Within the Tides: Tales
by Joseph Conrad · English · Gutenberg #1053 · 361,928 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Within the Tides: Tales
Author: Joseph Conrad
Release date: September 1, 1997 [eBook #1053]
Most recently updated: July 31, 2026
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1053
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE TIDES: TALES ***
WITHIN THE
TIDES
TALES
. . . Go, make you ready.
HAMLET _to the_ PLAYERS.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
* * * * *
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
PARIS: J. M. DENT ET. FILS
* * * * *
FIRST EDITION _February_ 1915
REPRINTED _April_ 1915; _August_ 1919
* * * * *
To
MR. AND MRS. RALPH WEDGWOOD
THIS SHEAF OF CARE-FREE ANTE-BELLUM PAGES
IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR CHARMING HOSPITALITY
IN THE LAST MONTH OF PEACE
Contents
PAGE
THE PLANTER OF MALATA 3
THE PARTNER 119
THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 175
BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 223
THE PLANTER OF MALATA
CHAPTER I
In the private editorial office of the principal newspaper in a great
colonial city two men were talking. They were both young. The stouter
of the two, fair, and with more of an urban look about him, was the
editor and part-owner of the important newspaper.
The other’s name was Renouard. That he was exercised in his mind about
something was evident on his fine bronzed face. He was a lean, lounging,
active man. The journalist continued the conversation.
“And so you were dining yesterday at old Dunster’s.”
He used the word old not in the endearing sense in which it is sometimes
applied to intimates, but as a matter of sober fact. The Dunster in
question was old. He had been an eminent colonial statesman, but had now
retired from active politics after a tour in Europe and a lengthy stay in
England, during which he had had a very good press indeed. The colony
was proud of him.
“Yes. I dined there,” said Renouard. “Young Dunster asked me just as I
was going out of his office. It seemed to be like a sudden thought. And
yet I can’t help suspecting some purpose behind it. He was very
pressing. He swore that his uncle would be very pleased to see me. Said
his uncle had mentioned lately that the granting to me of the Malata
concession was the last act of his official life.”
“Very touching. The old boy sentimentalises over the past now and then.”
“I really don’t know why I accepted,” continued the other. “Sentiment
does not move me very easily. Old Dunster was civil to me of course, but
he did not even inquire how I was getting on with my silk plants. Forgot
there was such a thing probably. I must say there were more people there
than I expected to meet. Quite a big party.”
“I was asked,” remarked the newspaper man. “Only I couldn’t go. But
when did you arrive from Malata?”
“I arrived yesterday at daylight. I am anchored out there in the bay—off
Garden Point. I was in Dunster’s office before he had finished reading
his letters. Have you ever seen young Dunster reading his letters? I
had a glimpse of him through the open door. He holds the paper in both
hands, hunches his shoulders up to his ugly ears, and brings his long
nose and his thick lips on to it like a sucking apparatus. A commercial
monster.”
“Here we don’t consider him a monster,” said the newspaper man looking at
his visitor thoughtfully.
“Probably not. You are used to see his face and to see other faces. I
don’t know how it is that, when I come to town, the appearance of the
people in the street strike me with such force. They seem so awfully
expressive.”
“And not charming.”
“Well—no. Not as a rule. The effect is forcible without being clear. . . .
I know that you think it’s because of my solitary manner of life away
there.”
“Yes. I do think so. It is demoralising. You don’t see any one for
months at a stretch. You’re leading an unhealthy life.”
The other hardly smiled and murmured the admission that true enough it
was a good eleven months since he had been in town last.
“You see,” insisted the other. “Solitude works like a sort of poison.
And then you perceive suggestions in faces—mysterious and forcible, that
no sound man would be bothered with. Of course you do.”
Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist friend that the suggestions
of his own face, the face of a friend, bothered him as much as the
others. He detected a degrading quality in the touches of age which
every day adds to a human countenance. They moved and disturbed him,
like the signs of a horrible inward travail which was frightfully
apparent to the fresh eye he had brought from his isolation in Malata,
where he had settled after five strenuous years of adventure and
exploration.
“It’s a fact,” he said, “that when I am at home in Malata I see no one
consciously. I take the plantation boys for granted.”
“Well, and we here take the people in the streets for granted. And
that’s sanity.”
The visitor said nothing to this for fear of engaging a discussion. What
he had come to seek in the editorial office was not controversy, but
information. Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject. Solitary
life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of gossip,
which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday exercise
regard as the commonest use of speech.
“You very busy?” he asked.
The Editor making red marks on a long slip of printed paper threw the
pencil down.
“No. I am done. Social paragraphs. This office is the place where
everything is known about everybody—including even a great deal of
nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this room. Waifs and strays
from home, from up-country, from the Pacific. And, by the way, last time
you were here you picked up one of that sort for your assistant—didn’t
you?”
“I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils of
solitude,” said Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at the
half-resentful tone. His laugh was not very loud, but his plump person
shook all over. He was aware that his younger friend’s deference to his
advice was based only on an imperfect belief in his wisdom—or his
sagacity. But it was he who had first helped Renouard in his plans of
exploration: the five-years’ programme of scientific adventure, of work,
of danger and endurance, carried out with such distinction and rewarded
modestly with the lease of Malata island by the frugal colonial
government. And this reward, too, had been due to the journalist’s
advocacy with word and pen—for he was an influential man in the
community. Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him, he was
himself without great sympathy for a certain side of that man which he
could not quite make out. He only felt it obscurely to be his real
personality—the true—and, perhaps, the absurd. As, for instance, in that
case of the assistant. Renouard had given way to the arguments of his
friend and backer—the argument against the unwholesome effect of
solitude, the argument for the safety of companionship even if
quarrelsome. Very well. In this docility he was sensible and even
likeable. But what did he do next? Instead of taking counsel as to the
choice with his old backer and friend, and a man, besides, knowing
everybody employed and unemployed on the pavements of the town, this
extraordinary Renouard suddenly and almost surreptitiously picked up a
fellow—God knows who—and sailed away with him back to Malata in a hurry;
a proceeding obviously rash and at the same time not quite straight.
That was the sort of thing. The secretly unforgiving journalist laughed
a little longer and then ceased to shake all over.
“Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . .”
“What about him,” said Renouard, after waiting a while, with a shadow of
uneasiness on his face.
“Have you nothing to tell me of him?”
“Nothing except. . . .” Incipient grimness vanished out of Renouard’s
aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously
before he changed his mind. “No. Nothing whatever.”
“You haven’t brought him along with you by chance—for a change.”
The Planter of Malata stared, then shook his head, and finally murmured
carelessly: “I think he’s very well where he is. But I wish you could
tell me why young Dunster insisted so much on my dining with his uncle
last night. Everybody knows I am not a society man.”
The Editor exclaimed at so much modesty. Didn’t his friend know that he
was their one and only explorer—that he was the man experimenting with
the silk plant. . . .
“Still, that doesn’t tell me why I was invited yesterday. For young
Dunster never thought of this civility before. . . .”
“Our Willie,” said the popular journalist, “never does anything without a
purpose, that’s a fact.”
“And to his uncle’s house too!”
“He lives there.”
“Yes. But he might have given me a feed somewhere else. The
extraordinary part is that the old man did not seem to have anything
special to say. He smiled kindly on me once or twice, and that was all.
It was quite a party, sixteen people.”
The Editor then, after expressing his regret that he had not been able to
come, wanted to know if the party had been entertaining.
Renouard regretted that his friend had not been there. Being a man whose
business or at least whose profession was to know everything that went on
in this part of the globe, he could probably have told him something of
some people lately arrived from home, who were amongst the guests. Young
Dunster (Willie), with his large shirt-front and streaks of white skin
shining unpleasantly through the thin black hair plastered over the top
of his head, bore down on him and introduced him to that party, as if he
had been a trained dog or a child phenomenon. Decidedly, he said, he
disliked Willie—one of these large oppressive men. . . .
A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were not going to say anything
more when, suddenly, he came out with the real object of his visit to the
editorial room.
“They looked to me like people under a spell.”
The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, thinking that, whether the effect
of solitude or not, this was a proof of a sensitive perception of the
expression of faces.
“You omitted to tell me their name, but I can make a guess. You mean
Professor Moorsom, his daughter and sister—don’t you?”
Renouard assented. Yes, a white-haired lady. But from his silence, with
his eyes fixed, yet avoiding his friend, it was easy to guess that it was
not in the white-haired lady that he was interested.
“Upon my word,” he said, recovering his usual bearing. “It looks to me
as if I had been asked there only for the daughter to talk to me.”
He did not conceal that he had been greatly struck by her appearance.
Nobody could have helped being impressed. She was different from
everybody else in that house, and it was not only the effect of her
London clothes. He did not take her down to dinner. Willie did that.
It was afterwards, on the terrace. . . .
The evening was delightfully calm. He was sitting apart and alone, and
wishing himself somewhere else—on board the schooner for choice, with the
dinner-harness off. He hadn’t exchanged forty words altogether during
the evening with the other guests. He saw her suddenly all by herself
coming towards him along the dimly lighted terrace, quite from a
distance.
She was tall and supple, carrying nobly on her straight body a head of a
character which to him appeared peculiar, something—well—pagan, crowned
with a great wealth of hair. He had been about to rise, but her decided
approach caused him to remain on the seat. He had not looked much at her
that evening. He had not that freedom of gaze acquired by the habit of
society and the frequent meetings with strangers. It was not shyness,
but the reserve of a man not used to the world and to the practice of
covert staring, with careless curiosity. All he had captured by his
first, keen, instantly lowered, glance was the impression that her hair
was magnificently red and her eyes very black. It was a troubling
effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very
unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if she
were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of her
whole figure. The light from an open window fell across her path, and
suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent, chiselled
and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished copper and
the flowing lines of molten metal. It kindled in him an astonished
admiration. But he said nothing of it to his friend the Editor. Neither
did he tell him that her approach woke up in his brain the image of
love’s infinite grace and the sense of the inexhaustible joy that lives
in beauty. No! What he imparted to the Editor were no emotions, but
mere facts conveyed in a deliberate voice and in uninspired words.
“That young lady came and sat down by me. She said: ‘Are you French, Mr.
Renouard?’”
He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either—of
some perfume he did not know. Her voice was low and distinct. Her
shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an extraordinary splendour, and
when she advanced her head into the light he saw the admirable contour of
the face, the straight fine nose with delicate nostrils, the exquisite
crimson brushstroke of the lips on this oval without colour. The
expression of the eyes was lost in a shadowy mysterious play of jet and
silver, stirring under the red coppery gold of the hair as though she had
been a being made of ivory and precious metals changed into living
tissue.
“. . . I told her my people were living in Canada, but that I was brought
up in England before coming out here. I can’t imagine what interest she
could have in my history.”
“And you complain of her interest?”
The accent of the all-knowing journalist seemed to jar on the Planter of
Malata.
“No!” he said, in a deadened voice that was almost sullen. But after a
short silence he went on. “Very extraordinary. I told her I came out to
wander at large in the world when I was nineteen, almost directly after I
left school. It seems that her late brother was in the same school a
couple of years before me. She wanted me to tell her what I did at first
when I came out here; what other men found to do when they came out—where
they went, what was likely to happen to them—as if I could guess and
foretell from my experience the fates of men who come out here with a
hundred different projects, for hundreds of different reasons—for no
reason but restlessness—who come, and go, and disappear! Preposterous.
She seemed to want to hear their histories. I told her that most of them
were not worth telling.”
The distinguished journalist leaning on his elbow, his head resting
against the knuckles of his left hand, listened with great attention, but
gave no sign of that surprise which Renouard, pausing, seemed to expect.
“You know something,” the latter said brusquely. The all-knowing man
moved his head slightly and said, “Yes. But go on.”
“It’s just this. There is no more to it. I found myself talking to her
of my adventures, of my early days. It couldn’t possibly have interested
her. Really,” he cried, “this is most extraordinary. Those people have
something on their minds. We sat in the light of the window, and her
father prowled about the terrace, with his hands behind his back and his
head drooping. The white-haired lady came to the dining-room window
twice—to look at us I am certain. The other guests began to go away—and
still we sat there. Apparently these people are staying with the
Dunsters. It was old Mrs. Dunster who put an end to the thing. The
father and the aunt circled about as if they were afraid of interfering
with the girl. Then she got up all at once, gave me her hand, and said
she hoped she would see me again.”
While he was speaking Renouard saw again the sway of her figure in a
movement of grace and strength—felt the pressure of her hand—heard the
last accents of the deep murmur that came from her throat so white in the
light of the window, and remembered the black rays of her steady eyes
passing off his face when she turned away. He remembered all this
visually, and it was not exactly pleasurable. It was rather startling
like the discovery of a new faculty in himself. There are faculties one
would rather do without—such, for instance, as seeing through a stone
wall or remembering a person with this uncanny vividness. And what about
those two people belonging to her with their air of expectant solicitude!
Really, those figures from home got in front of one. In fact, their
persistence in getting between him and the solid forms of the everyday
material world had driven Renouard to call on his friend at the office.
He hoped that a little common, gossipy information would lay the ghost of
that unexpected dinner-party. Of course the proper person to go to would
have been young Dunster, but, he couldn’t stand Willie Dunster—not at any
price.
In the pause the Editor had changed his attitude, faced his desk, and
smiled a faint knowing smile.
“Striking girl—eh?” he said.
The incongruity of the word was enough to make one jump out of the chair.
Striking! That girl striking! Stri . . .! But Renouard restrained his
feelings. His friend was not a person to give oneself away to. And,
after all, this sort of speech was what he had come there to hear. As,
however, he had made a movement he re-settled himself comfortably and
said, with very creditable indifference, that yes—she was, rather.
Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps. There wasn’t one woman
under forty there.
“Is that the way to speak of the cream of our society; the ‘top of the
basket,’ as the French say,” the Editor remonstrated with mock
indignation. “You aren’t moderate in your expressions—you know.”
“I express myself very little,” interjected Renouard seriously.
“I will tell you what you are. You are a fellow that doesn’t count the
cost. Of course you are safe with me, but will you never learn. . . .”
“What struck me most,” interrupted the other, “is that she should pick me
out for such a long conversation.”
“That’s perhaps because you were the most remarkable of the men there.”
Renouard shook his head.
“This shot doesn’t seem to me to hit the mark,” he said calmly. “Try
again.”
“Don’t you believe me? Oh, you modest creature. Well, let me assure you
that under ordinary circumstances it would have been a good shot. You
are sufficiently remarkable. But you seem a pretty acute customer too.
The circumstances are extraordinary. By Jove they are!”
He mused. After a time the Planter of Malata dropped a negligent—
“And you know them.”
“And I know them,” assented the all-knowing Editor, soberly, as though
the occasion were too special for a display of professional vanity; a
vanity so well known to Renouard that its absence augmented his wonder
and almost made him uneasy as if portending bad news of some sort.
“You have met those people?” he asked.
“No. I was to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to
Willie in the morning. It was then that he had the bright idea to invite
you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use.
Willie is stupid sometimes. For it is clear that you are the last man
able to help.”
“How on earth do I come to be mixed up in this—whatever it is?”
Renouard’s voice was slightly altered by nervous irritation. “I only
arrived here yesterday morning.”
CHAPTER II
His friend the Editor turned to him squarely. “Willie took me into
consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as well
tell you what is up. I shall try to be as short as I can. But in
confidence—mind!”
He waited. Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably,
assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning. Professor
Moorsom—physicist and philosopher—fine head of white hair, to judge from
the photographs—plenty of brains in the head too—all these famous
books—surely even Renouard would know. . . .
Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn’t his sort of reading, and his
friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his
sort—except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary page of
that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his life). The
only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not ignore the fashionable
philosopher of the age. Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antipodes,
but everybody had heard of him—women, children, dock labourers, cabmen.
The only person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he
knew, was old Dunster, who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it
Moorsomite) years and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself
up into the great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too.
Quite the fashion in the highest world.
Renouard listened with profoundly concealed attention. “A charlatan,” he
muttered languidly.
“Well—no. I should say not. I shouldn’t wonder though if most of his
writing had been done with his tongue in his cheek. Of course. That’s
to be expected. I tell you what: the only really honest writing is to be
found in newspapers and nowhere else—and don’t you forget it.”
The Editor paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a
casual: “I dare say,” and only then went on to explain that old Dunster,
during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where
he stayed with the Moorsoms—he meant the father and the girl. The
professor had been a widower for a long time.
“She doesn’t look just a girl,” muttered Renouard. The other agreed.
Very likely not. Had been playing the London hostess to tip-top people
ever since she put her hair up, probably.
“I don’t expect to see any girlish bloom on her when I do have the
privilege,” he continued. “Those people are staying with the Dunster’s
_incog._, in a manner, you understand—something like royalties. They
don’t deceive anybody, but they want to be left to themselves. We have
even kept them out of the paper—to oblige old Dunster. But we shall put
your arrival in—our local celebrity.”
“Heavens!”
“Yes. Mr. G. Renouard, the explorer, whose indomitable energy, etc., and
who is now working for the prosperity of our country in another way on
his Malata plantation . . . And, by the by, how’s the silk
plant—flourishing?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bring any fibre?”
“Schooner-full.”
“I see. To be transhipped to Liverpool for experimental manufacture, eh?
Eminent capitalists at home very much interested, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
A silence fell. Then the Editor uttered slowly—“You will be a rich man
some day.”
Renouard’s face did not betray his opinion of that confident prophecy.
He didn’t say anything till his friend suggested in the same meditative
voice—
“You ought to interest Moorsom in the affair too—since Willie has let you
in.”
“A philosopher!”
“I suppose he isn’t above making a bit of money. And he may be clever at
it for all you know. I have a notion that he’s a fairly practical old
cove. . . . Anyhow,” and here the tone of the speaker took on a tinge of
respect, “he has made philosophy pay.”
Renouard raised his eyes, repressed an impulse to jump up, and got out of
the arm-chair slowly. “It isn’t perhaps a bad idea,” he said. “I’ll
have to call there in any case.”
He wondered whether he had managed to keep his voice steady, its tone
unconcerned enough; for his emotion was strong though it had nothing to
do with the business aspect of this suggestion. He moved in the room in
vague preparation for departure, when he heard a soft laugh. He spun
about quickly with a frown, but the Editor was not laughing at him. He
was chuckling across the big desk at the wall: a preliminary of some
speech for which Renouard, recalled to himself, waited silent and
mistrustful.
“No! You would never guess! No one would ever guess what these people
are after. Willie’s eyes bulged out when he came to me with the tale.”
“They always do,” remarked Renouard with disgust. “He’s stupid.”
“He was startled. And so was I after he told me. It’s a search party.
They are out looking for a man. Willie’s soft heart’s enlisted in the
cause.”
Renouard repeated: “Looking for a man.”
He sat down suddenly as if on purpose to stare. “Did Willie come to you
to borrow the lantern,” he asked sarcastically, and got up again for no
apparent reason.
“What lantern?” snapped the puzzled Editor, and his face darkened with
suspicion. “You, Renouard, are always alluding to things that aren’t
clear to me. If you were in politics, I, as a party journalist, wouldn’t
trust you further than I could see you. Not an inch further. You are
such a sophisticated beggar. Listen: the man is the man Miss Moorsom was
engaged to for a year. He couldn’t have been a nobody, anyhow. But he
doesn’t seem to have been very wise. Hard luck for the young lady.”
He spoke with feeling. It was clear that what he had to tell appealed to
his sentiment. Yet, as an experienced man of the world, he marked his
amused wonder. Young man of good family and connections, going
everywhere, yet not merely a man about town, but with a foot in the two
big F’s.
Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: “And what the
devil’s that?” he asked faintly.
“Why Fashion and Finance,” explained the Editor. “That’s how I call it.
There are the three R’s at the bottom of the social edifice and the two
F’s on the top. See?”
“Ha! Ha! Excellent! Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed with stony eyes.
“And you proceed from one set to the other in this democratic age,” the
Editor went on with unperturbed complacency. “That is if you are clever
enough. The only danger is in being too clever. And I think something
of the sort happened here. That swell I am speaking of got himself into
a mess. Apparently a very ugly mess of a financial character. You will
understand that Willie did not go into details with me. They were not
imparted to him with very great abundance either. But a bad
mess—something of the criminal order. Of course he was innocent. But he
had to quit all the same.”
“Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed again abruptly, staring as before. “So
there’s one more big F in the tale.”
“What do you mean?” inquired the Editor quickly, with an air as if his
patent were being infringed.
“I mean—Fool.”
“No. I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that.”
“Well—let him be a scoundrel then. What the devil do I care.”
“But hold on! You haven’t heard the end of the story.”
Renouard, his hat on his head already, sat down with the disdainful smile
of a man who had discounted the moral of the story. Still he sat down
and the Editor swung his revolving chair right round. He was full of
unction.
“Imprudent, I should say. In many ways money is as dangerous to handle
as gunpowder. You can’t be too careful either as to who you are working
with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his
familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see
Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don’t it? What
was said between them no man knows—unless the professor had the
confidence from his daughter. There couldn’t have been much to say.
There was nothing for it but to let him go—was there?—for the affair had
got into the papers. And perhaps the kindest thing would have been to
forget him. Anyway the easiest. Forgiveness would have been more
difficult, I fancy, for a young lady of spirit and position drawn into an
ugly affair like that. Any ordinary young lady, I mean. Well, the
fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten, only he didn’t find it
easy to do so himself, because he would write home now and then. Not to
any of his friends though. He had no near relations. The professor had
been his guardian. No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old
retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the country, forbidding
him at the same time to let any one know of his whereabouts. So that
worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the Moorsom’s town house,
perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom’s maid, and then would write to ‘Master
Arthur’ that the young lady looked well and happy, or some such cheerful
intelligence. I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn’t
think he was much cheered by the news. What would you say?”
Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said
nothing. A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous
anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady,
prevented him from getting up and going away.
“Mixed feelings,” the Editor opined. “Many fellows out here receive news
from home with mixed feelings. But what will his feelings be when he
hears what I am going to tell you now? For we know he has not heard yet.
Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets
himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind.
Then seeing he’s in for a long sentence he thinks of making his
conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of
tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears
altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman. That embezzling fellow
was in a position to know, having been employed by the firm before the
smash. There was no doubt about the character being cleared—but where
the cleared man was nobody could tell. Another sensation in society.
And then Miss Moorsom says: ‘He will come back to claim me, and I’ll
marry him.’ But he didn’t come back. Between you and me I don’t think
he was much wanted—except by Miss Moorsom. I imagine she’s used to have
her own way. She grew impatient, and declared that if she knew where the
man was she would go to him. But all that could be got out of the old
butler was that the last envelope bore the postmark of our beautiful
city; and that this was the only address of ‘Master Arthur’ that he ever
had. That and no more. In fact the fellow was at his last gasp—with a
bad heart. Miss Moorsom wasn’t allowed to see him. She had gone herself
into the country to learn what she could, but she had to stay downstairs
while the old chap’s wife went up to the invalid. She brought down the
scrap of intelligence I’ve told you of. He was already too far gone to
be cross-examined on it, and that very night he died. He didn’t leave
behind him much to go by, did he? Our Willie hinted to me that there had
been pretty stormy days in the professor’s house, but—here they are. I
have a notion she isn’t the kind of everyday young lady who may be
permitted to gallop about the world all by herself—eh? Well, I think it
rather fine of her, but I quite understand that the professor needed all
his philosophy under the circumstances. She is his only child now—and
brilliant—what? Willie positively spluttered trying to describe her to
me; and I could see directly you came in that you had an uncommon
experience.”
Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his
eyes, as though he were bored. The Editor went on with the remark that
to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet
girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with
a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society,
he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the
glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would
have cared for the swells. Nothing interested him then but parliamentary
politics and the oratory of the House of Commons.
He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender,
reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl
her action was rather fine. All the same the professor could not be very
pleased. The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as
devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however
undeserved, which damaged a man’s standing permanently. On the other
hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse—not to speak
of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was
quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of
her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was
more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to
let himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt came along for the same
reasons. It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the usual
kind.
Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and
strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the
prosaic personality of the narrator. The Editor added: “I’ve been asked
to help in the search—you know.”
Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into the
street. His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty creeping
jealousy. He thought that obviously no man of that sort could be worthy
of such a woman’s devoted fidelity. Renouard, however, had lived long
enough to reflect that a man’s activities, his views, and even his ideas
may be very inferior to his character; and moved by a delicate
consideration for that splendid girl he tried to think out for the man a
character of inward excellence and outward gifts—some extraordinary
seduction. But in vain. Fresh from months of solitude and from days at
sea, her splendour presented itself to him absolutely unconquerable in
its perfection, unless by her own folly. It was easier to suspect her of
this than to imagine in the man qualities which would be worthy of her.
Easier and less degrading. Because folly may be generous—could be
nothing else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine her subjugated by
something common was intolerable.
Because of the force of the physical impression he had received from her
personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest
movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable.
But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn’t
walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance—and with a stumbling gait at that.
Generosity. Yes. It was her generosity. But this generosity was
altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in its lavishness—or,
perhaps, divine.
In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting on the rail, his arms
folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness
catch him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the mechanism of
sentiment and the springs of passion. And all the time he had an abiding
consciousness of her bodily presence. The effect on his senses had been
so penetrating that in the middle of the night, rousing up suddenly,
wide-eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create a faint mental
vision of her person for himself, but, more intimately affected, he
scented distinctly the faint perfume she used, and could almost have
sworn that he had been awakened by the soft rustle of her dress. He even
sat up listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and lay down again,
not agitated but, on the contrary, oppressed by the sensation of
something that had happened to him and could not be undone.
CHAPTER III
In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial office, carrying with
affected nonchalance that weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on
him suddenly in the small hours of the night—that consciousness of
something that could no longer be helped. His patronising friend
informed him at once that he had made the acquaintance of the Moorsom
party last night. At the Dunsters, of course. Dinner.
“Very quiet. Nobody there. It was much better for the business. I say
. . .”
Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him
dumbly.
“Phew! That’s a stunning girl. . . Why do you want to sit on that chair?
It’s uncomfortable!”
“I wasn’t going to sit on it.” Renouard walked slowly to the window,
glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead
of raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor’s head.
“Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes. You should
have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner.”
“Don’t,” said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned
right round to look at his back.
“You push your dislike of young Dunster too far. It’s positively
morbid,” he disapproved mildly. “We can’t be all beautiful after thirty.
. . . I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor. He appeared
to be interested in the silk plant—if only as a change from the great
subject. Miss Moorsom didn’t seem to mind when I confessed to her that I
had taken you into the confidence of the thing. Our Willie approved too.
Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his blessing. All
those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I told them that
you’ve led every sort of life one can think of before you got struck on
exploration. They want you to make suggestions. What do you think
‘Master Arthur’ is likely to have taken to?”
“Something easy,” muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth.
“Hunting man. Athlete. Don’t be hard on the chap. He may be riding
boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks
away to the devil—somewhere. He may be even prospecting at the back of
beyond—this very moment.”
“Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub. It’s late enough in the day for
that.”
The Editor looked up instinctively. The clock was pointing at a quarter
to five. “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “But it needn’t be. And he may
have lit out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden—say in a trading
schooner. Though I really don’t see in what capacity. Still . . . ”
“Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window.”
“Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can see
your face. I hate talking to a man’s back. You stand there like a
hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself. I tell you what it is,
Geoffrey, you don’t like mankind.”
“I don’t make my living by talking about mankind’s affairs,” Renouard
defended himself. But he came away obediently and sat down in the
arm-chair. “How can you be so certain that your man isn’t down there in
the street?” he asked. “It’s neither more nor less probable than every
single one of your other suppositions.”
Placated by Renouard’s docility the Editor gazed at him for a while.
“Aha! I’ll tell you how. Learn then that we have begun the campaign.
We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up
and down the land. And what’s more we’ve ascertained definitely that he
hasn’t been in this town for the last three months at least. How much
longer he’s been away we can’t tell.”
“That’s very curious.”
“It’s very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office here
directly she returned to London after her excursion into the country to
see the old butler. Well—her letter is still lying there. It has not
been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I
never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other.
Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner
or later. Remember he doesn’t know that the butler is dead, and he will
want to inquire for a letter. Well, he’ll find a note from Miss
Moorsom.”
Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough. His profound
distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness
darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented
dreaminess of his eyes. The Editor noted it as a further proof of that
immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of sentiment
fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude—according to his own
favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as long as a man had not given
up correspondence he could not be looked upon as lost. Fugitive
criminals had been tracked in that way by justice, he reminded his
friend; then suddenly changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by
asking if Renouard had heard from his people lately, and if every member
of his large tribe was well and happy.
“Yes, thanks.”
The tone was curt, as if repelling a liberty. Renouard did not like
being asked about his people, for whom he had a profound and remorseful
affection. He had not seen a single human being to whom he was related,
for many years, and he was extremely different from them all.
On the very morning of his arrival from his island he had gone to a set
of pigeon-holes in Willie Dunster’s outer office and had taken out from a
compartment labelled “Malata” a very small accumulation of envelopes, a
few addressed to himself, and one addressed to his assistant, all to the
care of the firm, W. Dunster and Co. As opportunity offered, the firm
used to send them on to Malata either by a man-of-war schooner going on a
cruise, or by some trading craft proceeding that way. But for the last
four months there had been no opportunity.
“You going to stay here some time?” asked the Editor, after a longish
silence.
Renouard, perfunctorily, did see no reason why he should make a long
stay.
“For health, for your mental health, my boy,” rejoined the newspaper man.
“To get used to human faces so that they don’t hit you in the eye so hard
when you walk about the streets. To get friendly with your kind. I
suppose that assistant of yours can be trusted to look after things?”
“There’s the half-caste too. The Portuguese. He knows what’s to be
done.”
“Aha!” The Editor looked sharply at his friend. “What’s his name?”
“Who’s name?”
“The assistant’s you picked up on the sly behind my back.”
Renouard made a slight movement of impatience.
“I met him unexpectedly one evening. I thought he would do as well as
another. He had come from up country and didn’t seem happy in a town.
He told me his name was Walter. I did not ask him for proofs, you know.”
“I don’t think you get on very well with him.”
“Why? What makes you think so.”
“I don’t know. Something reluctant in your manner when he’s in
question.”
“Really. My manner! I don’t think he’s a great subject for
conversation, perhaps. Why not drop him?”
“Of course! You wouldn’t confess to a mistake. Not you. Nevertheless I
have my suspicions about it.”
Renouard got up to go, but hesitated, looking down at the seated Editor.
“How funny,” he said at last with the utmost seriousness, and was making
for the door, when the voice of his friend stopped him.
“You know what has been said of you? That you couldn’t get on with
anybody you couldn’t kick. Now, confess—is there any truth in the soft
impeachment?”
“No,” said Renouard. “Did you print that in your paper.”
“No. I didn’t quite believe it. But I will tell you what I believe. I
believe that when your heart is set on some object you are a man that
doesn’t count the cost to yourself or others. And this shall get printed
some day.”
“Obituary notice?” Renouard dropped negligently.
“Certain—some day.”
“Do you then regard yourself as immortal?”
“No, my boy. I am not immortal. But the voice of the press goes on for
ever. . . . And it will say that this was the secret of your great
success in a task where better men than you—meaning no offence—did fail
repeatedly.”
“Success,” muttered Renouard, pulling-to the office door after him with
considerable energy. And the letters of the word PRIVATE like a row of
white eyes seemed to stare after his back sinking down the staircase of
that temple of publicity.
Renouard had no doubt that all the means of publicity would be put at the
service of love and used for the discovery of the loved man. He did not
wish him dead. He did not wish him any harm. We are all equipped with a
fund of humanity which is not exhausted without many and repeated
provocations—and this man had done him no evil. But before Renouard had
left old Dunster’s house, at the conclusion of the call he made there
that very afternoon, he had discovered in himself the desire that the
search might last long. He never really flattered himself that it might
fail. It seemed to him that there was no other course in this world for
himself, for all mankind, but resignation. And he could not help
thinking that Professor Moorsom had arrived at the same conclusion too.
Professor Moorsom, slight frame of middle height, a thoughtful keen head
under the thick wavy hair, veiled dark eyes under straight eyebrows, and
with an inward gaze which when disengaged and arriving at one seemed to
issue from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo of meditation,
showed himself extremely gracious to him. Renouard guessed in him a man
whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and
indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to
the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace
of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly.
They had a long conversation on the terrace commanding an extended view
of the town and the harbour.
The splendid immobility of the bay resting under his gaze, with its grey
spurs and shining indentations, helped Renouard to regain his
self-possession, which he had felt shaken, in coming out on the terrace,
into the setting of the most powerful emotion of his life, when he had
sat within a foot of Miss Moorsom with fire in his breast, a humming in
his ears, and in a complete disorder of his mind. There was the very
garden seat on which he had been enveloped in the radiant spell. And
presently he was sitting on it again with the professor talking of her.
Near by the patriarchal Dunster leaned forward in a wicker arm-chair,
benign and a little deaf, his big hand to his ear with the innocent
eagerness of his advanced age remembering the fires of life.
It was with a sort of apprehension that Renouard looked forward to seeing
Miss Moorsom. And strangely enough it resembled the state of mind of a
man who fears disenchantment more than sortilege. But he need not have
been afraid. Directly he saw her in a distance at the other end of the
terrace he shuddered to the roots of his hair. With her approach the
power of speech left him for a time. Mrs. Dunster and her aunt were
accompanying her. All these people sat down; it was an intimate circle
into which Renouard felt himself cordially admitted; and the talk was of
the great search which occupied all their minds. Discretion was expected
by these people, but of reticence as to the object of the journey there
could be no question. Nothing but ways and means and arrangements could
be talked about.
By fixing his eyes obstinately on the ground, which gave him an air of
reflective sadness, Renouard managed to recover his self-possession. He
used it to keep his voice in a low key and to measure his words on the
great subject. And he took care with a great inward effort to make them
reasonable without giving them a discouraging complexion. For he did not
want the quest to be given up, since it would mean her going away with
her two attendant grey-heads to the other side of the world.
He was asked to come again, to come often and take part in the counsels
of all these people captivated by the sentimental enterprise of a
declared love. On taking Miss Moorsom’s hand he looked up, would have
liked to say something, but found himself voiceless, with his lips
suddenly sealed. She returned the pressure of his fingers, and he left
her with her eyes vaguely staring beyond him, an air of listening for an
expected sound, and the faintest possible smile on her lips. A smile not
for him, evidently, but the reflection of some deep and inscrutable
thought.
CHAPTER IV
He went on board his schooner. She lay white, and as if suspended, in
the crepuscular atmosphere of sunset mingling with the ashy gleam of the
vast anchorage. He tried to keep his thoughts as sober, as reasonable,
as measured as his words had been, lest they should get away from him and
cause some sort of moral disaster. What he was afraid of in the coming
night was sleeplessness and the endless strain of that wearisome task.
It had to be faced however. He lay on his back, sighing profoundly in
the dark, and suddenly beheld his very own self, carrying a small bizarre
lamp, reflected in a long mirror inside a room in an empty and
unfurnished palace. In this startling image of himself he recognised
somebody he had to follow—the frightened guide of his dream. He
traversed endless galleries, no end of lofty halls, innumerable doors.
He lost himself utterly—he found his way again. Room succeeded room. At
last the lamp went out, and he stumbled against some object which, when
he stooped for it, he found to be very cold and heavy to lift. The
sickly white light of dawn showed him the head of a statue. Its marble
hair was done in the bold lines of a helmet, on its lips the chisel had
left a faint smile, and it resembled Miss Moorsom. While he was staring
at it fixedly, the head began to grow light in his fingers, to diminish
and crumble to pieces, and at last turned into a handful of dust, which
was blown away by a puff of wind so chilly that he woke up with a
desperate shiver and leaped headlong out of his bed-place. The day had
really come. He sat down by the cabin table, and taking his head between
his hands, did not stir for a very long time.
Very quiet, he set himself to review this dream. The lamp, of course, he
connected with the search for a man. But on closer examination he
perceived that the reflection of himself in the mirror was not really the
true Renouard, but somebody else whose face he could not remember. In
the deserted palace he recognised a sinister adaptation by his brain of
the long corridors with many doors, in the great building in which his
friend’s newspaper was lodged on the first floor. The marble head with
Miss Moorsom’s face! Well! What other face could he have dreamed of?
And her complexion was fairer than Parian marble, than the heads of
angels. The wind at the end was the morning breeze entering through the
open porthole and touching his face before the schooner could swing to
the chilly gust.
Yes! And all this rational explanation of the fantastic made it only
more mysterious and weird. There was something daemonic in that dream.
It was one of those experiences which throw a man out of conformity with
the established order of his kind and make him a creature of obscure
suggestions.
Henceforth, without ever trying to resist, he went every afternoon to the
house where she lived. He went there as passively as if in a dream. He
could never make out how he had attained the footing of intimacy in the
Dunster mansion above the bay—whether on the ground of personal merit or
as the pioneer of the vegetable silk industry. It must have been the
last, because he remembered distinctly, as distinctly as in a dream,
hearing old Dunster once telling him that his next public task would be a
careful survey of the Northern Districts to discover tracts suitable for
the cultivation of the silk plant. The old man wagged his beard at him
sagely. It was indeed as absurd as a dream.
Willie of course would be there in the evening. But he was more of a
figure out of a nightmare, hovering about the circle of chairs in his
dress-clothes like a gigantic, repulsive, and sentimental bat. “Do away
with the beastly cocoons all over the world,” he buzzed in his blurred,
water-logged voice. He affected a great horror of insects of all kinds.
One evening he appeared with a red flower in his button-hole. Nothing
could have been more disgustingly fantastic. And he would also say to
Renouard: “You may yet change the history of our country. For economic
conditions do shape the history of nations. Eh? What?” And he would
turn to Miss Moorsom for approval, lowering protectingly his spatulous
nose and looking up with feeling from under his absurd eyebrows, which
grew thin, in the manner of canebrakes, out of his spongy skin. For this
large, bilious creature was an economist and a sentimentalist, facile to
tears, and a member of the Cobden Club.
In order to see as little of him as possible Renouard began coming
earlier so as to get away before his arrival, without curtailing too much
the hours of secret contemplation for which he lived. He had given up
trying to deceive himself. His resignation was without bounds. He
accepted the immense misfortune of being in love with a woman who was in
search of another man only to throw herself into his arms. With such
desperate precision he defined in his thoughts the situation, the
consciousness of which traversed like a sharp arrow the sudden silences
of general conversation. The only thought before which he quailed was
the thought that this could not last; that it must come to an end. He
feared it instinctively as a sick man may fear death. For it seemed to
him that it must be the death of him followed by a lightless, bottomless
pit. But his resignation was not spared the torments of jealousy: the
cruel, insensate, poignant, and imbecile jealousy, when it seems that a
woman betrays us simply by this that she exists, that she breathes—and
when the deep movements of her nerves or her soul become a matter of
distracting suspicion, of killing doubt, of mortal anxiety.
In the peculiar condition of their sojourn Miss Moorsom went out very
little. She accepted this seclusion at the Dunsters’ mansion as in a
hermitage, and lived there, watched over by a group of old people, with
the lofty endurance of a condescending and strong-headed goddess. It was
impossible to say if she suffered from anything in the world, and whether
this was the insensibility of a great passion concentrated on itself, or
a perfect restraint of manner, or the indifference of superiority so
complete as to be sufficient to itself. But it was visible to Renouard
that she took some pleasure in talking to him at times. Was it because
he was the only person near her age? Was this, then, the secret of his
admission to the circle?
He admired her voice as well poised as her movements, as her attitudes.
He himself had always been a man of tranquil tones. But the power of
fascination had torn him out of his very nature so completely that to
preserve his habitual calmness from going to pieces had become a terrible
effort.
He used to go from her on board the schooner exhausted, broken, shaken
up, as though he had been put to the most exquisite torture. When he saw
her approaching he always had a moment of hallucination. She was a misty
and fair creature, fitted for invisible music, for the shadows of love,
for the murmurs of waters. After a time (he could not be always staring
at the ground) he would summon up all his resolution and look at her.
There was a sparkle in the clear obscurity of her eyes; and when she
turned them on him they seemed to give a new meaning to life. He would
say to himself that another man would have found long before the happy
release of madness, his wits burnt to cinders in that radiance. But no
such luck for him. His wits had come unscathed through the furnaces of
hot suns, of blazing deserts, of flaming angers against the weaknesses of
men and the obstinate cruelties of hostile nature.
Being sane he had to be constantly on his guard against falling into
adoring silences or breaking out into wild speeches. He had to keep
watch on his eyes, his limbs, on the muscles of his face. Their
conversations were such as they could be between these two people: she a
young lady fresh from the thick twilight of four million people and the
artificiality of several London seasons; he the man of definite
conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose
holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one’s
importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small
change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they
exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had
not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not
be said that she had received from the contacts of the external world
impressions of a personal kind, different from other women. What was
ravishing in her was her quietness and, in her grave attitudes, the
unfailing brilliance of her femininity. He did not know what there was
under that ivory forehead so splendidly shaped, so gloriously crowned.
He could not tell what were her thoughts, her feelings. Her replies were
reflective, always preceded by a short silence, while he hung on her lips
anxiously. He felt himself in the presence of a mysterious being in whom
spoke an unknown voice, like the voice of oracles, bringing everlasting
unrest to the heart.
He was thankful enough to sit in silence with secretly clenched teeth,
devoured by jealousy—and nobody could have guessed that his quiet
deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme effort of
stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his
tortures lest his strength should fail him. As before, when grappling
with other forces of nature, he could find in himself all sorts of
courage except the courage to run away.
It was perhaps from the lack of subjects they could have in common that
Miss Moorsom made him so often speak of his own life. He did not shrink
from talking about himself, for he was free from that exacerbated, timid
vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to her in his
restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the
time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of
him. And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and
perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping
head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from
the foam of the sea, but from a distant, still more formless, mysterious,
and potent immensity of mankind.
CHAPTER V
One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody there.
It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy disappointment and a
poignant relief.
The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the house
stood wide open. At the further end, grouped round a lady’s work-table,
several chairs disposed sociably suggested invisible occupants, a company
of conversing shades. Renouard looked towards them with a sort of dread.
A most elusive, faint sound of ghostly talk issuing from one of the rooms
added to the illusion and stopped his already hesitating footsteps. He
leaned over the balustrade of stone near a squat vase holding a tropical
plant of a bizarre shape. Professor Moorsom coming up from the garden
with a book under his arm and a white parasol held over his bare head,
found him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over by his side with a
remark on the increasing heat of the season. Renouard assented and
changed his position a little; the other, after a short silence,
administered unexpectedly a question which, like the blow of a club on
the head, deprived Renouard of the power of speech and even thought, but,
more cruel, left him quivering with apprehension, not of death but of
everlasting torment. Yet the words were extremely simple.
“Something will have to be done soon. We can’t remain in a state of
suspended expectation for ever. Tell me what do you think of our
chances?”
Renouard, speechless, produced a faint smile. The professor confessed in
a jocular tone his impatience to complete the circuit of the globe and be
done with it. It was impossible to remain quartered on the dear
excellent Dunsters for an indefinite time. And then there were the
lectures he had arranged to deliver in Paris. A serious matter.
That lectures by Professor Moorsom were a European event and that
brilliant audiences would gather to hear them Renouard did not know. All
he was aware of was the shock of this hint of departure. The menace of
separation fell on his head like a thunderbolt. And he saw the absurdity
of his emotion, for hadn’t he lived all these days under the very cloud?
The professor, his elbows spread out, looked down into the garden and
went on unburdening his mind. Yes. The department of sentiment was
directed by his daughter, and she had plenty of volunteered moral
support; but he had to look after the practical side of life without
assistance.
“I have the less hesitation in speaking to you about my anxiety, because
I feel you are friendly to us and at the same time you are detached from
all these sublimities—confound them.”
“What do you mean?” murmured Renouard.
“I mean that you are capable of calm judgment. Here the atmosphere is
simply detestable. Everybody has knuckled under to sentiment. Perhaps
your deliberate opinion could influence . . .”
“You want Miss Moorsom to give it up?” The professor turned to the young
man dismally.
“Heaven only knows what I want.”
Renouard leaning his back against the balustrade folded his arms on his
breast, appeared to meditate profoundly. His face, shaded softly by the
broad brim of a planter’s Panama hat, with the straight line of the nose
level with the forehead, the eyes lost in the depth of the setting, and
the chin well forward, had such a profile as may be seen amongst the
bronzes of classical museums, pure under a crested helmet—recalled
vaguely a Minerva’s head.
“This is the most troublesome time I ever had in my life,” exclaimed the
professor testily.
“Surely the man must be worth it,” muttered Renouard with a pang of
jealousy traversing his breast like a self-inflicted stab.
Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the
professor surrendered himself to the mood of sincerity.
“He began by being a pleasantly dull boy. He developed into a
pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to
understand anything. My daughter knew him from childhood. I am a busy
man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me.
I wish their reasons for that step had been more naïve. But simplicity
was out of fashion in their set. From a worldly point of view he seems
to have been a mere baby. Of course, now, I am assured that he is the
victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind. But that’s
mere idealising of a sad reality. For my part I will tell you that from
the very beginning I had the gravest doubts of his dishonesty.
Unfortunately my clever daughter hadn’t. And now we behold the reaction.
No. To be earnestly dishonest one must be really poor. This was only a
manifestation of his extremely refined cleverness. The complicated
simpleton. He had an awful awakening though.”
In such words did Professor Moorsom give his “young friend” to understand
the state of his feelings toward the lost man. It was evident that the
father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost. Perhaps the
unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the
Pacific, the sweep of the ocean’s free wind along the promenade decks,
cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian
coast. To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most treacherous
of fathers. He was amazed. But he was not at the end of his
discoveries.
“He may be dead,” the professor murmured.
“Why? People don’t die here sooner than in Europe. If he had gone to
hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn’t think of saying that.”
“Well! And suppose he has become morally disintegrated. You know he was
not a strong personality,” the professor suggested moodily. “My
daughter’s future is in question here.”
Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any
broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this
with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his
astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a generous—
“Oh! Don’t let us even suppose. . .”
The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before—
“It’s good to be young. And then you have been a man of action, and
necessarily a believer in success. But I have been looking too long at
life not to distrust its surprises. Age! Age! Here I stand before you
a man full of doubts and hesitation—_spe lentus_, _timidus futuri_.”
He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt, and in a lowered voice, as
if afraid of being overheard, even there, in the solitude of the terrace—
“And the worst is that I am not even sure how far this sentimental
pilgrimage is genuine. Yes. I doubt my own child. It’s true that she’s
a woman. . . . ”
Renouard detected with horror a tone of resentment, as if the professor
had never forgiven his daughter for not dying instead of his son. The
latter noticed the young man’s stony stare.
“Ah! you don’t understand. Yes, she’s clever, open-minded, popular,
and—well, charming. But you don’t know what it is to have moved,
breathed, existed, and even triumphed in the mere smother and froth of
life—the brilliant froth. There thoughts, sentiments, opinions,
feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space—to amuse
life—a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning
nothing, leading nowhere. She is the creature of that circle. And I ask
myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its
satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving
her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images. And
everything is possible—except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling
humanity can know. No woman can stand that mode of life in which women
rule, and remain a perfectly genuine, simple human being. Ah! There’s
some people coming out.”
He moved off a pace, then turning his head: “Upon my word! I would be
infinitely obliged to you if you could throw a little cold water. . . ”
and at a vaguely dismayed gesture of Renouard, he added: “Don’t be
afraid. You wouldn’t be putting out a sacred fire.”
Renouard could hardly find words for a protest: “I assure you that I
never talk with Miss Moorsom—on—on—that. And if you, her father . . . ”
“I envy you your innocence,” sighed the professor. “A father is only an
everyday person. Flat. Stale. Moreover, my child would naturally
mistrust me. We belong to the same set. Whereas you carry with you the
prestige of the unknown. You have proved yourself to be a force.”
Thereupon the professor followed by Renouard joined the circle of all the
inmates of the house assembled at the other end of the terrace about a
tea-table; three white heads and that resplendent vision of woman’s
glory, the sight of which had the power to flutter his heart like a
reminder of the mortality of his frame.
He avoided the seat by the side of Miss Moorsom. The others were talking
together languidly. Unnoticed he looked at that woman so marvellous that
centuries seemed to lie between them. He was oppressed and overcome at
the thought of what she could give to some man who really would be a
force! What a glorious struggle with this amazon. What noble burden for
the victorious strength.
Dear old Mrs. Dunster was dispensing tea, looking from time to time with
interest towards Miss Moorsom. The aged statesman having eaten a raw
tomato and drunk a glass of milk (a habit of his early farming days, long
before politics, when, pioneer of wheat-growing, he demonstrated the
possibility of raising crops on ground looking barren enough to
discourage a magician), smoothed his white beard, and struck lightly
Renouard’s knee with his big wrinkled hand.
“You had better come back to-night and dine with us quietly.”
He liked this young man, a pioneer, too, in more than one direction.
Mrs. Dunster added: “Do. It will be very quiet. I don’t even know if
Willie will be home for dinner.” Renouard murmured his thanks, and left
the terrace to go on board the schooner. While lingering in the
drawing-room doorway he heard the resonant voice of old Dunster uttering
oracularly—
“. . . the leading man here some day. . . . Like me.”
Renouard let the thin summer portière of the doorway fall behind him.
The voice of Professor Moorsom said—
“I am told that he has made an enemy of almost every man who had to work
with him.”
“That’s nothing. He did his work. . . . Like me.”
“He never counted the cost they say. Not even of lives.”
Renouard understood that they were talking of him. Before he could move
away, Mrs. Dunster struck in placidly—
“Don’t let yourself be shocked by the tales you may hear of him, my dear.
Most of it is envy.”
Then he heard Miss Moorsom’s voice replying to the old lady—
“Oh! I am not easily deceived. I think I may say I have an instinct for
truth.”
He hastened away from that house with his heart full of dread.
CHAPTER VI
On board the schooner, lying on the settee on his back with the knuckles
of his hands pressed over his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not
return to that house for dinner—that he would never go back there any
more. He made up his mind some twenty times. The knowledge that he had
only to go up on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: “Man the
windlass,” and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred
miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will. Nothing
easier! Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his
ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful
expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began, instead,
to hunt for excuses.
No! It was not for him to run away like an incurable who cuts his
throat. He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face in the
saloon mirror scornfully. While being pulled on shore in the gig, he
remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen when hardly more
than a boy, years ago, in Menado. There was a legend of a
governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official tour, committing
suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm. It was supposed that a
painful disease had made him weary of life. But was there ever a
visitation like his own, at the same time binding one to life and so
cruelly mortal!
The dinner was indeed quiet. Willie, given half an hour’s grace, failed
to turn up, and his chair remained vacant by the side of Miss Moorsom.
Renouard had the professor’s sister on his left, dressed in an expensive
gown becoming her age. That maiden lady in her wonderful preservation
reminded Renouard somehow of a wax flower under glass. There were no
traces of the dust of life’s battles on her anywhere. She did not like
him very much in the afternoons, in his white drill suit and planter’s
hat, which seemed to her an unduly Bohemian costume for calling in a
house where there were ladies. But in the evening, lithe and elegant in
his dress clothes and with his pleasant, slightly veiled voice, he always
made her conquest afresh. He might have been anybody distinguished—the
son of a duke. Falling under that charm probably (and also because her
brother had given her a hint), she attempted to open her heart to
Renouard, who was watching with all the power of his soul her niece
across the table. She spoke to him as frankly as though that miserable
mortal envelope, emptied of everything but hopeless passion, were indeed
the son of a duke.
Inattentive, he heard her only in snatches, till the final confidential
burst: “. . . glad if you would express an opinion. Look at her, so
charming, such a great favourite, so generally admired! It would be too
sad. We all hoped she would make a brilliant marriage with somebody very
rich and of high position, have a house in London and in the country, and
entertain us all splendidly. She’s so eminently fitted for it. She has
such hosts of distinguished friends! And then—this instead! . . . My
heart really aches.”
Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered by the voice of professor
Moorsom discoursing subtly down the short length of the dinner table on
the Impermanency of the Measurable to his venerable disciple. It might
have been a chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsomian philosophy.
Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes
shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard;
and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard
on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth
before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave. Yes!
Intellectual debauchery in the froth of existence! Froth and fraud!
On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom never once looked towards her
father, all her grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the faintest
rosiness under her dazzling complexion, her black eyes burning
motionless, and the very coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves
and undulation of her hair. Renouard fancied himself overturning the
table, smashing crystal and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot,
seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a tumult of shrieks from all
these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as
in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to
rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet.
On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand
condescendingly under his “dear young friend’s” arm. Renouard regarded
him now with the profoundest mistrust. But the great man seemed really
to have a liking for his young friend—one of those mysterious sympathies,
disregarding the differences of age and position, which in this case
might have been explained by the failure of philosophy to meet a very
real worry of a practical kind.
After a turn or two and some casual talk the professor said suddenly: “My
late son was in your school—do you know? I can imagine that had he lived
and you had ever met you would have understood each other. He too was
inclined to action.”
He sighed, then, shaking off the mournful thought and with a nod at the
dusky part of the terrace where the dress of his daughter made a luminous
stain: “I really wish you would drop in that quarter a few sensible,
discouraging words.”
Renouard disengaged himself from that most perfidious of men under the
pretence of astonishment, and stepping back a pace—
“Surely you are making fun of me, Professor Moorsom,” he said with a low
laugh, which was really a sound of rage.
“My dear young friend! It’s no subject for jokes, to me. . . You don’t
seem to have any notion of your prestige,” he added, walking away towards
the chairs.
“Humbug!” thought Renouard, standing still and looking after him. “And
yet! And yet! What if it were true?”
He advanced then towards Miss Moorsom. Posed on the seat on which they
had first spoken to each other, it was her turn to watch him coming on.
But many of the windows were not lighted that evening. It was dark over
there. She appeared to him luminous in her clear dress, a figure without
shape, a face without features, awaiting his approach, till he got quite
near to her, sat down, and they had exchanged a few insignificant words.
Gradually she came out like a magic painting of charm, fascination, and
desire, glowing mysteriously on the dark background. Something
imperceptible in the lines of her attitude, in the modulations of her
voice, seemed to soften that suggestion of calm unconscious pride which
enveloped her always like a mantle. He, sensitive like a bond slave to
the moods of the master, was moved by the subtle relenting of her grace
to an infinite tenderness. He fought down the impulse to seize her by
the hand, lead her down into the garden away under the big trees, and
throw himself at her feet uttering words of love. His emotion was so
strong that he had to cough slightly, and not knowing what to talk to her
about he began to tell her of his mother and sisters. All the family
were coming to London to live there, for some little time at least.
“I hope you will go and tell them something of me. Something seen,” he
said pressingly.
By this miserable subterfuge, like a man about to part with his life, he
hoped to make her remember him a little longer.
“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll be glad to call when I get back. But that
‘when’ may be a long time.”
He heard a light sigh. A cruel jealous curiosity made him ask—
“Are you growing weary, Miss Moorsom?”
A silence fell on his low spoken question.
“Do you mean heart-weary?” sounded Miss Moorsom’s voice. “You don’t know
me, I see.”
“Ah! Never despair,” he muttered.
“This, Mr. Renouard, is a work of reparation. I stand for truth here. I
can’t think of myself.”
He could have taken her by the throat for every word seemed an insult to
his passion; but he only said—
“I never doubted the—the—nobility of your purpose.”
“And to hear the word weariness pronounced in this connection surprises
me. And from a man too who, I understand, has never counted the cost.”
“You are pleased to tease me,” he said, directly he had recovered his
voice and had mastered his anger. It was as if Professor Moorsom had
dropped poison in his ear which was spreading now and tainting his
passion, his very jealousy. He mistrusted every word that came from
those lips on which his life hung. “How can you know anything of men who
do not count the cost?” he asked in his gentlest tones.
“From hearsay—a little.”
“Well, I assure you they are like the others, subject to suffering,
victims of spells. . . .”
“One of them, at least, speaks very strangely.”
She dismissed the subject after a short silence. “Mr. Renouard, I had a
disappointment this morning. This mail brought me a letter from the
widow of the old butler—you know. I expected to learn that she had heard
from—from here. But no. No letter arrived home since we left.”
Her voice was calm. His jealousy couldn’t stand much more of this sort
of talk; but he was glad that nothing had turned up to help the search;
glad blindly, unreasonably—only because it would keep her longer in his
sight—since she wouldn’t give up.
“I am too near her,” he thought, moving a little further on the seat. He
was afraid in the revulsion of feeling of flinging himself on her hands,
which were lying on her lap, and covering them with kisses. He was
afraid. Nothing, nothing could shake that spell—not if she were ever so
false, stupid, or degraded. She was fate itself. The extent of his
misfortune plunged him in such a stupor that he failed at first to hear
the sound of voices and footsteps inside the drawing-room. Willie had
come home—and the Editor was with him.
They burst out on the terrace babbling noisily, and then pulling
themselves together stood still, surprising—and as if themselves
surprised.
CHAPTER VII
They had been feasting a poet from the bush, the latest discovery of the
Editor. Such discoveries were the business, the vocation, the pride and
delight of the only apostle of letters in the hemisphere, the solitary
patron of culture, the Slave of the Lamp—as he subscribed himself at the
bottom of the weekly literary page of his paper. He had had no
difficulty in persuading the virtuous Willie (who had festive instincts)
to help in the good work, and now they had left the poet lying asleep on
the hearthrug of the editorial room and had rushed to the Dunster mansion
wildly. The Editor had another discovery to announce. Swaying a little
where he stood he opened his mouth very wide to shout the one word
“Found!” Behind him Willie flung both his hands above his head and let
them fall dramatically. Renouard saw the four white-headed people at the
end of the terrace rise all together from their chairs with an effect of
sudden panic.
“I tell you—he—is—found,” the patron of letters shouted emphatically.
“What is this!” exclaimed Renouard in a choked voice. Miss Moorsom
seized his wrist suddenly, and at that contact fire ran through all his
veins, a hot stillness descended upon him in which he heard the blood—or
the fire—beating in his ears. He made a movement as if to rise, but was
restrained by the convulsive pressure on his wrist.
“No, no.” Miss Moorsom’s eyes stared black as night, searching the space
before her. Far away the Editor strutted forward, Willie following with
his ostentatious manner of carrying his bulky and oppressive carcass
which, however, did not remain exactly perpendicular for two seconds
together.
“The innocent Arthur . . . Yes. We’ve got him,” the Editor became very
business-like. “Yes, this letter has done it.”
He plunged into an inside pocket for it, slapped the scrap of paper with
his open palm. “From that old woman. William had it in his pocket since
this morning when Miss Moorsom gave it to him to show me. Forgot all
about it till an hour ago. Thought it was of no importance. Well, no!
Not till it was properly read.”
Renouard and Miss Moorsom emerged from the shadows side by side, a
well-matched couple, animated yet statuesque in their calmness and in
their pallor. She had let go his wrist. On catching sight of Renouard
the Editor exclaimed:
“What—you here!” in a quite shrill voice.
There came a dead pause. All the faces had in them something dismayed
and cruel.
“He’s the very man we want,” continued the Editor. “Excuse my
excitement. You are the very man, Renouard. Didn’t you tell me that
your assistant called himself Walter? Yes? Thought so. But here’s that
old woman—the butler’s wife—listen to this. She writes: All I can tell
you, Miss, is that my poor husband directed his letters to the name of H.
Walter.”
Renouard’s violent but repressed exclamation was lost in a general murmur
and shuffle of feet. The Editor made a step forward, bowed with
creditable steadiness.
“Miss Moorsom, allow me to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart
on the happy—er—issue. . . ”
“Wait,” muttered Renouard irresolutely.
The Editor jumped on him in the manner of their old friendship. “Ah,
you! You are a fine fellow too. With your solitary ways of life you
will end by having no more discrimination than a savage. Fancy living
with a gentleman for months and never guessing. A man, I am certain,
accomplished, remarkable, out of the common, since he had been
distinguished” (he bowed again) “by Miss Moorsom, whom we all admire.”
She turned her back on him.
“I hope to goodness you haven’t been leading him a dog’s life, Geoffrey,”
the Editor addressed his friend in a whispered aside.
Renouard seized a chair violently, sat down, and propping his elbow on
his knee leaned his head on his hand. Behind him the sister of the
professor looked up to heaven and wrung her hands stealthily. Mrs.
Dunster’s hands were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul,
was looking sorrowfully at Willie. The model nephew! In this strange
state! So very much flushed! The careful disposition of the thin hairs
across Willie’s bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself
was red and, as it were, steaming.
“What’s the matter, Geoffrey?” The Editor seemed disconcerted by the
silent attitudes round him, as though he had expected all these people to
shout and dance. “You have him on the island—haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes: I have him there,” said Renouard, without looking up.
“Well, then!” The Editor looked helplessly around as if begging for
response of some sort. But the only response that came was very
unexpected. Annoyed at being left in the background, and also because
very little drink made him nasty, the emotional Willie turned malignant
all at once, and in a bibulous tone surprising in a man able to keep his
balance so well—
“Aha! But you haven’t got him here—not yet!” he sneered. “No! You
haven’t got him yet.”
This outrageous exhibition was to the Editor like the lash to a jaded
horse. He positively jumped.
“What of that? What do you mean? We—haven’t—got—him—here. Of course he
isn’t here! But Geoffrey’s schooner is here. She can be sent at once to
fetch him here. No! Stay! There’s a better plan. Why shouldn’t you
all sail over to Malata, professor? Save time! I am sure Miss Moorsom
would prefer. . .”
With a gallant flourish of his arm he looked for Miss Moorsom. She had
disappeared. He was taken aback somewhat.
“Ah! H’m. Yes. . . . Why not. A pleasure cruise, delightful ship,
delightful season, delightful errand, del . . . No! There are no
objections. Geoffrey, I understand, has indulged in a bungalow three
sizes too large for him. He can put you all up. It will be a pleasure
for him. It will be the greatest privilege. Any man would be proud of
being an agent of this happy reunion. I am proud of the little part I’ve
played. He will consider it the greatest honour. Geoff, my boy, you had
better be stirring to-morrow bright and early about the preparations for
the trip. It would be criminal to lose a single day.”
He was as flushed as Willie, the excitement keeping up the effect of the
festive dinner. For a time Renouard, silent, as if he had not heard a
word of all that babble, did not stir. But when he got up it was to
advance towards the Editor and give him such a hearty slap on the back
that the plump little man reeled in his tracks and looked quite
frightened for a moment.
“You are a heaven-born discoverer and a first-rate manager. . . He’s
right. It’s the only way. You can’t resist the claim of sentiment, and
you must even risk the voyage to Malata. . . ” Renouard’s voice sank. “A
lonely spot,” he added, and fell into thought under all these eyes
converging on him in the sudden silence. His slow glance passed over all
the faces in succession, remaining arrested on Professor Moorsom, stony
eyed, a smouldering cigar in his fingers, and with his sister standing by
his side.
“I shall be infinitely gratified if you consent to come. But, of course,
you will. We shall sail to-morrow evening then. And now let me leave
you to your happiness.”
He bowed, very grave, pointed suddenly his finger at Willie who was
swaying about with a sleepy frown. . . . “Look at him. He’s overcome
with happiness. You had better put him to bed . . . ” and disappeared
while every head on the terrace was turned to Willie with varied
expressions.
Renouard ran through the house. Avoiding the carriage road he fled down
the steep short cut to the shore, where his gig was waiting. At his loud
shout the sleeping Kanakas jumped up. He leaped in. “Shove off. Give
way!” and the gig darted through the water. “Give way! Give way!” She
flew past the wool-clippers sleeping at their anchors each with the open
unwinking eye of the lamp in the rigging; she flew past the flagship of
the Pacific squadron, a great mass all dark and silent, heavy with the
slumbers of five hundred men, and where the invisible sentries heard his
urgent “Give way! Give way!” in the night. The Kanakas, panting, rose
off the thwarts at every stroke. Nothing could be fast enough for him!
And he ran up the side of his schooner shaking the ladder noisily with
his rush.
On deck he stumbled and stood still.
Wherefore this haste? To what end, since he knew well before he started
that he had a pursuer from whom there was no escape.
As his foot touched the deck his will, his purpose he had been hurrying
to save, died out within. It had been nothing less than getting the
schooner under-way, letting her vanish silently in the night from amongst
these sleeping ships. And now he was certain he could not do it. It was
impossible! And he reflected that whether he lived or died such an act
would lay him under a dark suspicion from which he shrank. No, there was
nothing to be done.
He went down into the cabin and, before even unbuttoning his overcoat,
took out of the drawer the letter addressed to his assistant; that letter
which he had found in the pigeon-hole labelled “Malata” in young
Dunster’s outer office, where it had been waiting for three months some
occasion for being forwarded. From the moment of dropping it in the
drawer he had utterly forgotten its existence—till now, when the man’s
name had come out so clamorously. He glanced at the common envelope,
noted the shaky and laborious handwriting: H. Walter, Esqre. Undoubtedly
the very last letter the old butler had posted before his illness, and in
answer clearly to one from “Master Arthur” instructing him to address in
the future: “Care of Messrs. W. Dunster and Co.” Renouard made as if to
open the envelope, but paused, and, instead, tore the letter deliberately
in two, in four, in eight. With his hand full of pieces of paper he
returned on deck and scattered them overboard on the dark water, in which
they vanished instantly.
He did it slowly, without hesitation or remorse. H. Walter, Esqre, in
Malata. The innocent Arthur—What was his name? The man sought for by
that woman who as she went by seemed to draw all the passion of the earth
to her, without effort, not deigning to notice, naturally, as other women
breathed the air. But Renouard was no longer jealous of her very
existence. Whatever its meaning it was not for that man he had picked up
casually on obscure impulse, to get rid of the tiresome expostulations of
a so-called friend; a man of whom he really knew nothing—and now a dead
man. In Malata. Oh, yes! He was there secure enough, untroubled in his
grave. In Malata. To bury him was the last service Renouard had
rendered to his assistant before leaving the island on this trip to town.
Like many men ready enough for arduous enterprises Renouard was inclined
to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his
character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a
shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who
would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse
with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without
sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather
to keep that “friend” in the dark about the fate of his assistant.
Renouard had never needed other company than his own, for there was in
him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He
had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again
about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some
forlornly useless protégé of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor
had irritated him and had closed his lips in sheer disgust.
And now he contemplated the noose of consequences drawing tight around
him.
It was the memory of that diplomatic reticence which on the terrace had
stiffled his first cry which would have told them all that the man sought
for was not to be met on earth any more. He shrank from the absurdity of
hearing the all-knowing one, and not very sober at that, turning on him
with righteous reproaches—
“You never told me. You gave me to understand that your assistant was
alive, and now you say he’s dead. Which is it? Were you lying then or
are you lying now?” No! the thought of such a scene was not to be borne.
He had sat down appalled, thinking: “What shall I do now?”
His courage had oozed out of him. Speaking the truth meant the Moorsoms
going away at once—while it seemed to him that he would give the last
shred of his rectitude to secure a day more of her company. He sat
on—silent. Slowly, from confused sensations, from his talk with the
professor, the manner of the girl herself, the intoxicating familiarity
of her sudden hand-clasp, there had come to him a half glimmer of hope.
The other man was dead. Then! . . . Madness, of course—but he could not
give it up. He had listened to that confounded busybody arranging
everything—while all these people stood around assenting, under the spell
of that dead romance. He had listened scornful and silent. The glimmers
of hope, of opportunity, passed before his eyes. He had only to sit
still and say nothing. That and no more. And what was truth to him in
the face of that great passion which had flung him prostrate in spirit at
her adored feet!
And now it was done! Fatality had willed it! With the eyes of a mortal
struck by the maddening thunderbolt of the gods, Renouard looked up to
the sky, an immense black pall dusted over with gold, on which great
shudders seemed to pass from the breath of life affirming its sway.
CHAPTER VIII
At last, one morning, in a clear spot of a glassy horizon charged with
heraldic masses of black vapours, the island grew out from the sea,
showing here and there its naked members of basaltic rock through the
rents of heavy foliage. Later, in the great spilling of all the riches
of sunset, Malata stood out green and rosy before turning into a violet
shadow in the autumnal light of the expiring day. Then came the night.
In the faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy squat headland, and
it was pitch dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her
heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer
reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay
full of shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the mainsail the
murmuring voices of the Moorsom party lingered, very frail, in the black
stillness.
They were sitting aft, on chairs, and nobody made a move. Early in the
day, when it had become evident that the wind was failing, Renouard,
basing his advice on the shortcomings of his bachelor establishment, had
urged on the ladies the advisability of not going ashore in the middle of
the night. Now he approached them in a constrained manner (it was
astonishing the constraint that had reigned between him and his guests
all through the passage) and renewed his arguments. No one ashore would
dream of his bringing any visitors with him. Nobody would even think of
coming off. There was only one old canoe on the plantation. And landing
in the schooner’s boats would be awkward in the dark. There was the risk
of getting aground on some shallow patches. It would be best to spend
the rest of the night on board.
There was really no opposition. The professor smoking a pipe, and very
comfortable in an ulster buttoned over his tropical clothes, was the
first to speak from his long chair.
“Most excellent advice.”
Next to him Miss Moorsom assented by a long silence. Then in a voice as
of one coming out of a dream—
“And so this is Malata,” she said. “I have often wondered . . .”
A shiver passed through Renouard. She had wondered! What about? Malata
was himself. He and Malata were one. And she had wondered! She had . . .
The professor’s sister leaned over towards Renouard. Through all these
days at sea the man’s—the found man’s—existence had not been alluded to
on board the schooner. That reticence was part of the general constraint
lying upon them all. She, herself, certainly had not been exactly elated
by this finding—poor Arthur, without money, without prospects. But she
felt moved by the sentiment and romance of the situation.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” she whispered out of her white wrap, “to think of
poor Arthur sleeping there, so near to our dear lovely Felicia, and not
knowing the immense joy in store for him to-morrow.”
There was such artificiality in the wax-flower lady that nothing in this
speech touched Renouard. It was but the simple anxiety of his heart that
he was voicing when he muttered gloomily—
“No one in the world knows what to-morrow may hold in store.”
The mature lady had a recoil as though he had said something impolite.
What a harsh thing to say—instead of finding something nice and
appropriate. On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes,
Renouard’s resemblance to a duke’s son was not so apparent to her.
Nothing but his—ah—bohemianism remained. She rose with a sort of
ostentation.
“It’s late—and since we are going to sleep on board to-night . . .” she
said. “But it does seem so cruel.”
The professor started up eagerly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
“Infinitely more sensible, my dear Emma.”
Renouard waited behind Miss Moorsom’s chair.
She got up slowly, moved one step forward, and paused looking at the
shore. The blackness of the island blotted out the stars with its vague
mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the waters and ready to burst
into flame and crashes.
“And so—this is Malata,” she repeated dreamily, moving towards the cabin
door. The clear cloak hanging from her shoulders, the ivory face—for the
night had put out nothing of her but the gleams of her hair—made her
resemble a shining dream-woman uttering words of wistful inquiry. She
disappeared without a sign, leaving Renouard penetrated to the very
marrow by the sounds that came from her body like a mysterious resonance
of an exquisite instrument.
He stood stock still. What was this accidental touch which had evoked
the strange accent of her voice? He dared not answer that question. But
he had to answer the question of what was to be done now. Had the moment
of confession come? The thought was enough to make one’s blood run cold.
It was as if those people had a premonition of something. In the
taciturn days of the passage he had noticed their reserve even amongst
themselves. The professor smoked his pipe moodily in retired spots.
Renouard had caught Miss Moorsom’s eyes resting on himself more than
once, with a peculiar and grave expression. He fancied that she avoided
all opportunities of conversation. The maiden lady seemed to nurse a
grievance. And now what had he to do?
The lights on the deck had gone out one after the other. The schooner
slept.
About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone below without a sign or a word
for him, Renouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist under the
midship awning—for he had given up all the accommodation below to his
guests. He got out with a sudden swift movement, flung off his sleeping
jacket, rolled his pyjamas up his thighs, and stole forward, unseen by
the one Kanaka of the anchor-watch. His white torso, naked like a
stripped athlete’s, glimmered, ghostly, in the deep shadows of the deck.
Unnoticed he got out of the ship over the knight-heads, ran along the
back rope, and seizing the dolphin-striker firmly with both hands,
lowered himself into the sea without a splash.
He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then struck boldly for the land,
sustained, embraced, by the tepid water. The gentle, voluptuous heave of
its breast swung him up and down slightly; sometimes a wavelet murmured
in his ears; from time to time, lowering his feet, he felt for the bottom
on a shallow patch to rest and correct his direction. He landed at the
lower end of the bungalow garden, into the dead stillness of the island.
There were no lights. The plantation seemed to sleep, as profoundly as
the schooner. On the path a small shell cracked under his naked heel.
The faithful half-caste foreman going his rounds cocked his ears at the
sharp sound. He gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of the
swift white figure flying at him out of the night. He crouched in
terror, and then sprang up and clicked his tongue in amazed recognition.
“Tse! Tse! The master!”
“Be quiet, Luiz, and listen to what I say.”
Yes, it was the master, the strong master who was never known to raise
his voice, the man blindly obeyed and never questioned. He talked low
and rapidly in the quiet night, as if every minute were precious. On
learning that three guests were coming to stay Luiz clicked his tongue
rapidly. These clicks were the uniform, stenographic symbols of his
emotions, and he could give them an infinite variety of meaning. He
listened to the rest in a deep silence hardly affected by the low, “Yes,
master,” whenever Renouard paused.
“You understand?” the latter insisted. “No preparations are to be made
till we land in the morning. And you are to say that Mr. Walter has gone
off in a trading schooner on a round of the islands.”
“Yes, master.”
“No mistakes—mind!”
“No, master.”
Renouard walked back towards the sea. Luiz, following him, proposed to
call out half a dozen boys and man the canoe.
“Imbecile!”
“Tse! Tse! Tse!”
“Don’t you understand that you haven’t seen me?”
“Yes, master. But what a long swim. Suppose you drown.”
“Then you can say of me and of Mr. Walter what you like. The dead don’t
mind.”
Renouard entered the sea and heard a faint “Tse! Tse! Tse!” of concern
from the half-caste, who had already lost sight of the master’s dark head
on the overshadowed water.
Renouard set his direction by a big star that, dipping on the horizon,
seemed to look curiously into his face. On this swim back he felt the
mournful fatigue of all that length of the traversed road, which brought
him no nearer to his desire. It was as if his love had sapped the
invisible supports of his strength. There came a moment when it seemed
to him that he must have swum beyond the confines of life. He had a
sensation of eternity close at hand, demanding no effort—offering its
peace. It was easy to swim like this beyond the confines of life looking
at a star. But the thought: “They will think I dared not face them and
committed suicide,” caused a revolt of his mind which carried him on. He
returned on board, as he had left, unheard and unseen. He lay in his
hammock utterly exhausted and with a confused feeling that he had been
beyond the confines of life, somewhere near a star, and that it was very
quiet there.
CHAPTER IX
Sheltered by the squat headland from the first morning sparkle of the sea
the little bay breathed a delicious freshness. The party from the
schooner landed at the bottom of the garden. They exchanged
insignificant words in studiously casual tones. The professor’s sister
put up a long-handled eye-glass as if to scan the novel surroundings, but
in reality searching for poor Arthur anxiously. Having never seen him
otherwise than in his town clothes she had no idea what he would look
like. It had been left to the professor to help his ladies out of the
boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving directions, had stepped
forward at once to meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the path. In
the distance, in front of the dazzlingly sunlit bungalow, a row of
dark-faced house-boys unequal in stature and varied in complexion
preserved the immobility of a guard of honour.
Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before coming within earshot.
Renouard bent his head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements he
meant to make for the visitors; another bed in the master’s room for the
ladies and a cot for the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite
where—where Mr. Walter—here he gave a scared look all round—Mr.
Walter—had died.
“Very good,” assented Renouard in an even undertone. “And remember what
you have to say of him.”
“Yes, master. Only”—he wriggled slightly and put one bare foot on the
other for a moment in apologetic embarrassment—“only I—I—don’t like to
say it.”
Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression.
“Frightened of the dead? Eh? Well—all right. I will say it myself—I
suppose once for all. . . .” Immediately he raised his voice very much.
“Send the boys down to bring up the luggage.”
“Yes, master.”
Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally
conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them.
“I am sorry,” he began with an impassive face. “My man has just told me
that Mr. Walter . . .” he managed to smile, but didn’t correct himself .
. . “has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to
the westward.”
This communication was received in profound silence.
Renouard forgot himself in the thought: “It’s done!” But the sight of
the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and
dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction.
“All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home . . . with what
patience you may.”
This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at
once. The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies.
“Rather unexpected—this absence.”
“Not exactly,” muttered Renouard. “A trip has to be made every year to
engage labour.”
“I see . . . And he . . . How vexingly elusive the poor fellow has
become! I’ll begin to think that some wicked fairy is favouring this
love tale with unpleasant attentions.”
Renouard noticed that the party did not seem weighed down by this new
disappointment. On the contrary they moved with a freer step. The
professor’s sister dropped her eye-glass to the end of its chain. Miss
Moorsom took the lead. The professor, his lips unsealed, lingered in the
open: but Renouard did not listen to that man’s talk. He looked after
that man’s daughter—if indeed that creature of irresistible seductions
were a daughter of mortals. The very intensity of his desire, as if his
soul were streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of
keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his
senses. Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a
woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house.
The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had feared—yet
they were not better than his fears. They were accursed in all the moods
they brought him. But the general aspect of things was quiet. The
professor smoked innumerable pipes with the air of a worker on his
holiday, always in movement and looking at things with that mysteriously
sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly wiser than the rest of the
world. His white head of hair—whiter than anything within the horizon
except the broken water on the reefs—was glimpsed in every part of the
plantation always on the move under the white parasol. And once he
climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck
elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.
Felicia Moorsom remained near the house. Sometimes she could be seen
with a despairing expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up dairy.
But only for a moment. At the sound of Renouard’s footsteps she would
turn towards him her beautiful face, adorable in that calm which was like
a wilful, like a cruel ignoring of her tremendous power. Whenever she
sat on the verandah, on a chair more specially reserved for her use,
Renouard would stroll up and sit on the steps near her, mostly silent,
and often not trusting himself to turn his glance on her. She, very
still with her eyes half-closed, looked down on his head—so that to a
beholder (such as Professor Moorsom, for instance) she would appear to be
turning over in her mind profound thoughts about that man sitting at her
feet, his shoulders bowed a little, his hands listless—as if vanquished.
And, indeed, the moral poison of falsehood has such a decomposing power
that Renouard felt his old personality turn to dead dust. Often, in the
evening, when they sat outside conversing languidly in the dark, he felt
that he must rest his forehead on her feet and burst into tears.
The professor’s sister suffered from some little strain caused by the
unstability of her own feelings toward Renouard. She could not tell
whether she really did dislike him or not. At times he appeared to her
most fascinating; and, though he generally ended by saying something
shockingly crude, she could not resist her inclination to talk with
him—at least not always. One day when her niece had left them alone on
the verandah she leaned forward in her chair—speckless, resplendent, and,
in her way, almost as striking a personality as her niece, who did not
resemble her in the least. “Dear Felicia has inherited her hair and the
greatest part of her appearance from her mother,” the maiden lady used to
tell people.
She leaned forward then, confidentially.
“Oh! Mr. Renouard! Haven’t you something comforting to say?”
He looked up, as surprised as if a voice from heaven had spoken with this
perfect society intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of his blue
eyes fluttered the wax-flower of refined womanhood. She continued.
“For—I can speak to you openly on this tiresome subject—only think what a
terrible strain this hope deferred must be for Felicia’s heart—for her
nerves.”
“Why speak to me about it,” he muttered feeling half choked suddenly.
“Why! As a friend—a well-wisher—the kindest of hosts. I am afraid we
are really eating you out of house and home.” She laughed a little.
“Ah! When, when will this suspense be relieved! That poor lost Arthur!
I confess that I am almost afraid of the great moment. It will be like
seeing a ghost.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” asked Renouard, in a dull voice.
She shifted her hands a little. Her pose was perfect in its ease and
middle-aged grace.
“Not actually. Only in a photograph. But we have many friends who had
the experience of apparitions.”
“Ah! They see ghosts in London,” mumbled Renouard, not looking at her.
“Frequently—in a certain very interesting set. But all sorts of people
do. We have a friend, a very famous author—his ghost is a girl. One of
my brother’s intimates is a very great man of science. He is friendly
with a ghost . . . Of a girl too,” she added in a voice as if struck for
the first time by the coincidence. “It is the photograph of that
apparition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most interesting. A little
cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic.
It’s so consoling to think. . .”
“Those plantation boys of mine see ghosts too,” said Renouard grimly.
The sister of the philosopher sat up stiffly. What crudeness! It was
always so with this strange young man.
“Mr. Renouard! How can you compare the superstitious fancies of your
horrible savages with the manifestations . . . ”
Words failed her. She broke off with a very faint primly angry smile.
She was perhaps the more offended with him because of that flutter at the
beginning of the conversation. And in a moment with perfect tact and
dignity she got up from her chair and left him alone.
Renouard didn’t even look up. It was not the displeasure of the lady
which deprived him of his sleep that night. He was beginning to forget
what simple, honest sleep was like. His hammock from the ship had been
hung for him on a side verandah, and he spent his nights in it on his
back, his hands folded on his chest, in a sort of half conscious,
oppressed stupor. In the morning he watched with unseeing eyes the
headland come out a shapeless inkblot against the thin light of the false
dawn, pass through all the stages of daybreak to the deep purple of its
outlined mass nimbed gloriously with the gold of the rising sun. He
listened to the vague sounds of waking within the house: and suddenly he
became aware of Luiz standing by the hammock—obviously troubled.
“What’s the matter?”
“Tse! Tse! Tse!”
“Well, what now? Trouble with the boys?”
“No, master. The gentleman when I take him his bath water he speak to
me. He ask me—he ask—when, when, I think Mr. Walter, he come back.”
The half-caste’s teeth chattered slightly. Renouard got out of the
hammock.
“And he is here all the time—eh?”
Luiz nodded a scared affirmative, but at once protested, “I no see him.
I never. Not I! The ignorant wild boys say they see . . . Something!
Ough!”
He clapped his teeth on another short rattle, and stood there, shrunk,
blighted, like a man in a freezing blast.
“And what did you say to the gentleman?”
“I say I don’t know—and I clear out. I—I don’t like to speak of him.”
“All right. We shall try to lay that poor ghost,” said Renouard
gloomily, going off to a small hut near by to dress. He was saying to
himself: “This fellow will end by giving me away. The last thing that I
. . . No! That mustn’t be.” And feeling his hand being forced he
discovered the whole extent of his cowardice.
CHAPTER X
That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul
than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here
and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants. The crop
promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age
took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment. His
investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by,
for experiments.
After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of
cultivation and such matters. Then suddenly:
“By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation
boys have been disturbed by a ghost?”
Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a
strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a
stiff smile.
“My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence. They funk
working in a certain field on the slope of the hill.”
“A ghost here!” exclaimed the amused professor. “Then our whole
conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised. This island has
been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages. How did a ghost come
here. By air or water? And why did it leave its native haunts. Was it
from misanthropy? Was he expelled from some community of spirits?”
Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone. The words died on his
lips. Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired.
“I don’t know.” Renouard made an effort to appear at ease. He had, he
said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys—a ghost-ridden race. They
had started the scare. They had probably brought their ghost with them.
“Let us investigate the matter, Renouard,” proposed the professor half in
earnest. “We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of
primitive minds, at any rate.”
This was too much. Renouard jumped up and leaving the room went out and
walked about in front of the house. He would allow no one to force his
hand. Presently the professor joined him outside. He carried his
parasol, but had neither his book nor his pipe with him. Amiably serious
he laid his hand on his “dear young friend’s” arm.
“We are all of us a little strung up,” he said. “For my part I have been
like sister Anne in the story. But I cannot see anything coming.
Anything that would be the least good for anybody—I mean.”
Renouard had recovered sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this
waste of time. For that was what, he supposed, the professor had in his
mind.
“Time,” mused Professor Moorsom. “I don’t know that time can be wasted.
But I will tell you, my dear friend, what this is: it is an awful waste
of life. I mean for all of us. Even for my sister, who has got a
headache and is gone to lie down.”
He shook gently Renouard’s arm. “Yes, for all of us! One may meditate
on life endlessly, one may even have a poor opinion of it—but the fact
remains that we have only one life to live. And it is short. Think of
that, my young friend.”
He released Renouard’s arm and stepped out of the shade opening his
parasol. It was clear that there was something more in his mind than
mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for fashionable audiences.
What did the man mean by his confounded platitudes? To Renouard, scared
by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that nothing could be more fatal than
to have his deception unveiled otherwise than by personal confession),
this talk sounded like encouragement or a warning from that man who
seemed to him to be very brazen and very subtle. It was like being
bullied by the dead and cajoled by the living into a throw of dice for a
supreme stake.
Renouard went away to some distance from the house and threw himself down
in the shade of a tree. He lay there perfectly still with his forehead
resting on his folded arms, light-headed and thinking. It seemed to him
that he must be on fire, then that he had fallen into a cool whirlpool, a
smooth funnel of water swirling about with nauseating rapidity. And then
(it must have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he was walking on the
dangerous thin ice of a river, unable to turn back. . . . Suddenly it
parted from shore to shore with a loud crack like the report of a gun.
With one leap he found himself on his feet. All was peace, stillness,
sunshine. He walked away from there slowly. Had he been a gambler he
would have perhaps been supported in a measure by the mere excitement.
But he was not a gambler. He had always disdained that artificial manner
of challenging the fates. The bungalow came into view, bright and
pretty, and all about everything was peace, stillness, sunshine. . . .
While he was plodding towards it he had a disagreeable sense of the dead
man’s company at his elbow. The ghost! He seemed to be everywhere but
in his grave. Could one ever shake him off? he wondered. At that moment
Miss Moorsom came out on the verandah; and at once, as if by a mystery of
radiating waves, she roused a great tumult in his heart, shook earth and
sky together—but he plodded on. Then like a grave song-note in the storm
her voice came to him ominously.
“Ah! Mr. Renouard. . . ” He came up and smiled, but she was very
serious. “I can’t keep still any longer. Is there time to walk up this
headland and back before dark?”
The shadows were lying lengthened on the ground; all was stillness and
peace. “No,” said Renouard, feeling suddenly as steady as a rock. “But
I can show you a view from the central hill which your father has not
seen. A view of reefs and of broken water without end, and of great
wheeling clouds of sea-birds.”
She came down the verandah steps at once and they moved off. “You go
first,” he proposed, “and I’ll direct you. To the left.”
She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a muslin blouse; he could see
through the thin stuff the skin of her shoulders, of her arms. The noble
delicacy of her neck caused him a sort of transport. “The path begins
where these three palms are. The only palms on the island.”
“I see.”
She never turned her head. After a while she observed: “This path looks
as if it had been made recently.”
“Quite recently,” he assented very low.
They went on climbing steadily without exchanging another word; and when
they stood on the top she gazed a long time before her. The low evening
mist veiled the further limit of the reefs. Above the enormous and
melancholy confusion, as of a fleet of wrecked islands, the restless
myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark ribbons on the sky,
gathered in clouds, soared and stooped like a play of shadows, for they
were too far for them to hear their cries.
Renouard broke the silence in low tones.
“They’ll be settling for the night presently.” She made no sound. Round
them all was peace and declining sunshine. Near by, the topmost pinnacle
of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock,
weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the
Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders against it. Felicia Moorsom
faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his face as though
she had made up her mind at last to destroy his wits once and for all.
Dazzled, he lowered his eyelids slowly.
“Mr. Renouard! There is something strange in all this. Tell me where he
is?”
He answered deliberately.
“On the other side of this rock. I buried him there myself.”
She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a
moment, then: “Ohhh! . . . You buried him! . . . What sort of man are
you? . . . You dared not tell! . . . He is another of your victims? . . .
You dared not confess that evening. . . . You must have killed him. What
could he have done to you? . . . You fastened on him some atrocious
quarrel and . . .”
Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the weary
rock against which he leaned. He only raised his eyelids to look at her
and lowered them slowly. Nothing more. It silenced her. And as if
ashamed she made a gesture with her hand, putting away from her that
thought. He spoke, quietly ironic at first.
“Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots—the ruthless
adventurer—the ogre with a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss Moorsom.
I don’t think that the greatest fool of them all ever dared hint such a
stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing. No, I had noticed this
man in a hotel. He had come from up country I was told, and was doing
nothing. I saw him sitting there lonely in a corner like a sick crow,
and I went over one evening to talk to him. Just on impulse. He wasn’t
impressive. He was pitiful. My worst enemy could have told you he
wasn’t good enough to be one of Renouard’s victims. It didn’t take me
long to judge that he was drugging himself. Not drinking. Drugs.”
“Ah! It’s now that you are trying to murder him,” she cried.
“Really. Always the Renouard of shopkeepers’ legend. Listen! I would
never have been jealous of him. And yet I am jealous of the air you
breathe, of the soil you tread on, of the world that sees you—moving
free—not mine. But never mind. I rather liked him. For a certain
reason I proposed he should come to be my assistant here. He said he
believed this would save him. It did not save him from death. It came
to him as it were from nothing—just a fall. A mere slip and tumble of
ten feet into a ravine. But it seems he had been hurt before
up-country—by a horse. He ailed and ailed. No, he was not a
steel-tipped man. And his poor soul seemed to have been damaged too. It
gave way very soon.”
“This is tragic!” Felicia Moorsom whispered with feeling. Renouard’s
lips twitched, but his level voice continued mercilessly.
“That’s the story. He rallied a little one night and said he wanted to
tell me something. I, being a gentleman, he said, he could confide in
me. I told him that he was mistaken. That there was a good deal of a
plebeian in me, that he couldn’t know. He seemed disappointed. He
muttered something about his innocence and something that sounded like a
curse on some woman, then turned to the wall and—just grew cold.”
“On a woman,” cried Miss Moorsom indignantly. “What woman?”
“I wonder!” said Renouard, raising his eyes and noting the crimson of her
ear-lobes against the live whiteness of her complexion, the sombre, as if
secret, night-splendour of her eyes under the writhing flames of her
hair. “Some woman who wouldn’t believe in that poor innocence of his. .
. Yes. You probably. And now you will not believe in me—not even in me
who must in truth be what I am—even to death. No! You won’t. And yet,
Felicia, a woman like you and a man like me do not often come together on
this earth.”
The flame of her glorious head scorched his face. He flung his hat far
away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly his
resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of Pallas, still, austere,
bowed a little in the shadow of the rock. “Oh! If you could only
understand the truth that is in me!” he added.
She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till he looked up again, and
then with unnatural force as if defending herself from some unspoken
aspersion, “It’s I who stand for truth here! Believe in you! In you,
who by a heartless falsehood—and nothing else, nothing else, do you
hear?—have brought me here, deceived, cheated, as in some abominable
farce!” She sat down on a boulder, rested her chin in her hands, in the
pose of simple grief—mourning for herself.
“It only wanted this. Why! Oh! Why is it that ugliness, ridicule, and
baseness must fall across my path.”
On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke to each other as if the
earth had fallen away from under their feet.
“Are you grieving for your dignity? He was a mediocre soul and could
have given you but an unworthy existence.”
She did not even smile at those words, but, superb, as if lifting a
corner of the veil, she turned on him slowly.
“And do you imagine I would have devoted myself to him for such a
purpose! Don’t you know that reparation was due to him from me? A
sacred debt—a fine duty. To redeem him would not have been in my power—I
know it. But he was blameless, and it was for me to come forward. Don’t
you see that in the eyes of the world nothing could have rehabilitated
him so completely as his marriage with me? No word of evil could be
whispered of him after I had given him my hand. As to giving myself up
to anything less than the shaping of a man’s destiny—if I thought I could
do it I would abhor myself. . . .” She spoke with authority in her deep
fascinating, unemotional voice. Renouard meditated, gloomy, as if over
some sinister riddle of a beautiful sphinx met on the wild road of his
life.
“Yes. Your father was right. You are one of these aristocrats . . .”
She drew herself up haughtily.
“What do you say? My father! . . . I an aristocrat.”
“Oh! I don’t mean that you are like the men and women of the time of
armours, castles, and great deeds. Oh, no! They stood on the naked
soil, had traditions to be faithful to, had their feet on this earth of
passions and death which is not a hothouse. They would have been too
plebeian for you since they had to lead, to suffer with, to understand
the commonest humanity. No, you are merely of the topmost layer,
disdainful and superior, the mere pure froth and bubble on the
inscrutable depths which some day will toss you out of existence. But
you are you! You are you! You are the eternal love itself—only, O
Divinity, it isn’t your body, it is your soul that is made of foam.”
She listened as if in a dream. He had succeeded so well in his effort to
drive back the flood of his passion that his life itself seemed to run
with it out of his body. At that moment he felt as one dead speaking.
But the headlong wave returning with tenfold force flung him on her
suddenly, with open arms and blazing eyes. She found herself like a
feather in his grasp, helpless, unable to struggle, with her feet off the
ground. But this contact with her, maddening like too much felicity,
destroyed its own end. Fire ran through his veins, turned his passion to
ashes, burnt him out and left him empty, without force—almost without
desire. He let her go before she could cry out. And she was so used to
the forms of repression enveloping, softening the crude impulses of old
humanity that she no longer believed in their existence as if it were an
exploded legend. She did not recognise what had happened to her. She
came safe out of his arms, without a struggle, not even having felt
afraid.
“What’s the meaning of this?” she said, outraged but calm in a scornful
way.
He got down on his knees in silence, bent low to her very feet, while she
looked down at him, a little surprised, without animosity, as if merely
curious to see what he would do. Then, while he remained bowed to the
ground pressing the hem of her skirt to his lips, she made a slight
movement. He got up.
“No,” he said. “Were you ever so much mine what could I do with you
without your consent? No. You don’t conquer a wraith, cold mist, stuff
of dreams, illusion. It must come to you and cling to your breast. And
then! Oh! And then!”
All ecstasy, all expression went out of his face.
“Mr. Renouard,” she said, “though you can have no claim on my
consideration after having decoyed me here for the vile purpose,
apparently, of gloating over me as your possible prey, I will tell you
that I am not perhaps the extraordinary being you think I am. You may
believe me. Here I stand for truth itself.”
“What’s that to me what you are?” he answered. “At a sign from you I
would climb up to the seventh heaven to bring you down to earth for my
own—and if I saw you steeped to the lips in vice, in crime, in mud, I
would go after you, take you to my arms—wear you for an incomparable
jewel on my breast. And that’s love—true love—the gift and the curse of
the gods. There is no other.”
The truth vibrating in his voice made her recoil slightly, for she was
not fit to hear it—not even a little—not even one single time in her
life. It was revolting to her; and in her trouble, perhaps prompted by
the suggestion of his name or to soften the harshness of expression, for
she was obscurely moved, she spoke to him in French.
“_Assez_! _J’ai horreur de tout cela_,” she said.
He was white to his very lips, but he was trembling no more. The dice
had been cast, and not even violence could alter the throw. She passed
by him unbendingly, and he followed her down the path. After a time she
heard him saying:
“And your dream is to influence a human destiny?”
“Yes!” she answered curtly, unabashed, with a woman’s complete assurance.
“Then you may rest content. You have done it.”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. But just before reaching the end of
the path she relented, stopped, and went back to him.
“I don’t suppose you are very anxious for people to know how near you
came to absolute turpitude. You may rest easy on that point. I shall
speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say that he has
died—nothing more.”
“Yes,” said Renouard in a lifeless voice. “He is dead. His very ghost
shall be done with presently.”
She went on, but he remained standing stock still in the dusk. She had
already reached the three palms when she heard behind her a loud peal of
laughter, cynical and joyless, such as is heard in smoking-rooms at the
end of a scandalous story. It made her feel positively faint for a
moment.
CHAPTER XI
Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey Renouard. His resolution
had failed him. Instead of following Felicia into the house, he had
stopped under the three palms, and leaning against a smooth trunk had
abandoned himself to a sense of an immense deception and the feeling of
extreme fatigue. This walk up the hill and down again was like the
supreme effort of an explorer trying to penetrate the interior of an
unknown country, the secret of which is too well defended by its cruel
and barren nature. Decoyed by a mirage, he had gone too far—so far that
there was no going back. His strength was at an end. For the first time
in his life he had to give up, and with a sort of despairing
self-possession he tried to understand the cause of the defeat. He did
not ascribe it to that absurd dead man.
The hesitating shadow of Luiz approached him unnoticed till it spoke
timidly. Renouard started.
“Eh? What? Dinner waiting? You must say I beg to be excused. I can’t
come. But I shall see them to-morrow morning, at the landing place.
Take your orders from the professor as to the sailing of the schooner.
Go now.”
Luiz, dumbfounded, retreated into the darkness. Renouard did not move,
but hours afterwards, like the bitter fruit of his immobility, the words:
“I had nothing to offer to her vanity,” came from his lips in the silence
of the island. And it was then only that he stirred, only to wear the
night out in restless tramping up and down the various paths of the
plantation. Luiz, whose sleep was made light by the consciousness of
some impending change, heard footsteps passing by his hut, the firm tread
of the master; and turning on his mats emitted a faint Tse! Tse! Tse! of
deep concern.
Lights had been burning in the bungalow almost all through the night; and
with the first sign of day began the bustle of departure. House boys
walked processionally carrying suit-cases and dressing-bags down to the
schooner’s boat, which came to the landing place at the bottom of the
garden. Just as the rising sun threw its golden nimbus around the purple
shape of the headland, the Planter of Malata was perceived pacing
bare-headed the curve of the little bay. He exchanged a few words with
the sailing-master of the schooner, then remained by the boat, standing
very upright, his eyes on the ground, waiting.
He had not long to wait. Into the cool, overshadowed garden the
professor descended first, and came jauntily down the path in a lively
cracking of small shells. With his closed parasol hooked on his forearm,
and a book in his hand, he resembled a banal tourist more than was
permissible to a man of his unique distinction. He waved the disengaged
arm from a distance, but at close quarters, arrested before Renouard’s
immobility, he made no offer to shake hands. He seemed to appraise the
aspect of the man with a sharp glance, and made up his mind.
“We are going back by Suez,” he began almost boisterously. “I have been
looking up the sailing lists. If the zephirs of your Pacific are only
moderately propitious I think we are sure to catch the mail boat due in
Marseilles on the 18th of March. This will suit me excellently. . . .”
He lowered his tone. “My dear young friend, I’m deeply grateful to you.”
Renouard’s set lips moved.
“Why are you grateful to me?”
“Ah! Why? In the first place you might have made us miss the next boat,
mightn’t you? . . . I don’t thank you for your hospitality. You can’t be
angry with me for saying that I am truly thankful to escape from it. But
I am grateful to you for what you have done, and—for being what you are.”
It was difficult to define the flavour of that speech, but Renouard
received it with an austerely equivocal smile. The professor stepping
into the boat opened his parasol and sat down in the stern-sheets waiting
for the ladies. No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence of the
morning while they walked the broad path, Miss Moorsom a little in
advance of her aunt.
When she came abreast of him Renouard raised his head.
“Good-bye, Mr. Renouard,” she said in a low voice, meaning to pass on;
but there was such a look of entreaty in the blue gleam of his sunken
eyes that after an imperceptible hesitation she laid her hand, which was
ungloved, in his extended palm.
“Will you condescend to remember me?” he asked, while an emotion with
which she was angry made her pale cheeks flush and her black eyes
sparkle.
“This is a strange request for you to make,” she said, exaggerating the
coldness of her tone.
“Is it? Impudent perhaps. Yet I am not so guilty as you think; and bear
in mind that to me you can never make reparation.”
“Reparation? To you! It is you who can offer me no reparation for the
offence against my feelings—and my person; for what reparation can be
adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its
implication, so humiliating to my pride. No! I don’t want to remember
you.”
Unexpectedly, with a tightening grip, he pulled her nearer to him, and
looking into her eyes with fearless despair—
“You’ll have to. I shall haunt you,” he said firmly.
Her hand was wrenched out of his grasp before he had time to release it.
Felicia Moorsom stepped into the boat, sat down by the side of her
father, and breathed tenderly on her crushed fingers.
The professor gave her a sidelong look—nothing more. But the professor’s
sister, yet on shore, had put up her long-handle double eye-glass to look
at the scene. She dropped it with a faint rattle.
“I’ve never in my life heard anything so crude said to a lady,” she
murmured, passing before Renouard with a perfectly erect head. When, a
moment afterwards, softening suddenly, she turned to throw a good-bye to
that young man, she saw only his back in the distance moving towards the
bungalow. She watched him go in—amazed—before she too left the soil of
Malata.
Nobody disturbed Renouard in that room where he had shut himself in to
breathe the evanescent perfume of her who for him was no more, till late
in the afternoon when the half-caste was heard on the other side of the
door.
He wanted the master to know that the trader _Janet_ was just entering
the cove.
Renouard’s strong voice on his side of the door gave him most unexpected
instructions. He was to pay off the boys with the cash in the office and
arrange with the captain of the _Janet_ to take every worker away from
Malata, returning them to their respective homes. An order on the
Dunster firm would be given to him in payment.
And again the silence of the bungalow remained unbroken till, next
morning, the half-caste came to report that everything was done. The
plantation boys were embarking now.
Through a crack in the door a hand thrust at him a piece of paper, and
the door slammed to so sharply that Luiz stepped back. Then approaching
cringingly the keyhole, in a propitiatory tone he asked:
“Do I go too, master?”
“Yes. You too. Everybody.”
“Master stop here alone?”
Silence. And the half-caste’s eyes grew wide with wonder. But he also,
like those “ignorant savages,” the plantation boys, was only too glad to
leave an island haunted by the ghost of a white man. He backed away
noiselessly from the mysterious silence in the closed room, and only in
the very doorway of the bungalow allowed himself to give vent to his
feelings by a deprecatory and pained—
“Tse! Tse! Tse!”
CHAPTER XII
The Moorsoms did manage to catch the homeward mail boat all right, but
had only twenty-four hours in town. Thus the sentimental Willie could
not see very much of them. This did not prevent him afterwards from
relating at great length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor Miss
Moorsom—the fashionable and clever beauty—found her betrothed in Malata
only to see him die in her arms. Most people were deeply touched by the
sad story. It was the talk of a good many days.
But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard’s only friend and crony, wanted to
know more than the rest of the world. From professional incontinence,
perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of harrowing detail. And when he
noticed Renouard’s schooner lying in port day after day he sought the
sailing master to learn the reason. The man told him that such were his
instructions. He had been ordered to lie there a month before returning
to Malata. And the month was nearly up. “I will ask you to give me a
passage,” said the Editor.
He landed in the morning at the bottom of the garden and found peace,
stillness, sunshine reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of the
bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a human being anywhere, the
plants growing rank and tall on the deserted fields. For hours the
Editor and the schooner’s crew, excited by the mystery, roamed over the
island shouting Renouard’s name; and at last set themselves in grim
silence to explore systematically the uncleared bush and the deeper
ravines in search of his corpse. What had happened? Had he been
murdered by the boys? Or had he simply, capricious and secretive,
abandoned his plantation taking the people with him. It was impossible
to tell what had happened. At last, towards the decline of the day, the
Editor and the sailing master discovered a track of sandals crossing a
strip of sandy beach on the north shore of the bay. Following this track
fearfully, they passed round the spur of the headland, and there on a
large stone found the sandals, Renouard’s white jacket, and the Malay
sarong of chequered pattern which the planter of Malata was well known to
wear when going to bathe. These things made a little heap, and the
sailor remarked, after gazing at it in silence—
“Birds have been hovering over this for many a day.”
“He’s gone bathing and got drowned,” cried the Editor in dismay.
“I doubt it, sir. If he had been drowned anywhere within a mile from the
shore the body would have been washed out on the reefs. And our boats
have found nothing so far.”
Nothing was ever found—and Renouard’s disappearance remained in the main
inexplicable. For to whom could it have occurred that a man would set
out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life—with a steady stroke—his
eyes fixed on a star!
Next evening, from the receding schooner, the Editor looked back for the
last time at the deserted island. A black cloud hung listlessly over the
high rock on the middle hill; and under the mysterious silence of that
shadow Malata lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild sunset, as
if remembering the heart that was broken there.
* * * * *
_Dec._ 1913.
THE PARTNER
“And that be hanged for a silly yarn. The boatmen here in Westport have
been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years. The sort that
gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head—and asks foolish
questions—must be told something to pass the time away. D’ye know
anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a beach? . . . It’s
like drinking weak lemonade when you aren’t thirsty. I don’t know why
they do it! They don’t even get sick.”
A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow; the locality was a small
respectable smoking-room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste for
forming chance acquaintances accounts for my sitting up late with him.
His great, flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick, square wisp of
white hairs hung from his chin; its waggling gave additional point to his
deep utterance; and his general contempt for mankind with its activities
and moralities was expressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of
black felt with a large rim, which he kept always on his head.
His appearance was that of an old adventurer, retired after many unholy
experiences in the darkest parts of the earth; but I had every reason to
believe that he had never been outside England. From a casual remark
somebody dropped I gathered that in his early days he must have been
somehow connected with shipping—with ships in docks. Of individuality he
had plenty. And it was this which attracted my attention at first. But
he was not easy to classify, and before the end of the week I gave him up
with the vague definition, “an imposing old ruffian.”
One rainy afternoon, oppressed by infinite boredom, I went into the
smoking-room. He was sitting there in absolute immobility, which was
really fakir-like and impressive. I began to wonder what could be the
associations of that sort of man, his “milieu,” his private connections,
his views, his morality, his friends, and even his wife—when to my
surprise he opened a conversation in a deep, muttering voice.
I must say that since he had learned from somebody that I was a writer of
stories he had been acknowledging my existence by means of some vague
growls in the morning.
He was essentially a taciturn man. There was an effect of rudeness in
his fragmentary sentences. It was some time before I discovered that
what he would be at was the process by which stories—stories for
periodicals—were produced.
What could one say to a fellow like that? But I was bored to death; the
weather continued impossible; and I resolved to be amiable.
“And so you make these tales up on your own. How do they ever come into
your head?” he rumbled.
I explained that one generally got a hint for a tale.
“What sort of hint?”
“Well, for instance,” I said, “I got myself rowed out to the rocks the
other day. My boatman told me of the wreck on these rocks nearly twenty
years ago. That could be used as a hint for a mainly descriptive bit of
story with some such title as ‘In the Channel,’ for instance.”
It was then that he flew out at the boatmen and the summer visitors who
listen to their tales. Without moving a muscle of his face he emitted a
powerful “Rot,” from somewhere out of the depths of his chest, and went
on in his hoarse, fragmentary mumble. “Stare at the silly rocks—nod
their silly heads [the visitors, I presume]. What do they think a man
is—blown-out paper bag or what?—go off pop like that when he’s hit—Damn
silly yarn—Hint indeed! . . . A lie?”
You must imagine this statuesque ruffian enhaloed in the black rim of his
hat, letting all this out as an old dog growls sometimes, with his head
up and staring-away eyes.
“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “Well, but even if untrue it _is_ a hint,
enabling me to see these rocks, this gale they speak of, the heavy seas,
etc., etc., in relation to mankind. The struggle against natural forces
and the effect of the issue on at least one, say, exalted—”
He interrupted me by an aggressive—
“Would truth be any good to you?”
“I shouldn’t like to say,” I answered, cautiously. “It’s said that truth
is stranger than fiction.”
“Who says that?” he mouthed.
“Oh! Nobody in particular.”
I turned to the window; for the contemptuous beggar was oppressive to
look at, with his immovable arm on the table. I suppose my unceremonious
manner provoked him to a comparatively long speech.
“Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks? Like plums in a slice of
cold pudding.”
I was looking at them—an acre or more of black dots scattered on the
steel-grey shades of the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey mist
with a formless brighter patch in one place—the veiled whiteness of the
cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a
delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and
desolate, a symphony in grey and black—a Whistler. But the next thing
said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt
for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went
on—
“I—no such foolishness—looking at the rocks out there—more likely call to
mind an office—I used to look in sometimes at one time—office in
London—one of them small streets behind Cannon Street Station. . . ”
He was very deliberate; not jerky, only fragmentary; at times profane.
“That’s a rather remote connection,” I observed, approaching him.
“Connection? To Hades with your connections. It was an accident.”
“Still,” I said, “an accident has its backward and forward connections,
which, if they could be set forth—”
Without moving he seemed to lend an attentive ear.
“Aye! Set forth. That’s perhaps what you could do. Couldn’t you now?
There’s no sea life in this connection. But you can put it in out of
your head—if you like.”
“Yes. I could, if necessary,” I said. “Sometimes it pays to put in a
lot out of one’s head, and sometimes it doesn’t. I mean that the story
isn’t worth it. Everything’s in that.”
It amused me to talk to him like this. He reflected audibly that he
guessed story-writers were out after money like the rest of the world
which had to live by its wits: and that it was extraordinary how far
people who were out after money would go. . . Some of them.
Then he made a sally against sea life. Silly sort of life, he called it.
No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine men came
out of it—he admitted—but no more chance in the world if put to it than
fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great name as a
skipper. Big man; short side-whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice.
A good fellow, but no more up to people’s tricks than a baby.
“That’s the captain of the _Sagamore_ you’re talking about,” I said,
confidently.
After a low, scornful “Of course” he seemed now to hold on the wall with
his fixed stare the vision of that city office, “at the back of Cannon
Street Station,” while he growled and mouthed a fragmentary description,
jerking his chin up now and then, as if angry.
It was, according to his account, a modest place of business, not shady
in any sense, but out of the way, in a small street now rebuilt from end
to end. “Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public house under the
railway bridge. I used to take my lunch there when my business called me
to the city. Cloete would come in to have his chop and make the girl
laugh. No need to talk much, either, for that. Nothing but the way he
would twinkle his spectacles on you and give a twitch of his thick mouth
was enough to start you off before he began one of his little tales.
Funny fellow, Cloete. C-l-o-e-t-e—Cloete.”
“What was he—a Dutchman?” I asked, not seeing in the least what all this
had to do with the Westport boatmen and the Westport summer visitors and
this extraordinary old fellow’s irritable view of them as liars and
fools. “Devil knows,” he grunted, his eyes on the wall as if not to miss
a single movement of a cinematograph picture. “Spoke nothing but
English, anyway. First I saw him—comes off a ship in dock from the
States—passenger. Asks me for a small hotel near by. Wanted to be quiet
and have a look round for a few days. I took him to a place—friend of
mine. . . Next time—in the City—Hallo! You’re very obliging—have a
drink. Talks plenty about himself. Been years in the States. All sorts
of business all over the place. With some patent medicine people, too.
Travels. Writes advertisements and all that. Tells me funny stories.
Tall, loose-limbed fellow. Black hair up on end, like a brush; long
face, long legs, long arms, twinkle in his specs, jocular way of
speaking—in a low voice. . . See that?”
I nodded, but he was not looking at me.
“Never laughed so much in my life. The beggar—would make you laugh
telling you how he skinned his own father. He was up to that, too. A
man who’s been in the patent-medicine trade will be up to anything from
pitch-and-toss to wilful murder. And that’s a bit of hard truth for you.
Don’t mind what they do—think they can carry off anything and talk
themselves out of anything—all the world’s a fool to them. Business man,
too, Cloete. Came over with a few hundred pounds. Looking for something
to do—in a quiet way. Nothing like the old country, after all, says he. . .
And so we part—I with more drinks in me than I was used to. After a
time, perhaps six months or so, I run up against him again in Mr. George
Dunbar’s office. Yes, _that_ office. It wasn’t often that I . . .
However, there was a bit of his cargo in a ship in dock that I wanted to
ask Mr. George about. In comes Cloete out of the room at the back with
some papers in his hand. Partner. You understand?”
“Aha!” I said. “The few hundred pounds.”
“And that tongue of his,” he growled. “Don’t forget that tongue. Some
of his tales must have opened George Dunbar’s eyes a bit as to what
business means.”
“A plausible fellow,” I suggested.
“H’m! You must have it in your own way—of course. Well. Partner.
George Dunbar puts his top-hat on and tells me to wait a moment. . .
George always looked as though he were making a few thousands a year—a
city swell. . . Come along, old man! And he and Captain Harry go out
together—some business with a solicitor round the corner. Captain Harry,
when he was in England, used to turn up in his brother’s office regularly
about twelve. Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the paper and
smoking his pipe. So they go out. . . Model brothers, says Cloete—two
love-birds—I am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this cozy little
show. . . Gives me that sort of talk. Then by-and-by: What sort of old
thing is that _Sagamore_? Finest ship out—eh? I dare say all ships are
fine to you. You live by them. I tell you what; I would just as soon
put my money into an old stocking. Sooner!”
* * * * *
He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand, lying loosely on the table,
close slowly into a fist. In that immovable man it was startling,
ominous, like the famed nod of the Commander.
“So, already at that time—note—already,” he growled.
“But hold on,” I interrupted. “The _Sagamore_ belonged to Mundy and
Rogers, I’ve been told.”
He snorted contemptuously. “Damn boatmen—know no better. Flew the
firm’s _house-flag_. That’s another thing. Favour. It was like this:
When old man Dunbar died, Captain Harry was already in command with the
firm. George chucked the bank he was clerking in—to go on his own with
what there was to share after the old chap. George was a smart man.
Started warehousing; then two or three things at a time: wood-pulp,
preserved-fruit trade, and so on. And Captain Harry let him have his
share to work with. . . I am provided for in my ship, he says. . . But
by-and-by Mundy and Rogers begin to sell out to foreigners all their
ships—go into steam right away. Captain Harry gets very upset—lose
command, part with the ship he was fond of—very wretched. Just then, so
it happened, the brothers came in for some money—an old woman died or
something. Quite a tidy bit. Then young George says: There’s enough
between us two to buy the _Sagamore_ with. . . But you’ll need more money
for your business, cries Captain Harry—and the other laughs at him: My
business is going on all right. Why, I can go out and make a handful of
sovereigns while you are trying to get your pipe to draw, old man. . .
Mundy and Rogers very friendly about it: Certainly, Captain. And we will
manage her for you, if you like, as if she were still our own. . . Why,
with a connection like that it was good investment to buy that ship.
Good! Aye, at the time.”
The turning of his head slightly toward me at this point was like a sign
of strong feeling in any other man.
“You’ll mind that this was long before Cloete came into it at all,” he
muttered, warningly.
“Yes. I will mind,” I said. “We generally say: some years passed.
That’s soon done.”
He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing way, as if engrossed in
the thought of the years so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they
were, the years before and the years (not so many) after Cloete came upon
the scene. When he began to speak again, I discerned his intention to
point out to me, in his obscure and graphic manner, the influence on
George Dunbar of long association with Cloete’s easy moral standards,
unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour (funny fellow), and
adventurously reckless disposition. He desired me anxiously to elaborate
this view, and I assured him it was quite within my powers. He wished me
also to understand that George’s business had its ups and downs (the
other brother was meantime sailing to and fro serenely); that he got into
low water at times, which worried him rather, because he had married a
young wife with expensive tastes. He was having a pretty anxious time of
it generally; and just then Cloete ran up in the city somewhere against a
man working a patent medicine (the fellow’s old trade) with some success,
but which, with capital, capital to the tune of thousands to be spent
with both hands on advertising, could be turned into a great
thing—infinitely better-paying than a gold-mine. Cloete became excited
at the possibilities of that sort of business, in which he was an expert.
I understood that George’s partner was all on fire from the contact with
this unique opportunity.
“So he goes in every day into George’s room about eleven, and sings that
tune till George gnashes his teeth with rage. Do shut up. What’s the
good? No money. Hardly any to go on with, let alone pouring thousands
into advertising. Never dare propose to his brother Harry to sell the
ship. Couldn’t think of it. Worry him to death. It would be like the
end of the world coming. And certainly not for a business of that kind!
. . . Do you think it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his
mouth. . . George owns up: No—would be no better than a squeamish ass if
he thought that, after all these years in business.
“Cloete looks at him hard—Never thought of _selling_ the ship. Expected
the blamed old thing wouldn’t fetch half her insured value by this time.
Then George flies out at him. What’s the meaning, then, of these silly
jeers at ship-owning for the last three weeks? Had enough of them,
anyhow.
“Angry at having his mouth made to water, see. Cloete don’t get excited. . .
I am no squeamish ass, either, says he, very slowly. ’Tisn’t selling
your old _Sagamore_ wants. The blamed thing wants tomahawking (seems the
name _Sagamore_ means an Indian chief or something. The figure-head was
a half-naked savage with a feather over one ear and a hatchet in his
belt). Tomahawking, says he.
“What do you mean? asks George. . . Wrecking—it could be managed with
perfect safety, goes on Cloete—your brother would then put in his share
of insurance money. Needn’t tell him exactly what for. He thinks you’re
the smartest business man that ever lived. Make his fortune, too. . .
George grips the desk with both hands in his rage. . . You think my
brother’s a man to cast away his ship on purpose. I wouldn’t even dare
think of such a thing in the same room with him—the finest fellow that
ever lived. . . Don’t make such noise; they’ll hear you outside, says
Cloete; and he tells him that his brother is the salted pattern of all
virtues, but all that’s necessary is to induce him to stay ashore for a
voyage—for a holiday—take a rest—why not? . . . In fact, I have in view
somebody up to that sort of game—Cloete whispers.
“George nearly chokes. . . So you think I am of that sort—you think _me_
capable—What do you take me for? . . . He almost loses his head, while
Cloete keeps cool, only gets white about the gills. . . I take you for a
man who will be most cursedly hard up before long. . . He goes to the
door and sends away the clerks—there were only two—to take their lunch
hour. Comes back . . . What are you indignant about? Do I want you to
rob the widow and orphan? Why, man! Lloyd’s a corporation, it hasn’t
got a body to starve. There’s forty or more of them perhaps who
underwrote the lines on that silly ship of yours. Not one human being
would go hungry or cold for it. They take every risk into consideration.
Everything I tell you. . . That sort of talk. H’m! George too upset to
speak—only gurgles and waves his arms; so sudden, you see. The other,
warming his back at the fire, goes on. Wood-pulp business next door to a
failure. Tinned-fruit trade nearly played out. . . You’re frightened, he
says; but the law is only meant to frighten fools away. . . And he shows
how safe casting away that ship would be. Premiums paid for so many,
many years. No shadow of suspicion could arise. And, dash it all! a
ship must meet her end some day. . .
“I am not frightened. I am indignant,” says George Dunbar.
“Cloete boiling with rage inside. Chance of a lifetime—his chance! And
he says kindly: Your wife’ll be much more indignant when you ask her to
get out of that pretty house of yours and pile in into a two-pair
back—with kids perhaps, too. . .
“George had no children. Married a couple of years; looked forward to a
kid or two very much. Feels more upset than ever. Talks about an honest
man for father, and so on. Cloete grins: You be quick before they come,
and they’ll have a rich man for father, and no one the worse for it.
That’s the beauty of the thing.
“George nearly cries. I believe he did cry at odd times. This went on
for weeks. He couldn’t quarrel with Cloete. Couldn’t pay off his few
hundreds; and besides, he was used to have him about. Weak fellow,
George. Cloete generous, too. . . Don’t think of my little pile, says
he. Of course it’s gone when we have to shut up. But I don’t care, he
says. . . And then there was George’s new wife. When Cloete dines there,
the beggar puts on a dress suit; little woman liked it; . . . Mr. Cloete,
my husband’s partner; such a clever man, man of the world, so amusing! . . .
When he dines there and they are alone: Oh, Mr. Cloete, I wish George
would do something to improve our prospects. Our position is really so
mediocre. . . And Cloete smiles, but isn’t surprised, because he had put
all these notions himself into her empty head. . . What your husband
wants is enterprise, a little audacity. You can encourage him best, Mrs.
Dunbar. . . She was a silly, extravagant little fool. Had made George
take a house in Norwood. Live up to a lot of people better off than
themselves. I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots, all feathers and
scent, pink face. More like the Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent
home, it looked to me. But some women do get a devil of a hold on a
man.”
“Yes, some do,” I assented. “Even when the man is the husband.”
“My missis,” he addressed me unexpectedly, in a solemn, surprisingly
hollow tone, “could wind me round her little finger. I didn’t find it
out till she was gone. Aye. But she was a woman of sense, while that
piece of goods ought to have been walking the streets, and that’s all I
can say. . . You must make her up out of your head. You will know the
sort.”
“Leave all that to me,” I said.
“H’m!” he grunted, doubtfully, then going back to his scornful tone: “A
month or so afterwards the _Sagamore_ arrives home. All very jolly at
first. . . Hallo, George boy! Hallo, Harry, old man! . . . But by and by
Captain Harry thinks his clever brother is not looking very well. And
George begins to look worse. He can’t get rid of Cloete’s notion. It
has stuck in his head. . . There’s nothing wrong—quite well. . . Captain
Harry still anxious. Business going all right, eh? Quite right. Lots
of business. Good business. . . Of course Captain Harry believes that
easily. Starts chaffing his brother in his jolly way about rolling in
money. George’s shirt sticks to his back with perspiration, and he feels
quite angry with the captain. . . The fool, he says to himself. Rolling
in money, indeed! And then he thinks suddenly: Why not? . . . Because
Cloete’s notion has got hold of his mind.
“But next day he weakens and says to Cloete . . . Perhaps it would be
best to sell. Couldn’t you talk to my brother? and Cloete explains to
him over again for the twentieth time why selling wouldn’t do, anyhow.
No! The _Sagamore_ must be tomahawked—as he would call it; to spare
George’s feelings, maybe. But every time he says the word, George
shudders. . . I’ve got a man at hand competent for the job who will do
the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased at the chance, says
Cloete. . . George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk—but at the
same time he thinks: Humbug! There can be no such man. And yet if there
was such a man it would be safe enough—perhaps.
“And Cloete always funny about it. He couldn’t talk about anything
without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . Now, says
he, I know you are a moral citizen, George. Morality is mostly funk, and
I think you’re the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels. Why,
you are afraid to speak to your brother. Afraid to open your mouth to
him with a fortune for us all in sight. . . George flares up at this: no,
he ain’t afraid; he will speak; bangs fist on the desk. And Cloete pats
him on the back. . . We’ll be made men presently, he says.
“But the first time George attempts to speak to Captain Harry his heart
slides down into his boots. Captain Harry only laughs at the notion of
staying ashore. He wants no holiday, not he. But Jane thinks of
remaining in England this trip. Go about a bit and see some of her
people. Jane was the Captain’s wife; round-faced, pleasant lady. George
gives up that time; but Cloete won’t let him rest. So he tries again;
and the Captain frowns. He frowns because he’s puzzled. He can’t make
it out. He has no notion of living away from his _Sagamore_. . .
“Ah!” I cried. “Now I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me
crushingly.
“I beg your pardon,” I murmured.
“H’m! Very well, then. Captain Harry looks very stern, and George
crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course
it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow.
He is shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to understand that
his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete
waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious. Cloete really had found a man
for the job. Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very
boarding-house he lodged in—somewhere about Tottenham Court Road. He had
noticed down-stairs a fellow—a boarder and not a boarder—hanging about
the dark—part of the passage mostly; sort of ‘man of the house,’ a
slinking chap. Black eyes. White face. The woman of the house—a widow
lady, she called herself—very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this and
Mr. Stafford that. . . Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to have a
drink. Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars. No
drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there;
just habit; American fashion.
“So Cloete takes that chap out more than once. Not very good company,
though. Little to say for himself. Sits quiet and drinks what’s given
to him, eyes always half closed, speaks sort of demure. . . I’ve had
misfortunes, he says. The truth was they had kicked him out of a big
steam-ship company for disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his
certificate, you understand; and he had gone down quite easily. Liked
it, I expect. Anything’s better than work. Lived on the widow lady who
kept that boarding-house.”
“That’s almost incredible,” I ventured to interrupt. “A man with a
master’s certificate, do you mean?”
“I do; I’ve known them ’bus cads,” he growled, contemptuously. “Yes.
Swing on the tail-board by the strap and yell, ‘tuppence all the way.’
Through drink. But this Stafford was of another kind. Hell’s full of
such Staffords; Cloete would make fun of him, and then there would be a
nasty gleam in the fellow’s half-shut eye. But Cloete was generally kind
to him. Cloete was a fellow that would be kind to a mangy dog. Anyhow,
he used to stand drinks to that object, and now and then gave him half a
crown—because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford short of pocket-money.
They had rows almost every day down in the basement. . .
“It was the fellow being a sailor that put into Cloete’s mind the first
notion of doing away with the _Sagamore_. He studies him a bit, thinks
there’s enough devil in him yet to be tempted, and one evening he says to
him . . . I suppose you wouldn’t mind going to sea again, for a spell? . . .
The other never raises his eyes; says it’s scarcely worth one’s while
for the miserable salary one gets. . . Well, but what do you say to
captain’s wages for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you are
compelled to come home without the ship. Accidents will happen, says
Cloete. . . Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on taking sips of
his drink as if he had no interest in the matter.
“Cloete presses him a bit; but the other observes, impudent and languid
like: You see, there’s no future in a thing like that—is there? . . Oh!
no, says Cloete. Certainly not. I don’t mean this to have any future—as
far as you are concerned. It’s a ‘once for all’ transaction. Well, what
do you estimate your future at? he asks. . . The fellow more listless
than ever—nearly asleep.—I believe the skunk was really too lazy to care.
Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying his living out of some
woman or other, was more his style. Cloete swears at him in whispers
something awful. All this in the saloon bar of the Horse Shoe, Tottenham
Court Road. Finally they agree, over the second sixpennyworth of Scotch
hot, on five hundred pounds as the price of tomahawking the _Sagamore_.
And Cloete waits to see what George can do.
“A week or two goes by. The other fellow loafs about the house as if
there had been nothing, and Cloete begins to doubt whether he really
means ever to tackle that job. But one day he stops Cloete at the door,
with his downcast eyes: What about that employment you wished to give me?
he asks. . . You see, he had played some more than usual dirty trick on
the woman and expected awful ructions presently; and to be fired out for
sure. Cloete very pleased. George had been prevaricating to him such a
lot that he really thought the thing was as well as settled. And he
says: Yes. It’s time I introduced you to my friend. Just get your hat
and we will go now. . .
“The two come into the office, and George at his desk sits up in a sudden
panic—staring. Sees a tallish fellow, sort of nasty-handsome face, heavy
eyes, half shut; short drab overcoat, shabby bowler hat, very
careful—like in his movements. And he thinks to himself, Is that how
such a man looks! No, the thing’s impossible. . . Cloete does the
introduction, and the fellow turns round to look behind him at the chair
before he sits down. . . A thoroughly competent man, Cloete goes on . . .
The man says nothing, sits perfectly quiet. And George can’t speak,
throat too dry. Then he makes an effort: H’m! H’m! Oh
yes—unfortunately—sorry to disappoint—my brother—made other
arrangements—going himself.
“The fellow gets up, never raising his eyes off the ground, like a modest
girl, and goes out softly, right out of the office without a sound.
Cloete sticks his chin in his hand and bites all his fingers at once.
George’s heart slows down and he speaks to Cloete. . . This can’t be
done. How can it be? Directly the ship is lost Harry would see through
it. You know he is a man to go to the underwriters himself with his
suspicions. And he would break his heart over me. How can I play that
on him? There’s only two of us in the world belonging to each other. . .
“Cloete lets out a horrid cuss-word, jumps up, bolts away into his room,
and George hears him there banging things around. After a while he goes
to the door and says in a trembling voice: You ask me for an
impossibility. . . Cloete inside ready to fly out like a tiger and rend
him; but he opens the door a little way and says softly: Talking of
hearts, yours is no bigger than a mouse’s, let me tell you. . . But
George doesn’t care—load off the heart, anyhow. And just then Captain
Harry comes in. . . Hallo, George boy. I am little late. What about a
chop at the Cheshire, now? . . . Right you are, old man. . . And off they
go to lunch together. Cloete has nothing to eat that day.
“George feels a new man for a time; but all of a sudden that fellow
Stafford begins to hang about the street, in sight of the house door.
The first time George sees him he thinks he made a mistake. But no; next
time he has to go out, there is the very fellow skulking on the other
side of the road. It makes George nervous; but he must go out on
business, and when the fellow cuts across the road-way he dodges him. He
dodges him once, twice, three times; but at last he gets nabbed in his
very doorway. . . What do you want? he says, trying to look fierce.
“It seems that ructions had come in the basement of that boarding-house,
and the widow lady had turned on him (being jealous mad), to the extent
of talking of the police. _That_ Mr. Stafford couldn’t stand; so he
cleared out like a scared stag, and there he was, chucked into the
streets, so to speak. Cloete looked so savage as he went to and fro that
he hadn’t the spunk to tackle him; but George seemed a softer kind to his
eye. He would have been glad of half a quid, anything. . . I’ve had
misfortunes, he says softly, in his demure way, which frightens George
more than a row would have done. . . Consider the severity of my
disappointment, he says. . .
“George, instead of telling him to go to the devil, loses his head. . . I
don’t know you. What do you want? he cries, and bolts up-stairs to
Cloete. . . . Look what’s come of it, he gasps; now we are at the mercy
of that horrid fellow. . . Cloete tries to show him that the fellow can
do nothing; but George thinks that some sort of scandal may be forced on,
anyhow. Says that he can’t live with that horror haunting him. Cloete
would laugh if he weren’t too weary of it all. Then a thought strikes
him and he changes his tune. . . Well, perhaps! I will go down-stairs
and send him away to begin with. . . He comes back. . . He’s gone. But
perhaps you are right. The fellow’s hard up, and that’s what makes
people desperate. The best thing would be to get him out of the country
for a time. Look here, the poor devil is really in want of employment.
I won’t ask you much this time: only to hold your tongue; and I shall try
to get your brother to take him as chief officer. At this George lays
his arms and his head on his desk, so that Cloete feels sorry for him.
But altogether Cloete feels more cheerful because he has shaken the ghost
a bit into that Stafford. That very afternoon he buys him a suit of blue
clothes, and tells him that he will have to turn to and work for his
living now. Go to sea as mate of the _Sagamore_. The skunk wasn’t very
willing, but what with having nothing to eat and no place to sleep in,
and the woman having frightened him with the talk of some prosecution or
other, he had no choice, properly speaking. Cloete takes care of him for
a couple of days. . . Our arrangement still stands, says he. Here’s the
ship bound for Port Elizabeth; not a safe anchorage at all. Should she
by chance part from her anchors in a north-east gale and get lost on the
beach, as many of them do, why, it’s five hundred in your pocket—and a
quick return home. You are up to the job, ain’t you?
“Our Mr. Stafford takes it all in with downcast eyes. . . I am a
competent seaman, he says, with his sly, modest air. A ship’s chief mate
has no doubt many opportunities to manipulate the chains and anchors to
some purpose. . . At this Cloete thumps him on the back: You’ll do, my
noble sailor. Go in and win. . .
“Next thing George knows, his brother tells him that he had occasion to
oblige his partner. And glad of it, too. Likes the partner no end.
Took a friend of his as mate. Man had his troubles, been ashore a year
nursing a dying wife, it seems. Down on his luck. . . George protests
earnestly that he knows nothing of the person. Saw him once. Not very
attractive to look at. . . And Captain Harry says in his hearty way,
That’s so, but must give the poor devil a chance. . .
“So Mr. Stafford joins in dock. And it seems that he did manage to
monkey with one of the cables—keeping his mind on Port Elizabeth. The
riggers had all the cable ranged on deck to clean lockers. The new mate
watches them go ashore—dinner hour—and sends the ship-keeper out of the
ship to fetch him a bottle of beer. Then he goes to work whittling away
the forelock of the forty-five-fathom shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two
with a hammer just to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn’t safe
any more. Riggers come back—you know what riggers are: come day, go day,
and God send Sunday. Down goes the chain into the locker without their
foreman looking at the shackles at all. What does he care? He ain’t
going in the ship. And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . ”
* * * * *
At this point I was incautious enough to breathe out another “I see,”
which gave offence again, and brought on me a rude “No, you don’t”—as
before. But in the pause he remembered the glass of beer at his elbow.
He drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and remarked grimly—
“Don’t you think that there will be any sea life in this, because there
ain’t. If you’re going to put in any out of your own head, now’s your
chance. I suppose you know what ten days of bad weather in the Channel
are like? I don’t. Anyway, ten whole days go by. One Monday Cloete
comes to the office a little late—hears a woman’s voice in George’s room
and looks in. Newspapers on the desk, on the floor; Captain Harry’s wife
sitting with red eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . . Look at this,
says George, in great excitement, showing him a paper. Cloete’s heart
gives a jump. Ha! Wreck in Westport Bay. The _Sagamore_ gone ashore
early hours of Sunday, and so the newspaper men had time to put in some
of their work. Columns of it. Lifeboat out twice. Captain and crew
remain by the ship. Tugs summoned to assist. If the weather improves,
this well-known fine ship may yet be saved. . . You know the way these
chaps put it. . . Mrs. Harry there on her way to catch a train from
Cannon Street. Got an hour to wait.
“Cloete takes George aside and whispers: Ship saved yet! Oh, damn! That
must never be; you hear? But George looks at him dazed, and Mrs. Harry
keeps on sobbing quietly: . . . I ought to have been with him. But I am
going to him. . . We are all going together, cries Cloete, all of a
sudden. He rushes out, sends the woman a cup of hot bovril from the shop
across the road, buys a rug for her, thinks of everything; and in the
train tucks her in and keeps on talking, thirteen to the dozen, all the
way, to keep her spirits up, as it were; but really because he can’t hold
his peace for very joy. Here’s the thing done all at once, and nothing
to pay. Done. Actually done. His head swims now and again when he
thinks of it. What enormous luck! It almost frightens him. He would
like to yell and sing. Meantime George Dunbar sits in his corner,
looking so deadly miserable that at last poor Mrs. Harry tries to comfort
him, and so cheers herself up at the same time by talking about how her
Harry is a prudent man; not likely to risk his crew’s life or his own
unnecessarily—and so on.
“First thing they hear at Westport station is that the life-boat has been
out to the ship again, and has brought off the second officer, who had
hurt himself, and a few sailors. Captain and the rest of the crew, about
fifteen in all, are still on board. Tugs expected to arrive every
moment.
“They take Mrs. Harry to the inn, nearly opposite the rocks; she bolts
straight up-stairs to look out of the window, and she lets out a great
cry when she sees the wreck. She won’t rest till she gets on board to
her Harry. Cloete soothes her all he can. . . All right; you try to eat
a mouthful, and we will go to make inquiries.
“He draws George out of the room: Look here, she can’t go on board, but I
shall. I’ll see to it that he doesn’t stop in the ship too long. Let’s
go and find the coxswain of the life-boat. . . George follows him,
shivering from time to time. The waves are washing over the old pier;
not much wind, a wild, gloomy sky over the bay. In the whole world only
one tug away off, heading to the seas, tossed in and out of sight every
minute as regular as clockwork.
“They meet the coxswain and he tells them: Yes! He’s going out again.
No, they ain’t in danger on board—not yet. But the ship’s chance is very
poor. Still, if the wind doesn’t pipe up again and the sea goes down
something might be tried. After some talk he agrees to take Cloete on
board; supposed to be with an urgent message from the owners to the
captain.
“Whenever Cloete looks at the sky he feels comforted; it looks so
threatening. George Dunbar follows him about with a white face and
saying nothing. Cloete takes him to have a drink or two, and by and by
he begins to pick up. . . That’s better, says Cloete; dash me if it
wasn’t like walking about with a dead man before. You ought to be
throwing up your cap, man. I feel as if I wanted to stand in the street
and cheer. Your brother is safe, the ship is lost, and we are made men.
“Are you certain she’s lost? asks George. It would be an awful blow
after all the agonies I have gone through in my mind, since you first
spoke to me, if she were to be got off—and—and—all this temptation to
begin over again. . . For we had nothing to do with this; had we?
“Of course not, says Cloete. Wasn’t your brother himself in charge?
It’s providential. . . Oh! cries George, shocked. . . Well, say it’s the
devil, says Cloete, cheerfully. I don’t mind! You had nothing to do
with it any more than a baby unborn, you great softy, you. . . Cloete has
got so that he almost loved George Dunbar. Well. Yes. That was so. I
don’t mean he respected him. He was just fond of his partner.
“They go back, you may say fairly skipping, to the hotel, and find the
wife of the captain at the open window, with her eyes on the ship as if
she wanted to fly across the bay over there. . . Now then, Mrs. Dunbar,
cries Cloete, you can’t go, but I am going. Any messages? Don’t be shy.
I’ll deliver every word faithfully. And if you would like to give me a
kiss for him, I’ll deliver that too, dash me if I don’t.
“He makes Mrs. Harry laugh with his patter. . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you
are a calm, reasonable man. Make him behave sensibly. He’s a bit
obstinate, you know, and he’s so fond of the ship, too. Tell him I am
here—looking on. . . Trust me, Mrs. Dunbar. Only shut that window,
that’s a good girl. You will be sure to catch cold if you don’t, and the
Captain won’t be pleased coming off the wreck to find you coughing and
sneezing so that you can’t tell him how happy you are. And now if you
can get me a bit of tape to fasten my glasses on good to my ears, I will
be going. . .
“How he gets on board I don’t know. All wet and shaken and excited and
out of breath, he does get on board. Ship lying over, smothered in
sprays, but not moving very much; just enough to jag one’s nerve a bit.
He finds them all crowded on the deck-house forward, in their shiny
oilskins, with faces like sick men. Captain Harry can’t believe his
eyes. What! Mr. Cloete! What are you doing here, in God’s name? . . .
Your wife’s ashore there, looking on, gasps out Cloete; and after they
had talked a bit, Captain Harry thinks it’s uncommonly plucky and kind of
his brother’s partner to come off to him like this. Man glad to have
somebody to talk to. . . It’s a bad business, Mr. Cloete, he says. And
Cloete rejoices to hear that. Captain Harry thinks he had done his best,
but the cable had parted when he tried to anchor her. It was a great
trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to face it. He fetches a
deep sigh now and then. Cloete almost sorry he had come on board,
because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time.
They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the
men. The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was
coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting
the ship afloat could be made. Dusk was falling; winter’s day; black
sky; wind rising. Captain Harry felt melancholy. God’s will be done.
If she must be left on the rocks—why, she must. A man should take what
God sends him standing up. . . Suddenly his voice breaks, and he squeezes
Cloete’s arm: It seems as if I couldn’t leave her, he whispers. Cloete
looks round at the men like a lot of huddled sheep and thinks to himself:
They won’t stay. . . Suddenly the ship lifts a little and sets down with
a thump. Tide rising. Everybody beginning to look out for the
life-boat. Some of the men made her out far away and also two more tugs.
But the gale has come on again, and everybody knows that no tug will ever
dare come near the ship.
“That’s the end, Captain Harry says, very low. . . . Cloete thinks he
never felt so cold in all his life. . . And I feel as if I didn’t care to
live on just now, mutters Captain Harry . . . Your wife’s ashore, looking
on, says Cloete . . . Yes. Yes. It must be awful for her to look at the
poor old ship lying here done for. Why, that’s our home.
“Cloete thinks that as long as the _Sagamore’s_ done for he doesn’t care,
and only wishes himself somewhere else. The slightest movement of the
ship cuts his breath like a blow. And he feels excited by the danger,
too. The captain takes him aside. . . The life-boat can’t come near us
for more than an hour. Look here, Cloete, since you are here, and such a
plucky one—do something for me. . . He tells him then that down in his
cabin aft in a certain drawer there is a bundle of important papers and
some sixty sovereigns in a small canvas bag. Asks Cloete to go and get
these things out. He hasn’t been below since the ship struck, and it
seems to him that if he were to take his eyes off her she would fall to
pieces. And then the men—a scared lot by this time—if he were to leave
them by themselves they would attempt to launch one of the ship’s boats
in a panic at some heavier thump—and then some of them bound to get
drowned. . . There are two or three boxes of matches about my shelves in
my cabin if you want a light, says Captain Harry. Only wipe your wet
hands before you begin to feel for them. . .
“Cloete doesn’t like the job, but doesn’t like to show funk, either—and
he goes. Lots of water on the main-deck, and he splashes along; it was
getting dark, too. All at once, by the mainmast, somebody catches him by
the arm. Stafford. He wasn’t thinking of Stafford at all. Captain
Harry had said something as to the mate not being quite satisfactory, but
it wasn’t much. Cloete doesn’t recognise him in his oilskins at first.
He sees a white face with big eyes peering at him. . . Are you pleased,
Mr. Cloete . . . ?
“Cloete is moved to laugh at the whine, and shakes him off. But the
fellow scrambles on after him on the poop and follows him down into the
cabin of that wrecked ship. And there they are, the two of them; can
hardly see each other. . . You don’t mean to make me believe you have had
anything to do with this, says Cloete. . .
“They both shiver, nearly out of their wits with the excitement of being
on board that ship. She thumps and lurches, and they stagger together,
feeling sick. Cloete again bursts out laughing at that wretched creature
Stafford pretending to have been up to something so desperate. . . Is
that how you think you can treat me now? yells the other man all of a
sudden. . .
“A sea strikes the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round them,
there’s the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete, and
he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you don’t believe me!
Go and look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go and see if it’s parted.
Go and find the broken link. You can’t. There’s no broken link. That
means a thousand pounds for me. No less. A thousand the day after we
get ashore—prompt. I won’t wait till she breaks up, Mr. Cloete. To the
underwriters I go if I’ve to walk to London on my bare feet. Port cable!
Look at her port cable, I will say to them. I doctored it—for the
owners—tempted by a low rascal called Cloete.
“Cloete does not understand what it means exactly. All he sees is that
the fellow means to make mischief. He sees trouble ahead. . . Do you
think you can scare me? he asks,—you poor miserable skunk. . . And
Stafford faces him out—both holding on to the cabin table: No, damn you,
you are only a dirty vagabond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the
black coat. . .
“Meaning George Dunbar. Cloete’s brain reels at the thought. He doesn’t
imagine the fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what George is;
give the show away; upset the whole business he had set his heart on. He
says nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk and strain and
excitement, panting like a dog—and then a snarl. . . A thousand down,
twenty-four hours after we get ashore; day after to-morrow. That’s my
last word, Mr. Cloete. . . A thousand pounds, day after to-morrow, says
Cloete. Oh yes. And to-day take this, you dirty cur. . . He hits
straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else. Stafford goes
away spinning along the bulk-head. Seeing this, Cloete steps out and
lands him another one somewhere about the jaw. The fellow staggers
backward right into the captain’s cabin through the open door. Cloete,
following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then
slams the door to and turns the key. . . There! says he to himself, that
will stop you from making trouble.”
“By Jove!” I murmured.
The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his
rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre
eyes.
“He did leave him there,” he uttered, weightily, returning to the
contemplation of the wall. “Cloete didn’t mean to allow anybody, let
alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great notion of
making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter, rich
men. And he didn’t think much of consequences. These patent-medicine
chaps don’t care what they say or what they do. They think the world’s
bound to swallow any story they like to tell. . . He stands listening for
a bit. And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a
sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain’s room. He thinks he
hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old _Sagamore_
rises and falls to a sea. That noise and that awful shock make him clear
out of the cabin. He collects his senses on the poop. But his heart
sinks a little at the black wildness of the night. Chances that he will
get drowned himself before long. Puts his head down the companion.
Through the wind and breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford’s
beating against the door and cursing. He listens and says to himself:
No. Can’t trust him now. . .
“When he gets back to the top of the deck-house he says to Captain Harry,
who asks him if he got the things, that he is very sorry. There was
something wrong with the door. Couldn’t open it. And to tell you the
truth, says he, I didn’t like to stop any longer in that cabin. There
are noises there as if the ship were going to pieces. . . Captain Harry
thinks: Nervous; can’t be anything wrong with the door. But he says:
Thanks—never mind, never mind. . . All hands looking out now for the
life-boat. Everybody thinking of himself rather. Cloete asks himself,
will they miss him? But the fact is that Mr. Stafford had made such poor
show at sea that after the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention to
him. Nobody cared what he did or where he was. Pitch dark, too—no
counting of heads. The light of the tug with the lifeboat in tow is seen
making for the ship, and Captain Harry asks: Are we all there? . . .
Somebody answers: All here, sir. . . Stand by to leave the ship, then,
says Captain Harry; and two of you help the gentleman over first. . .
Aye, aye, sir. . . Cloete was moved to ask Captain Harry to let him stay
till last, but the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the fore-rigging,
two chaps lay hold of him, watch their chance, and drop him into her, all
safe.
“He’s nearly exhausted; not used to that sort of thing, you see. He sits
in the stern-sheets with his eyes shut. Don’t want to look at the white
water boiling all around. The men drop into the boat one after another.
Then he hears Captain Harry’s voice shouting in the wind to the coxswain,
to hold on a moment, and some other words he can’t catch, and the
coxswain yelling back: Don’t be long, sir. . . What is it? Cloete asks
feeling faint. . . Something about the ship’s papers, says the coxswain,
very anxious. It’s no time to be fooling about alongside, you
understand. They haul the boat off a little and wait. The water flies
over her in sheets. Cloete’s senses almost leave him. He thinks of
nothing. He’s numb all over, till there’s a shout: Here he is! . . .
They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting—they slack away on the
grapnel-line and get him in the boat quite easy. There is a little
shouting—it’s all mixed up with the noise of the sea. Cloete fancies
that Stafford’s voice is talking away quite close to his ear. There’s a
lull in the wind, and Stafford’s voice seems to be speaking very fast to
the coxswain; he tells him that of course he was near his skipper, was
all the time near him, till the old man said at the last moment that he
must go and get the ship’s papers from aft; would insist on going
himself; told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat. . . He had meant
to wait for his skipper, only there came this smooth of the seas, and he
thought he would take his chance at once.
“Cloete opens his eyes. Yes. There’s Stafford sitting close by him in
that crowded life-boat. The coxswain stoops over Cloete and cries: Did
you hear what the mate said, sir? . . . Cloete’s face feels as if it were
set in plaster, lips and all. Yes, I did, he forces himself to answer.
The coxswain waits a moment, then says: I don’t like it. . . And he turns
to the mate, telling him it was a pity he did not try to run along the
deck and hurry up the captain when the lull came. Stafford answers at
once that he did think of it, only he was afraid of missing him on the
deck in the dark. For, says he, the captain might have got over at once,
thinking I was already in the life-boat, and you would have hauled off
perhaps, leaving me behind. . . True enough, says the coxswain. A minute
or so passes. This won’t do, mutters the coxswain. Suddenly Stafford
speaks up in a sort of hollow voice: I was by when he told Mr. Cloete
here that he didn’t know how he would ever have the courage to leave the
old ship; didn’t he, now? . . . And Cloete feels his arm being gripped
quietly in the dark. . . Didn’t he now? We were standing together just
before you went over, Mr. Cloete? . . .
“Just then the coxswain cries out: I’m going on board to see. . . Cloete
tears his arm away: I am going with you. . .
“When they get aboard, the coxswain tells Cloete to go aft along one side
of the ship and he would go along the other so as not to miss the
captain. . . And feel about with your hands, too, says he; he might have
fallen and be lying insensible somewhere on the deck. . . When Cloete
gets at last to the cabin companion on the poop the coxswain is already
there, peering down and sniffing. I detect a smell of smoke down there,
says he. And he yells: Are you there, sir? . . . This is not a case for
shouting, says Cloete, feeling his heart go stony, as it were. . . Down
they go. Pitch dark; the inclination so sharp that the coxswain, groping
his way into the captain’s room, slips and goes tumbling down. Cloete
hears him cry out as though he had hurt himself, and asks what’s the
matter. And the coxswain answers quietly that he had fallen on the
captain, lying there insensible. Cloete without a word begins to grope
all over the shelves for a box of matches, finds one, and strikes a
light. He sees the coxswain in his cork jacket kneeling over Captain
Harry. . . Blood, says the coxswain, looking up, and the match goes out.
. .
“Wait a bit, says Cloete; I’ll make paper spills. . . He had felt the
back of books on the shelves. And so he stands lighting one spill from
another while the coxswain turns poor Captain Harry over. Dead, he says.
Shot through the heart. Here’s the revolver. . . He hands it up to
Cloete, who looks at it before putting it in his pocket, and sees a plate
on the butt with _H. Dunbar_ on it. . . His own, he mutters. . . Whose
else revolver did you expect to find? snaps the coxswain. And look, he
took off his long oilskin in the cabin before he went in. But what’s
this lot of burnt paper? What could he want to burn the ship’s papers
for? . . .
Cloete sees all, the little drawers drawn out, and asks the coxswain to
look well into them. . . There’s nothing, says the man. Cleaned out.
Seems to have pulled out all he could lay his hands on and set fire to
the lot. Mad—that’s what it is—went mad. And now he’s dead. You’ll
have to break it to his wife. . .
“I feel as if I were going mad myself, says Cloete, suddenly, and the
coxswain begs him for God’s sake to pull himself together, and drags him
away from the cabin. They had to leave the body, and as it was they were
just in time before a furious squall came on. Cloete is dragged into the
life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in. Haul away on the grapnel, he
shouts; the captain has shot himself. . .
“Cloete was like a dead man—didn’t care for anything. He let that
Stafford pinch his arm twice without making a sign. Most of Westport was
on the old pier to see the men out of the life-boat, and at first there
was a sort of confused cheery uproar when she came alongside; but after
the coxswain has shouted something the voices die out, and everybody is
very quiet. As soon as Cloete has set foot on something firm he becomes
himself again. The coxswain shakes hands with him: Poor woman, poor
woman, I’d rather you had the job than I. . .
“Where’s the mate?” asks Cloete. He’s the last man who spoke to the
master. . . Somebody ran along—the crew were being taken to the Mission
Hall, where there was a fire and shake-downs ready for them—somebody ran
along the pier and caught up with Stafford. . . Here! The owner’s agent
wants you. . . Cloete tucks the fellow’s arm under his own and walks away
with him to the left, where the fishing-harbour is. . . I suppose I
haven’t misunderstood you. You wish me to look after you a bit, says he.
The other hangs on him rather limp, but gives a nasty little laugh: You
had better, he mumbles; but mind, no tricks; no tricks, Mr. Cloete; we
are on land now.
“There’s a police office within fifty yards from here, says Cloete. He
turns into a little public house, pushes Stafford along the passage. The
landlord runs out of the bar. . . This is the mate of the ship on the
rocks, Cloete explains; I wish you would take care of him a bit to-night. . .
What’s the matter with him? asks the man. Stafford leans against the
wall in the passage, looking ghastly. And Cloete says it’s nothing—done
up, of course. . . I will be responsible for the expense; I am the
owner’s agent. I’ll be round in an hour or two to see him.
And Cloete gets back to the hotel. The news had travelled there already,
and the first thing he sees is George outside the door as white as a
sheet waiting for him. Cloete just gives him a nod and they go in. Mrs.
Harry stands at the head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these two
coming up, flings her arms above her head and runs into her room. Nobody
had dared tell her, but not seeing her husband was enough. Cloete hears
an awful shriek. . . Go to her, he says to George.
“While he’s alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy
and thinks it all out. Then George comes in. . . The landlady’s with
her, he says. And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his
arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete
has never seen it before. . . What must be, must be. Dead—only brother.
Well, dead—his troubles over. But we are living, he says to Cloete; and
I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won’t
forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for
certain. . .
“Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is
business, George goes on; and look—my hands are clean, he says, showing
them to Cloete. Cloete thinks: He’s going crazy. He catches hold of him
by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you—if you had had the
sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to
speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he
shouts.
“At this George stares, t
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