第 十 章 · 第10章

What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And be the matter what it

might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom prior

to the affair of the spilled soup he had never come into any special

contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do

with one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant ship’s

_peacemaker_, even him who in Claggart’s own phrase was ‘the sweet and

pleasant young fellow’? Yes, why should _Jemmy Legs_, to borrow the

Dansker’s expression, be _down_ on the Handsome Sailor?

But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may

indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he

assuredly was.

Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart,

something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be

wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart’s

knowledge of the young blue-jacket began at some period anterior to

catching sight of him on board the seventy-four--all this, not so

difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to

account for whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But, in

fact, there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause, necessarily to

be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much

charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, _the

mysterious_, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the _Mysteries

of Udolpho_ could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious

than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain

exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however

harmless he may be?--if not called forth by that very harmlessness

itself.

Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar

personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a great

warship fully manned and at sea. There, every day, among all ranks,

almost every man comes into more or less of contact with almost every

other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an aggravating object

one must needs give it Jonah’s toss, or jump overboard himself. Imagine

how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar human creature

the direct reverse of a saint?

But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these

hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must

cross ‘the deadly space between,’ and this is best done by indirection.

Long ago an honest scholar, my senior, said to me in reference to one

who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that

against him nothing was ever openly said, though among the few something

was whispered, ‘Yes, X---- is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a

lady’s fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organised

religion, much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all

that, I think that to try and get into X----, enter his labyrinth, and

get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what

is known as _knowledge of the world_, that were hardly possible, at

least for me.’

‘Why,’ said I, ‘X----, however singular a study to some, is yet human,

and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human

nature, and in most of its varieties.’

‘Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But

for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to

know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while

they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or

nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant

rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the

understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters,

whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a

girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage

of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew

the girl’s heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into

obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they?

Mostly recluses.’

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift

of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon

which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less

difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one

must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured

with the Biblical element.

In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato,

a list attributed to him, occurs this: ‘Natural Depravity: a depravity

according to nature.’ A definition which though savouring of Calvinism,

by no means involves Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind. Evidently its

intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples

of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for

notable instances,--since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in

them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality,--one must go

elsewhere. Civilisation, especially if of the austerer sort, is

auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It

has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It is

not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There

is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything--never

mercenary or avaricious. In short, the depravity here meant partakes

nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity.

Though no flatterer of mankind, it never speaks ill of it.

But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a

nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would

seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the

less in his soul’s recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption

from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than

to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.

That is to say: toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness

of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool

judgment sagacious and sound.

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their

lunacy is not continuous, but occasional; evoked by some special object;

it is secretive and self-contained, so that when most active it is to

the average mind not distinguished from sanity, and for the reason above

suggested that whatever its aim may be, and the aim is never disclosed,

the method and the outward proceeding is always perfectly rational.

Now something such was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil

nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or

licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short, ‘a depravity

according to nature.’

Can it be this phenomenon, disowned or not acknowledged, that in some

criminal cases puzzles the courts? For this cause have our juries at

times not only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers with their

fees, but also the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts

with theirs? But why leave it to them? Why not subpœna as well the

clerical proficients? Their vocation bringing them into peculiar contact

with so many human beings, and sometimes in their least guarded hour, in

interviews very much more confidential than those of physician and

patient; this would seem to qualify them to know something about those

intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility; whether in

a given case, say, the crime proceeded from mania in the brain or rabies

of the heart. As to any differences among themselves these clerical

proficients might develop on the stand, these could hardly be greater

than the direct contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical

experts.

Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? It is because they

somewhat savour of Holy Writ in its phrase ‘mysteries of iniquity.’

The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the

master-at-arms has necessitated this chapter. With an added hint or two

in connection with the accident of the mess, the resumed narrative must

be left to vindicate as it may its own credibility.

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