The Playmaker Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ralph, who was one of Dick’s most prized parishioners.
    Dick called himself a Moravian Methodist and an Eclectic, terms Ralph understood very inexactly. He didn’t want to offend Dick, however, by asking for an explanation. The Reverend Johnson and his wife, Mary, had always been very interested in the state of prisons, so it was appropriate that they had been sent to serve in this ultimate one.
    Among the tracts Dick and Mary had handed out to the convicts in the transports at Portsmouth, before the journey even began, was Advice against Swearing , and Dick seemed a little unhinged by the idea that if he could only convince the convicts to stop profaning the name of God, all else would fall into place. Their clean tongues would spread a Divine reform to all their limbs. The lags had from the first treated this proposition with contempt. When Dick had first visited the hold of the Lady Penrhyn , which held over one hundred women prisoners, the girls put him to flight by pulling their skirts up over their heads. “Convincing him of their trade,” as the surgeon, Johnny White, said.
    H.E. had once offended Dick by telling him to preach on straight moral matters—the main issues of stealing, deceiving, and whoring; the secular virtues of reasonableness, obedience, and industry. He’d also insisted that Dick be not too particular about marrying couples here, whether they were rumoured to have partners in the old world or not. For this was a new state of being. The eight-moon passage to this place had been nearly as absolute a change as death, he argued, and therefore altered morality.
    The Reverend Johnson then was a florid young man about Ralph’s age. He had been permitted to bring his wife with him all this way. Dick was kindly: he had concerned himself with the terrible brand of smallpox which was afflicting the natives. But even a devout parishioner like Ralph could not help but feel that Mary Johnson, who was capable and pious but more worldly, might have made a better pastor.
    For Dick’s sermons were dreadful—a mixture of plain moral advice as H.E. had requested, but also warnings to the convicts about falling into the Papist heresy of Pelagianism and Justification by Works. When it came down to it, Dick considered that a whore or a pickpocket could always reform and be redeemed, but a heretic was beyond help. So, even in a criminal community where doctrine and orthodoxy were not common subjects of conversation, he was determined to save the minds of the lags from every nuance of Papist heterodoxy. His sermons, therefore, were capable of making your average sheep thief’s eyes cross.
    As Harry, leaving the small hillock where God had been praised that morning, told Ralph now, “Jesus, Ralph, what a cracked sermon that man preaches!”
    Ralph made some moderate answer. Then he sprang it on Harry. “Duckling has some capacity,” he murmured.
    â€œChrist! Who hasn’t come forward to claim a part in this bloody play? But she can’t read.”
    â€œI have had to lower that high standard in favour of those who cannot read but have good memories. I had the lag Mary Brenham rehearse her in some of the lines, and she spoke them back well to me. She didn’t tell you she would audition for the play?”
    â€œShe didn’t. I shall beat her for it.” But Harry wouldn’t. He was a pitiably indulgent lover. His face was bunched like a fist now, yet it held no vengeance in it at all. “I would not like it to turn her head.”
    He feared too much success would draw younger men to her.
    â€œIt is a lesser role,” Ralph reassured him. “Lucy. Melinda’s servant. She would be quite overshadowed by the other performers.”
    Harry chuckled. “So she has some stagecraft, does she? My girl?”
    â€œShe is a different person if you let her act.”
    â€œI hope she does not have many risqué lines.”
    â€œNot really.