems of dramatic art to wrestle with,
only the problem of coal consumption. But it is ultimately the same
thing, i.e., energy. My friend mourns the shameful loss of energy
incident to the production of a decent presentment of his dramatic
conception. I, as an engineer, mourn over the hideous loss of coal
incidental to the propulsion of the ship. The loss in his case, I
suppose, is incalculable: in mine it is nearly seventy per cent. Think
of it for a moment. The _Lusitania's_ furnaces consume one thousand
tons of coal per day, seven hundred of which are, in all probability,
lost in the inefficiency of the steam-engine as a prime mover. It runs
through the whole of our life, my friend! Waste, waste, waste! What we
call the perfect cycle, the conversion of energy into heat and heat
into energy, cannot, in practice, be accomplished without loss. What
may interest you still more is that we cannot, even in theory,
calculate on no loss whatever in the progress of the cycle, and by
this same "entropy loss," as we call it, some of our more reckless
physicists foresee the running down of the great universe-machine some
day, and so eliminating both plays and steam-engines from the problem
altogether. But this is my point. Prodigious loss is the law of
nature which she imposes both on artist and artisan. Indeed, artist
and artisan have their reason of being in that loss, as I think you
will admit.
Again, history will corroborate my contention as to the catholicity of
this loss. Imagine the French Revolution, the Lutheran Reformation,
the "Catholic" Reaction, and the like, to be _revolutions_ of the vast
human engine. Consider then the loss of power. Consider the impulse,
the enormous impulse, applied to the piston, and then look at
the result. What losses in leakages, in cooled enthusiasms, in
friction-heat, in (pardon the ludicrous analogy) waste gases! Think,
too, of the loss involved in unbalanced minds, as in unbalanced
engines, one mass of bigoted inertia retarding another mass! Oh, my
friend, my friend, you talk of "losses" as though you playwrights had
a monopoly of it. Ask men of all trades, of all faiths, and they will
give you, in their answers, increased knowledge of human life.
Such, at least, is my method--digging into the hearts of men. Take,
for instance, my friend the Second Officer. A tall, lean young man,
with an iron jaw under his brown beard. I began to talk to him one
evening because he said he never had letters from home. He had a
sister, he told me, but there was no joy in the telling. "We don't
hit it off," he observed grimly, and I smiled. He has no sweetheart,
loves nothing but dogs. How he loves dogs! He has two at his heels all
day long. He loves them almost as much as dogs love the Chief Officer,
which is to distraction. He will take the solemn English terrier up on
his knee and give me a lecture thereon. This same pup, I learn, is
"low"--look at his nose! He is in bad health--just feel his back
teeth! Saucy? Yes, certainly, but not a thoroughbred hair on him. He
has worms, too, I understand, somewhere inside, and on several
occasions during the voyage his bowels needed attention. I, in my
utter ignorance of dog-lore, begin to marvel that the animal holds
together at all under the stress of these deficiencies. Perhaps the
dirt which he collects by rolling about on deck affords a protective
covering. Once a week, however, his lord and master divests him of
even this shadowy defence, and he emerges from a bucket, clean, soapy,
and coughing violently. In all probability he rejoices in consumption
as well.
The Second Officer, I say, teaches me philosophy. He has had a hard
life, I think. By sheer industry he has risen from common sailor to
his present berth. I say "sheer" because it seems to me that when a
man has no friends or relations who care to write to him, the way of
life must be very steep indeed. I was surprised, though, to learn
of his loneliness. Had he, then, no kindly light to lead him on?
Unconsciously he answered me. Would I come down below and have
something to drink? With pleasure; and so we went. The last time I had
been in that room was when his predecessor, the little man with four
children and a house of his own, had extended hospitality to me. It is
not a pleasant room. A spare bunk full of canvas bolts, cordage, and
other stores, make it untidy; and the Steward's stores are just behind
the after bulkhead, so that it smells like a ship-chandler's
warehouse. Well, we sit down, and the whiskey passes. We light cigars
(magnificent Campania Generals at three farthings each), and then he
ferrets about in his locker. I look at the pictures. Almanack issued
by a rope-maker in Manchester; photo of an Irish terrier, legs wide
part, tail at an angle of forty-five to the rest of him; photo of
Scotch terrier, short legs, fat body, ears like a donkey's; photo of
the officers of s.s. _Timbuctoo_, in full uniform, my friend among
them, taken on the upper deck, bulldog in the foreground. By this time
the Second Officer has exhumed an oblong wooden case containing a worn
violin. Ah! I have his secret. He holds it like a baby, and plucks at
the strings. Then he plays.
Well, he knows, by instinct I imagine, that I care nothing for music,
as music. So when I ask for hymn-tunes, he smiles soberly and
complies. I hear my favourites to my heart's content--"Hark, Hark, My
Soul," "Weary of Earth," "Abide With Me," and "Thou Knowest, Lord."
How glad they must be who believe these words! The red sun was
flooding the room with his last flaming signal as the man played:
"_Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide,
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!_"
Yes, _mon ami_, all men know of that tremendous loss inherent in all
their labours. And it is, I think, to balance that loss that they have
invented religion.