As a fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in our cuddy living-room on board the Livorno was quite valueless. But I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are. In the schoolman's sense I learned little or nothing. But natheless I believe these hours spent with my father among his books, and yet more, it may be, other hours spent with him when he had no thought of teaching me, had their very real value in the process of my mental development. If they did not give me much of actual knowledge, they helped to give me a mind of sorts, an inclination or bent toward those directions in which intellectual culture is obtainable. Else, surely, I had remained all my days a hewer of wood and a drawer of water--with more of health in mind and body and means, perhaps, than are mine to-day! Well, yes; and that, too, is likely enough. At all events I choose to thank my father for the fact that at no period of my life have I cared to waste time over mere vapid trash, whether spoken or printed.
Outside his own personal feelings and mental processes, the which he never discussed with me, there was no set of subjects, I think, that my father excluded from the range of our conversations. Indeed, I think that in those last months of our life on the Livorno, he talked pretty much as freely with me, and as variously, as he would have talked with any friend of his own age. In the periods when we were not together, he would be sitting at the saloon table, with paper and pens before him, or pacing the seaward side of the poop, or lying resting in his bunk, or on the deck. Frequent rest became increasingly necessary for him. His strength seemed to fade out from him with the mere effluxion of time. He often spoke to me of the curious effects upon men's minds of the illusions we call nostalgia. But he allowed no personal bearing to his remarks, and never hinted that he regretted leaving England, or wished to return there.
Physically speaking, I doubt if any life could be much healthier than ours was on the Livorno. Dress, for each of us alike, consisted of two garments only, shirt and trousers. Unless when going inland for some reason, we went always barefoot. Of what use could shoes be on the Livorno's decks--washed down with salt water every day--or the white sands of the bay. Our dietary, though somewhat monotonous, was quite wholesome. We lacked other vegetables, but grew potatoes, pumpkins, and melons in plenty. Fresh fish we ate most days, and butcher's meat perhaps twice or thrice a week. Purer air than that we breathed and lived in no sanatorium could furnish, and the hours we kept were those of the nursery; though, unfortunately, bed-time by no means always meant sleeping-time for my father.
Withal, even my inexperience did not prevent my realisation of the sinking, fading process at work in my father. Its end I did not foresee. It would have gone hard with me indeed to have been consciously facing that. But I was sadly enough conscious of the process; and a competent housewife would have found humorous pathos, no doubt, in my efforts, by culinary means, to counteract this. My father's appetite was capricious, and never vigorous. There was a considerable period in which I am sure quite half my waking hours (not to mention dream fancies and half waking meditations in bed) were devoted to thinking out and preparing special little dishes from the limited range of food-stuffs at my command.
'A s'prise for you this morning, father,' I would say, as I led the way, proudly, to our dining-table, or, in one of his bad times, arrived at his bunk-side, carrying the carefully pared sheet of stringy bark which served us for a tray. There would be elaborate uncoverings on my side, and sniffs of pretended eagerness from my father; and, thanks to the unvarying kindliness and courtesy of his nature, I dare say my poor efforts really were of some value, because full many a time I am sure they led to his eating when, but for consideration of my feelings, he had gone unnourished, and so aggravated his growing weakness.
'God bless my soul, Nick,' he would say, after a taste of my latest concoction; 'what would they not give to have you at the Langham, or Simpson's? I believe you are going to be a second Soyer, and control the destinies of empires from a palace kitchen. Bush cooking, forsooth! Why this--this latest triumph is nectar--ambrosial stuff, Nick--more good, hearty body in it than any wines the gods ever quaffed. You'll see, I shall begin forthwith to lay on fat, like a Christmas turkey.'
My father could not always rise to such flights, of course; but many and many a time he took a meal he would otherwise have lacked, solely to gratify his small cook.
There came a time when my father passed the whole of every morning in bed, and, later, a time when he left his bunk for no more than an hour or two each afternoon. The thought of seeking a doctor's help never occurred to me, and my father never mentioned it. I suppose we had grown used to relying upon ourselves, to ignoring the resources of civilisation, which, indeed, for my part, I had almost forgotten. Not often, I fancy, in modern days has a boy of eleven or twelve years passed through so strange an experience, or known isolation more complete.
The climax of it all dates in my memory from an evening upon which I returned with Jerry from a journey to the road (for stores) to find my father lying unconscious beside the saloon table, where his paper and pens were spread upon a blotting-pad. Fear had my very heart in his cold grip that night. There was, no doubt, a certain grotesqueness, due to ignorance, about many of my actions. In some book (of Fielding's belike) I had read of burnt feathers in connection with emotional young ladies' fainting fits. So now, like a frightened stag, I flew across the sand to our fowl run, and snatched a bunch of feathers from the first astonished rooster my hand fell upon. A few seconds later, these were smoking in a candle flame, and thence to my father's nostrils. To my ignorant eyes he showed no sign of life whatever, but none the less--again inspired by books--I fell now to chafing his thin hands. And then to the feathers again. Then back to the hands. Lack of thought preserved me from the customary error of attempting to raise the patient's head; but no doubt my ignorance prevented my being of much real service, though every nerve in me strained to the desire.
My father's recovery of robust health, or my own sudden acquisition of a princely fortune, could hardly have brought a deeper thrill of gladness and relief than that which came to me with the first flutter of the veined, dark eye-lids upon which my gaze was fastened. A few moments later, and he recognised me; another few minutes, and, leaning shakily on my shoulder, he reached the side of his bunk. When his head touched the pillow, he gave me a wan smile, and-- 'So you see you can't trust me to keep house even for one afternoon, Nick,' he said.