Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [142]
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two men to translate my writing." He narrowed his eyes at Neal. "Where'd you learn to write?"
Neal stood up. "In Greenwich, sir."
"He's to work for my father," I said, "in law and insurance."
"Law!" Colonel Pepperrell cried. "Quibble, quibble, quibble! That's no life for you, my boy! Here, sit down! Sit down! Dr. Packer said he had to trim off half your foot."
"I don't know how much he took off, sir. It feels no worse than it did before he trimmed it."
"Yes," Colonel Pepperrell said. "I see!" He looked carelessly at Neal, glanced at Captain Dean and me: then seemed to come to a decision.
He spoke thoughtfully and jerkily, almost as if meditating aloud. "I talked to John Wentworth about you. Twice. Slow man, I am, like folks in Devonshire. Think slowly but make up my mind quick. Always wanted to go to America, but couldn't make up my mind to go till I was sixteen. Then I went quick."
"My brother Jasper speaks of you often, Colonel," Captain Dean said. "He heard all about you from David Waterhouse."
Colonel Pepperrell looked mellow. "Yes. Handles my accounts in England." His eyes strayed back to Neal.
"Mustn't wander from subject," he grumbled. "My boy William Junior! He's fourteen. I can write, but what I write I can't read. William Junior can't write at all, and of course he can't read my writing either. He's got to learn to write, because my other son Andrew's at sea, learning the things a shipowner needs to know. Andrew's delicate. He couldn't have come through Boon Island the way you people did."
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He tilted back in his chair and ran his eyes over us, a shrewd, farseeing old man, wondering, I suspected, whether he could have endured Boon Island.
"I know a little about England," he said. "I ought to. I was born in Revelstoke, near Plymouth. I didn't like it. It's no place for a man without money. Upper classes everywhere protecting themselves from lower classes, and with good reason!" He snorted. "Been thinking some of going back to Revelstoke: buying a few hundred acres in the country: being upper classes myself."
He glanced at us sharply, as if to get our reactions. I, for one, had none.
"The thing that stops me is William Junior. I've built a big business. William Junior's got to write letters to me about the business, so I can buy books and learn to chase foxes at Revelstoke! Chase foxes! Those fools that chase foxes never kept hens. If they ever had, they'd kill all the foxes before they had a chance to grow up!"
He clucked disparagingly at himself. "Wander, wander from the subject! Now here: we got no schools. Imagine that! John Wentworth says he's going to build a school with his own money, but he hasn't done it, and William Junior still can't write. Time's getting short! Nine vessels I've gotone of 'em picked you upthe pink Joanna." He named them, ticking them off on thick fisherman's fingers: "Ship Frenchie, brigantine William and Andrew, brigantine Dolphin, sloop Miriam, sloop Fellowship, sloop Nonesuch, sloop Olive, sloop Merrimac."
He looked proud, and he had reason. The poor boy from Revelstoke had truly prospered.
"You know what that means," Colonel Pepperrell went on. "It means having our accounts handled in half a dozen
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portsinvoicesletters of instruction to captains, enough letters to drive anyone crazy." He pounded the table. "William Junior has got to learn to write, and you, young Butler, have got to learn him."
Neal quickly wrote the word "teach" on a scrap of paper, and showed it to the colonel.
"Yes, yes!" the colonel said. "That's what I meant, but don't start me wandering! The point is, William Junior is a problem. He gets into bad habits. He goes over to Bray's and gets into the pigpens and rides the pigs. Then he comes home and hides his boots where his mother can smell 'em but not find 'em. Now then!"
He leaned forward and fixed Neal with a steely eye.
"Well," Neal said, "I half promised"
"I know what you half promised!"