Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [536]
Shockley grinned. It was hard not to like the man.
“Forest,” called the comfortable clergyman, “Captain Shockley and I lack port.”
At the third glass of port there came over him that sudden sense of unreality which tells a wise man not to drink a fourth.
It was with the third glass that the talk turned to philosophy.
“No hard, dry Aristotle for me,” the clergyman remarked in a comfortable, mellow tone. “Give me men of large ideas. Give me Plato.” He surveyed the table to see how many of the party were still alert. “I am for Bishop Berkeley,” he announced. “That everything is only in the mind.”
“Expound,” Forest demanded. The clergyman obliged.
“You can only tell me anything about the world, Forest, by what you see and feel. Take any object – tell me its shape, its colour, its taste – they are all qualities which are represented in your own mind. Its existence therefore is only in your own mind. To be, is to be seen. Without you to see it, therefore, I claim that the object has no existence.” He leaned back in his chair and stared round the company with amusement. “Is there a man here sober enough to dispute with me?”
Ah, but in the long years of his exile, Adam Shockley had had time to read; and he knew the answer to Berkeley.
“Certainly,” he said, and kicked the table sharply so that one of the country gentlemen started up from his sleep. “I kicked the table and it informed me that it did exist. Perhaps you’d care to do the same.”
“The evening goes to Captain Shockley,” Forest announced, “by a length and a half at least.”
As he crossed the close that evening, Adam knew that he had done well. Whatever reason Forest had for inspecting him, he had been satisfied, for as he paused at the door, Sir Joshua had asked him to come to see him at ten o’clock the following morning.
How pleasant it was to be back in the civilisation of England: how thin and poor the colonies seemed after such an evening as this. He walked, fairly steadily, back home as the evening sun was sinking and the lamplighters made their quiet progress round the close.
Yet something was wrong. Was it the wine, or the company; was it something said at dinner? He shook his head slowly. No. It was something else.
He continued his walk. Far ahead, over the close wall, a long bank of pale cloud was catching the orange glow of the setting sun. On his right, the cathedral soared, so quiet and stately. The whole world seemed at peace.
But still, something was wrong. He paused, this time, to consider. It was something deep in his mind, important, increasingly urgent. He frowned. Was it just that he had had too much to drink?
The whole dinner and the conversation swelled up before him in his mind. There had been fish and gossip; boiled chicken and the constitution; game, pigeon, asparagus, and the strange picture of the miz-maze; lobster and enclosures; fruit tarts and religion; and finally port and the clergyman’s philosophy. The images, tastes and rich scents of the meal, accompanied by the echoes of their conversation, of deep and laughing voices, went through his mind. He frowned. Which course, which of the subjects had so disturbed him?
No, it was none of these.
With a sad smile of recognition, he realised what it was that was troubling him. And then he murmured:
“My God, then, what shall I do? I’m too old to make another journey.”
The realisation had only grown more definite in his mind the next morning when he called upon Forest.
He was led, this time, straight to a small library upstairs. It was a gem of a room, done up in the pseudo-gothic fashion some architects favoured, with heavy plaster bosses in the ceiling and gothic arches also done in plaster, which formed handsome recesses for the shelves of leather-bound books. On the table were several recent issues of the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Sir Joshua rose and gravely motioned him to a leather chair.
“Would