by Parry, Owen
That is the thing about gentlemen. They know how to slap you small with their very courtesy, and they give you no excuse to slap them back.
We had left the proper confines of the city and travelled a road between villages and smaller settlements growing toward one another as the city crept toward them. The Clyde appeared on our right when we passed by fields or marshes, and shipbuilding enterprises littered the rivers’s banks, with swimming boys and fishermen in the intervals between the brisk commotions of hammers and hulls. I felt I saw a world that was changing forever.
The sun felt lovely, and now the sky was of an unmarred blue, with the soot and stink of the city left behind us. Twas one of those days at the end of June when the Lord lets down his blessing upon the earth, and the leaf trees shimmer in the breeze, and the heart yearns in desire beyond words.
“I understand your singing tart was splendid last night,” the Earl said to pass the time. “McLeod’s put it out all over the police offices. I believe he’s smitten with her.” He gave the floor of the caleche a playful tap with his stick. “I wonder what he’d think of her if he knew she’d had a child and gave it up to an orphan’s home? Without a backward glance?”
“That is cruel.”
“Not enamored of Miss—Miss Perkins, was it? Not taken by her yourself, are you, Jones?”
“I am a married man. And happy in my—”
“Oh, but that has nothing to do with it! Marriage is simply a refuge—and a false one—for the weak and sentimental. For those afraid to accept their mortal lot.”
“And what is our lot?”
“To be alone. First and last. And in between, any time it should matter.” He smiled and his lips parted to show stained teeth that did not match the grooming of the rest of him. “How does it go? ‘We must endure our going hence, even as our coming hither’? Have I quoted correctly? Really, Jones, you’re much too strong a fellow to remain within the confines of marriage indefinitely. Sooner or later, you’re bound to ‘betray’ your wife.” He tapped me on the sleeve. “Remember me when you do.”
“You do not know me,” I muttered.
“But do you know yourself? Isn’t that the thing?”
“I know what I must.”
“That’s a blatant lie. I’m ashamed of you. Tell me, though. What would you do if you didn’t have a war? Or some other excuse to go about killing people whenever the mood struck you?”
“I do not need to kill.”
“The opium eater insists he needs no opium.”
“You do not know.”
“No, not if you mean that I’ve never killed myself. I never have. I told you that. Nor do I intend to. It all sounds rather shabby. Encumbering to the spirit.”
“Condemn me, if you wish. It will not move me.”
“But I don’t want to condemn you, don’t you see. I simply want you to understand. Look here. Although I don’t know all you did in India, I suspect you’ve never taken a pretty little boy to your bed. No. I can see you haven’t. So you don’t know what it’s like, what pleasures may be enjoyed by both parties. Yet, you’re ready to condemn another’s pleasures without hesitation.”
“You twist things.”
“No, I state things. The twisting goes on inside of you, don’t you see. The Greeks—”
“We are not Greeks.”
“And I find it a pity. We live in an age that flees from every pleasure. I expect that, any day, we shall hear of the invention of a machine with which we may inflict pain upon ourselves in regular doses. The inventor will become the richest man in England. And in America, I suspect.”
“Your life is joyless,” I told him, “so you imagine others have no joys. And you are loveless, so you see no love in others.”
“Oh, that’s trite. And inaccurate, by the way.” He smiled the finest smile I ever had seen on him. “But here we are. I wonder which of us will have joy of what comes next?”
We had arrived at the gate of a bustling shipyard, perhaps halfway down to Greenock. I had no fears for my person, for half the population of Glasgow knew where I was going that morning, and the Earl had appeared in his open carriage to inform the other half. I knew I would return safely to my hotel. But I did not know if I would go back sound.
I saw it in the distance. A great wooden-sided structure it was, with canvas stretched over the roofbeam, like a vast exaggeration of the tents prepared for an army’s winter quarters. Big enough that pavilion was to hold any ship of war I could imagine.
“There it is, Jones,” the Earl told me.
“I want to see inside.”
“Of course. That’s why I’ve brought you here, after all.”
“Is it that the ship is already gone from it? And you intend to show me an empty slip?”
He shook his head. “Too simple. We’re playing chess, not checkers.”
Then the servility started up again, with the guards at the gates, and workers and foremen, errand boys and lads set to glean scraps, all pulling off their caps and bowing as the Chinese are said to do, and some of them even cheering as we rolled by.
“I pay them a decent wage,” the Earl said. “I find my fellow yard-owners simply disgraceful. With their parsimony. If you’re looking for your beloved ‘evil,’ Jones, I rather think you should look there. Among the workers. And those ‘dark Satanic mills,’ although I do find Blake a bit much. More of a Coleridge man, myself.” He tapped my forearm again. “You know, the first concrete act I undertook when I gained my majority was to raise the wages of every man and woman in my employ. And I’m all the richer for it, to be frank. I have the very best workers, and I’ve never lost a skilled artisan to another man’s yard. Or to another’s factory. I’m afraid I find most men of business benighted.”
We stopped before a second barrier blocking access to the huge wooden hall. There were thrice as many guards about as there were at the front gate, and all were armed with clubs that would split a skull.
“Shall we walk in?” the Earl asked me, getting down himself.
I got me down, if awkwardly. My bothered leg was stiff from the ride, and the knee I had banged on the headstone had swelled as I slept. I must have looked a man of sixty following the Earl across that landscape of piled lumber and steaming pitch-pots. Although, at thirty-four, I judged I was but five or six years his elder.
The Earl paused for a moment, teasing me. “I wonder exactly what you expect,” he said.
Of a sudden, I realized that I could not hear a sound from the great wooden structure. Around us, the yard was all banging and scraping and shouts. But it seemed that we had entered a vale of silence.
“Shall we?” the Earl asked. Smiling.
He flicked his hand and a great Scotsman opened a rough-cut door. The fellow looked the sort who had gone swinging claymore swords at walls of English muskets.
“Yer Lardship,” he said, with his tam balled in his hand and his big head nodding.
And then we went inside.
The interior was empty.
Twas not that a ship had been built and discharged to the sea. The inside of the pavilion held nothing but dried mud and some grasses withered by the lack of sun. Otherwise, nature had been undisturbed, and I even saw a frog hop into the water at the end of the structure. There was nothing inside that building. And there never had been anything.
After he had allowed me some minutes of wonderment, the Earl said, “I suppose it was a rather shabby trick, after all. Playing with the expectations of everyone this way. But you must admit you brought this on yourselves.”
He sighed, as a fellow does at the end of an abundant meal, when his buttons are popping. “Last night, while you were otherwise engaged—and your Minister was looking north to Scotland in expectation—a ship left the Birkenhead yards. You may know her as Number 290 and she sailed as the Enrica, but I believe she’s to assume the name C.S.S. Alabama. Designed as a commerce raider. Oh, don’t excite yourself. It’s too late now. The ship’s beyond territorial waters. She’l
l be armed before anyone could possibly move this government to act on the high seas.”
“But . . .” I said, “ . . . there is a law . . . Mr. Adams has filed in the courts . . .”
“As long as those letters of Lord Palmerston’s were floating about, the government was not about to incense any party that might possess them. Certain hints were given. And the ship was allowed to go quietly. I’ve won, you see. All trumps, Jones!”
“But you do not have the letters. And never will.”
“Nor do I want them,” he said, with a sincere frown. “Can’t you understand that, either? I value skill. I don’t want to play with two queens when my opponent has none. Anyone can win that sort of game. I won’t play unless there’s an element of fairness between the parties, of equal risks. Bludgeoning poor old Palmerston with those letters would be rather like hunting rabbits with a battery of artillery. Don’t you think it rather better to let people fear you have the letters—when you haven’t got them at all?”
“You speak of fairness,” I said sullenly, “and yet you have your wealth and position to back you.”
“And you,” he replied almost merrily, “have an entire government behind you. I should say that makes me more David than Goliath, don’t you think?”
When I made no reply, he tugged his summer gloves to rights and said, “Shall we return to the rig? I expect you’ll want to telegraph London.”
And so we began our journey back to Glasgow. I was glum, as you will imagine, but the Earl was in excellent spirits.
“I don’t expect you’d allow me to give you lunch?” he asked. “There’s a not-bad inn just along here. No?”
“We will use those letters to further the cause of the American Union,” I told him grumpily. Twas the start of a little speech I had prepared. But he forestalled me.
“Oh, I don’t give a fig what you do with them.”
“But you want Richmond to win.”
“Couldn’t care less.”
“You want cotton.”
“I’ll have it from India.”
“Not in time.”
“Sooner than I’d have it from the Confederate States, to be honest. I have reasonable expectations, you know.”
“But you have supported the slavers. By helping this ship get away. And in New York. You tried—”
“And failed. First match to you, second to me. I shall be interested to see who takes the next bout. Meanwhile, we’ll just have to see which way the hounds turn. Why, you may even find I’m on your side, one of these days.”
“You will never be on my side.”
“That is ungracious.”
“Well, if I lack in manners, I do not lack in morals,” I told him.
“No,” he said, “you’ve quite the highest morals of any killer I know.”
“I am not a killer.”
“By the tenets of your own religious profession, you’re nothing less. But now I’m being ungracious. And I do think those old Jews should have added a commandment about that, don’t you? ‘Thou shalt not be a dreary conversationalist.’ Or something to that effect. Are you quite certain I can’t give you lunch?”
“Our Navy will find your ship,” I told him, in the spiteful tones of a child. “And we will sink it.”
“But it never was my ship,” he said. “I was merely a good angel on its behalf. And as for your own fleet sending it to the bottom, that does sound like a game that’s worth the candle. Shall we wait and see?”
I could not find another word, for the truth is I was chastened. And beaten. The Earl was right about that. I wondered if there would be another encounter between us. If such would come, I did not intend to lose again.
“Don’t let it get you down too low,” the Earl told me. “The truth is, I had better than average luck. When I sent that little tart to your room in London, I had no idea you’d have the letters just then. Or that she’d make off with them. I suspect she’ll be had up for thieving, one of these days. Perfect candidate for Australia. Anyway, the effect was sublime. Pomeroy, Disraeli, and that lot—and poor old Cullie—were unspeakably confused. And the confusion aided me, you see. All I wished to do was to keep the ball in play until the ship could get off.” He clicked his tongue, which I am told is a vulgar habit. But earls can do most anything they like. “Really, it was a great relief when you finally came to Glasgow. I knew I could play you out for the last few days old Laird needed to get the ship off. I should say you did your best, under the circumstances. In fact, you did rather well, given your array of opponents.”
“And you never wanted the letters? Not at all? Could you swear to that, if anything is left sacred to you upon which you might take your oath?”
“I fear I would embarrass you, if I laid my hand upon the nearest object I regard as sacred. No, the letters didn’t attract me in the least. I should have thought it ungentlemanly to use them, you know.”
The queer thing is that the fellow made me believe him.
“Hargreaves,” the Earl called in his pleasantest voice, “let the horses show us what they’re made of.”
Of course, my failure carried an awful price. The Alabama played havoc on the seas, and cost our Union fortune after fortune. No man was better pleased than me when Captain Winslow’s Kearsarge finally sank her off Cherbourg. But that is another tale. And we did not fare so badly in the end. For we won the war, and found ourselves a great power, much to our own astonishment. After Appomattox, when Mr. Adams and Mr. Seward claimed reparations from Her Majesty’s Government for the Alabama’s rampage of destruction, John Bull paid up.
But all that was in the future, past seas of blood and landscapes soaked in crimson, and I have more to tell. So let that bide.
HENRY ADAMS WAS so distraught he had quite forgotten Miss Perkins.
“Father’s angry,” he informed me, as soon as I stepped inside the hotel door. “I mean, the minister’s angry. Oh, I do so hate it when he’s out of sorts. He’s an absolute bear.”
“Trouble, is it?” I asked, though I already knew. I would not need to telegraph my message.
“Oh, something about the sailing of a ship.” He fished through his clothing. “He wants us to return to London immediately, though I suppose there isn’t a train until tomorrow.”
I had forgotten how little his father had chosen to tell him. I did not wish to pry into family matters that were no concern of mine, but I thought I understood the elder Mr. Adams. Young Henry had been born to disappoint. He had no gravity, as they say, and I thought him the sort who would mock the efforts of those who had the vigor to attempt what he would not. But let that bide. The failings of the day were mine alone.
He found the message in his waistcoat pocket and handed it over.
“It’s addressed to you,” he told me blithely. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I opened it.” Then he added, “He must be terribly angry about something. Not at you, I don’t mean. You don’t quite figure, if you don’t object to my saying so. This must have to do with something important.”
The telegram said simply:
AJ. SHIP SAILED. RETURN LONDON. CFA
I raised my eyes from the scrap to young Mr. Adams. “Yes, I know of the matter. But look you. How can you tell he is angry? From four words?”
Certainly, our Minister had a right to be disgruntled. For say what you will, I had failed to stop the Rebels from gaining their vessel. But I hardly could read any rage in that brief message. Curious I was.
“That’s it exactly,” Henry Adams told me. “Only four words. Whenever he gets terribly angry, he withdraws into that New England shell of his and starts growling about economies. His telegraphic messages get shorter and shorter—to conserve funds, he says—and the shorter the message, the more out of sorts he is. I’d hate to get a one-word message from him.” Henry Adams sighed. “He drives us all mad at the legation with his counting pennies—although I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that. But, then, after last night, we’re comrades in arms, aren’t we? He even expec
ts me to use both sides of a piece of paper, and he won’t hear of claret at dinner when he’s like this.”
Now, that sounded eminently sensible to me. But each man has his intricate form of anger. And the son must know its shape.
“Really,” young Mr. Adams added, “he’d do better if he didn’t insist on being so awfully American at times like this. He needs to take a lesson from the English.”
Now, I was angry myself, about a thousand things and more, and I nearly gave that young fellow a proper talking to. For there is nothing finer than being an American. Even if we lack Britain’s wealth and power.
“Where is Miss Perkins?” I asked, almost listlessly.
“Oh, that beastly police fellow took her off. He said he needed her written testimony about last night’s affair.” At that, Mr. Adams worked himself into a smart little huff. “It didn’t take him five minutes to copy mine down. And I didn’t have to leave the hotel.”
“I’m sure Miss Perkins will give a good account of things.”
“I say, Jones.” He moved closer to me, as if to force more intimacies upon me, and his tone became more English than the English. “Do you believe Miss Perkins is a flirt?”
“Miss Perkins,” I told him, trying to be just to every party, “is a survivor.”
“That’s really not an answer, you know.”
But it was. And it was all the answer I intended to give him. I asked if he might book our journey to London for the next morning, and I excused myself. For I had a number of things I wished to do. And I wanted to walk. Bothered leg or no, a good walk helps.
“Don’t worry too much,” Henry Adams called after me. “Father’s rarely severe with minor subordinates. He always takes the blame upon himself. And won’t he be surprised to see those letters?”
YES. THE LETTERS. Whether or not they mattered to the Earl, they would matter a great deal to many another man. I longed to see the elder Mr. Adams wield those letters as an avenging angel might, to lay into the lot of them with the shining sword of justice. Then we would see just who won what in Albion.