The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold Read online

  “Oh, he was all right,” said Mrs. Pinfold.

  “There was something fishy about him,” said Mr. Pinfold. “He stared at me as though he was measuring my Life-Waves.”

  Then he fell into a doze.

  Mrs. Pinfold lunched alone downstairs and rejoined her husband who said: “I must go and say good-bye to my mother. Order a car.”

  “Darling, you aren’t well enough.”

  “I always say good-bye to her before going abroad. I’ve told her we are coming.”

  “I’ll telephone and explain. Or shall I go out there alone?”

  “I’m going. It’s true I’m not well enough, but I’m going. Get the hall-porter to have a car here in half an hour.”

  Mr. Pinfold’s widowed mother lived in a pretty little house at Kew. She was eighty-two years old, sharp of sight and hearing, but of recent years very slow of mind. In childhood Mr. Pinfold had loved her extravagantly. There remained now only a firm pietas. He no longer enjoyed her company nor wished to communicate. She had been left rather badly off by his father. Mr. Pinfold supplemented her income with payments under a deed of covenant so that she was now comfortably placed with a single, faithful old maid to look after her and all her favorite possessions, preserved from the larger house, set out round her. Young Mrs. Pinfold, who would talk happily of her children, was very much more agreeable company to the old woman than was her son, but Mr. Pinfold went to call dutifully several times a year and, as he said, always before an absence of any length.

  A funereal limousine bore them to Kew. Mr. Pinfold sat huddled in rugs. He hobbled on two sticks, one a blackthorn, the other a malacca cane, through the little gate up the garden path. An hour later he was out again, subsiding with groans into the back of the car. The visit had not been a success.

  “It wasn’t a success, was it?” said Mr. Pinfold.

  “We ought to have stayed to tea.”

  “She knows I never have tea.”

  “But I do, and Mrs. Yercombe had it all prepared. I saw it on a trolley—cakes and sandwiches and a muffin-dish.”

  “The truth is my mother doesn’t like to see anyone younger than herself iller than herself—except children of course.”

  “You were beastly snubbing about the children.”

  “Yes. I know. Damn. Damn. Damn. I’ll write to her from the ship. I’ll send her a cable. Why does everyone except me find it so easy to be nice?”

  When he reached the hotel he returned to bed and ordered another bottle of champagne. He dozed again. Mrs. Pinfold sat quietly reading a paper-covered detective story. He awoke and ordered a rather elaborate dinner, but by the time it came his appetite was gone. Mrs. Pinfold ate well, but sadly. When the table was wheeled out, Mr. Pinfold hobbled to the bathroom and took his blue-gray pills. Three a day was the number prescribed. He had a dozen left. He took a big dose of his sleeping-draught; the bottle was half full.

  “I’m taking too much,” he said, not for the first time. “I’ll finish what I’ve got and never order any more.” He looked at himself in the glass. He looked at the backs of his hands which were again mottled with large crimson patches. “I’m sure it’s not really good for me,” he said, and felt his way to bed, tumbled in, and fell heavily asleep.

  His train was at ten next day. The funereal limousine was ordered. Mr. Pinfold dressed laboriously and, without shaving, went to the station. Mrs. Pinfold came with him. He needed help to find a porter and to find his seat. He dropped his ticket and his sticks on the platform.

  “I don’t believe you ought to be going alone,” said Mrs. Pinfold. “Wait for another ship and I’ll come too.”

  “No, no. I shall be all right.”

  But some hours later when he reached the docks Mr. Pinfold did not feel so hopeful. He had slept most of the way, now and then waking to light a cigar and let it fall from his fingers after a few puffs. His aches seemed sharper than ever as he climbed out of the carriage. Snow was falling. The distance from the train to the ship seemed enormous. The other passengers stepped out briskly. Mr. Pinfold moved slowly. On the quay a telegraph boy was taking messages. Mrs. Pinfold would be back at Lychpole by now. Mr. Pinfold with great difficulty wrote: Safely embarked. All love. Then he moved to the gangway and painfully climbed aboard.

  A colored steward led him to his cabin. He gazed round it unseeing, sitting on a bunk. There was something he ought to do; telegraph his mother. On the cabin table was some writing paper bearing the ship’s name and the flag of the line at its head. Mr. Pinfold tried to compose and inscribe a message. The task proved to be one of insuperable difficulty. He threw the spoilt paper into the basket and sat on his bed, still in his hat and overcoat with his sticks beside him. Presently his two suitcases arrived. He gazed at them for some time, then began to unpack. That too proved difficult. He rang his bell and the colored steward reappeared bowing and smiling.

  “I’m not very well. I wonder if you could unpack for me?”

  “Dinner seven-thirty o’clock, sir.”

  “I said, could you unpack for me?”

  “No, sir, bar not open in port, sir.”

  The man smiled and bowed and left Mr. Pinfold.

  Mr. Pinfold sat there, in his hat and coat, holding his cudgel and his cane. Presently an English steward appeared with the passenger list, some forms to fill, and the message: “The Captain’s compliments, sir, and he would like to have the honor of your company at his table in the dining-saloon.”

  “Now?”

  “No, sir. Dinner is at seven-thirty. I don’t expect the Captain will be dining in the saloon tonight.”

  “I don’t think I shall either,” said Mr. Pinfold. “Thank the Captain. Very civil of him. Another night. Someone said something about the bar not being open. Can’t you get me some brandy?”

  “Oh yes, sir. I think so, sir. Any particular brand?”

  “Brandy,” said Mr. Pinfold. “Large one.”

  The chief steward brought it with his own hands.

  “Good night,” said Mr. Pinfold.

  He found on the top of his case the things he needed for the night. Among them his pills and his bottle. The brandy impelled him to action. He must telegraph to his mother. He groped his way out and along the corridor to the purser’s office. A clerk was on duty, very busy with his papers behind a grille.

  “I want to send a telegram.”

  “Yes, sir. There’s a boy at the head of the gangway.”

  “I’m not feeling very well. I wonder if you could be very kind and write it for me?”

  The purser looked at him hard, observed his unshaven chin, smelled brandy, and drew on his long experience of travelers.

  “Sorry about that, sir. Pleased to be any help.”

  Mr. Pinfold dictated, “Everyone in ship most helpful. Love, Gilbert,” fumbled with a handful of silver, then crept back to his cabin. There he took his large gray pills and a swig of his sleeping-draught. Then, prayerless, he got himself to bed.

  Three

  An Unhappy Ship

  The S.S. Caliban, Captain Steerforth master, was middle-aged and middle-class; clean, trustworthy and comfortable, without pretence to luxury. There were no private baths. Meals were not served in cabins, it was stated, except on the orders of the medical officer. Her public rooms were paneled in fumed oak in the fashion of an earlier generation. She plied between Liverpool and Rangoon, stopping at intermediate ports, carrying a mixed cargo and a more or less homogeneous company of passengers, Scotchmen and their wives mostly, travelling on business and on leave. Crew and stewards were Lascars.

  When Mr. Pinfold came to himself it was full day and he was rocking gently to and fro in his narrow bed with the slow roll of the high seas.

  He had barely noticed his cabin on the preceding evening. Now he observed that it was a large one, with two berths. There was a little window made of slats of opaque glass, fitted with tight, ornamental muslin curtains, and a sliding shutter. This gave, not on the sea, but on a deck where people from t
ime to time passed, casting a brief shadow but with no sound that was audible above the beat of the engine, the regular creak of plates and woodwork, and the continuous insect-hum of the ventilator. The ceiling, at which Mr. Pinfold gazed, was spanned as though by a cottage beam by a white studded air-shaft and by a multiplicity of pipes and electric cable. Mr. Pinfold lay for some time gazing and rocking, not quite sure where he was, but rather pleased than not to be there. His watch, unwound the night before, had run down. He had been called. On the shelf at his side a cup of tea, already quite cold, slopped in its saucer, and beside it, stained with spilled tea, was the ship’s passenger list. He found himself entered as Mr. G. Penfold and thought of Mr. Pooter at the Mansion House. The misprint was welcome as an item of disguise, an uncovenanted addition to his privacy. He glanced idly through the other names—“ Dr. Abercrombie, Mr. Addison, Miss Amory, Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Margaret Angel, Mr. and Mrs. Benson, Mr. Blackadder, Major and Mrs. Cockson,” no one he knew, no one likely to annoy him. There were half a dozen Burmese on their way to Rangoon; the rest were solidly British. No one, he felt confident, would have read his books or would seek to draw him into literary conversation. He would be able to do a quiet three weeks’ work in this ship as soon as his health mended.

  He sat up and put his feet to the floor. He was still crippled but a shade less painfully, he thought, than in the days before. He went to his basin. The looking-glass showed him a face which still looked alarmingly old and ill. He shaved, brushed his hair, took his gray pill, returned to bed with a book, and at once fell into a doze.

  The ship’s hooter roused him. That must be twelve noon. A knock on his door, barely audible above the other sea noises, and the dark face of his steward appeared.

  “No good today,” the man said. “Plenty passengers sick.”

  He took the cup of tea and slipped away.

  Mr. Pinfold was a good sailor. Only once in a war which had been largely spent bucketing about in various sorts of boat, had he ever been seasick, and on that occasion most of the naval crew had been prostrate also. Mr. Pinfold, who was neither beautiful nor athletic, cherished this one gift of parsimonious Nature. He decided to get up.

  The main deck, when he reached it, was almost deserted. Two wind-blown girls in thick sweaters were tacking along arm-in-arm past the piles of folded chairs. Mr. Pinfold hobbled to the after smoking-room bar. Four or five men sat together in one corner. He nodded to them, found a chair on the further side, and ordered brandy and ginger-ale. He was not himself. He knew in a distant way, as he knew, or thought he knew, certain facts of history, that he was in a ship, travelling for the good of his health, but, as with much of his historical knowledge, he was vague about the date. He did not know that twenty-four hours ago he had been in the train from London to Liverpool. His phases of sleeping and waking in the last few days were not related to night and day. He sat still in the smoking-room gazing blankly ahead.

  After a time two cheerful women entered. The men greeted them:

  “Morning, Mrs. Cockson. Glad to see you’re on your feet this merry morning.”

  “Good morning, good morning, good morning all. You know Mrs. Benson?”

  “I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure. Will you join us, Mrs. Benson? I’m in the chair,” and he turned and called to the steward: “Boy.”

  Mr. Pinfold studied this group with benevolence. No one among them would be a Pinfold fan. Presently, at one o’clock, a steward appeared with a gong and Mr. Pinfold followed him submissively down to the dining-saloon.

  The Captain’s table was laid for seven. The “fiddles” were up and the cloth damped; barely a quarter of the places in the saloon were taken.

  Only one other of the Captain’s party came to luncheon, a tall young Englishman who fell into easy conversation with Mr. Pinfold, informing him that he was named Glover and was manager of a tea plantation in Ceylon; an idyllic life, as he described it, lived on horseback with frequent long leave at a golf club. Glover was keen on golf. In order to keep himself in condition for the game on board ship he had a weighted club, its head on a spring, which he swung, he said, a hundred times morning and evening. His cabin, it transpired, was next to Mr. Pinfold’s.

  “We have to share a bathroom. When do you like your bath?”

  Glover’s conversation did not demand sharp attention. Mr. Pinfold found himself recalled into a world beyond which he had momentarily wandered, to answer: “Well, really, I hardly ever have a bath at sea. One keeps so clean and I don’t like hot salt water. I tried to book a private bathroom. I can’t think why.”

  “There aren’t any private baths in this ship.”

  “So I learned. It seems a very decent sort of ship,” said Mr. Pinfold, gazing sadly at his curry, at his swaying glass of wine, at the surrounding deserted table, wishing to be pleasant to Glover.

  “Yes. Everyone knows everyone else. The same people travel in her every year. People sometimes complain they feel rather out of things if they aren’t regulars.”

  “I shan’t complain,” said Mr. Pinfold. “I’ve been rather ill. I want a quiet time.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You’ll find it quiet enough. Some find it too quiet.”

  “It can’t be too quiet for me,” said Mr. Pinfold.

  He took rather formal leave of Glover and at once forgot him until, reaching his cabin, he found added to its other noises the strains of a jazz band. Mr. Pinfold stood puzzled. He was not musical. All he knew was that somewhere quite near him a band was playing. Then he remembered.

  “It’s the golfer,” he thought. “That young man next door. He’s got a gramophone. What’s more,” he suddenly observed, “he’s got a dog.” Quite distinctly on the linoleum outside his door, between his door and Glover’s, he heard the pattering of a dog’s feet. “I bet he’s not allowed it. I’ve never been in a ship where they allowed dogs in the cabins. I daresay he bribed the steward. Anyway, one can’t reasonably object. I don’t mind. He seemed a very pleasant fellow.”

  He noticed his gray pills, took one, lay down, opened his book, and then to the sound of dance tunes and the snuffling of the dog he fell asleep once more.

  Perhaps he dreamed. He forgot on the instant whatever had happened in the hours between. It was dark. He was awake and there was a very curious scene being played near him; under his feet, it seemed. He heard distinctly a clergyman conducting a religious meeting. Mr. Pinfold had no first-hand acquaintance with evangelical practice. His home and his schools had professed a broad-to-high anglicanism. His ideas of nonconformity derived from literature, from Mr. Chadband and Philip Henry Gosse, from charades and from back numbers of Punch. The sermon, which was just rising to its peroration, was plainly an expression of that kind of faith, scriptural in diction, emotional in appeal. It was addressed presumably to members of the crew. Male voices sang a hymn which Mr. Pinfold remembered from his nursery where his nanny, like almost all nannies, had been Calvinist: “Pull for the shore, sailor. Pull for the shore.”

  “I want to see Billy alone after you dismiss,” said the clergyman. There followed an extempore, rather perfunctory prayer, then a great shuffling of feet and pushing about of chairs; then a hush; then the clergyman, very earnestly: “Well, Billy, what have you got to say to me?” and the unmistakable sound of sobbing.

  Mr. Pinfold began to feel uneasy. This was something that was not meant to be overheard.

  “Billy, you must tell me yourself. I am not accusing you of anything. I am not putting words into your mouth.”

  Silence except for sobbing.

  “Billy, you know what we talked about last time. Have you done it again? Have you been impure, Billy?”

  “Yes, sir, I can’t help it, sir.”

  “God never tempts us beyond our strength, Billy. I’ve told you that, haven’t I? Do you suppose I do not feel these temptations, too, Billy? Very strongly at times. But I resist, don’t I? You know I resist, don’t I, Billy?”

  Mr. Pinfold was horror-struck. He w
as being drawn into participation in a scene of gruesome indecency. His sticks lay by the bunk. He took the blackthorn and beat strongly on the floor.

  “Did you hear anything then, Billy? A knocking. That is God knocking at the door of your soul. He can’t come and help you unless you are pure, like me.”

  This was more than Mr. Pinfold could bear. He took painfully to his feet, put on his coat, brushed his hair. The voices below him continued:

  “I can’t help it, sir. I want to be good. I try. I can’t.”

  “You’ve got pictures of girls stuck up by your bunk, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Filthy pictures.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How can you say you want to be good when you keep temptation deliberately before your eyes. I shall come and destroy those pictures.”

  “No, please, sir. I want them.”

  Mr. Pinfold hobbled out of his cabin and up to the main deck. The sea was calmer now. More passengers were about in the lounge and the bar. It was half past six. A group were throwing dice for drinks. Mr. Pinfold sat alone and ordered a cocktail. When the steward brought it, he asked: “Does this ship carry a regular chaplain?”

  “Oh no, sir. The Captain reads the prayers on Sundays.”

  “There’s a clergyman, then, among the passengers?”

  “I haven’t seen one, sir. Here’s the list.”

  Mr. Pinfold studied the passenger list. No name bore any prefix indicating Holy Orders. A strange ship, thought Mr. Pinfold, in which laymen were allowed to evangelize a presumably heathen crew; religious mania perhaps on the part of one of the officers.