I have been up town “to meeting,” as my father used to say. The air was clear and warm when my friend the Mate appeared on deck in all the splendour of “shore gear.” He affects a material which never wears out. “Mr. McAlnwick, these here are the pants I was married in!” He reserves his serious thoughts for underwear, of which he carries a portentous quantity to last a voyage. Smart young cadets, who never wear the same collar twice, and sport white shirts and soiled souls in seamen’s missions, are the Mate’s aversion. He has severe censures for “gallivantin’” and “dressin’ for show.” He approves of my own staid habits of life, after the fashion of those elderly folk who admire in others what they so sadly lacked in their own spring-time. He forgets that perhaps even I have trembled with rage because there was a spot on my collar, that even I may have spent precious moments folding and pressing a favourite pair of trousers.
The Mate does not often go ashore nowadays, even to missions, and so the lavendery smell which exhales from the historic pants scarcely has time to dissipate before they are back in the chest. Different now, from his young days, when the vessel lay alongside the Quai de la Bourse in Rouen City, and my friend stepped across each evening to the CafÉ Victor to drink crÈme de menthe and feel that listening to the band was rather wicked and altogether Continental. Indeed, his attachment to the ship is now proverbial, the prevailing feeling having been brilliantly epitomised by himself. “If I wash me face,” he snapped to me one day; “If I wash me face, they think I’m goin’ ashore!” But now the decent double-breasted blue serge, the trim beard and black bowler hat are in evidence; my friend the Mate is about to attend divine service at the Seamen’s Mission. My own appearance in mufti causes excitement.
“Ye’re comin’, Mr. McAlnwick?”
“As far as the door,” I reply.
The Chief Officer’s blue eyes glint as he wrinkles his nose.
“’Tis my opinion, Mr. McAlnwick, that ye’ve a young woman in the town yerself.”
And we go forth into the town. At the door of the Mission I bid the Mate farewell, and I catch a last glimpse of him as he removes his hat and wipes his boots with the diffidence apparently interwoven in the fibre of all mariners ashore. He is not of a proselytising disposition. Strong Orangeman, an Ulster Protestant, and—the rest. So, thinking of him, I fare onward, watching the show. Men and maidens idly saunter along, or hasten to the house of God. Why, I wonder, do girls of religious disposition allow themselves so little time to dress? Two or three have passed me; one had a button loose at the back of her dress; another’s “stole” of equivocal lace was unsymmetrically adjusted to her shoulders; and so on. I know that God looketh not on the outward semblance, but I am also painfully aware that young men are not fashioned after their Creator in that respect, and my desire to see everybody married is outraged by these omissions. And looking into the faces of my fellow-passengers this Sunday evening, I am led to think that, as a class, girls are not very beautiful objects when they lack refinement. I see much raw material around me which might possibly be hewn into lovely shape—but——To my friend, with his intellectual Toryism, this hiatus is quite reasonable. These lower classes, he will observe sublimely, have their functions; refinement is not for all. And the St. James’s Gazette rustles comfortably as he sinks back into the saddle-bags again!
Well, let me be honest in this matter. My mind is still in a fluid state concerning theories of society. I can only generalise. I believe, with Emerson, that the world exists ultimately for the weal of souls; I believe, also, the spiritually correlative truth, the ultimate probity of those same souls, but—I have not yet discovered why I abhor contact with those who hold the same political faith. Am I misanthropic? Or unsocial? Why, when I sit resolutely down to hear my own beliefs preached, do I silently contest each point, adopt the contrary view? Why do I avoid “active propaganda,” “working for the cause,” and such like? Is it because I disbelieve utterly in preaching? I do that, anyway. I often think how much farther ahead we should be if no one ever preached. I do not condemn lecturing by any means. I dislike the packed audience of the conventional preacher, socialistic or otherwise. My ideal is the heterogeneous assembly, hearkening to the words of a man skilled in oratory, profound in thought, a genius in the art of the suggestive phrase. The audience in all probability would be far from clear as to his intentions; they would grow clearer as time went on and the suggestions ripened into independent speculation. If they could understand at once what he intends, they would stand in no need of his ministry.
You will perceive how unfitted I was for the meeting I attended to-night. The uppermost thought in mind as I left was, “I do not believe in bloodless revolutions.” You cannot have a revolution of society without turning part of it upside down. And I am half afraid that a good deal of what I value most in this world will be turned upside down by a socialistic revolution. Add the sad, indisputable fact that if everyone were a Socialist I should, by natural law, be a Tory, and you will see, more or less accurately, how I stand. You will see, too, the cause of my belief in heroes and gods, which latter you call natural laws. I look upon myself as a man working among gods and heroes, and I am beginning to think that the question of revolutions rests always ultimately with them, while I, a man, can but look on and marvel.
Well, I am tired with my jaunt. One’s feet are not inured to walking after months at sea. And I hear my friend the Mate overhead.
“Mr. McAlnwick, ye should have been there! The Élite o’ the Mission was on show. An’ we had an anthem. ’Twas good!”
I slip ashore with my letter before turning in.
