The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  “I should be pleased to tell you the story of my travels,” said Bono smartly, “really I should, and a cracking fine tale it is too, sir, but I beg your pardon, you has work to do. Teaching Prince O. And reading and such.”

  Dr. Trefusis importuned him to recount his adventures — to which my own wishes ardently assented — but Bono offered only theatrical refusal, saying he knew Trefusis had a letter from Dunmore that said we should be philosophizing, and we didn’t want to disappoint our Serjeant there.

  Nodding, Dr. Trefusis asked me to fetch my Locke; which I did, receiving a baleful interrogatory look from Clippinger. When I returned, Dr. Trefusis was sat with his arms around his thin legs, as I remembered him so oft sitting in the school room in the College of Lucidity, laughing at some witty chaff of Bono’s.

  Trefusis took the book and searched it, explaining that today’s lesson was on travel, location, place, and the relative nature of motion; which, said he, would be illuminated by an excellent example of alteration in location by Private William Williams.

  “Read it now,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Later this evening, transcribe it for better understanding.”

  I stared down at the page; and well can it be imagined how little I perceived of the meaning of Mr. Locke’s disquisition on space and place; though I shall transcribe and seek to understand. What I recall of our evening is not the words of that most eminent of rationalists, but the sensibility that those dearest to me, the supports of my childhood and instructors of my youth, were gathered again in company with me, and that there was great comfort annexed to sitting there idle — together — crouched upon the stooped lower deck of the Crepuscule, hearkening to Bono’s tale while others played cards or muttered or slept, and Vishnoo clambered along the planking, seeking his insect meal.

  And Bono, beginning, spake thus: “I was sold to one Colonel Clepp Asquith of Burn Acres. I served him as a valet. You know Colonel Asquith?” he asked Dr. Trefusis.

  “I was never gratified with a personal introduction,” said Dr. Trefusis. “I saw many letters by his hand regarding the finances of the College.”

  Bono nodded with impatience. “He’s a — what can a person say? Mr. Asquith is one of them men who’s like a tipped-over scuttle, see? He has one of the pointy, low guts that a gentleman can have. And a face like that too, a pointy, low round face. That didn’t make it no easier when you saw how many of the little Negro babes on the plantation had his pointy, low little nose and little mouth. Or maybe that was just in my fancy. I started to see his pointy, low self everywhere I looked.

  “First I got there and he had me as just another house servant, but then one day he saw me look over his shoulder at a newspaper that had some word of a Negro uprising and he was sensible that I seen the matter and understood it; so he had me whipped for knowing the science of reading — ten lashes — and then elevated me to his valet.”

  (And I read, without much marking:)

  I shall begin with the simple idea of SPACE. I have showed above that we get the idea of space both by our sight and touch; which, I think, is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves: nor is it less obvious, that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.

  “So if you never met him, how much you know about Clepp Asquith?” Bono asked Dr. Trefusis.

  “The impressions he made upon me suggested he was not of the sagest, nor of the most excellent of men.”

  “Sir, he may have paid for some of the College, but he hated it, too. Surely, he employed me to write him notes and to read some small correspondence, but it raised up his ire devilish — devilish — that the College had taught me to read; just as it raised up his ire that the College done experiments on time and the soul and such instead of on crops and metal and baking and such. That and everything else got him storming, on a general head — that there ain’t enough respecting of degree in the North, and that up yonder, barbers and bootmen — he always said that, ‘barbers and bootmen’ — that up yonder, barbers and bootmen sat next to the first men of the Colonies and talked to them like brethren. Sweet Jesus, he would yell and curse about the Northerners and their fool leveling Puritan ways and they were a lot of sickly old schoolmarms, didn’t understand a single thing regarding the nicer points of business.

  “And after a while, I started to remark that whenever there was some talk of the North — one of the mobs done something he didn’t like, or a reverend arguing for schools, or some Negro gents presenting a petition in Boston for their freedom, or (murder!) that book of poems by the Negress — he’d start all fulminating: Oh, the meddling scoundrels in New England! Their leveling! Their freaks!

  “And then, he search out some reason for to whip me.

  “Every time. I looked over the top of his head to the hall clock, and the longest it took was one hour and thirty-three minutes. Some fool reason. They wasn’t the right shoes or the candle is burnt down too low, boy, or just for having a look. He said I had a certain look. And he order me outside and whip me hisself and all the while asking me if I was clever, if my dear sweet College ever taught me to read stripes. And I kept quiet and bided my time.

  “He had a daughter, I mean a white daughter, name of Fanny. She was — sweet mercy in a firkin — she was a gruesome little baggage. You know, sir, I love the dear darling squat children, especially when they’re spruce things that either answer smart or that stare in a long-lashedy kind of way, like our minikin Prince O. here used to be before he a-muscled himself up — but this damn thing was some imp out of Hell. Maybe ten or eleven. I knew her and the truth of her from one of the first days I was there, when I seen her playing with some little girls — six or seven years, these girls — they was the daughters of a neighbor planter. She brought out her dolls for their games, and one of the dolls was a black doll made from rags that was given her when she was a little girl by her maid, who’d suckled her, her mother being too tender to do so herself. Fanny and these neighbor girls, see, were at play, and one of the small girls took a white doll in a dress and began having fits yelling at the black doll, making all this chastisement in some high, squeaky voice. ‘You breaked another plate, Masie, and you ain’t fit to serve in a respectable house’ and such-like. Like she must hear her mommy or her dada say.

  “And Fanny — who could tell her halt, that ain’t what a lady does — instead Fanny breaks off a stem of grass, and gives it her, and puts it in the doll’s hand, and together, they make the little white doll whip the black one.

  “And Fanny puts on some African accent, and starts begging mercy — ‘Oh, de missus whip me some! Oh, missus!’ and such-like. And these tiny girls, they start to laugh and whip the doll harder to urge the whole jest longer.

  “It made my heart sick, and I could not barely stand in that yard without fleeing. That’s when I knew sweet Fanny was a species of demon.

  “Now, I don’t know rightly what made Fanny fascinated with my person, and longing always to hurt me special, what called her eye to me, but I warrant it was due to me being a wondrous handsome brute. That’s a burden that a man has to carry upright, sir, and I may suffer — I may suffer awful, boys — but weep me no tears.”

  “You have,” said Trefusis, “made your peace with your Maker.”

  “And gentlemen, I myself cry no tears for me. No, sir, I don’t. Because it crunches up the features. Detracts from the regularity.”

  “I can see that if we allow the slightest divagation on the subject of your charms, we shall never have time to hear the tale of your escape.”

  “Sir, the shape of my jaw alone could furnish enough talk for a whole of your symposiums.”

  “Symposia. Doubtless.”

  “Look ye, Prince O. actually almost smiles.”

  (Bashfully, I returned my gaze to Locke.)

  SPACE AND EXTENSION.

  Space, considered barely in
length between any two beings, without considering anything else between them, is called DISTANCE.

  Bono continued his tale: “So, as I say, Fanny, she conceived a great hate for me specific. I don’t rightly know why; but that girl enjoyed tormenting me, and so, oft when her father was in a ranting state because of the fools of New England, his reasons for whipping, they come from Fanny.

  “I can recall . . . Here, sir, one example: One day, it was beastly hot, a devilish hot rainy day, and Miss Fanny didn’t want to go above-stairs to her chamber to change her dress, because her paint might melt. So her father says to me to go up and fetch down the gown the maid left out on the bed. Now, her maid is there, sirs; she is present in the chamber. Miss Fanny’s maid is the correct one to fetch her dress. But I bow and say, ‘An’t please your honor,’ and I step up the stairs and fetch the dress down and ask where they wish me to lay it, that she might change into it and such.

  “Fanny says, she says, ‘That ain’t the gown I am to wear for supper; I wish for the gray. That ain’t the one I asked for.’

  “I apologize, and say this is the one I found on her bed.

  “She says, ‘You got the wrong one.’

  “I says to Colonel Asquith, ‘My apologies, sir. An’t please your honor, this was the dress was laid out.’

  “‘That was laid out earlier,’” says Colonel Ass. ‘Before the rain started. Now she wishes for the gray. She wears always the gray, boy, when it rains. Always.’

  “At this I cannot forbear, and I say, ‘When it rains, sir?’

  “And he says, ‘Don’t be an impertinent fool, boy.’

  “And I can’t forbear — because I am an impertinent fool — saying, ‘I was to guess her mind from the weather, sir?’

  “And he calls that insufferable vanity, and swears that I am a black scoundrel, and I say, ‘Sir, begging your honor’s pardon, sir, I beg your honor’s most gracious pardon, but I have a nation of trouble knowing people’s thoughts by looking at the clouds, me being a gentleman’s valet and not a old Roman prophet.’”

  Bono ceased his speaking.

  “Lord Jesus,” he swore; and for a moment there was silence. I looked up, and found he was almost in tears. “Lord Jesus,” he repeated. “I still have them scars.”

  We sat soberly; we none of us could speak.

  After a time, Bono resumed his tale. “Now, people was always at the house, talking sedition, just as up at the College. Colonel Ass and his friends might proclaim that the Boston mob is a danger, but they applauded all that talk of liberty. I presume, sir, from what I could tell, that they was wound up in that same scheme to purchase Indian land —”

  “Indeed,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Mr. Asquith was one of the foremost investors in that scheme.”

  “That same scheme. So they was always making plaints about Parliament and the King’s Ministers being no respecters of property and how government was builded to protect the natural right to own what you own and how there was rumors — mark you — rumors that Lord Dunmore even spake of freeing the slaves if the spirit of rebellion came to Virginia.

  “It was that last that I heard. I knew my master and his crew was preparing for a stand — they had recipes from you at the College for gunpowder, and they was making experiments in getting nitre from the floors of their tobacco houses. They was setting up a factory to make the powder. They was ready to fight; and I said, ‘If they’re ready to fight Lord Dunmore, time may come when I am ready to join him.’

  “And not too long after, that time, it come.”

  FIGURE.

  This the touch discovers in sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach; and the eye takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view.

  Thus did I read in counterfeit of study; but I could not comprehend its meaning, so bent were my ears to Bono’s tale:

  “So it happens that Mrs. Asquith is having a grand ball. Her particular acquaintance is come for overnight, and then the next night, there is a full ball with all the neighboring houses. There was among that crowd several especial friends of the little Asquith imp, and Miss Fanny was ever so delighted they was visiting. The first night, Miss Fanny and her friends are in the parlor, and Colonel and Mrs. Ass and their guests are out visiting at another house for the evening. Before the Asquith Seniors take leave, they says to me, the Ass Seniors, ‘Bono, you make sure the girls got everything they wish,’ and though that ain’t my watch, I bow and says, ‘As it pleases your honor.’

  “I spend some time, a part of an hour, polishing my master’s shoes, and then I hear screams and laughs from the parlor and I bethinks me it is time to see whether the ladies require any little thing. I introduce myself into the parlor and they’s all giddy, and I inquire if there is any way in which I may be of service; that the kitchen is at their command and such.

  “One of them says that I has polished manners, and I bow, but Miss Fanny is bellowing over it all like Captain Stormalong that she wishes me to fetch them her mother’s diamonds — Peruzzi diamonds some of them — corsages and aigrettes and such — so the girls can dress like ladies and romp.

  “Now, this is a surprise. I express my regrets that I cannot oblige her, but I aver that should she wish anything within the compass of my et cetera, surely I shall speed to et cetera.

  “She says, ‘You will get us diamonds or be whipped as you were for the gown.’

  “Once again — and now my ire was rising, but I was most cool — I say that I regret I can’t oblige an indulgence that her father should find wanton and improper in a young lady and et cetera, and she says softly, ‘You will oblige us.’

  “At this, there wasn’t no course but insolence, so I says, ‘Miss Fanny, I tell your father that you and your friends played flying duchess skip-jump with the diamonds on, and you gets a greater whipping than ever I will.’

  “There was silence then — this terrible silence — and she stood up and smiled at me. She said — very soft now — she said, ‘You are my djinni. You are my magic spirit. You will get me whatever I wish.’

  “I did not reply.

  “So she said, ‘Otherwise, I shall tell mon père that you touched me.’

  “She delivered that word, then she stared with all this hate; and I stared right back; and our eyes . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence, but said, “And my heart retreated, and I went and fetched them down some gauds; bethinking the whole while that I should be whipped for touching the jewelry, but that if I didn’t give her the diamonds, and she delivered her message of me touching, the Asquith Seniors would be tripping over theyselves as to whether I should be burnt first or hanged.

  “I delivered the jewelry boxes, and she smiles again and says, ‘Now you may give me a kiss.’

  “It was death. It was death, sir. I could not do a thing in one way or in another. It was death. I ain’t got no thing to say to her, no witty thing, and no . . . No thing. I ain’t got no thing. So I bow and I left the room. I heard them cackling behind me.

  “And I knew then that I must flee. I must needs flee or I was soon dead.”

  (And I read, without apprehending:)

  In our idea of place, we consider the relation of distance betwixt anything, and any two or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest. For when we find anything at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, we say it hath kept the same place.

  “I knew I had to run, and I knew it was Lord Dunmore or nothing. I reckoned that I could make my way during the ball, there being confusion and many servants, all comings and goings. And I should have just fled — but I couldn’t forbear revenge. I could not forbear revenge.”

  “Revenge,” said Dr. Trefusis, smiling widely and stretching his hands around his knees, as he could not be more delighted by this welcome turn in the narrative.

  “Now. All night, I lay and I bethou
ght myself — how to leave so I won’t be forgot? And behold.”

  “Ecce,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “Look ye. Now, when I was at the College, one of the experiments I assisted at — it was an experiment with paint. Metallic paint. Lead and bismuth. You recall, sir? We all wore cloths over our mouths?”

  “I recall it. Paint for the ladies.”

  “For the ladies, as you say. For their cheeks. An excellent complexion in a gallipot. And I remembered Mr. Gitney telling me that what you was all laboring at was an old problem: that the bismuth, or mayhap the lead, acted with any sulphureous exhalations in the air —”

  “Ye gods, you are so far at present from being comprehensible —”

  “Hark and shhh. That sulphur in the air acted on the paint and turned it black.”

  “Indeed. ’Tis a thorny problem.”

  “So in the morning, I went down to Mr. Asquith’s gunpowder house, where there was two men concocting the powder, and I delivered a message that Mr. Ass was desirous of a sample of liver of sulphur. I recalled particularly, that’s what we used in the experiment at the College. Liver of sulphur.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I told them Mr. Ass was observing his own experiments up at the house with his guests, some crook-bonneted scheme sent down by those Collegians up north. They laughed and they gave me the liver of sulphur in a sack, and when I asked, some vitriol oil, too.”

  “You carried oil of vitriol knocking about in a sack? It is infinitely dangerous, my boy.”